There is a war going on between humans, and since it involves a subject so profoundly bound with our existence and our place within the Universe, naturally there will be heated disagreement and even deaths resulting. You guessed it -- religion and philosophy cause wars.
First of all, even without a discussion about the nature of life, or even the nature of the non-biological processes all around us, there are many arguments over whose "holy book" is the holiest. It seems to always depend on where you were born, and therefore which culture had its effects imprinted on you first. I don't like arguing about things that are essentially arbitrary. In fact I don't like arguing at all. It is quite tiresome, and I have little of my life remaining to waste on such endless blithering.
I am not an Atheist, although I don't necessarily disagree with many of their arguments. Yet I am definitely not a Theist, because both of those labels imply that I believe something. I don't believe in either premise -- that there is NO god, or that there IS a god. Who knows?
I don't "believe" anything on that level. There are many things that I suspect, and there are many things that seem to be true -- the fact that I am alive right now, typing these words into a computer -- how can I argue against such a fact. I can't. But that is not something that requires "belief". I don't have to actively force my brain to believe in such an immediate reality. I just exist, whether I believe it or not.
"Belief" is something that is required whenever there is a possible doubt. And for scientists, the doubt must be overcome with logical facts which can be proven (or at least not collide against things which are already proven.) I am more like a scientist in that regard. The other kind of belief is "Faith", in which one believes something for the sake of believing it, regardless of any facts, for or against. I have no "faith".
I used to joke about believing things, such as "I will now believe in Aliens." I certainly had no reason or knowledge regarding Aliens that could prompt such a decision. It was just an arbitrary thing to believe -- something which many people have strong feelings about. I just liked to see how people would react to such a statement. It is silly, yet no more silly than believing in the Big Bang or something like that.
However, when I look at the most fundamental aspects of existence, such as the substrate of atomic interactions known as chemistry, with all the electrons and atomic weights somehow producing a vast array of properties in so many different combinations -- I see an endless complexity. It is not necessary to drag "life chemistry" into the problem in order to see the complexity. It exists in the simplest chemical, e.g. hydrogen. The existence of hydrogen is a mystery all in its own. The relationship of the single proton with its single electron has a built in unpredictability, and behaviors which depend greatly upon the temperature of the environment (and thus of other hydrogen or other atoms) around it.
Looking even closer, one finds that a proton is collection of quarks, with different properties within, thereby making the hydrogen atom far more complicated than a stone with a littler stone orbiting it. Even an electron, so tiny compared to the proton, is a lepton particle/wave contraption with little rules of its own within. It also depends on the temperature of the environment to behave whichever way it does.
When we back out to the level of human life, and pick up a stone from the ground, we don't see the vast interactions of countless specks of atoms and their electrons. We just feel the weight, the hardness, the solidness of the stone in our hand. If we could live a billion years, and held the rock in our hands the entire time, it would have changed very little. Possibly the acids in our skin might effect it, or bacteria, gasses and so forth in the environment might discolor the thing, but it would mostly just be that same old stone.
Yet, internally, the atoms may have all changed places in their matrices, and certainly the electrons would have all been replaced. If one could watch atoms through a microscope, which is rarely possible, there would be an endless dance of molecules, vibrating, bouncing about, changing partners as in a minuet. Yet, seen from the distance of our eyes to our hands, the stone's atoms seem to be as completely solid as solids can possibly be.
Still, if you could make a tiny drill with a drill bit as sharp as a single atom of titanium, and drill the tiniest possible hole into that matrix of atoms, the hole would disappear nearly instantly once the drill bit was removed. Atoms won't tolerate such an artificial structure as a hole without some other factor, such as a minimum size for the hole, or a junction layer of differing atoms that hold back the tide of other atoms from filling in the hole. Yet, even the junction layer would have rules governing the minimum size of a hole that it could tolerate.
So, are these atoms alive? Are they like teeny tiny bacteria or viruses? I doubt that they alive in the sense that formal life forms are alive. Certainly they are not organic molecules, at least not in a common stone -- perhaps made only from silicon dioxide, quartz, or feldspar, without a single carbon atom to be seen in the whole matrix (except possibly as an impurity.)
