DANIEL

I Believe
Copywrite © 2003 Daniel Ball

I'm not a person of religious faith. I don't believe in miracles or anything like that. I do believe; however, that there is a creator of some sort. It may be a deity, it may be an alien with a sick sense of humor, but whatever it is, everything seems far too organized and unlikely to be a fluke.

We'll start with the beginning. Big bang. Sure, I can believe that. All the mass in the universe suddenly explodes in all directions. Matter is now forming nebulas, cosmic masses of dust and debris. It forms together even further into smaller bodies like curdling milk. So now we have our galactic bowl of cottage cheese, some bits larger than others, all of it still with the forward momentum supplied by the original cataclysmic explosion. Wow that's neat.

We move further in time. To a more focused point in space. Our solar system has formed. Nine (or ten) planets revolving merrily around a single star. Iron and silicates made up the majority of the planet at the time. Radioactive elements such as Thorium and Uranium gradually heated the earth and melted some the baby planet. The heavier element, iron, sank toward the center of the planet while the silicates remained at the top. You probably don't care though, right? But it's important. As the planet swallowed iron and vomited silicates, it formed many depressions which served as natural basins for water. Hydrogen and Oxygen bond together to form water, one of the most unusual molecules known to man. This water, having been obliged by the law of gravity, went to the place closest to the center of our giant rock-pimple covered adolescent planet; the oceans.

What does this have to do with life you ask? Well, water just happens to be fairly important to the grueling process of dying, which regrettably requires that you be alive first. The earth was covered in a primordial ooze at this point. A mixture of all the ingredients necessary for the creation of life, like carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. So here we have all this goop floating aimlessly in our happy new oceans. (Note that the oceans are happy, because there's no garbage and turds floating in them at this point.) Now that we have everything required for the spontaneous generation of life, life spontaneously generates! It's probably accompanied by an amusing sound affect, like *POOF.* I'm pretty sure that our new friend the prokaryote said something like “look ma, I'm a monocellular organism!” For androgyny's sake, we'll name it Chris.

So here we have Chris. Chris was bored. So Chris decided to make itself some company. He thought to himself, gee, if I spontaneously developed an organelle known as chloroplasts, I could have another miraculously generated buddy capable of eating me! So it could make oxygen for Pat, the protozoan capable of a newly discovered prehistoric cellular technology. Pat and Chris discussed this new technology at length and decided to call it Diffusion. Yay. Shortly after, Pat ate Chris.

Seems odd, doesn't it? That Pat and Chris spontaneously formed a working set of tiny organelles that would be incapable of functioning separate from each other? It should, the probability of a self replicating cell by the random movement of atoms is 10 to the power of 40000 to 1 according to an astronomer and mathematician, Sir Fred Hoyle.

Now, we move even further along our supposed timeline. We have dinosaurs: Gigantic prehistoric monsters battling for survival against all odds, and being generally cool to look at. Pretty much the same as any other era really. I just want to know how, if all of these dinosaurs were wiped out, did anything evolve from them? They say that a parakeet is a close relative of Tyrannosaurus Rex. Now, I've seen the similarities in bone structure and all, I'll concede to that method of thinking. My only question regarding the Giant Lizard of Death and Chief, my little childhood budgie is this: All these gargantuan lizards are happily prancing around being vicious and frightening when they just suddenly die. The common theory at the moment is still the giant meteor one. They even found evidence of an impact around the Gulf of Mexico! But I digress. OK, so giant rock hits planet. Giant dust cloud causes global change in temperature. ICE AGEE. At what point in this history was it remotely possible for Chief to flutter his merry little way into things? I mean, it's not like a parakeet is the hardiest of animals.

Now, to give credit to the evolutionists, or just because I'll take any chance I ca get to mock traditiona Christian ideology, I also find it amazing that carbon dating sets these bones as millions of years old when Christian scholars assure use that the planet is no older than 4000 years.

This is where our timeline gets really hairy. We're going to New Zealand! An incredible island, absolutely filled with scientific oddities paired with breathtaking scenery. This scenery is theoretically related to the aforementioned “oddities.” These seem proof both for and against evolution. Proof against is the Duck Billed Platypus. Look at it: It's a marsupial, a type of mammal, having a pouch for it's young. It lays eggs like a bird, not to mention having a duck's bill. It has webbed feet, including a poisonous claw. What was the last poisonous mammal you've heard of? And, as if to add insult to injury, it has a beaver's tail! This creature actually has a class all it's own because natural science couldn't classify it with anything else.

The evidence for evolution lies nearby, in the ruffled brown feathers of a large bird. A fairly large brown species of Parrot. But it's not the dull plumage that makes this bird unique: no, this bird is flightless. As if it were considering taking wing and getting the hell off this rock, but kept tellin gitself that it was too fat to fly. Perhaps this was a stage between The giant meat tearing doom lizard and my cute little parakeet. But that's not all, the island is covered in evidence for both sides, the sheer ridiculousness of some of the creatures points to a creator. Yet the same qualities vouch for the evolutionists. Good luck sorting this place out.

So which is it? Creation or evolution/ Theology or Science? I think that I'll take the middle ground. (Bet you didn't think there was one.) I believe that there is definitely some sort of a creator. But I don't think that he/she/it could possibly have created everything in such order. I believe that this creator create life, and then let chaos take over. That's right, we were created out of the boredom of the supreme being. Evolution is not an organized thing, it's chaotic and random, cause and effect. It's the path that it leaves tbehind that appears as a pattern. I guess that makes me a deist.

That's not the point though. What it really boils down to is this:Who cares? Be it creation or evolution, the final outcome for all of us is the same, no matter how it all started. That's nature's, or god's grand design. Death becomes us..