Who are we; where did we come from; what is my purpose in life; why is there something rather than nothing, etc. has probably been pondered by most of us at one time or another. One universal blanket answer is God (or in earlier times, the gods). A rival answer is that the abstract concept of Mother Nature can equally explain all, even if sometimes in the negative – the Universe and you have no ultimate purpose. It, you and I just are.
Cosmological Origins & Considerations: Did God create the Universe?
To be honest, cosmologists have no need of a God Hypothesis to explain the origin of our Universe, be it the standard model of the Big Bang event or a variation thereof (and there are cosmologists who don’t buy into the standard model) and you won’t find any mention of the God Hypothesis as a plausible possibility in their textbooks and given in university lecture halls.
Still, ‘In the beginning’ - that’s a good place to start, although I actually prefer the phrase ‘once upon a time’ for reasons that will become apparent. The standard cosmological model outlining the origin or our Universe via the Big Bang event is, well let me just say I don’t accept a word of it and I won’t go into massive detail about it. It’s very easy to get hold of any number of popular accounts that detail the standard Big Bang scenario. However, in extreme briefness, the standard Big Bang event postulates the origin of all matter where no matter existed before; the creation of all energy, where no energy existed previously; the creation of time itself where previously there was no time; and lastly the creation of space where before-the-fact there was no space. To add insult to our intelligence, the Big Bang was also a quantum event, so you are forced to believe that the entire contents of our Universe were once crammed into a space the size of an atom or less. Sure it was! In fact there’s so much philosophical baggage for the standard Big Bang scenario to have to lug around that even the standard Biblical account is slightly, ever so slightly, more believable, but only just – barely just.
In proposing an alternative scenario, I can’t really throw the Big Bang baby out along with the philosophical bathwater, because there’s too much real observational evidence in support of some sort of Big Bang event. My alternative just postulates that the Big Bang event happened in pre-existing space and time, and that the matter and energy of our Universe is just a recycling of the contents of a previous universe that, in the reverse of our expanding Universe, contracted until it all came together in a Big Crunch so warping the fabric of space and time that it ended up spewing the contents out in what we see as our Universe. Oh, the transition from a previous Big Crunch universe to our Big Bang Universe was a macro event, not a micro (quantum) one.
Anyway, either our Universe had a beginning (the Big Bang), and will have (based on current cosmological observations) an ultimate, albeit long drawn out termination (a Heat Death or Big Rip), or the Universe is infinitely cyclic (Big Crunch – Big Bang – expansion – contraction – Big Crunch – Big Bang – etc.).
In the former case, what’s the point of God creating and ruling over a Universe that’s ultimately going to spend an eternity in a very cold and dead state, or for there to be a Heaven (or Hell) that exists within such an ultimately dreary Universe? The realm of God, of Heaven and Hell, has ultimately got to be part of our Universe and subject to the same sort of fate as the Universe overall will share.
In the latter case, with infinitely cyclic universes, there is no need for a creator God at all. Or, maybe God, over an eternity, has created lots of various universes, one after the other, for His amusement, and perhaps like a kid tired of a new toy, abandoned it (or destroyed it via a Big Crunch) after a time. Our Universe could be but the latest in this series of amusements, sort of like a child playing with a doll house and dolls for a while. Perhaps God is akin to a child and we are toys to be played with and manipulated. God can sure throw tantrums like a spoiled brat! [Recall the original ‘Star Trek’ episode ‘Squire of Gothos’ for an illustration of what I’m on about – the episode illustrates a very similar idea.] Regardless, perhaps this is yet another interesting variation of the cyclic or oscillating universe scenario where there are lots of universes in turn, but supernaturally, not naturally created. However, I’d ultimately have to argue that if Mother Nature can create one universe, Mother Nature can create more than one universe. And while God can create as many universes as He likes, what’s the logical point of doing so? Isn’t our Universe a big enough playground for Him?
The Origin of Life on Earth (or Elsewhere): Did God Create Life?
The upshot is that those biologists and biochemists who study the origin of life, whether an origin indigenous to our planet, or one arriving from the depths of outer space via a panspermia scenario, have not required resorting to supernatural explanations for the creation of life. You won’t find the phrase ‘and then a miracle occurred’ in the textbooks between discussions that link pre-biology with biology.
Life, even microbial life, is still very, very complex (try making a microbe from scratch if you doubt it). The fact that life arose from scratch on Earth within a very, very short span of geological time after the planet formed is a bit suspect IMHO. But what if Earth were seeded by microbial life forms already in existence from space (or deliberately seeded by extraterrestrials as the Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick has proposed)? Now I realize that just puts off the origin of life question to another time(s) and place(s). However, given the vastness of the cosmos is far greater than that of our finite globe, and given that the cosmos existed for vastly longer periods of time before our sun, solar system and home planet came into existence, such additional time and space easily turns the improbable into a near certainty. And once established somewhere, life could spread throughout that time and space, until it reached us.
Earth arose billions of years after our Universe and our galaxy had evolved, ample time for life to have arisen elsewhere, and seed the early Earth. This is the concept of panspermia. We know that comets, meteors, and the cosmic dust within outer space are chock-o-block full of complex organic molecules. We know that simple terrestrial life can survive the outer space environment if suitably shielded – and it doesn’t take much to do the shielding. We know that surface bits from planets and their moons can be ejected into space, carry a cargo of microbes, and land on another planet, even eons later with the microbes still viable. Of course 99.999% of all such microbial life will be doomed to forever wander in space or crash onto a cold, surface of a planet with no atmosphere or water, or plunge into a star, etc. But, sheer numbers, like terrestrial plant seeds, will insure that now and again some microbes will land on a hospitable abode and be fruitful and multiple and evolve. The interesting bit is that if then, then now. And thus panspermia will be happening today. Certainly some meteorites which have impacted Earth have inside them ‘organized elements’ suggestive of microbial structures – the Murchison Meteorite from Australia
Further readings:
Crick, Francis; Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature; Simon and Schuster, New York
Davies, Paul; The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin of Life; Allen Lane , Ringwood , Victoria
Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Lifecloud: The Origin of Life in the Universe; J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London
Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Diseases from Space; J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London
Ponnamperuma, Cyril (Editor); Comets and the Origin of Life; D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht , Holland
Seargent, David A. J.; Genesis Stone? The Murchison Meteorite and the Beginnings of Life; Karagi Publications, The Entrance, NSW: 1991:
To be continued…
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