Life, Page 1

Introduction

Life is another one of those 'mysteries' that we as human's debate about. You have religious extremists that treat the biblical explaination of life as something literal. And you have the scientific approach of Darwinism. However, some, if not most people always like to question why such an event took place. Why is the universe exactly the way it is for us to be born into existance? Why did the earth come into existance at exactly the right time for life to come onto the scene? What is life like after death? You get the point.

Before delving into this topic, I would suggest you read my article about the Universe, which you can find by clicking here. I will approach this topic providing you have some knowledge of the ideas in that article. I think you'll find that a lot of my stuff interweave themselves together. The reason for that is, I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff and as it turns out, I like to do it in a fashion that blends the different topics together. That way I can get a large scale picture of the whole story, instead of having conflicting ideas. I just like it that way.

Identifying the Problem

The biblical explaination of life suggests God's intervention. God created the earth, moon and stars, and then eventually created man. The Darwinistic approach deals with the whole concept of evolution. Other explainations out there exist. It only depends on the culture. For example, the Australian aboriginies might use their whole dream time story to describe such an event (I'm not positive if they do describe how man came into being, but I'd imagine they would).

Being the man of science that I am, Darwin's approach we'll assume is the correct one. I'm not saying that the religious stories are completely wrong, I'm simply saying that the darwin approach is a lot more scientifically sound. In my opinion anyway.

In terms of science, namely physics (or even more specifically, astrophysics and cosmology) the whole concept of life appears to be a mystery. Not necessarily the "where did we come from, how did we get here" notion, more like the "why is the universe in the exact state needed for us to exist?". This is quite a stupid question considering the type of minds these people have. Instead of asking, "why" the universe is in such a state, they should be asking "why not?".

Trust me, it's not as stupid as it sounds. The problem we have, ourselves being humans, is that we look at the world through human eyes. Doing so creates a bias in the way we explain things. The line of questioning above is largely selfish when you think about it. Some scientists say that the universe is exactly the right state for us to exist. The universe has exactly the right amout of matter to balance in between continual expansion into the future, and sudden cllapse. In other words, the amount of matter and the starting state of the universe is at that exact point where it will neither collopse nor continually expand. We'll simply stop expanding and then everything will be fine.

Now, I don't know if this just me, but in light of everything that was described in that Universe aritcle, and everything described in the above paragraph, doesn't the question of "why is it such a perfect state of us to exist" kind of sound really strange?

Ok, now lets get down and dirty about the issue. Some people will use this whole concept as a "proof" of a higher power. The fact that the universe is exactly perfect enough for us humans to live, considering all the odds involved, must be considered an act of God. Scientists don't go so far, but some still can't grasp how this can be so.

This is where the selfishness comes in. We automatically assume that we are something special. But we, as a human race are nothing better than any other form of life on this planet. Sure we've got lots of tall buildings and we are so much more advanced mentally and physically than most creatures. All that makes us is more advanced, that does not make us any more special.

The Influence of Evolution

Consider this statement: Human life is no different from that of the life of a star. I know that's a bold statement to make, but just bare with me. Lets look at the life of a star. The life of a star lasts generally a few billion years. A star consumes fuel and produces heat and light...energy. It consumes this fuel in a continual self preserved furnace. Light elements are converted into heavier elements. Eventually the star runs out of fuel, collapses a bit and then the ignition of the heavier elements sometimes begins again. And the star starts the process all over again.

A star certainly doesnt have the mobility the we do. A star doesn't have arms or legs. It can't talk either. But my argument is that the life of a star and the life of humans is much the same. The only reason we have arms, legs and can talk is because we evolve quicker. Our average life span is between 70 and 80 years. Back a hundred years ago it would be half of that. So in the how ever many years that 'humans' have been a race, we would have evolved thousands if not, millions of times over. The stars you seen in the sky have evolved only a few times.

Humans evolve and adapt to their envoronment. We breathe in air because we need air to live. A stars environment is the empty space. It doesn't have a thing to adapt too. It doesn't need arms or legs because it has nothing to walk upon. A star eventually dies, as does a human. A star does what it can and all it needs to, to survive. It burns fuel. So do humans, we consume resources and consciously reproduce, all in the effort to survive.

What about the life of a fly? It has a very short life span and they've been around for ages, why haven't they changed much over the years? Well, I stopped doing biology in grade 10. If evolution--the change and adaption of a particular species--relies of the reproduction of a species, then evolution will be connected in some way with the number of genes and chromosomes. Added to that, it'd have a connection with the size of a species as with the life span of it. A species the size of us with the life span that we do now should, in theory, evolved a lot faster than a much smaller species with the same life time (at the moment this is all guess work...I suppose I should do my research!)

Either way, whether the above guess work is right or wrong, we humans should not be so bold to think that this world and universe was created the way it is in exactly the way we need it for us to exist. The universe doesn't exist the way it does for our benefit. We exist the way we do because of it.

If the earth is the way it is, we have the same sort of air and water, the universe is the way it is, then why wouldn't we turn out the way we are? It is not like the form we currently take was a predetermined blue print of how we should be. We didn't wait for the right type of universe to be in exactly the right state for us to come onto the scene. That's just selfish. We adapt to what we are given. If the earth was full of hydrogen instead of oxygen, then you might expect our form to be different. Tenticles with 3 eyes, or something like that.