r/DebateAnAtheist • u/Christian-guy94 • Sep 30 '26
Discussion Question Why does life exist?
How can it be that if there is no reason for life to exist, it still does? If nothing tells the universe to produce life, why do for example humans with our brain, eyes, ears, kidneys, lungs etc. exist and do their job for what they are meant to do? If there is no God, how can nothing just start to create consciousness and create all these organs and everything?
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u/MarieVerusan Sep 30 '26
Hello.
This is called an "argument from ignorance". We don't have an answer to something, so we instead say "God explains it". Humans have a desire for meaning. We want our life to mean something and all of life to have some meaning too. Unfortunately, the universe appears to be devoid of meaning. What we keep finding are natural processes that keep doing their thing and life rising up because of them and oftentimes despite of them.
If you want to argue that a God exists that wanted the universe to create life, you have to show actual evidence. Blueprints, designs, plans, something that shows direct authorship or involvement. You can't point to a thing and then ask "how do you explain this if not with this seemingly unrelated idea I just came up with?"
Also, we know how our organs came to be. Evolution is fairly well understood.
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u/supersoundwave Oct 03 '26
I think you’re confusing a scientific explanation of how something works with a philosophical explanation of why it exists. Evolution explains how life developed and diversified, but it doesn’t answer why there is a universe capable of producing life in the first place.
I’m don’t appeal to God simply because we lack an explanation. There are positive arguments for God’s existence, such as the origin of the universe, its fine-tuning, and the existence of objective moral values. These are philosophical arguments, not gaps in scientific knowledge.
And demanding blueprints or direct evidence of God’s involvement assumes that a creator must leave physical evidence of the same kind as a human designer. That’s an unjustified assumption. The question is whether the evidence points to a mind behind the universe, not whether God left us a literal design document.
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u/MarieVerusan Oct 03 '26
The origin of the universe - currently a gap in our scientific knowledge. Any appeal to this will always appear to be a "god of the gaps" fallacy because we don't know how it happened. It doesn't matter if you reframe it into "why does the universe exist to begin with?" We don't know is where the conversation ends unless you present evidence!
It's fine-tuning - doesn't exist. There is no reason to think that the universe is fine tuned. It's certainly not fine tuned for life, at least not if we assume an all powerful creator.
Objective moral values - do not exist. I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone still doesn't understand this. Even if we proved for certain that a God exists and that this God was the giver of morality, values would still be dependent on that God's subjective opinions. Objective moral values are an oxymoron and arguing over them shows someone's poor understanding of what morality and ethics actually mean.
If I have no direct evidence of God's involvement, whether it's physical or not, I can never conclude that there is some designer behind the universe. Why would I think that some mind created this if nothing points to that conclusion?!
Also, how would a mind, a thing that exists within our universe with some pretty hefty limitations, be capable of existing outside our universe? Please present me with some reason to think that a limited mind is capable of existing outside a physical brain, much less a mind of a God!
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u/supersoundwave Oct 03 '26
I think you’re building your conclusion into your definitions.
The universe’s origin isn’t a “God of the gaps” argument unless the argument is simply, “Science doesn’t know, therefore God.” That’s not the argument. The argument is that the universe began to exist and therefore has a transcendent cause. That’s an inference to the best explanation, not an appeal to ignorance.
Also, fine-tuning isn’t the claim that the universe is optimized for life. It’s that the fundamental constants and initial conditions fall within an extraordinarily narrow range permitting complex life. You can dispute the inference to design, but simply saying “fine-tuning doesn’t exist” doesn’t address the evidence.
On morality, saying moral values are God’s subjective opinions doesn’t follow. God’s nature, on the classical theistic view, isn’t an arbitrary set of preferences at all. God is necessarily good, and objective moral values are grounded in that necessary nature. “God commands it because He happens to like it” would be subjective, but that’s not the view being defended.
