by Josephat Seleman Hema from Tanzania

On 18th December 2019 we had a traditional Christmas meal in volunteers’ house after doing the Christmas cookies backing. After the meal, Carolin gave us some well decorated envelopes and we had to open up to see our Christmas surprise. With excitement, we came to find out that on 6th of January 2020 we would be attending the Planetarium show in Bochum city. Planetarium Bochum (Castroper Strasse 67, 44791 Bochum) is a domed astronomy centre with digital projectors showing the stars above Earth & far into space.So after the Christmas and New Year holiday, Frauke, Carolin, Dika, Rachel, Dirk, Carol and I drove to Bochum from Dortmund, we had a little walk to the planetarium and then entered into the hall, the moment that I guess all of us were waiting for so eagerly. The approximately 60min film was called “From the big bang to people” (in German: Vom Urknall zum Menschen). The film basically tried to illustratively analyse the questions regarding origin of life over almost 14 billion years (considered to be the Age of the Universe), the genesis of living beings and the long time before man, the development of whatever comprises the space, the sun, stars, milky way galaxy and the earth itself. The 60 minutes passed so fast, we found ourselves soon on the way to have our dinner but with the awe of the experience of the movie when came again the question of the origin of life. Which is which?

As the science student in high school this was a very hot topic, there are two main theories of origin of life: Creationism and Evolution. Creationism theory is more of faith based and is accepted by many religious groups. As a Christian science student I had a difficult time to just say that I believe in creationism with most of times no tangible proof. But sometimes that is all about faith.

Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”

The evolution theory has been supported by so much evidences we have today. The earlier atomic combinations can be proved today in biochemistry laboratories and the structural elucidation of the elemental blocks forming our units of life can be easily assessed today. Paleoanthropological studies too came out with many evidences of remains believed to be of early living things that show evolutionary relationship. For example, in Olduvai Gorge (Northern Tanzania) where Homo habilis is believed to have lived, The British paleoanthropologist-archeologists Mary and Louis Leakey’s (inspired by a German geologist Hans Reck who was in Olduvai in 1913) excavation led to the discovery of the skull of Zinjanthropus or Australopithecus boisei (lived from about 2.4 until about 1.4 million years ago).

In my opinions, I have always been believing that Science has always been trying to explore God’s mysterious and terrific ways of creation. So explanations like huge star explosions and catastrophic comet strikes on Earth and evolving of primeval beings are just sophisticated ways of trying to explain God’s greatness! The Holy Bible explains about 6 days of creation and Science explains about billions of years of evolution. Yet this arithmetic symbolism also uncovers the mystery in how we differ with the almighty God in measuring time.

2 Peter 3:8 says: “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.”

So I think what we actually do is to ponder about and admire God’s complex process of making life into existence with a number of speculated theories dating back the time that none of us existed and always with questionable evidences. While we express it as a very long term, disputable, not easily explainable and neither a clearly established complex process happening in extreme conditions, to God it looks short, clear, simple and comfortable. Because He is GOD and we are people. I think the tendency that science cannot perfectly explain everything such as to tangibly proving God’s existence (another big topic) it is because scientific knowledge is just a tiny part of knowledge that our “Above All” God offered to humans.

At the end I think Science (although arguably) glorifies God.

As I lied down on a comfortable couch in the Planetarium, being immersed in the digital technology illusions, out in space, trying to avoid the impact of speedy heavenly bodies from knocking my head, or avoiding being swallowed by giant terrific dinosaurs, or avoiding being imbedded by Ribosomes in the polypeptide chain and disrupting the peptide bond during amino acids and subsequent protein synthesis, a song came in my head

“O Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder
Thy power throughout the universe displayed

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee
How great Thou art, how great Thou art
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee
How great Thou art, how great Thou art”

The discussion, which is always endless and interesting, continued to be part of our evening as we drove to the dinner restaurant and during dinner. All in all the day in the Planetarium was perfectly spent.