The Clash of the Theorists

I often find it amazing that world has so many controversies that will keep igniting the minds of many. Take for example the case of creationists vs. the evolutionists. While the creationists maintain that a supreme being is responsible for life, the evolutionists look at life as a mere “accident”- a freak of nature that took millions of years to evolve to what we see today.

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking in his mini-series “Into the universe” puts forward a very convincing explanation on how the universe was formed after the big bang and how life evolved on earth due to the presence of a concoction of elements needed to make life exist. But even a physicist of the caliber of Mr. Hawking maintains that though science has explained HOW it all began, it has yet to explain WHY it all began.

Ditto for the case of life on earth- If you really think about all the animal, bird and insect species on this planet, you are bound to be astounded, not only with the mere numbers, but also the unbelievable variations that are so beautifully diverse that you have hundreds if not thousands of varieties within the same species! And then let’s not forget the species of plant life which outnumber animals any day. In my mind, such an abundance of life to be so diverse yet strangely enough be somehow related to each other makes me believe that some form of evolution must have occurred in the Earth’s million year history. As I ponder more on this, there is one exceptional species of “animal” which still puzzles me – a species that in my view has never significantly evolved – Homo sapiens a.k.a Humans.

Whether humans can be classified as animals is a topic for another day. But humans unlike all other life on earth have a unique level of unmatched intelligence; Intelligence with which our ancestors improvised even in the toughest of conditions. I think the cliché that our early tribal ancestors were dumb dodos is quite unfair. On the contrary, I am of the opinion that our ancestors were as intelligent as human beings today. They might have not understood the world like we do today but I am sure they had thoughts about life, who we are and where we came from. And it would be safe for me to say that the birth of religion is a consequence of these thoughts. Our uniqueness in this aspect therefore gives me reason to believe that unlike animals, birds, plants and insects, we did NOT evolve. Evolutionists will argue we came from monkeys, that we have physical features and DNA that are alike. Why then, are we the only “evolved species” with unmatched intelligence? Why isn’t there an evolved species of cats for instance that can talk and think like we do? We as humans seem to be so out of place in the hierarchy of nature and its constant cycles. Like an artist who leaves his signature on his works of art, our resemblance to animals physically and genetically only seem to indicate that we all originated from the same grand designer. In this case therefore, unlike Mr. Hawkings argument, not only do we not know WHY we are here; we don’t even know HOW we got here. Furthermore, as a result of this argument I am quite certain that life DOES exist on other planets – animals, birds and even plants, and we will, as intelligent beings one day stumble upon them. We will however never come across anything evenly remotely as intelligent as humans. I can bet my bottom dollar on that!