~May Your Light Shine :D~

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

I have a feeling this is going to be another long post and I can just hear someof you all go… “Lydea is gonna write an essay again, doesn’t she have enoughessays to hand in?” or “What on earth is she writing about?”

Well I can’t help it if I have the inspiration to elaborate, can I?

So what caught my mind this time?

Psychology.

The very subject some of my classmates have no idea why we are studying it. ButI just read about language acquisition and that is a topic that has been circulating in my brain the past few weeks no thanks to my linguistic and phonetic journal.Anyway, someone mentioned that language could have been a product of evolution. Although many animals such as the intelligent dolphins and our closest relativeaka chimpanzee, have been known to possess language skills, it is nothingcompared to what we human beings are capable of. So our ability to communicateis what put us on top of the food chain.

This brings me to my next point of interest – Darwin. No, not the guy (was hecute? No link… abit desperate here) but the theory which many people adamantlybelieve in – evolution. It reminds me of a time a friend of mine got reallyupset because her classmate said that creationism (the existence of a Creator who created the universe) is bullshit and that evolution is the way to go.

I am a logical and reasoning type of person. I have thought about evolution, espwhen I had to study it in JC and the Big Bang. Now everyone who studies scienceknow that explosions do NOT occur in vacuum. Explosions can only occur with matter, be it gas or atoms. But there has to be something in order for one to occur. Ok, so take it that the Big Bang did occur, so where did the matter come from for it to happen? Fine, so the vast universe definitely has some spare rocks and stuff that coincidentally happened to be in the same orbit and BANG,we have the Big Bang. Umm, where did those rocks come from?

Remind you of the annoying kid who kept asking, “why?”? Wait… this gets better…

Let’s digress a little to evolution. Hmm… if we and apes had the same ancestors,why is it that we are way smarter than them? Wanna ask how I know we are smarter than them? Have you seen a chimp invent an automobile? Have you seen a gorilla split an atom? I dun think so. Please let me know if you do. Now if by natural selection only the best survive, shouldn’t those dumber ones be extinct(although many are on that road no thanks to us driving them to the brink of it)? I don’t mean to degrade animals, I sometimes think they are way more humane than us, just see how we treat sharks to get their fins. Why do we have laws that state it immoral to steal or punishable to kill another person oreven ourselves? Can you imagine the number of lions and tigers who would need to go on trial for murder? Change that to manslaughter. Cuz they do not have a conscience. They do not know it is wrong. In fact, it is natural for them tokill. What would happen if they did not? Why, they would starve to death. Pardon? They do not kill their own kind so it does not count? Hmm… but I would really hate to put a hamster on the death sentence for eating up her baby, alive.

Have we established that the difference between us and animals is that of a conscience? I think we did, so how did conscience pop out in evolution? Does ithave a selective advantage for us? Perhaps if we did not have one, we would have killed each other to extinction, cuz he stole his wife, she cheated him ofhis inheritance, he killed her so her family kills him and then his family kills…

Ok… so maybe conscience is a result of evolution, and that we do share the sameancestors as apes. What about the ancestor of that ancestor? If we were to go waaaaaayyyyyy back, I think the ancestor of all living things, is the simplest organism. Amoeba? Nice try. Nope, mitochondria. For those who do not know, mitochondria has its own DNA and is the factory in every single one of our cells, it produces energy. Now, I just learnt that I have approximately a billion neurons in my brain, possibly a fraction less by the time im done with this. So that makes trillions of mitochondria in our whole body? How long doyou think it took for mitochondria to ‘learn’ to group together, create an outer environment – a cell? How did they then differentiate to form the many different types of single cell organisms? Then how did these single cell organisms ‘learn’ to group together and assimilate, taking on different roles,in a multi-cellular organism? That still doesn’t answer the question of why we are so different, forget comparing the differences between us and anothermulti-cellular organism say a shark, what about the distinctive features of the different races? True, people in the tropics are dark skin to suit the hot weather while people in the northern countries are fairer since there is more snow than sun. But how long would all these take?

The earth is old I know, but not as old as we think as scientifically proven bycarbon dating. So is it still possible that evolution being the sole reason forour existence and our ability to think? Perhaps evolution was faster then thanit is now, cuz things weren’t run so efficiently and now that it is working outpretty fine, even with us killing ourselves by drilling a hole in the ozone,attempting to make cancer normal with nuclear bombs, evolution does not go so fast. Kinda like enzyme reactions reaching a plateau with limiting factors.But we still have to account for the presence of the mitochondria! Big Bang? Itis common knowledge that explosions are just plain destructive in nature. Can you name me one that is constructive? Now its is quite a stretch to believethat when those rocks collided or some force caused an explosion, things were not blown to bits but rather formed the thing we call Earth. Like atomic fusion? But earth isn’t just a piece of rock, it has a hot core, it is covered by water with land interspersed, volcanoes dot its surface, and mountains peek out. Gosh, I haven’t even gone on about the different types of soil, sand and gravel. Why some places are arable and some are not. And I totally forgot about our atmosphere, with 70% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. Anyone sees the chance that mitochondria was formed too?

Honestly, I do not know which is more far-fetched. Believing that earth with its delicate balance of nature was borne out of an explosion and that we were once like apes. Or believing that there is a Creator out there, who lovingly put all the details on his masterpiece. I can’t help recalling how many times my anatomy and physiology lecturer comments how fascinating and wonderful nature is. I am not sure if he is a Christian or not, but being taught about how sophisticatedare the systems that run in our body and in other living things, it makes it increasingly difficult to believe all these were formed by chance. I do not intend to preach. I believe the reason why many people choose to believe in evolution and big bang, is because they do not wish to think. Cuz if they truly questioned its principles, they would probably come to the same conclusion as me – its simply impossible! Its sad but true that many people just live their lives from day to day, dwelling in trivialities, never bothering to think about their existence. How does it feel like not knowing where you will go at the end of the day? Is death really a full stop? Or a comma? Ever thought of WHY you are you? WHY you are here? I know my purpose on earth, do you?

Lydea blogged at 3:39 PM

May your light shine...
in the darkness...