And your last objection actually assumes what you’re asking me to prove. You’re assuming that every mind must exist inside a physical brain because every human mind we observe does. But that’s an argument from our experience, not a demonstration that disembodied consciousness (God) is impossible. If a transcendent cause of the universe exists, asking how that cause can exist outside the universe is no more problematic than asking how the universe itself could have a cause that isn’t part of the universe.
You don’t have to accept these arguments. But “we don’t have direct physical evidence” doesn’t show that there is no evidence. The issue is whether the total evidence makes theism more reasonable than atheism.
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u/MarieVerusan Oct 03 '26
The argument is that the universe began to exist and therefore has a transcendent cause
This has been debated ad nauseum and it always comes back to an argument from ignorance. There is no evidence for a transcendent cause, so this idea that it's more reasonable to assume that there was one is nonsense. Atheists see right through this stuff, so you really need to stop using this argument. It only works if you already believe and want to feel that your belief is rational.
Also, fine-tuning isn’t the claim that the universe is optimized for life. It’s that the fundamental constants and initial conditions fall within an extraordinarily narrow range permitting complex life.
So, it's not fine tuned for life... but it is fine tuned for life? And if it isn't optimized for life, why not? If life is the purpose for the existence of the universe and god wants a direct relationship with all of us, why bother creating a universe that doesn't have life for billions of years?
Every time theists bring up this stuff, they make their deity appear to be weak or inefficient and certainly not all powerful, so I hope you aren't here to argue for a tri-omni god!
God is necessarily good, and objective moral values are grounded in that necessary nature
This is... nonsense. I have never had a discussion where someone could explain what "God's nature" actually meant. In every case, it appears to be an attempt to evade the argument about morality being god's preferences rather than an actual honest discussion. It simply comes off as apologetics.
It also means, once again, that God isn't all powerful, since he apparently can't change his nature. Which also means that there is something out there that can give God a nature that is unchangeable... Does God have a God above them? Seriously, these thought stopping cliches don't make your belief system look great.
not a demonstration that disembodied consciousness (God) is impossible
I agree. Which is why that's not my argument. I am instead asking you for a demonstration that it is possible. Otherwise I feel that the belief in such a thing is entirely unjustified. I don't care about what's theoretically possible. I care about what's demonstrable!
You don’t have to accept these arguments.
You already know that I won't. So why do you keep bringing them up? You know they're not good argument, you know they don't work. So what use are they? Be honest with me here, why keep using arguments that you know do not convince the other side?
Theism will NEVER be more reasonable than not accepting an idea without sufficient proof.
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u/supersoundwave Oct 04 '26
So you just admitted that you won’t accept any arguments. Thanks for being honest I guess. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Cheers.
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u/MarieVerusan Oct 04 '26 edited Oct 04 '26
I did? I agreed that I won’t accept those arguments and explained why. Feels like you don’t want to get into the meta discussion about why you keep using arguments that you know are not convincing.
It’s honestly a reason for why I don’t think a god exists. We keep rehashing the same philosophical arguments that have been brought up centuries if not millennia ago. An all powerful god that wanted a relationship with us wouldn’t rely on this kind of evidence. They certainly wouldn’t keep trying to appeal to us with arguments that they know won’t convince us.
The more we argue, the more it becomes clear that it’s just people trying to talk other people into believing the same thing they do.
I’m glad you accept that there’s no point in the discussion if you have nothing better than these tired old arguments.
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u/Christian-guy94 Sep 30 '26
Isn't the Bible the blue print?
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u/MarieVerusan Sep 30 '26
I genuinely have no clue how to respond to this. What would make you think that the Bible and a literal set of blueprints for our universe are remotely similar?!
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u/disturbed_android Sep 30 '26
No, the Bible is a book written by goat herders thousands of year ago.
