I don’t believe in any God, so I suppose people with a faith would want to call me an atheist, though to me that is as much a title as Christian or Muslim, it presupposes that I am a member of some sect or society which operates under that title, but I am not a member of any such group. I simply don’t believe in a supreme being! In fact, if I was going to worship anything, which I’m not, I would put my faith in the power of the sun. Not as some intelligent super-being, but simply because it is the source of everything on the face of this earth. Without the sun there would be no water, no trees, no living creatures – nothing; in fact I don’t suppose even the earth itself would exist if we didn’t have our own private star to orbit around!
As regards the development of the earth and the existence of all the forms of life here, both animal and vegetable, I put all of that down to two simple sets of forces (simple from the point of view that they are the only basic sources of everything, not that they are simple in their functions, because neither of them are that, by any means!) They are evolution and physics.
Physics control everything from a completely natural set of unbreakable laws that exist because they exist, not through any intelligent power switching them on and off. In its absolutely simplest form, water has to freeze when the temperature around it reaches zero Celsius. This is absolute and unchangeable, apart from very minor fluctuations due to changing air pressure. There’s no magic or mystery about it, that is simply the way it is, and it applies to every physical thing and occurrence on earth – air must always flow from a high pressure area to a low pressure one, The Earth and other planets must always continue to orbit around the sun, held there by the strength of gravity, the power that holds the whole Universe in place and the chemical actions and reactions that are always going on inside our bodies, as we convert food into energy or protein.
Evolution to me is another simple matter, in that every living thing changes, to suit the environment in which it finds itself, not as a conscious action but as a consequence of the forces applied to us every day, or because a small piece of DNA changes causing a completely new form of being to start to exist. It has been going on for literally billions of years, and it has caused various living bodies to either succeed or to fail – the failures becoming extinct! And I believe this evolutionary action is still going on at the same pace as it always has. Why is it that some people can smoke cigarettes all their lives and show no sign of cancer, while other individuals can simply spend a little time in a smoking environment, (without actually smoking themselves), and go down with the disease? Is it because some of us have developed a little bit of code in our DNA which gives us protection, and then, by pure chance some of us with the special gene meet others who are the same though neither is aware of it. They marry and have children, who then automatically have the protection built in, and so it goes on, over thousands, or even millions of years until eventually the whole human race is protected against the ravages of cancer, the ones without the magic gene having died out altogether. A slightly whimsical example, but I believe this is basically how evolution works, over colossal periods of time, for one small change to have shown itself.
I find this an exciting prospect, even if I am totally wrong in my suppositions; after all, we have to go somewhere, into the future, don’t we, and I think my guess is just as good as anyone else’s!
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