Rosio Pavoris a blog

Religious people often raise the point that the natural world is rather dull, and adding the supernatural adds a dimension of splendor. I really believe these people wouldn’t feel this way if they understood the natural world at all.
The actual history of the universe is so much grander than any Bronze Age mythologer could possibly have imagined. Let me sum it up for you.

The Formation of the Universe

The story of the universe starts 13.7 billion years ago, at the Big Bang, with the great expansion and the crystallisation of the physical laws. Very quickly, hadrons, including the building blocks of our modern elements, are created, and some three hundred thousand years later, the early elements form; vast clouds of hydrogen and helium and lithium.
Eventually, gravity makes these clouds comes together and processes of nuclear fusion eventually create the early stars. The same gravitational forces pull stars together in galaxies, galaxies together in clusters, and clusters together in superclusters.
In these early stars, heavier elements, including our own carbon and oxygen, are formed.

Our own solar system was formed by similar processes, about 4.6 billion years ago, when a huge nebula collapsed under its own gravity. As it collapsed, it heated up (because of the conversion of gravitational potential energy to kinetic energy of the atoms), its spin increased (because of the preservation of angular momentum), and it flattened out into a protoplanetary disk.

Eventually accretion formed, among other things, the planets, all revolving on roughly the same plane and in the same direction (with two fascinating exceptions), and their moons (again, with a few very interesting exceptions, including, perhaps, our own moon).
At the center, of course, was the largest ball of mass of all; so large, in fact, that under the force of its own gravity, the process of nuclear fusion was initiated, and the ball of gas became a bright star—the Sun.

Earth and Early Life

Our own Earth is, of course, one of those planets that orbits our sun. It’s about 4.5 billion years old, and it’s the largest of our solar system’s four terrestrial planets (the other four are gas giants; Ceres is a terrestrial dwarf planet, and Pluto is composed mostly of ice; we aren’t sure what Eris is yet, but it’s smaller than we are, in any event).
The early Earth was very hot, obviously, but it cooled down quickly, and its surface solidified into tectonic plates. Light elements, including the various gases that would make up the early atmosphere, floated to the top, while heavier ones, including most of the planet’s iron, sunk to the center.
Comets brought a fair amount of a water to our planet, creating the early hydrosphere (which has since become a lot complexer), and the relative stability of the planet allowed for the formation of small organic molecules.

There is some debate as to how exactly life itself got started. An interesting theory as to what kind of mechanism could start it was laid out by Graham Cairns-Smith in his clay theory. I’ll write a longer post about abiogenesis at some point.
Whatever the cause, eventually life got underway; first with simple replicators, like naked RNA (that is, RNA which isn’t protected by a cell, like modern viruses). These reproduced for hundred of thousands of years. Natural selection favored the ones who cooperated (unconsciously, mind) by living in groups, and who could form their own protective soap-bubble-like skins. This eventually led to the simplest single-celled life, the prokaryotes.

Evolution!

Life on Earth spent a lot of time in this single-celled form (though the individual cells got quite complex), but eventually, about a billion years ago, these cells discovered that they could work together in symbiotic colonies, and multi-cellular life was formed.
Early on, of course, these were just tiny and simple organisms living in the water, but eventually they became quite complex indeed.
Some of these eventually became plants. Others became simple sessile polyps. Eventually these polyps developed simple gills to aid them in feeding, and some became mobile during the larval stage, but still sessile as adults. Some of those retained their larval mobility throughout their lifespan.
These free-swimming polyps eventually developed something like a backbone, and came to look more like very simple fish. Jawless, filter-feeding fish, somewhat similar, perhaps, to modern lampreys.

Gradually, these early fish developed eyes and jaws. This enabled them to eat one another, which added another dimension to natural selection.
Since they could now use their jaws to eat with, they didn’t need their gills anymore, and they were repurposed to breathe the oxygen in the water. This is the way modern fish eventually arose.

Now, these fish didn’t necessarily live in the ocean. Some of them lived in lakes and puddles which dried up during the summer. As such, some fish developed a primitive lung to tide them over until the rainy season.

If the rainy season didn’t come, it helped to be able to pull yourself along to the next puddle, perhaps, so there was an advantage to developing simple limbs rather than just fins. This was, of course, a very important adaptation. The first amphibians were born.

Now, like fish, amphibians laid their eggs in water, where they were an easy target to be eaten. As such, some of them began laying (hard-shelled) eggs on land, which was still low on predators. Reptiles and turtles would be the eventual result.
Many of these reptiles never returned to the waters, and some became the dinosaurs (and eventually some of these dinosaurs would develop feathers for flight, and become birds). Some of the ones that didn’t become dinosaurs started carrying their young inside themselves rather than lay eggs, and these became the marsupials and the mammals.
These young were very immature at birth, and had to be taught how to survive. This was important, because it meant the brain would need to be larger and more developed.

Us

The earliest mammal was something like a shrew.
One line of mammals took to the trees. This required a greater dexterity and depth perception, and, of course, the larger brain to go with it. These became primates, including lemurs, tarsiers, monkeys, and, of course, apes.

Some of these apes walked upright, freeing their hands to poke at their surroundings. They learned how to use tools, and got smarter.
Eventually they learned how to talk, and developed culture.

These walking apes are still incredibly curious about their surroundings, and have learned so much more than any other species on the planet. This has enabled them to build vast cathedrals, to explore distant continents, and even to leave the planet they were born on.

The human species is a marvellous thing, and the world it grew in a fascinating place.
Why does this garden need fairies at the bottom of it? It’s rich enough in its own right.

If you want to understand your origins, this is where you’ll find them. If you want a sense of awe at the world, this is where it is. To say “goddidit” for no reason really just subtracts from it.

The creation story is pathetically unimaginative in comparison.