Life? No mystery
The mystery of life and nature lies
With shimmering pebbles in a moorland stream.
While deeper than it seems to our poor eyes
A simple slate like lapis lazuli can gleam.
And in this river find deceitful stones
That hide their sparkle from a duller glance,
But make the eyes of others shine with lust
Of riches for the one who hones
This glassy rock to its refractive best.
But I digressed.
The wonder of a diamond stems
From qualities discovered at the hand of man;
While nature had, so many eons past
Pressed humble carbon into service as a jewel-to-be,
it took a jeweler to add the essential polish
The question that I really want to ask
is do you feel the need to ascribe nature’s hardest creation to a supernatural power? Nobody has ever told you to believe that beautiful pebbles in a stream or on the beach prove intelligent design, have they?
And does the simple worm that moves only to eat and procreate speak of a ‘maker’ just because it is more complex than a stone?
Where is the design here? Molecules exist because atoms can combine according to strict rules – and do so whenever they meet because they must.
Even under conditions of heat and pressure where life cannot exist, complex molecules can replicate, and do so because they must. These replicating molecules can organize themselves into ‘simple’ forms that can move and take stuff from their environment – which they do, because they are able. But the mechanisms within continue to operate because they must.
Fishes skipped on the mud and gills slowly changed to lungs – a whole new world rose from the water’s edge to be explored and exploited. Wonderful changes took place because they could. Forms changed slowly as small errors crept into the processes of replication. Particles
from space bombard us still and can make changes to the elementary atoms involved in DNA – the instructions for replication.
To a very simple creature a simple change meant success or failure in the competition for resources, in the ability to recreate. The changed forms flourished because they were better, and nothing could stop them. For a while anyway.
As creatures became very complex tiny changes had tiny effects, but over millions of years the complexities grew, and not for one second in the time it took dumb animals to evolve into even dumber humans (humorous episode) was there a need for an outside ‘designer’ to make something from nothing.
My mother was a devout believer, and I respect the human need to fill in the gaps of understanding, and to praise something for the wonder of life (when it is wonderful) and beauty of nature (when it is beautiful).
It is my position that simple christians are among the kindest and most selfless people by nature, and fundamentalists of all flavors among the most neurotic and dangerous. There cannot be a single god that both groups believe in. How can there be?
