Unintelligent design

I've kept pretty quiet on the whole intelligent design vs evolution argument.

For me, it's complicated because I'm a religious person who believes in evolution; or a Darwinist who believes in God, however one chooses to look at it. In my mind, the two concepts are perfectly reconciled. They don't contradict each other; in some respects they overlap. Part of my religious experience is awe at the variety and beauty that exists in nature.

At school in Year 12 Biology, any religious objections to evolution were dealt with a simple comment from the teacher: "We're learning a curriculum here. You don't have to believe it, you have to learn it, so that you'll pass your exams." (Fine, but these days that separation of curricula and belief is under threat.) At the same time, we were revising Genesis in Jewish studies. As well as the actual creation, we learned about the tower of Babel... but before we read the text, we wrote the story as we remembered it from primary school on the board. What a surprise we had when we read the actual story inside... the embellishments that our previous education had laid onto the basics were so flamboyant, they almost changed the meaning. There is so much fluidity in interpretation... no wonder there's a range of views on what the dinosaurs were, for example. One commentary says it's a test of our faith (rubbish if you ask me... or Bill Hicks as the prankster god); another says they were left over from a failed world; one that lacked spirituality (slightly better).

Now, with a science degree and further religious studies under my belt, I feel that this whole attempt to push religion as an alternative to science is a crock. Faith isn't there to be proven. Either you believe or you don't. Until God sits down with you for a chat, there is no proof (or disproof). I believe, and I accept that it's totally irrational and possibly improbable to do so. My belief is connected to my intellectual understanding of science, but it isn't based on it.

On the flipside to that, science is not a replacement for religion, or faith in an ethical system of some kind. Throughout uni I had lecturers who would say, "nature provided x organism with y trait." This is just word replacement. It's not fashionable to believe in God, so they use the word nature instead. Or even better, "the bacteria (or even better, the DNA) wants to do x,y or z. Bacteria and DNA don't want to do anything; and even if they did, it wouldn't help them; it's up to chance or fate or whatever you actually believe in whether they acquire resistance to an antibiotic or mutate in a certain way. Even humans, who can want things, can't will evolution to happen. It just happens, regardless of your feelings on the matter. I think that many scientists who haven't given philosophy much thought confuse causality and process.

So, both sides have some unintelligence going on. Only time will tell which side gets smarter first.

May I please borrow your brain?

Thanks to New Scientist, I've just discovered a disease I'd actually like to have. It'd be a little inconvenient in some ways, but personally I feel that the pros would outweigh the cons.

It's called hypergraphia, and the author writing about it in New Scientist is Alice Flaherty, a neurologist who has experienced this condition as well as written about it (The Midnight Disease). She calls hypergraphia "an exaggerated desire to write" but it's not desire, it's compulsion. She wrote and wrote and wrote until finally she needed to be hospitalised. OK, that I don't want, but some innate motivation to write wouldn't go astray. I've got a novel to write, and for something that I want to write and am even enjoying writing, it sure is progressing slowly. After two years, I have 12 000 words. Frustratingly slow progress.

I don't regret the field I chose; I find microbiology and biochemistry fascinating, but sometimes I feel like I should learn more about neurology. The little changes to our brains can make such huge and spectacular changes to our behaviour and perception; it really is amazing.