Dr. Manhattan: In
my opinion, the existence of life is a highly overrated phenomenon.
Irrelevant whether there exists a
single universe or multiverse, this universe started with a single spontaneous
burst and expanded at first into a hot dense cloud of gas and dust. This
happened 13.75 ± 0.11 billion years ago.
This cloud started expanding at an
exponential rate, and the larger it got, the cooler it gets. Formations started
to appear, and so far, the oldest galaxy dates back to 500 million years after
the Big Bang.
Celestial bodies and formations
kept on appearing, Nebulas, Galaxies, Stars, Red Giants, Black Holes etc. At
one point out there in the backwaters of the universe, in the boondocks of the
small Milky Way galaxy is a Nano celestial formation which we call the solar
system emerges.
This solar system which we call
ours is roughly 4.5 billion years old, however during those 4.5 billion years,
it’s mechanics were constantly changing, and its evolution was a violent one.
About 4 billion years ago in that
solar system which we call ours, a small grain started to form from small
particulates smashing together and rotating around a medium sized star. A
spherical shape emerged that rotated around itself and that star in an
elliptical manner.
If I were to compare the state of
the birth of earth, I would say it was like a blazing splinter, and that
splinter started to eventually cool down, similar to the rest of the universe. About 400 million years after its birth, earth
started to look like a planet with an atmosphere, however, back then the
atmosphere was very different than what it is now.
Life, which is most probably accidental,
began its journey roughly 3.7 billion years ago with the formation of amino
acids. They were formed from water (H2O), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3) and
hydrogen (H2) combined with an extremely high energy, which is most probably lighting.
These amino acids started to swarm
and form and evolve in water to create the first life forms which were
microorganisms. From those microorganisms came more evolved aquatic life forms,
and fast forward billions of years of evolutions and you have animals.
Perhaps the most accidental of all
the animals; and I am being biased and judgmental came about 2.4 million years
ago. Homo-habilis was a pleasant ole chap that resembled your cousin the
Gorilla, but the difference is that he is you great grandfather.
Your great grandfather was both
simple and complex in terms of cognitive abilities. His simplicity or
complexity does depend on your perspective. Homo-habilis, (habilis as in handy)
was named this way because they were believed to be the first to use tools.
Then came homo-rudolfensis then homo-ergaster
then homo-cepranensis then homo-heidelbergensis then homo-rhodesiensis, and
alas we reach the Neanderthal, which equates to your grandfather relative to
homo-habilis. We are sub strands of Neanderthals, we are homo-sapiens and we
came after homo-floresiensis which looked like hobbits and lived about 120
thousand years ago.
All of our ancestors were of decent
cognitive abilities, the used tools and built functional societies. They
started to develop habits in order to facilitate their daily life. However,
what differentiates us homo-sapiens (sapiens as in wise) is that we were not
only intrigued with how things worked, but we also wanted to know why things
worked. So from that point on things started to get really interesting. We
started to discover more, and the more we discovered the more oblivious and
deluded we got with our findings.
Perhaps the “why” that baffled us
the most was the “why do we die”, but I think that why is banal and our great
grandfather has answered that question a long time ago. He realized that at
some point of time things end, they just do, and that’s how things are.
However, that answer makes us uneasy because we feel that we are special and
should be eternal.
We reach a point which is roughly
60 thousand years BC, and at that point people were so concerned with the end, hence
devised a ritual to make them more at ease. “The funeral”, it was created in
Mesopotamia, more specific modern day Iraq.
The funeral complemented the
delusion of an afterlife, so people started to expand on that postulate, and I
think the epitome of that expansion was with the pharaohs and their monolithic
pyramid tombs. However those religions and rituals were immeasurably
schizophrenic so people wanted to make them more coherent and consistent.
Therefore the idea of superior deities emerged which for a decent amount of
time gave people’s lives meaning because it rid them of their fear in a more
convenient manner.
However, certain people were not
convinced with the delusion of multiple deities, because they were so “human”
like in their behavior. Therefore, they ironically created a more elaborate
delusion of a single omnipotent, all powerful everlasting deity. This was
approximately 3000 years BC.
Obviously people expanded on their
delusions to explain things, however, knowing how schizoid we are, we decided
at some point to be pragmatic in parallel to our delusion, so determinism and
physics (physics as in the study of nature) emerged, and it was more reliable
in everyday live.
However, the latter do not give
life meaning for they give the truth. There is no meaning in truth, meaning is
found only in that which comforts our psyche, and truth does not.
The irony of the situation is that
we crave meaning by explaining things yet those same things that we crave to
explain are either irrelevant or contradictory with what comforts us. Looking
at the big picture, I believe that we are so insignificant, accidental, and
irrelevant to be concerned with explaining the universe, and the world in order
to explain our mortality and give our lives meaning.