By Aare Afe Babalola

I STARTED publishing weekly  articles  in the defunct Daily Sketch newspaper in the late ’60s. When the company folded up, I switched to Nigerian Tribune and later I also published in the Vanguard. In all, I have published over 2,500 articles.

I must confess that over the last five decades, I have never received so many reactions and feedbacks on any of my articles as I received from readers on my article titled: “The race to eradicate man from planet earth through nuclear and chemical weapons.”

 I have to agree with Nikita Khrushchev that “every living thing wants to live”. I am tempted to believe that the topic: ‘The race to eradicate man from planet earth through nuclear and chemical weapons’ had attracted so much attention because it touches the possible end of the earth by man’s activities. This week and the next, I will publish some of the reactions to the article including my replies to them. 

Adekunle Aworeni, Esq: I thank Aworeni Esq for taking time to read through the articles. 

In your feedback, you suggested that ‘the intelligence behind creation will make sure that there are survivors to perpetuate human race’. In other words, you are of the view that “the intelligence” behind creation of planet earth will take action to prevent man from destroying planet earth. Your position raised some interesting issues: In the first article, I demonstrated vividly that man was not the first inhabitant on planet earth.

The vast land on planet earth was indeed inhabited by Dinosaurs which were huge animals. They roamed around the whole planet for 66 million years and there was no human being at all. Today, none of them is in existence. All that remains of their existence are their fossil. The scientific term for what happened to them is that they are ‘extinct’ meaning that they were completely wiped out. The reasonable question is: “Why didn’t the Intelligence behind creation prevent their extinction”? 

The Sahara Desert is today the largest dry land on planet earth. Initially, it was a region submerged by sea. There were trees and plants when the sea dried up. The marshlands produced huge trees such as oaks, cypresses, olive trees and Aleppo pines. Today, the Sahara Desert is a vast scanty dry land full of fossils as evidence of existence in the past.

History has it that the long and mighty River Nile used to flow from the West of Africa to Sudan where it turned to the North before discharging water into Mediterranean Sea. But today, the Nile flows from Central Africa through Khartoum in Sudan to the Mediterranean Sea through Egypt. The question to Aworemi Esq is: “Why didn’t the Intelligence behind creation prevent this”?  

The whole planet earth was initially one land mass surrounded by ocean about 200 million years ago. This gigantic continent was at the time called Pangaea. The same planet earth now contains seven continents separated by multiple oceans such as the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. “Why didn’t the Intelligence behind creation prevent this”? 

The glaciers of the North Pole and the great ice sheets of the South Poles used to be mountain of ice which piled up over million years ago. Today, about 35 per cent of the glaciers of the North Pole has melted. This has translated to the increase of the sea levels, and is threatening the continued existence of Polar bears, the world’s largest bear, that is only found in the North Pole.

There is also the prognosis that about 70 percent of the Emperor Penguins in Antarctica will be lost to the melting ice sheets in 2100. In addition, about 902 species of animals are officially extinct, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature as at 2021. A total of 41,415 species of animals are on the red list, and 16,306 of them are threatened with extinction. A total of 571 plant species are extinct and another 6,147 species are near extinction.

Human population has risen to 7.98 billion and will reach 9.8 billion in 2050. At this time, the world will not be able to support adequately the number of men, against the balance of biodiversity as plants and animals are dying out while human population explodes. Men have taken over wild lands, pushing every other species of anything to near extinction. Why didn’t the Intelligence behind creation prevent all these?

The stars are the suns of other galaxies. The gravitational pull of the sun is what sustains the milky-way galaxy, which is where the earth exists as a planet. However, many of the stars have died. About one star dies each earthly year in the milky way galaxy alone. There is no telling how many die out in the other Galaxies in the universe yearly.

The stars that die in the milky way galaxy are not the central star, i.e. the sun, but where a central star dies out, that marks the end of the galaxy it sustains. “Why didn’t the Intelligence behind creation prevent the death of the stars”? The belief in a supernatural force behind the universe initially permeated the ancient world, and persisted throughout ages till today. This had led to a growing curiosity about how the world came into existence or how the heavens were made and the force behind the same. 

There is equally the account in the book of Genesis 11, where persons of curious minds tried to build a tower into heaven, so that they could be God’s neighbours. This quest has spurred philosophers, astronomical physicists and cosmetologists to develop telescopes that could offer answers to all these questions. Unfortunately, there are still many questions unanswered about the seemingly limitless universe.

In February 14, 1990, the Voyager 1 took a picture of the solar system from a distance of six billion kilometres from the earth, a distance that is considerably small, when put in context of the sheer size of the universe. All that was found of the earth is a pale small dot. This is the revelation of the insignificance of the planet earth when viewed in cosmic relevance. If the universe is viewed as a star, the sun will also be seen as a small dot. 

Where all the issues raised earlier are considered sincerely, the question of willingness of a Supernatural Being to prevent the total annihilation of man, without remnants will, however, be questionable. There are evidences to show that it has happened before, and it is still happening. The sad reality that man has developed the culture of leaving everything to the Divine, is not a healthy culture. Likewise, the belief that prayer alone is enough to change the narrative of the universe is grossly misleading.

This is because prayer without work is in itself dead. Hinged on the above therefore, I believe man becomes irresponsible when everything is left to the Divine. God will not do for man what man ought to do for himself. Man has a role to play and must wake up to this responsibility, if he will outlive the apocalypse he is birthing. Again, I thank you for your meaningful contribution to this discourse, and I thoroughly enjoyed interacting with the same.

Martins Imakhu <martinsimakhu21@gmail.com>: Hello Mr. Imakhu, I first wish to express my appreciation for your taking out time to read the article. I wish to further inquire if you read both volumes of the article. All my publications are in the archive section of the Afe Babalola University website, and are freely accessible to you and other members of the public. Thank you once again.  

Adaralegbe Joseph <adaralegbejoseph7@gmail.com>: I wish to first express my sincere appreciation for your commendation, on the worth of the article for posterity’s sake. I have been writing for the past 50 years, and have so far written over 2,500 articles and seven books. If you are interested and can get in touch, I will cause those copies of my articles be made available to you. They are also properly documented for posterity. 

Kolawole Olawuni <kolawuni2019@gmail.com>: You asked me whether I believe in God. The word ‘God’ is capable of various meanings, depending on who is defining the word God and the context of such definition. According to the Oxford dictionary, God, in Christianity and other monotheistic religions, refers to the creator and supreme ruler of the universe.

The Webster dictionary sees Him as the omnipotent creator and ruler of the universe. However, in polytheistic religions, a god is defined by the Oxford dictionary as a superhuman being or spirit worshipped as having power over nature and human life. The Webster Dictionary defines a god as a being to whom worship is ascribed; an image of such a deity; an idolized person or thing. Gods also refer to the theatre audience up in the gallery. I believe that your question presupposes my disposition to a monotheistic view of God, which sees God as the Supreme Being and omnipotent creator and ruler of the universe.