"The recipe for life is not that complicated. There are a limited number of elements inside your body. Most of your mass is carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur, plus some nitrogen and phosphorous. There are a couple dozen other elements that are in there in trace amounts, but to a first approximation you're just a bag of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen.
Now, it turns out that the atmosphere is a bag of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen as well, and it's not living. So the real issue here is, how do you take that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (or methane in an early atmosphere) and water vapor and other sources of hydrogen—how do you take those simple, inorganic precursors and make them into the building blocks of life?"
And I suspect that most life is not something I would want (at least not from this perspective). I mean I suppose it is possible for a beatle to experience some instinctive equivalent of joy but I am not sure this would change my opinion. Now a deer might feel a sense of peace (safety) alternating with moments of intense fear. Certainly, hunger and thirst. But I am not sure I would take that over a peaceful sleep either! The smell of homo sapiens would drive me mad and then there are wolves...
So, carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen and a bit more and....OH!...also, an ego--a sense of self--and of course we think. But thought (whether protective or otherwise) rests on a physical ground of neurochemistry (more of that carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen)! When we lose the neurochemistry we are still carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen-but without the sense of separation from deer and beetles!
Can I change any of this by inventing a master of the sun and the rain to do the things with the sun and the rain that I cannot do myself? I don't think so! And building a pyramid and getting mummified for strangers to poke at in 3000 years seems like a lot of work! "MY" carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen was around for a very long time before the laws of chance and a lustful gleam and an arduous swim brought me to shore!
What a shame if I should waste this life in fear and rituals and pyramids and storm gods and sun gods and exorcisms and mindless listening to cunning or irrelevant or mindless human conduits to "Zeus". Much better to ride a horse...
And anyone with half a brain can figure out that if there were a creator and It is whimsical or evil, it does not matter how much we skin our knees from pew to pew! And if It is caring and loving, it does not matter what we do, either! |
