A few Sundays back, we had a "Question Box" Sunday. This is when, instead of a sermon, I take questions from the congregation and offer (hopefully) clarifying answers. Unforntuately, I cannot get through all the questions in the service, so I'll be answering those I didn't get to here.

I've grouped the remaining questions into four groups: Questions for General Knowledge, Questions about Rev. Matthew, Questions for/about UUs, and Questions about Life. I'll be answering them in four different installations here, so if you asked a question it will appear here in the coming weeks.

Questions for General Knowledge:Are monkeys just like us?

Everything I know about primates (monkeys, apes & humans) I learned from a college class in primatology and from Gary Larson’s The Far Side comic strip. What I recall is that genetically, apes are our closest living relatives and monkeys are a near second. So, fundamentally, they are different. Yet, I also recall that when observed in their natural habitat, they have many similarities.

Jane Goodall and Diane Fossey are among many scientists who through their study and conservation of chimps and mountain gorillas taught us about being human animals. They observed in apes emotional reactions to family, birth and death, which appear akin to ours. They have also documented their use of culture, the passing on of information from individual to individual not based on genetics or instinct.  

Their observations remind me that there are more similarities than differences between myself and the natural world; a reminder of our seventh principle, “that we affirm and promote the interconnected web of all existence.”

Is it true that a dog’s mouth is cleaner that a human’s?

It’s amazing considering the awful stuff they eat, but yes, dogs have fewer bacteria than humans in their mouths. Still, when your dog grabs the donut you dropped, it’s not worth going after it.

What o’ what is the meaning of the earth?

Oh, the Earth is the third rock in orbit of a star

And it’s not too near, and it’s not too far

Which makes it just right… for Evolution!

Now, it all started off with some singled celled life

Which grew and changed and survived all the strife

Which made the right soup… for Evolution!

And today we have oodles of living diversity

We got bugs, fugi, viruses, and a whole bunch a’ kind o’ tree

Which all emerged from… Evolution!

Does that make evolution the meaning of this place?

Is it somehow focused on the entire human race?

Well I’m happy to say that it simply not so

The “meaning” of the earth isn’t just so humans grow

In all the universe, it just one of many planets

With evolution as a process - that don’t need no folks to man it…

So, the Earth is the third rock orbit’n the star Sol

I think if you asked all its creatures in some telepathic poll

They’d say the meaning of the earth… was Evolution!

How many dimples on a golf ball?

325.