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Marveling in the wonders of amazing 'Planet Earth'

By ANDREW SKERRITT
Published April 3, 2007

I've been having a religious experience in the most unlikely place lately. It's Holy week and Passover, but my awakening hasn't been from going to a church or synagogue.

I've been watching lots of TV. I'm one of those captivated by Planet Earth, the 11-part, five-week series being aired on the Discovery Channel.

It first aired on March 25 but reruns are shown throughout the week. I've watched it live; I've also taped it and played it again and again. It's almost like my wife taping and replaying episodes of Oprah. Coincidentally she has been touting the series on her show.

Watching the school of dolphins as they sailed in and out of the water, they seemed to be writing words, as if they were sending a sacred message with the froth on the surface. As other larger fish chase mackerel, birds flying overhead wait to join the ambush. It's fascinating stuff.

But as I watched the images in high definition, I couldn't help but marvel at the symmetry and order of creation. How can you watch the Bird of Paradise in his courtship ritual and not wonder about its design for a minute? This stuff can't be random. God had to have created it.

Planet Earth will undoubtedly fuel the never-ending debate between those who believe God created the Earth and those who subscribe to the scientific theory of evolution. Watching the pictures of the deserts, mountains and oceans and the amazing creatures that live there reinforces my conviction that this planet is the result of someone else's grand design. Planet Earth will also bring comfort to those who believe that the real answers are somewhere in between.

Where simple-minded folks like me see God, others will see the kangaroos' adaptability to the Australian heat and the camels' long eyelashes to combat the desert dust as proof of evolution. They evolve or they don't survive. Was that God or was it evolution?

Does it have to be one or the other?

Can't it be both?

Clearly, when the narrator talks about all those millions of years to form the Alps, Rockies and Himalayas mountain ranges, some will see this as evolutionists again boldly disputing the trajectory of human existence as laid out in the Bible.

The series also lays bare our humanity. Just watching the snow leopard hunting goats in the Himalayas, you can't help but root for the fleeing goat. At the same time, your rational self acknowledges that's the way things are. Animals hunt to live. If the goats always escape, then the leopard and her cub will starve to death. And if no one culls the goat herds, they become huge and overgraze. It all makes sense.

There is even a political lesson, too. As I heard the narrator, actress Sigourney Weaver, lament about the impact of the early melting of the polar ice on the meat-eating polar bear, I could hear strains of the global warming debate. Skeptics will be tempted to dismiss this as another environmentalist film in line with Al Gore's film Inconvenient Truth. But why waste time being skeptical when you can be bowled over in amazement at the images of nature captured in this series?

Whether you believe that God made the Earth or things evolved, watching Planet Earth is a humbling experience. It makes us see the Earth in a marvelous new way. And if that makes us want to do a better job of taking care of our planet, then no God would disapprove.

Andrew Skerritt can be reached at (813) 909-4602 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is askerritt@sptimes.com.

[Last modified April 3, 2007, 06:20:18]