I was just reading http://ranalevy.blogspot.com/ and it made think of all the times I have written about similar things, like creator gods and faith v science and on and on. But in the middle of her post she starts talking about the stars, well towards the end, and I remember a point I made in poetry class once.
It was about how we are made of carbon-- a self assembling molecule -- and carbon comes from the deaths of stars. And I went into this beautiful (to me) explanation to my religious peers about how a star had to burn up all its hydrogen fuel before it started in on its helium fuel before it ran out of that and kept getting denser and denser with heavier elements until it collapses in a spectacular implosion throwing those bits of carbon and EVERYTHING else across the universe so they could collect in other places to start the process up again--but a little bit of it collected elsewhere and became rocks, and planets, and water, and well, everything.
You are made of the pieces of a dead star. There is no other way to get carbon than the fusion that takes place inside stars.
A star had to die a violent death so you could be here, billions of years after it died.
A star had to die so that you could live.
Now isn't that more spectacular than Jesus casting the demons out into a bunch of pigs? Or a burning bush? Or a blood-red river? And if it isn't (so claim the people of faith) at the very least IT IS TRUE. That is the crazy part. The most amazing thing about science and cosmology and physics and all that is that
it
is
true. And provable.
Compare that with the myriad of religious belief, a specific belief for a specific time and place that evolves to fit the current population, or dies to be studied by archeologists.
The worlds religions can't all be true, but they can all be false. The best way we have of learning what is true is by learning what isn't.
And the best way to know something is to prove it wrong. Like Socrates allegedly said, "I know through not-knowing."
We are made of carbon, which self-assembles. We are made of carbon chains of various lengths. In the primordial soup that was our blue planet the water was full of carbon, which self assembled for billions of years until it assembled the most popular arrangement which would become DNA and RNA, after that comes evolution by natural selection and genetic drift and the rest of it, which is not random as the religious talking heads like to claim. They have a problem with humanity coming from the lowly bacterium, but no problem with the biblical account of our coming from dirt.
I don't have a problem with coming from random self-assembling carbon molecules for two reasons.
1) All evidence points to this as the most likely origin of our species, and all life on this planet.
and
2) It is humbling.
Jesus tap-dancing Christ look at the time!
Good night.
ps: I saw the dragon movie in 3d. I loved it.
Dreading it... another update
7 years ago
4 comments:
Wow, I did not know this about the stars and carbon and us. That's just fascinating. It is always nice to learn something new.
I know someone who does not believe in evolution, he believes were created, though different from the biblical sense- he research a lot about this and has his idea. I don't know myself, I need to read/research more about evolution and everything. Need to inform myself on this.
I have done a lot of research myself in this area because I hate not knowing things. It is very complicated, evolution, but also very simple (not to mention a strong scientific theory--we know more about evolution than we do about gravity). It's hard to explain. I suggest this site from Nova/PBS: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/
and if you can spare the dollar or so from amazon, get Charles Darwins' book 'on the origin of species' because he is the daddy of evolution and his book is surprisingly well written and easy to follow. (Iexpected it to be all science babel, but its not) From there there are a gazillion scientific books to read.
One of my favorites is: Evolution: what the fossils say and why it matters. In that book they break down the fossils and the tree of life and how they can know for certain (prove it) that whales were originally dog like creatures that frequented the ocean, or how trilobites became spiders and lobsters. Just crazy stuff.
The trouble is there is just so much to know! If it would help you I'd be happy to write a post about evolution, maybe something you don't understand or would like some clarity on. It would give me something to write about :-D
So, basically I would never be done with the research! Well, if you want something to write about then it would be nice, but don't bother just for me! I will have to check out the sites. THanks Brian =)
that was quick?i'd be interested on knowing what moderate or beyond would be.lol a death of a star the life or the evolution to what we are now. pretty interesting stuff. yeah it sounds pretty bad, that Jesus, a guy, exerciced pigs and things of that nature, star to pig, are quite apart? Now like i've said i do believe in a God,that doesn't make me irrational since i do believe in evolution. I wasn't back then(B.C or A.C.), we didn't have this technology , we based some knoledge on what we have been told and so it's possible that people over stretched the truth. like for their own gain.Thats greed,a sin and well in away its just wrong(morally).I'd like to shed a little light on the debate of religion. Religion is basically a code of conduct, like knights or samurais. What they stand for was real.In any case now the people who don't believe in Jesus now(which i find funny), say that if he was the son of God, then he'd be able to do this and that and to my knoledge he just came to share a message. To interpret that code to the new times, thats why there is a old testament and new testament (in the bible). whats below the very core of an atom? energy, what brought that forth. The nothingness, or am i just guilty to think that an entity came and did all that.Ramdomness or coincidence? Neither? ponder the possibilities.
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