As you know, the First Eternal Question is the Meaning of Life (to which the Eternal Answer is, of course, 42). However, I hold that there is now a Second Eternal Question (mostly because I say so): is there a God? This is embodied in the Creationism/evolution argument. I shall now launch into my obligatory preamble as to why exactly I am boring you with this topic today.

I had just arrived home from a road-trip with some fellows of mine (yes, I am finally getting out of the house!), and imagine what I should see stuffed through my door but a leaflet to some seminar on Creationism. Because I wish to be entirely accurate, I shall now have to retrieve the leaflet from the rubbish bin.

Ah. It would appear that my mother has changed the bin-liner. No matter: it is not essential to this discussion. I shall continue on the basis of what I know and have spent an hour or so today researching.

Now then: since I am not a proponent of Creationism, I am afraid that I do not know the arguments for it - or against it, for that matter (for we must remember that the best method of combatting the weapons of one's opposition is to own them yourself). I am, it must be said, an advocate of the theory of evolution - but not a particularly staunch one, for reasons that shall be divulged once you have pulled that bar to the right of the webpage in a downward direction.

For those who do not know the mechanics of the theory of evolution, here I shall give a swift crash-course.

Charles Darwin, often named as the one who defined evolutionary theory with his work The Origin of Species, noticed in his journeys to the Galapagos Islands that the tortoises he encountered there were different in small - but significant - ways. On islands where there was plenty of vegetation and verdure growing near the ground, the tortoises had flat-edged shells, as we typically think them to have. However, on islands where greenery was sparse and often only on trees, the tortoises had notches on the front of their shells and extra-long necks with which they could reach up and chomp on whatever delicious foodstuffs may have been growing from the branches. (Well I don't know it they really were delicious, do I? I'm not a tortoise.) Also, he noticed that there were different varieties of finches, the differing characteristic between them being their beaks and the way said beaks corresponded well with the type of food they ate and the functions they had to perform to survive. This set Darwin thinking - why were these creatures so well-suited to their respective environments?

Now, I think I can predict what a Creationist would say here: namely, that God designed the animal in this way because He knew under which conditions it would have to survive, and that was probably the way Darwin was inclined to think in those conservative times. Still, there was the question of whether or not they changed over time - without God's intervention, instead of themselves. After all, why are apes so similar in so many ways to humans? Why is the archaeopteryx a kind of proto-bird, with crude feathers that very much resemble reptilian scales? Surely this points to some kind of gradual change through the generations, through which apes became humans and reptiles became birds?

The mechanism by which this is thought to happen became known as 'natural selection', or more colloquially as 'the survival of the fittest': those organisms which were best-suited to their environment lived on while the less well-suited individuals perished, thus ensuring that the genes representing the characteristics which increased survivability were passed on to the next generation and therefore making it more likely for the race as a whole to continue surviving - and developing, needless to say.

The Creationists get past this theory with a rather clever argument, known as the 'watchmaker analogy'. Namely, if you were to happen across a watch and study it closely, you would naturally come to the conclusion that it had been designed by an intelligent being - surely such a complex device could not have come about by chance? Especially when taking into account that the watch has a definite end for which it was designed (the teleological argument). Now, when we transfer this argument to the rest of the world, specifically in this case to the natural world, surely the complexity of design present in animals is an obvious indicator of some kind of intelligent design?

The thing about this argument is that it is incredibly difficult to refute. After all, if we were to receive some kind of message from beyond the stars, we would instantly assume that it was sent by intelligent lifeforms - aliens, in other words (or that there was a prankster somewhere with a lot of money and time on their hands, but for the sake of the argument let's stick to the first supposition). How is the natural world any different? After all, DNA, the building-blocks of life and the basis of the entire evolutionary argument, is possibly one of the most complex codes around, and - despite its ability to function autonomously - it must have first been created to be able to act autonomously, implying that there may have been some Great Programmer who initially coded the incredibly complex alogrithm that is DNA (to put it in computer terms).

In the end, ironically, it all comes back to the beginning: that is, the beginning of everything. How did it all begin, were it not for some all-powerful being that created it all? The obvious reply to this is 'How did said being begin? Did someone create Him, and if so who created that being?' 'Tis a quandary. However, I feel I have an answer - or rather, I have adapted an answer. Upon asking whom it was that created God of one of my Muslim friends, I received the answer that He has no beginning and no end. Could we not then argue that our world is the same? After all, our world is chock-full of cycles, is it not? So what if all these tiny cycles amount to one BIIIG cycle that is all of existence? It sounds (to employ hip-hop terminology) whack, I know, but it makes sense to me.

Anyways - all of these arguments are pretty irrelevant anyways. Why is that? Because this argument is part of a cycle itself. It is the perpetual present: the battleground between a traditional past and a radical future, the conflict and the compromise betwixt the two. Neither of them is wrong because they are both equally correct. Ultimately 'tis a matter for one's own conscience - and it is a personal thing, believe me. Humans are incredibly irrational. We purport to operate on truth and facts, but we do not. First we decide what it is we want to find out, and then we warp the truth until it fits our desired view of the universe. That is why neither side of the debate can ever win - because they are both equally flawed by their human restrictions. It does not come down to truth: it comes down to how one was raised and the personal experiences one has.

And besides... does it really matter? For all we know, there may be a deity. There may not be. Unless this deity actually phones us all up tomorrow and orders us to pledge our eternal allegiance, what difference does it make? There could be a chocolate teapot orbiting the moon, but why should I make a big deal about it if it doesn't affect my life? Similarly, evolution may or may not exist - unless we see some kind of extreme evolution (or 'saltation', wherein evolution takes place over an impossibly few number of generations) then there's no real way of proving it. Plus, if God does not exist, then there's no way we can prove that He doesn't exist because... well, He doesn't exist. You can only measure existing quantities - there's no way to measure non-existence, and as the believers say: 'Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.' So the argument is never-ending and goes in cycles. See what I mean?

Well then, I hope that's cleared it up for you. Or made it more confusing - I don't know. However, as long as it has got you thinking - and more importantly, thinking for yourself - that's all I need to know.