CAN THEY BE FRIENDS?

I am gradually becoming the person I never wanted to be: A "Once-A-Week" blogger. It's not that I don't have ideas, it's more a matter of time, so please bear with me. And to make matters worse I'm about to pull out stuff from the back corners of my mind...you know-the place where you lock up stuff you don't want to deal with until it miraculously unlocks itself and you have to step back and ask for answers.

So open up your mind, and work with me:

It must have been sometime in December last year, I was standing in front of some random white board in a random conference room trying to creatively convey to my student why sponges(phylum:Porifera) are considered animals and at the same time why they are less complex than say... earthworms(phylum:Annelida), an organism that evolved later in time. I remember cramming all the Pteridophytas et al (American Pronunciation:teree-DAW-fta, Nigerian Pronunciation: TE-REE-DOH-FAAIGHTA. Back then, we probably figured if we were going to have to memorize weird latin words, we might as well emphasize every single painful syllable it had lol) in high school and regurgitating them mindlessly on exams and eventually, in college using theories of evolution to explain how we came to being from some random one celled organism that existed eons ago. But I had blocked my mind and sequestered these concepts to an obscure part of my brain, it wasn't my opinion, it was that of the crazy scientists. But here I was now imparting this crazy scientist knowledge on some one else, but with a little caveat to save face-"at least that's how THEY say it works, I personally don't believe it but just learn it for your exam"

After that random tutoring session, I remember thinking of myself as a hypocrite. I grew up believing beautiful stories of Adam, Eve and the Garden of Eden. How GOD created the world in seven days, etc and all throughout my short career as a science student, I put pen to paper numerous times and boldly attested otherwise. For the first time though, I let the "church" part of my brain talk to the "science" part. I laid all my guards down and after the brief but awkward silence that two strangers thrown together in a room experience, the ever liberal scientific side asked the conservative "church" side..."WHY CAN'T WE BE FRIENDS?"

Thus began an ongoing "re"concilliation process. I have tried to think logically of a way GOD could be involved in evolution. Where logic fails, prayer fills the void. Is it not possible that GOD could have created a self-maintaining system that HE did not have to micromanage? You know, like creating the first microbe and setting the wheels in motion for a process that would lead to the development of the most complex of HIS organisms-US. The evidence is really compelling. Why else will scientists be able to test new drugs on mice, monkeys et al and just add on a few tweaks here and there to make it useful in humans. And of course the closer "related" the organisms are to man in evolutionary time, the less tweaking is needed (usually). And if you look at any random genetic code, certain proteins have been conserved(remained similar/the same) from organisms like roundworms all the way to humans.

One compelling point I got from a Christian Scientist whose opinion I respect, was this challenge. Why do we think 7 days is literally SEVEN DAYS. It could be the equivalent of SEVEN EONS right? Didn't GOD tell Abraham he would soon become the father of many nations only for the events to happen more than 20 years later? Also even the creation story acknowledged the land was first separated from the waters, then sea animals were created and then the land animals. This strongly supports scientists theory that the evolution of higher animals, started with the fish(water), then the frogs(amphibians-both land and water dwellers), the reptiles(sole land dwellers), birds, then mammals.

Yet another compelling theory is that of Natural Selection. The only reason a disease such as sickle cell still exists today(as opposed to all carriers dying off to prevent transmission of such a chronic disease to their offspring) is because carriers of the S hemoglobin have been selected for over time. The maintenance of this potentially problematic S-hemoglobin in the gene pool was advantageous because it offered some kind of resistance to malaria-a disease which is very prevalent in areas where most of the carriers descended from.

I did not delve into some kind of thesis research to get info for this post because I didn't want it to sound any more like a boring science article than it already does, but these are the points that stand out for me in trying to unite these two schools of thought. I also tried to avoid mainstream technicalities like CREATIONISM,etc, we don't all have to fit in a category do we? I feel the need to figure out what exactly I believe in because simply put,
- I don't enjoy teaching people things I don't believe
- There is significant evidence supporting each side of this argument and trying to hold on to a belief system without using it to explain practical things in life is of no use to me.

So I guess the whole point of this hoobla is: Think logically and open-mindedly for a second, step out of your cosy belief system and if you can, tell me what you believe about this? Do you think the evolution of life could have been initiated on its own, without any higher power's intervention? Or do you think all the evidence aside, scientists just make these things up? No don't google anything, no research just your raw thoughts...