The Path Chosen

As most of you know, I am a scientist and have been trained to only accept things that I can prove and observe. My faith has never been a problem for me because I believed that science is really good with the 'how' but not the 'why'. Anyway.....during this doubting time, I came to realize how hard it is to believe in an all powerful, all loving, infinite God of which no solid proof of his/her/its existence can be provided. This was very troubling in that my faith has never been a problem before.


I have always understood why people leave Christianity or have an unfavorable opinion of Christianity. When a group claiming to be the only "true" Christians carry around signs that say "Thank God for Katrina" or "God hates fags", it is no surprise that Christianity's public image is taking a beating. Also, when you have been raised in a household where you hear more about God punishing the wicked as opposed to God loving all sinners.....it is no wonder people leave their faith behind them. Sorry to get sidetracked.


As I was saying, it is hard to believe in God, especially without proof. But then I had another thought. Let us take the opposite approach and start at the very basic principle. Some people like to start with life, the cosmos, etc.....I will start with existence itself. Existence (IMHO) is the first miracle. Why should anything exist? I would speculate that it is almost infinitely more probable that nothing should exist rather than something. That being said...there is no way to measure the probability of existence although it is what we most take for granted.


Since we exist...we will move onto the next event which was the formation of the universe. There are several aspects of the formation of the universe that almost defy explanation. Several factors in the formation of the universe needed to be nearly perfect for matter to even exist (plan to cover this in much more detail later). A life friendly universe is just an added benefit and could easily be refuted because we don't know under what conditions life can form....but we do know that matter is necessary. Particles and antiparticles have to have asymmetric populations for matter to exist. Why this asymmetry? Expand too fast the universe blows up....Expand to slow and you get collapse. Change Carbon resonance frequency for formation....no carbon (no life, Silicon has been shown not to be an adequate substitute). I could go on and on....which I will do in a later post.


We can then move to life. If we were constantly bombarded by cosmic radiation or if the constants changed a little bit and the sun burned 10x as fast, this may prove to be inhospitable to life as we know it. Sure there are unicellular organisms that can sustain radiation and inhospitable conditions, but could life evolve to the level of complexity that we see. Also, if constants were muddled with and stars either didn't form or burned out 10x as fast....could life evolve in such a short period of time? I know that this is more subjective because life could arise....but maybe just not humans. However, you do need a decent amount of time for evolution to self aware organisms to arise.


But since we are here, we know that we live on a tiny blue marble that is in a not so special part of the galaxy in a seemingly not so special solar system. But it turns out our location does matter and the solar system does impart special circumstances for our existence. Without Jupiter, it is likely that Earth would have been bombarded with asteroids and comets for a lot longer and more often than it has been. If Earth would have been closer or farther from the sun, changes in temperature would be dramatic. If Earth's orbit would not be as constant as it is, temperature fluctuations throughout the year would also be drastic. If the Moon did not exist, the Earth's tilt would not be stable which would result in drastic climate changes. Not to mention the atmosphere, protection of magnetic field, etc. But nevertheless, this happened.


Let us move on to life. Life appeared from inert chemicals in a relatively short amount of time. The Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago. For the first 500 million years, the Earth's surface was molten and in no condition to support any type of life. The first signs of life can be found 3.9 million years ago. That leaves about 100 million years for life to develop in such a way to leave behind evidence. There are several aspects of this that are remarkable to say the least. A couple that come to mind....conversion from inanimate organic matter to self-organized, self-replicating life (why is this necessary or even possible?), switch from RNA to DNA, switch from prokaryotic to eukaryotic, switch from single to multi celled (why were bacteria not happy with being unicellular?), switch from anaerobic to aerobic, Cambrian explosion (during which all observed body types appear in a geologic blink of an eye.), etc.


If this process wasn't amazing enough. We seem to be the outcome. We started with simple organic chemicals and ended up with an inexplicably complex biological machine (people) which by comparison pales in complexity with the brain. The brain is by far the most complex system presently known in the entire universe. Another way to look at it is, we start with inanimate matter and end with a self-aware being with thoughts, feelings, and the intellectual capacity to understand the very physical world in which it lives in. The same chemicals in the rocks, dirt, stars, comets, etc have some how become able to enquire about their own existence.


When I though about it this way, it didn't seem so cut and dry anymore. Realizing all of the things that have to happen to arrive at this point....it no longer seemed so far fetched that there is a supreme intelligence or consciousness.

There are some people that are skeptical of all of this and think that the fact that we are here renders all of the improbabilities meaningless (once again this will be covered in more detail later) since it did happen. The question that I have always had is:

How many times do we need to win the cosmic / life lottery before we start to suspect that it has somehow been rigged?