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One thing that especially jumped out at me during our discussion group with Prof. Dalke on was what makes the story of evoltion useful.  We managed to come up with the obvious examples, resistant strains of bacteria can develop when we don't finish our course of antibiotics.  Farmers begin to discover strains of insects that are resistent to the pesticides used to protect their plants.  These are good examples, but I sensed that, as a class, we didn't find these examples to be satisfying.  For me, I was searching for something much bigger.  Why else is this story such a big deal? We began grappling with different ideas, "it tells us where we come from", "an idea of where we are going". But are these things really useful.  Some people reported that they found comfort in the concept of evolution.  Finding comfort in something considered to be so scientific pointed out a glaring parallel and contradiction for me.  For me science is so NOT comforting, I love it, but it has never made me feel comfortable.  I like to be sure of myself and confident in my decisions; science for me is always pushing me beyond my comfort level, forcing me to learn more, discover more, but never feel comfortable with what I know.  On the other hand, though I do not claim that analyzing literature or the written word in any form to be my forte, I enjoy it immensely.  And for me, it does provide a certain level of comfort that I can't quite articulate.  And of course this led me to the conclusion, that this differs completely from person to person, and is quite possibly the opposite for some. 

An interesting theme in discussion that weaved through the whole class was comfort.  Why aren't we comfortable with the idea that evolution might be wrong.  Many good points were brought up.  But for me, and perhaps for others, the idea that evolution might be completely off base is really rather frightening.  Because if it is completly wrong, than we will be seen by future generations as we currently see the Greeks and Romans, believing in nothing more than fairytales.  For an intellectual, isn't this frightening? To be so off base that your beliefs and "discoveries" ammount to nothing more than childrens stories.  And while one can argue that we know so much more than they knew then, the same is true for the future.  And as for the past, the myths that they created were the best they could do with their "summary of observations" of the world around them. That's all for now, sorry a bit scrambled.