As regards variation, if all life evolved from the original self-replicating molecules, those molecules must have contained the potential for variation ... if they hadn't, nothing would have changed and there would have been no evolution. But in any case this makes no difference to the basic fact that belief in the theory of evolution is perfectly compatible with belief in design.-Hear, hear!! Exactly my starting point in the research and reasoning I have done. And on point (I think) is the following bit of scientific comment on one of my favorite subjects, microRNA, which fits my theory exactly:-http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19472371