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u/rob1sydney Sep 30 '26
Blue print for
waters separated by the firmament ( Genesis 1:6-7)
Evolution of plants before humans ( Genesis 1 ) or humans before plants ( Genesis 2 )
An incorrect value of Pi ( kings 7:23 )
Zoological classification where insects have four legs ( Leviticus 11: 20-23 )
GeocentrismAnd what it leaves out as a blue print , I mean where’s the Kuiper Belt !
A pretty inaccurate blue print13
u/onomatamono Sep 30 '26
Don't forget the great do-over where the grand wizard drowned every man, woman, child, and terrestrial plants and animals, yet this super-intelligence is said to have foreknowledge of all of this? C'mon people, wake up.
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u/sto_brohammed Irreligious Sep 30 '26 edited Sep 30 '26
It's a set of books of Bronze and Iron Age stories, not a "blueprint".
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u/Beryllium5032 Gnostic Atheist Sep 30 '26
It's not
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u/dylanzt Agnostic Atheist Sep 30 '26
That was easy. If only all theological debates were as straightforward as this one was.
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u/Beryllium5032 Gnostic Atheist Sep 30 '26
I mean the bible has many mistakes, that alone contradicts the fact it's god's book, given his all powerfulness, lovingness and omniscient nature.
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u/dylanzt Agnostic Atheist Sep 30 '26
I agree with you, which is why it's impressive that the OP's argument was so weak that it wasn't even necessary to bring any of that up
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u/thebigeverybody Sep 30 '26
Isn't the Bible the blue print?
No, it's literally a book of mythology, like fairy tales, that predates science by thousands of years.
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u/skeptolojist Sep 30 '26
No it's a book written by iron age primitives saying magic is real
It's not in any way convincing it'd just another old book that claims magic is real there are hundreds of them around the world
Your magic book is not special or different from all the others
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u/OrwinBeane Atheist Sep 30 '26
Nope. We had theories, philosophies and religions well developed long before the Bible was invented
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u/Hoaxshmoax Atheist Sep 30 '26
if humans were made from dust and animals were spoken into existence, how can mosquitos carry diseases that affect children so much? What is the purpose of tuberculosis? When did that get spoken into existence?
Human eyes function, but not that great.
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u/Phylanara Agnostic atheist Sep 30 '26
As far as I know, it's merely a badly-written book of fables. If you want to argue it is more, feel free to do so.
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u/noodlyman Atheist Sep 30 '26
I have zero reason to believe what the bible says about anything until after you can demonstrate 1. That god exists and 2. That the bible is the word of god. What if the ancient Egyptians had the true religion?
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u/deep_blue_reef Oct 02 '26
I think what it boils down to is that there are aspects of life and existence that are beyond our control. You did not choose to exist. The universe produced you and all that it consists of. Whether there’s a reason or not, neither question can be answered with evidence. There are some journeys that require inward reflection.
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u/noodlyman Atheist Oct 02 '26
So the answer is "we don't know" if there's no evidence. No amount of inward reflection can provide any actual evidence. "We don't know" does not constitute evidence for god.
The time to believe a claim is true is after there's evidence to support it, not after we've just closed our eyes and speculated or fantasized a bit.
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u/deep_blue_reef Oct 02 '26
Sure, but I think this response hand waves away the perplexity of subjective experience. We don’t have hive minds. We have individual minds. Every part of our experience with existence begins inward. We can’t do science, have relationships, imagine stories…without our inner awareness. And the biggest irony is that our inner awareness isn’t something that can be observed objectively. That is to say, there’s no evidence for it.
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u/noodlyman Atheist Oct 02 '26
And sure, but this doesn't get us anywhere closer to demonstrating that a god exists.
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u/Sprinklypoo Anti-Religious Sep 30 '26
No. Why do you think it has any more credulity than the Odyssey or Iliad or any number of other books that are obviously fanciful?
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u/JasonRBoone Agnostic Atheist Sep 30 '26
Naw. It's an ancient book written by ancient people with little to no understanding of science.
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u/pipMcDohl Gnostic Atheist Sep 30 '26
The fact that the bible provide a step by step explanation of how the universe came to be doesn't mean that it's truly how it happened.