But, even if the rock was merely a solid crystal of hydrogen (not very likely on the Earth), it would have extremely unpredictable behavior at the molecular level. The only thing that can be predicted is that it will be chaotic. This is the law of entropy. Things will become increasingly disordered with time, releasing their energy in lesser and lesser levels of infra-red radiation as entropy progresses.
Not until all matter has been stripped of its latent heat, frozen beyond any conception of the word "freeze", will there be a cessation of the progress of entropy. Where will all that heat have gone? It will have been dissipated into infinite space, radiated beyond the reach of every atom. The "heat" will have been stretched out until it is flattened and cold, and then to disappear from existence entirely.
But until that far distant time, which could a quintillion years from now, or longer, there will be the ceaseless dance of molecules. Ever changing shapes and configurations, shuffled and reshuffled again as if in infinite atomic poker games. Atoms will accidentally form shapes and designs of nearly limitless kinds. Only their "death" at that future heat death at "absolute zero" (a sort of comical expression, really, any other kind of "zero" would not really be "zero" at all...) could ever stop the endless dancing of atoms and particles of matter.
Certainly, as the temperature reduces, the freedom of movement of each atom is reduced. The crystal forms will be less and less able to be altered. The atoms will be forced to dance in smaller and smaller arenas, as in the crystalline methane snow of Pluto. It is unlikely that hydrogen will become anything more complicated than methane in such an environment, yet it is even there, frozen as solid as solid can be, the most minute organic molecule, like a tiny frozen biscuit, food for bacteria that might come along someday.
Of course, with the addition of "dark matter" and other exotic formats of energy and space, there may be other completely separate complexities of which I know nothing, and can only just pretend to imagine, but even so, the meaning of "existence" must include those things as well, even though nothing is known about them. But rather than subtracting from the complexity of simple matter, it can only add more.
Anyway, this is what I tend to "believe", if I must use such a word -- that atoms and energy ARE life. They have always been alive, at the most basic level, and always will be. As ever increasingly complex "life forms" such as ourselves come into existence, certainly far more complex than basic atoms, they are able to look upon these little bricks of super-simple life and wonder -- how did these little things get created? Was there an intelligent maker? Or did these things just emerge from the infinite goop of nothingness?
First of all, even without a discussion about the nature of life, or even the nature of the non-biological processes all around us, there are many arguments over whose "holy book" is the holiest. It seems to always depend on where you were born, and therefore which culture had its effects imprinted on you first. I don't like arguing about things that are essentially arbitrary. In fact I don't like arguing at all. It is quite tiresome, and I have little of my life remaining to waste on such endless blithering.
I am not an Atheist, although I don't necessarily disagree with many of their arguments. Yet I am definitely not a Theist, because both of those labels imply that I believe something. I don't believe in either premise -- that there is NO god, or that there IS a god. Who knows?
I don't "believe" anything on that level. There are many things that I suspect, and there are many things that seem to be true -- the fact that I am alive right now, typing these words into a computer -- how can I argue against such a fact. I can't. But that is not something that requires "belief". I don't have to actively force my brain to believe in such an immediate reality. I just exist, whether I believe it or not.
"Belief" is something that is required whenever there is a possible doubt. And for scientists, the doubt must be overcome with logical facts which can be proven (or at least not collide against things which are already proven.) I am more like a scientist in that regard. The other kind of belief is "Faith", in which one believes something for the sake of believing it, regardless of any facts, for or against. I have no "faith".
I used to joke about believing things, such as "I will now believe in Aliens." I certainly had no reason or knowledge regarding Aliens that could prompt such a decision. It was just an arbitrary thing to believe -- something which many people have strong feelings about. I just liked to see how people would react to such a statement. It is silly, yet no more silly than believing in the Big Bang or something like that.
However, when I look at the most fundamental aspects of existence, such as the substrate of atomic interactions known as chemistry, with all the electrons and atomic weights somehow producing a vast array of properties in so many different combinations -- I see an endless complexity. It is not necessary to drag "life chemistry" into the problem in order to see the complexity. It exists in the simplest chemical, e.g. hydrogen. The existence of hydrogen is a mystery all in its own. The relationship of the single proton with its single electron has a built in unpredictability, and behaviors which depend greatly upon the temperature of the environment (and thus of other hydrogen or other atoms) around it.
