Why I don't need religion
Why I don't need religion
In the beginning of the universe, only a few minutes after the Big Bang, all of existence burned. Hydrogen nuclei fused to make helium nuclei. Hundreds of thousands of years later, these nuclei combined with electrons to make atoms. Areas where this "soup" of matter was denser than surrounding regions collapsed and formed clouds, galaxies, stars.
Early stars, made of hydrogen and helium, were far more massive than our Sun and used up their fuel so quickly that they burned out in only a few million years. In their spectacular deaths, they spread the heavier elements created in their cores across the skies. These remnants collapsed and formed new stars, which fused until they, too, exhausted their fuel and exploded as supernovae.
It is only in the later generations of the universe that our Sun formed, initially only a protostar surrounded by a disk of dust. It is from this disk that Earth emerged, in the same way that stars formed, as a collapsing dense region.
To me, the idea that this was all accomplished through some "creator" cheapens it. I like being a result of random chance. I like being small against the sky. I like it because I know that I burned at the beginning of time, I burned at the core of a star, I traveled across light years of space in an immense shock wave, I collapsed in the cloud that formed the Earth. I am a part of the fractal pattern--the underlying mathematical structure--that defines the universe.
I have existed for over 13.7 billion years, and I will exist for billions more, until the end of the universe and the end of time.
In the beginning of the universe, only a few minutes after the Big Bang, all of existence burned. Hydrogen nuclei fused to make helium nuclei. Hundreds of thousands of years later, these nuclei combined with electrons to make atoms. Areas where this "soup" of matter was denser than surrounding regions collapsed and formed clouds, galaxies, stars.
Early stars, made of hydrogen and helium, were far more massive than our Sun and used up their fuel so quickly that they burned out in only a few million years. In their spectacular deaths, they spread the heavier elements created in their cores across the skies. These remnants collapsed and formed new stars, which fused until they, too, exhausted their fuel and exploded as supernovae.
It is only in the later generations of the universe that our Sun formed, initially only a protostar surrounded by a disk of dust. It is from this disk that Earth emerged, in the same way that stars formed, as a collapsing dense region.
To me, the idea that this was all accomplished through some "creator" cheapens it. I like being a result of random chance. I like being small against the sky. I like it because I know that I burned at the beginning of time, I burned at the core of a star, I traveled across light years of space in an immense shock wave, I collapsed in the cloud that formed the Earth. I am a part of the fractal pattern--the underlying mathematical structure--that defines the universe.
I have existed for over 13.7 billion years, and I will exist for billions more, until the end of the universe and the end of time.
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