Your life: a miracle? Or something that just happened? Lent 2021, Day Two

"You are as insignificant as a grain of sand"

"The Universe was made for you."

Which of these two statements are true? 

I'll argue that both are. 

I'll start this post by hitting you with some big numbers.

Science currently (2021) estimates the Universe to consist of 200 billion galaxies. Each of those galaxies consists of anywhere between a hundred million and a hundred trillion stars; there are therefore more stars in the observable Universe than there are grains of sand on Planet Earth.

Our entire galaxy, the Milky Way, is pretty ordinary, consisting (it is estimated) of somewhere between 100 and 400 billion stars, of which ours, the Sun, is pretty ordinary.

The Universe is estimated to have been around for around 13.8 billion years (and what happened before the Big Bang remains a matter of competing scientific theories). Our planet has been around for 4.5 billion years, and life on Earth has been around for at least 4.1 billion years. And from the moment the first life form took on the hallmarks of being alive, reproducing, evolving, an unbroken chain of ancestors has made it all the way to you - alive, conscious, right now. Had just a single amoeba or proto-fish or lobe fin or dinosaur or early mammal or hominid in that chain died before it had the chance to reproduce - you'd not be here, reading my blog at this moment in time. A chain consisting of billions of successful reproductions - and now, here you are. A lineage, an ancestry running all the way back to the very first successfully-reproducing form of life on earth

The odds of your existence, of your consciousness being here, now, to pore over these words, are infinitesimally small. And yet it happened. Rejoice!

Is that not a miracle? 

Or, would you turn it the other way round: there's so much life, even conscious life, with 7.8 billion humans alive on our planet right now, that your existence is totally unremarkable...

But had your parents never met - would you still be? Not the physical you, but the conscious you - the awareness that defines how you experience life?

The physical you - the Ego - is indeed as insignificant as a grain of sand. But your Consciousness is why the Universe exists - so that you can experience it.

The way you subjectively see life is crucial to understanding that the Universe was made for you, for you to observe, to sample, even to a very limited degree.

The conditions for you to be you have all been met, right the way back to the Big Bang. A Universe that's physically right, that has the right set of laws of physics to enable it to expand, to develop heavier atoms that can combine into molecules that can build proteins and cells - and conscious life.

It's pretty miraculous. If the Big Bang were to start all over, what would be the chances that 13.8 billion years later, on one planet orbiting an ordinary star in an ordinary galaxy, you'd pop up to start observing it unfolding?

Sit back and consider that miracle. That's what it means to be alive, a conscious observer of an unfolding Universe. To make it more amazing, consider this: the hydrogen atoms that you are made up of have been around since shortly after Big Bang, and will exist after your death for another nonillion years (10³²) before decaying (science currently estimates).

Your consciousness is a part of this Universal process. 

A tiny part/A huge part.

This time three years ago:
The evolution of the biosphere cannot be predicted

This time four years ago:
Jeziorki meltdown in the fog

This time five years ago:
Health, happiness and wholeness

This time six years ago:
Kicking off Lent again 

This time seven years ago:
Improving the procurement of Poland's infrastructure 

This time eight years ago:
Wait to spend or save lives now? An infrastructure quandry

This time 12 years ago:
It's not rich countries that build roads, its roads that build rich countries

This time 13 years ago:
Snow that was doomed to melt