"Four reasons why I should not exist", according to physicists?
I could not force myself to read the article. I do not know why life should not exist. What I do know is that we do exist. And since nature itself produced life, it is quite likely that basic physics is the cause of our existing.
It is an absurd argument. It is quite like all those arguments that a place like earth is so improbable that we are probably the only planet with life on it in the whole universe. And these days, we seem to be finding earth-like planets everywhere.
That kind of irrational argumentation is usually an exercise in primitive religion; something rooted in a Mesopotamian creation myth, and cultivated in the Middle East. Like not knowing how many planets there actually are, mostly because our tools are so crude, and our assumptions are so fine, the notion that life--and intelligent life--is improbable is simply a denial (or ignorance) of that things are the way they are.
A fair time ago, as human life goes--just a blink or two as the universe goes--William Paley, in the early 1800s, said that the mere existence of things like human life logically demanded that there must be a designer somewhere around here. It was like finding a fine watch: someone had to have designed it. It was an argument resting on a mechanical view of the universe. If you find a machine, there must be a machinist, or there must have been one.
But life isn't a machine. It is what matter and energy does, eventually, here and there. It becomes complex, and even self-replicating. Chance and necessity, Jacques Monod called it. No engineers. No mechanics. No watchmakers. No mechanical Creators. It is what has happened, naturally, and we are the proof of it.
We are matter and energy, having come to contemplate itself; having come, however clumsily, to understand itself. We are earth, having come to consciousness, counting the millenia of our past, and speculating about its future.
We don't need four reasons not to exist. We don't need reasons to exist. We just do. It is what has happened. And it is exhilarating, just thinking about it!
I could not force myself to read the article. I do not know why life should not exist. What I do know is that we do exist. And since nature itself produced life, it is quite likely that basic physics is the cause of our existing.
It is an absurd argument. It is quite like all those arguments that a place like earth is so improbable that we are probably the only planet with life on it in the whole universe. And these days, we seem to be finding earth-like planets everywhere.
That kind of irrational argumentation is usually an exercise in primitive religion; something rooted in a Mesopotamian creation myth, and cultivated in the Middle East. Like not knowing how many planets there actually are, mostly because our tools are so crude, and our assumptions are so fine, the notion that life--and intelligent life--is improbable is simply a denial (or ignorance) of that things are the way they are.
A fair time ago, as human life goes--just a blink or two as the universe goes--William Paley, in the early 1800s, said that the mere existence of things like human life logically demanded that there must be a designer somewhere around here. It was like finding a fine watch: someone had to have designed it. It was an argument resting on a mechanical view of the universe. If you find a machine, there must be a machinist, or there must have been one.
But life isn't a machine. It is what matter and energy does, eventually, here and there. It becomes complex, and even self-replicating. Chance and necessity, Jacques Monod called it. No engineers. No mechanics. No watchmakers. No mechanical Creators. It is what has happened, naturally, and we are the proof of it.
We are matter and energy, having come to contemplate itself; having come, however clumsily, to understand itself. We are earth, having come to consciousness, counting the millenia of our past, and speculating about its future.
We don't need four reasons not to exist. We don't need reasons to exist. We just do. It is what has happened. And it is exhilarating, just thinking about it!
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