If we play life again, it won’t be the same (1)
For Nature is playing a randomness game.
No obvious plan and no clear guiding hand,
So, no supervisor to credit or blame.

We think life began in the sea, moved to land,
Flew up in the air, all without a command.
Religionists say that they all see a plan,
But facts disagree, (things look rather unplanned.)

Our science has reached back to when life began,
Near four billion years, an enormous timespan.
As random disasters appeared here and there,
Life was threatened by fire and then, frying pan.

Volcanoes erupted and poisoned the air,
Tornadoes and hurricanes stripped the land bare,
Most species would die off but they would leave room (2)
For new to appear, with no hint that it’s fair.

A six mile-wide asteroid, with a huge boom,
Smashed into the Yucatan, threatening doom. (3)
A nuclear winter, the dinosaurs died;
And then furry mammals crawled out of the gloom.

Now here in the present, we humans abide
And fight over whose god is blessing whose side,
Which myth of creation we all should believe,
And mountains of evidence we cannot hide.

The joker that randomness has up its sleeve:
First comes a disaster, then comes a reprieve.
If life on our planet were started again,
The story would change. Would we humans still win?

(1)See Ingrid Bergman’s request to Sam, the piano player in Casablanca.
(2)Science has recorded five mass extinctions in the timespan of life on
Earth.
(3)This caused the last mass extinction about 66 million years ago. It is
called the Chicxulub Event.