During a cool summer day in New York City, I walked into Central Park from the south side. I went over to the swing set and sat down while lightly pushing myself back and forth. As I swung back and forth, my foot made light skid marks into the sand. I knew in my mind that I was looking at sand, but I knew on a deeper level that I was really observing the collection of sextillions of atoms arranged in just the right fashion to give the illusion that I was just "kicking sand around."
The one telling story of existence is that it will eventually end. All things born will eventually die. All things created by man will eventually return to dust. There is not a person alive today or a building standing that will not be completely erased from existence given enough time.
I looked up briefly towards the sun while basking in its heat. The amazing yellow sun was so bright, but I knew it wasn't really yellow. It just appears yellow due to the atmosphere's effect on light rays. The beautiful blue sky, in all its glory, isn't really blue for a reason -- yet it is to me.
I looked around and noticed kids playing together. The fact that countless components of a perfect physical system allowed them to live, breath and play was inconsequential to their happiness. I looked up and knew that the sun was fusing 4,600 metric tons of hydrogen per second to generate the 1.74 x 10^17 joules of energy that would rain down upon the Earth each second.
To an atheist, this must all seem to be just a convenient fluke of nature -- that the quantum interactions of countless particles from 13.8 billion years ago happened to arrange themselves in such a way as to provide for life on some desolate large rock orbiting a typical main-sequence star in some run-of-the-mill galaxy. It must seem coincidental that certain molecules, given the exact perfect conditions of an oxygen atmosphere, began to merge and form the necessary proteins and amino acids that gave birth to the simplest of life forms. It must be a curious intellectual musing for an atheist to realize that all the physics in the universe just happened to be fine-tuned perfectly to allow for the evolution of one cell organisms into multi-cell organisms which then begot creepy crawly things which then mutated into a string of ever complex creatures until man finally made an appearance. To an atheist, all of this must be just another curious puzzle that science neatly solves without the intervention or conditioning of some higher force.
Then again, in an endless expanse of space among countless universes, infinity would dominate. Infinity is such a magnificent thing that, if it could happen, somewhere and somehow it did, does and will. These sentences have been written before, countless times in fact, and will be written countless times to come.
While swinging back and forth, I realized an internal inclination to love others. I don't have to expend the extra energy to do so, but through all of evolution and my own personal "interlution," I knew in my heart that loving just "feels" right. A world without love is a barren desert without sun or wind. I can't use science to explain the necessity for me to travel, love and grow, but I could easily explain it if a piece of infinity, or god, was inside of me. It might highlight the need for the universe to experience all aspects of existence through the eyes of sentient beings -- beings that just so happened to come about coincidentally by nearly perfect conditions of a forgiving universe.
Perhaps god isn't a person or a "thinker." To think suggests that we're processing information in the interest of progression. If god did exist, would not this god be beyond progression? Perhaps god is more like an abstraction of infinity, or the root of what gives substance to information. If the universe was nothing but a collection of matter, then god might be what breathes life into this matter.
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A blog that discusses issues pertaining to the 20 and 30-something lifestyle. Travel, love, sex, pain and pleasure -- nothing is left out and everything is fair-game for posting. This blog is written and maintained by aphexcoil.
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- Aphexcoil
- I consider myself to be a very passionate person. I care deeply about other people and I especially have a weak spot in my heart for underprivileged children. I love to work hard and play harder. My goal is to eventually make a lot of money so that I can run a non-profit organization that helps those who are in need. I deeply care about my family and my friends. Of my friends that learn to put up with my eccentric and unpredictable ways, I reward them with unyielding and eternal loyalty -- I would honestly die for any one of my closest friends without hesitation.
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2 comments:
To an atheist, this must all seem to be just a convenient fluke of nature -- that the quantum interactions of countless particles from 13.8 billion years ago happened to arrange themselves in such a way as to provide for life on some desolate large rock orbiting a typical main-sequence star in some run-of-the-mill galaxy. It must seem coincidental that certain molecules, given the exact perfect conditions of an oxygen atmosphere, began to merge and form the necessary proteins and amino acids that gave birth to the simplest of life forms. It must be a curious intellectual musing for an atheist to realize that all the physics in the universe just happened to be fine-tuned perfectly to allow for the evolution of one cell organisms into multi-cell organisms which then begot creepy crawly things which then mutated into a string of ever complex creatures until man finally made an appearance. To an atheist, all of this must be just another curious puzzle that science neatly solves without the intervention or conditioning of some higher force.
Sounds like you're about to launch into an fallacious argument from incredulity here.
This line of thinking has never sat well with me. That is, marveling at the complexity of the universe and how it's fine tuned to support life.
Had things been subtly different in terms of element ratios or distance of the sun, then sure, life as we know it wouldn't exist. But who's to say it wouldn't have adapted in some other inconceivable way? Perhaps we'd all live on Venus and oxygen would be toxic. We'd have an epidermis 4 inches thick to protect us from the enviroment.
Point is, life adapted to what was already there. It's not like everything arranged itself in some special way to create homosapiens.
It's like pouring water into a bowl and then being amazed that the water adapted to fit the shape of the bowl.
Anonymous,
You bring up an excellent point. The anthropic principle is a curious concept because, as you so neatly stated, the very fact that we are able to marvel at the complexity of life is derived from a pre-existing condition where life was situated in such a way that the principle itself becomes the pre-existing condition for the formulation of its original hypothesis.
In other words, had this universe NOT been conductive to life, we could not sit around debating why the universe wasn't conditioned perfectly so that life could exist.
In a metaverse of infinite universes where each had slightly differing conditions, there would bound to be some universe where beings eventually came into being to marvel at the initial conditions which gave rise to that understanding.
However, this raises deeper questions into the nature of existence. Is there an infinite number of other universes besides this one? If so, then the old theory of "an infinte number of monkeys typing for an infinite amount of time would surely create the entire works of Shakespeare at some point." We would then just happen to see that one monkey in that one short instant where suddenly we were given great works of literature from a seemingly inept primate incapable of doing such. It would be like staring directly into impossibility yet still having to acknoweledge that the impossible was brought out into existence.
If we assume an infinite number of universes, then we are still left with yet a more fundamental question -- why is there something instead of nothing?
Perhaps god is merely the existence of infinity which would bring about countless worlds where some seemed to be "intelligently designed."
Yet, here we are in a wonderfully complex world where things do exist -- so we cannot simply discount the possibility of design merely because there *might* be infinite other worlds but we CAN acknowledge that THIS world seems perfectly designed so that it was conductive to life.
Good response.
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