Thursday, March 17, 2011

Science: A window to God's infinite wisdom

I have just read today an article "Sperm mystery solved" in The Scientist magazine. The article, culled from a study published this week in the scientific magazine Nature, says scientists have "solved a 20-year mystery regarding the molecular mechanism by which human sperm detect an egg."
I will not discuss here about how a man's sperm find the egg of a woman which is necessary for fertilization for a baby to be born. The article is replete with technical terms which I may not be able to explain clearly in layman's terms, I myself not having acquired an expertise in science.
For instance, here's a paragraph from that article:
"Prior to fertilization, a cloud of cumulus cells surrounding the egg release progesterone, the female sex hormone, triggering a calcium influx into the sperm. This flood of calcium causes the sperm to beat their flagella rapidly, an action necessary to penetrate though the egg's protective jelly-like protein coating ..."
The next paragraph says it has remained unknown how progesterone activates sperm.
What got my interest in the article is not the process of how babies are born but on the mystery of how a human sperm could find an egg as if it were guided so that life could go on and on. From my readings in other fields of science of which I have a fairly firm grasp, it occurs to me that living things have an inherent tendency or the instinctive will to survive. It's like heeding the Bible's advice to "go and multiply".
From cosmology, or the science of the universe, to evolution, there seems to be a pattern that our world is so designed for life. This is a tack that has been taken by the Intelligent Design movement led by some creationist scientists who, as I know it, include the molecular biologist Francis Collins.
For instance, our sexual desire is so designed to be compulsive that no matter how intelligent we are we cannot escape indulging in sex. This raises some question like why do we have to live, fall in love, have children and then die?
This and other mysteries in life have always puzzled me since I returned to the Faith after a decade of atheism. While most Christians abhor science as an enemy of religion. I don't find science to be an antithesis of the Faith. I look at science as a window to take a peek at the marvels of God's infinite wisdom.

I will continue this topic in the next blog. I don't want to bore my readers with very long articles. I hope you have liked reading my blogs and would try to make some comments.

2 comments:

  1. very true...the mystery of how a human sperm could find an egg as if it were guided so that life could go on and on, is really interesting and it also makes our faith stronger on our God.

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