Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Is Life On Earth Only A Coincidence, or is it Supernatural?

Today I would like to try to explain as clearly as possible, what is most likely the most difficult question about the universe. And that question is whether or not Earth, and the the fact that there is life (primitive and/or intelligent) on Earth, is merely a coincidence. First, I would like to state that many people, even to this day, are persuaded, or give in to, the idea that we are remarkably lucky to live on an Earth which harbors life. This fact is considered often to be the greatest coincidence we have ever known, the fact that the conditions on Earth were just right for life to evolve, and there have been ideas that life had to be created by supernatural means. How much truth is there to this, though? Life first began as bacteria, which was made from various compounds called amino acids, which were created by atoms.
So, should we actually consider ourselves lucky that Earth is as beneficial to life as it is?
Not necessarily. Life's building blocks are created by some of the most common elements of the universe, which include Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen, and these elements compose quite the majority of all elements in living cells.
So, since the conditions on Earth were just right for life to evolve, does this mean there is a supernatural explanation for life? There is a serious problem with thinking such an idea. You might argue, as I have already mentioned, that we are remarkably lucky because Earth has water, that we live the right distance away from our Sun, and that this couldn't have all been by chance. This idea is misleading. Let's consider a great analogy to help understand this dilemma; The analogy does not need to be necessarily about Earth. Instead, it will be about the notion, or idea, of coincidence in general. Sometimes, stories can be really compelling, because they are generally interpreted by people as coincidences, such as the coincidences that have to do with the deaths of presidents Lincoln and Kennedy. The reason that a coincidence can be misleading, is because we only think about the similarities, and we might not realize that a story can have more differences instead of similarities. I think that this kind of logic might just have something to do with the fact that people seek a supernatural explanation for life. If we are lucky, then why are we surprised that we are alive? If someone else were living on Earth other than people, then we wouldn't think the same, since the lucky people would instead be someone else! Because we are the people who live on Earth, we are persuaded to think that we are lucky. The problem is that if Earth didn't develop the way it did, then we might not even be here, therefore there should be no need to think of a supernatural explanation, because such an explanation is simply not true for many other places in the universe; and that is extremely paradoxical, even though it has been extremely difficult to explain. And so I don't know if this explanation is sufficient, though I think this is practically the best that can be written for now.

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