It’s days like today when I’m very aware of how much I’ll miss being a bench scientist. Not the crushing boredom and mind numbing repetition of experiments almost working. But the sheer joy of deduction through experimentation.

To formulate a falsifiable hypothesis based on one’s current data, to then test that hypothesis through careful and repeatable experimentation and to then see your null hypothesis blown to smithereens taken out back and shot drowned in a bucket not proven is a wonderful, wonderful feeling.

This is why I do science, and I think why we all do science. A beautiful, elegant mechanistic pathway slowly unfolding in front of you, allowing you to glimpse the inner complexity of a cell (OK, so this is why cell biologists do it). Something hidden since the dawn of time cells. A simple, yet unfeasably complex, system that has evolved over hundreds of millions of years.

I am often amazed at how complicated biological systems are. That anyone could believe or put any stock at all in theories beliefs like intelligent design is beyond my comprehension. It suggests to me a couple of things, both about the theory and the theorist.

1) A lack of imagination. Much better to just say “it was designed like this” than to try and unravel evolution’s inner workings. Because it is really fucking hard to do science.

2) A lack of faith on the part of the theorist. Much easier to say “God did it” (for that is what they’re saying), than to imagine that maybe He didn’t.

3) A disdain for the power of a Creator. If (S)He exists (and for what it’s worth, I believe He does), there is no need for obvious signposts. As Mark Vernon says in his excellent lecture series on agnosticism, the opposite of faith is certainty.

4) A fundamental inability to accept that Nature is a dirty, often violent, unfeeling, mindless force. Mother Nature? No bloody way. I want my mum to show some compassion, to have some thought or deliberate process to nurture her offspring.

Sit down with me sometime and let’s talk about biology. I’ll do my best to explain the cell biology i know and how it relates to neuroscience. I’ll try and explain, with pictures, about enzymes and synaptic scaffolds, and ion channels and I’ll really do my best to show you the reducable complexity that comes from multiple layers of redundancy. Redundancy that springs from the gradual evolution of a system where gene duplication and modification has created designed evolved into something no sane creator would dream of.

The famous analogy is the Blind Watch Maker, our hapless vicar strolling across the moors and conducting thought experiments. Well, take that watch and have a look at it. It’s a bloody mess. But it works perfectly.

By all means go on believing in an insane, lazy, badly organised deity with a Dawkins God Delusion. I, and my peers, will continue to marvel daily at the mystery of nature, Her complexity and simplicity.