5. So where did life come from?

 

Where did I come from? Is there a creator?

When we study the reality around us (i.e. anything we sense within the universe) we will come to know that nothing has the quality or characteristic of being able to create either itself or other things. What is meant by ‘create’ is to bring into existence from nothing, rather than just a manipulation of form from already existing things. For example, making a can from metal extracted from the ore that already exists in rocks is not considered as creating a can in our strict sense here- but rather making a can.

So even when a child is born- it was not that he came from nothing, but he grew from his parent’s cells and then that fertilised cell kept on absorbing nutrients from its mother and then from the environment until it grew to its size.

We cannot observe anything within our universe creating itself or other objects from nothing even the smallest speck of sand or sub-atomic particle has never been observed to appear from nothing out of thin air. Sub-atomic particles of mass (the stuff inside everything) have been found to transform to and from energy – however that energy is  still ‘something’ and can be converted using the formula E=mc2, So mass and energy are interchangeable. Energy has not ever been produced from nothing, and neither has mass.

 Moreover the aforementioned point is even established according to the scientific law of thermodynamics that within the observable universe: "energy cannot be created or destroyed but can only be changed from one form to another" (this  is represented mathematically as a law as: U_{T} = U_{i} + W + Q) and energy is related to matter through the law E=mc2. So even scientifically, it is established that within the universe something cannot appear or disappear into nothing. [ side point of scientific knowledge: science is not a criteria to judge truth as it can be based on interpretations of observed phenomena to justify unobserved theories. The interpretation therefore has elements of speculation ]. However the above observation is established rationally through our senses – the scientific method just concurs with it – i.e. this rational method does not contradict what even scientists think!

 

 If it were true that objects within the universe have the power of bringing themselves or other things into existence from ‘nothing’ then this would mean for instance that whilst you walk down the street a chicken (or an egg- whichever came first) appears from nowhere- hitting you in the face! Or whilst sitting down watching television and getting hungry you don’t bother walking to the fridge to get some food but you open your hand and wait for the food to materialise into your hand! Why even bother mine natural resources like carbon based fuels and nuclear fuels for power stations when we should be able to power our homes from the energy inside the sub-atomic particles that are constantly being created from nothing?! 

 

Then where did everything come from? 

So, logically speaking if we use the information that we can sense:

If our universe exists,

If nothing within the universe has the power to bring itself or other things into existence from nothing (creation),

Then it must have come from something that is not within this observable universe

 

This is the rational belief in a “creator”.

It is a fact -not based on opinion as the reality proves it for everyone. 

 A mistake in thinking would be to extend the discussion beyond the sensed reality of the universe such as in asking, “if this creator created us then what created the creator?”

By asking who created the creator there is an error in thinking that the non-sensed characteristics of the creator is the same as the sensed characteristics of the creation. This is an irrational analogy to make. An example of the absurdity of this question is like asking, “if bread has come from the baker, then who baked the baker?” The error here is in thinking that the bread and baker share the same characteristics of being baked. 

Therefore we cannot describe this creator and its characteristics because it is out of our physically sensed reality- and it would be factually incorrect to describe anything about it.

(footnote: throughout history  certain arguments are made against this rational view of the world from various religions, philosophies and now speculative scientific theories such as  one branch of quantum mechanics which speculates that something can come from nothing- however this theory as well as the others have  been refuted by other quantum physicists as discussed later in the section below)