Looking even closer, one finds that a proton is collection of quarks, with different properties within, thereby making the hydrogen atom far more complicated than a stone with a littler stone orbiting it. Even an electron, so tiny compared to the proton, is a lepton particle/wave contraption with little rules of its own within. It also depends on the temperature of the environment to behave whichever way it does.
When we back out to the level of human life, and pick up a stone from the ground, we don't see the vast interactions of countless specks of atoms and their electrons. We just feel the weight, the hardness, the solidness of the stone in our hand. If we could live a billion years, and held the rock in our hands the entire time, it would have changed very little. Possibly the acids in our skin might effect it, or bacteria, gasses and so forth in the environment might discolor the thing, but it would mostly just be that same old stone.
Yet, internally, the atoms may have all changed places in their matrices, and certainly the electrons would have all been replaced. If one could watch atoms through a microscope, which is rarely possible, there would be an endless dance of molecules, vibrating, bouncing about, changing partners as in a minuet. Yet, seen from the distance of our eyes to our hands, the stone's atoms seem to be as completely solid as solids can possibly be.Still, if you could make a tiny drill with a drill bit as sharp as a single atom of titanium, and drill the tiniest possible hole into that matrix of atoms, the hole would disappear nearly instantly once the drill bit was removed. Atoms won't tolerate such an artificial structure as a hole without some other factor, such as a minimum size for the hole, or a junction layer of differing atoms that hold back the tide of other atoms from filling in the hole. Yet, even the junction layer would have rules governing the minimum size of a hole that it could tolerate.
So, are these atoms alive? Are they like teeny tiny bacteria or viruses? I doubt that they alive in the sense that formal life forms are alive. Certainly they are not organic molecules, at least not in a common stone -- perhaps made only from silicon dioxide, quartz, or feldspar, without a single carbon atom to be seen in the whole matrix (except possibly as an impurity.)
But, even if the rock was merely a solid crystal of hydrogen (not very likely on the Earth), it would have extremely unpredictable behavior at the molecular level. The only thing that can be predicted is that it will be chaotic. This is the law of entropy. Things will become increasingly disordered with time, releasing their energy in lesser and lesser levels of infra-red radiation as entropy progresses.
Not until all matter has been stripped of its latent heat, frozen beyond any conception of the word "freeze", will there be a cessation of the progress of entropy. Where will all that heat have gone? It will have been dissipated into infinite space, radiated beyond the reach of every atom. The "heat" will have been stretched out until it is flattened and cold, and then to disappear from existence entirely.
But until that far distant time, which could a quintillion years from now, or longer, there will be the ceaseless dance of molecules. Ever changing shapes and configurations, shuffled and reshuffled again as if in infinite atomic poker games. Atoms will accidentally form shapes and designs of nearly limitless kinds. Only their "death" at that future heat death at "absolute zero" (a sort of comical expression, really, any other kind of "zero" would not really be "zero" at all...) could ever stop the endless dancing of atoms and particles of matter.
Certainly, as the temperature reduces, the freedom of movement of each atom is reduced. The crystal forms will be less and less able to be altered. The atoms will be forced to dance in smaller and smaller arenas, as in the crystalline methane snow of Pluto. It is unlikely that hydrogen will become anything more complicated than methane in such an environment, yet it is even there, frozen as solid as solid can be, the most minute organic molecule, like a tiny frozen biscuit, food for bacteria that might come along someday.
Of course, with the addition of "dark matter" and other exotic formats of energy and space, there may be other completely separate complexities of which I know nothing, and can only just pretend to imagine, but even so, the meaning of "existence" must include those things as well, even though nothing is known about them. But rather than subtracting from the complexity of simple matter, it can only add more.
Anyway, this is what I tend to "believe", if I must use such a word -- that atoms and energy ARE life. They have always been alive, at the most basic level, and always will be. As ever increasingly complex "life forms" such as ourselves come into existence, certainly far more complex than basic atoms, they are able to look upon these little bricks of super-simple life and wonder -- how did these little things get created? Was there an intelligent maker? Or did these things just emerge from the infinite goop of nothingness?
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