This is a question that has been haunting
mankind ever since his
Reason clicked into place he thought about asking questions beyond the domain of
daily needs, and
personal gratification.
Who are we?
Were did we come from?
These are both incredibly important because from them we derive a sense of identity and history. In the past the main arena for these sorts of questions was the debate between religion and philosophy, and the intellectual rigour imposed that for the vast majority of people the discussion was quite beyond them, and they relied on their local religious leader or representative of the academic community to take them through it. In modern times, the arena has shifted to Micro-Biology, and genetics, and associated realms of science, and again the battle is between philosophy, religion, and now science. However, if we are to believe philosophy or religion or science, the other two simply don't exist as they have no value except through an understanding of themselves. Yet, even if we remain impartial we are still left with the questions: Who are we? Where did we come form?
The node above, while superb in it's proof of the unlikeliness of chance protien production, and the inclusion of valued commentary from noted Biologists of our time, fails to answer this question directly by proposing, or supporting a theory of it's own. It simply negates the currently accepted view that life evolved from more primitive forms, by a process of chance, (and perhaps natural selection). Now while we have all been taught to accept this view, to get our marks from school/uni, we should perhaps pay heed to the objections that the noted scholars above have made. Again, we face the problem that although we are much more educated than our ancestors, relatively speaking we are no better off for taking part in this important discussion. There are really only a very few Biologists, Philosophers, and Theologians that know their stuff well enough to be able to argue fairly about this topic.
That being said, we still have our own Reason to fall back on, and perhaps an examination of the problem might be valuable.
There are a number of options:
- Created/Fashioned/Designed/Whatever by a Higher being. I.e GOD.
- Nothing/God, Life Always Was.
- Evolution (Natural Selection + Chance)
- Other
These are pretty well mutually exclusive. Ie if one is true, then the others are likely not to be true. Having said this, the available evidence does point to an ordered and structured universe that does follow intelligable laws, and a consistent framework. Our own intuition suggests then that the first option is highly likely. Although we may not understand the role of such an entity in a continuing universe, we cannot preclude the information around us that points to a reasoning intellect behind the ordered universe we see around us.
That doesn't stop us, however from also examining the scientific advances in Biology as well. It is perfectly possible that we may learn to fill the gaps and illuminate the dark areas in the theory of evolution, however currently, like the first theory, it is only a theory, and every person must decide which theory most closely fits to their picture of the universe. The Other option is there waiting for something to come along and blow the other two theories out of the water, this is highly unlikely, but it is possible, so it's good practice to cover all the bases. And on that basis (pun intended) I intend to finish this wu.