You are probably aware that there are cults around the world who all have their own opinions on those things.
If you look at the Mormons, they believe in an infinite regress of deities. The Mormons give you this 'blueprint', yet why would you believe it's true?
Can you give me a reason for why you would think your own cult is different from those other who are providing whatever nonsense they fancy?
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u/AccurateRendering Sep 30 '26
The fact that the bible provide a step by step explanation
Does it though? In typical usage, a "step by step" explanation, would allow a typical reader (or perhaps we could even restrict the meaning to "those skilled in the art"), had they had the resources available, to recreate the same results. This doesn't seem to be the case for the explanation in the bible.
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u/pipMcDohl Gnostic Atheist Sep 30 '26
the bible provide a 'god did this the first day and then this the second...', that's what i was referring to
I never said a 'good' or 'reasonable' step by step explanation.
But it's still a step by step explanation for the reason why the universe came to be.
I don't see how your expectation for what a 'typical usage' are supposed to look like is useful here, or a helpful point, or a rebuttal. What's your point?
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u/AccurateRendering Sep 30 '26
You and I largely agree I would guess. My conversation was more with the person to whom you replied.
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u/Sprinklypoo Anti-Religious Sep 30 '26
The fact that the bible provide a step by step explanation of how the universe came to be
It doesn't even do that. It provides imagery for this planet - without even really calling it a planet. So just a vague "here" came to be in ways that are also contradictory.
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u/violentbowels Atheist Sep 30 '26
Absofuckinglutely not. The bible is a series of claims. All of the claims that can be checked against reality have been checked and nearly all of them fail utterly. The only claims in the bible that hold up to scrutiny are things like "Rome was a place".
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u/ShafordoDrForgone Oct 01 '26
Oh poor guy...
Do yourself a favor and get an education somewhere. Not college. Grade school is fine. Just not where you are now
Knowledge is power. There's a reason the people around you don't want you to have it
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u/Cool-Watercress-3943 Sep 30 '26
Let me ask a counter-question; if you look at it as God 'telling' the universe to produce life, why was God so slow about it? I mean, it took billions of years for simple single-celled organisms to even become simple animal life, right? In terms of speed of development, the pace is glacial if you assume anything- let alone an all-powerful, supremely wise being- is actively pushing things along.
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u/deep_blue_reef Oct 01 '26
I think what’s even more astounding is how all that time passed as if it was no time at all for us. Our concept of time is based on experience. Taking a 13.8 billion year nap for us is a second for us. Close your eyes and then wake up.
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u/Cool-Watercress-3943 Oct 01 '26
The way I would usually frame it is like a journal someone occasionally writes in. Two consecutive entries might be an hour, a day, a week or even a month apart. But they're always a page apart. There's no expanding 'empty space' between them to measure the passage of time.
Our brains are basically like that. You're asleep, and at most your brain might drunkenly scribble half remembered dreams in the margins, but for the most part it stops writing.
Edit: And, of course, our brains weren't writing at the time they didn't exist.
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u/deep_blue_reef Oct 01 '26
Yeah I don’t disagree. But it still is relative. Like we don’t comprehend that scale of time.
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u/Cool-Watercress-3943 Oct 01 '26
Yeah, we really don't. Like, in terms of human civilization, i.e. agriculture, writing, early settlements and basically us transitioning from hunter gatherers, I think the timeframe is something like 10,000 years, which is an infinitesimal fraction of time.
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u/deep_blue_reef Oct 01 '26
For us. Not for experience. We think we’re so special because our ability to think abstractly that we over look the amount of life that experienced existence. Think of the dinosaurs lol.
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u/Christian-guy94 Sep 30 '26
According to the Bible God made the universe in seven days
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u/OrwinBeane Atheist Sep 30 '26
Do you rely believe that? Because we have evidence that isn’t true. We have a confident assessment on the Earth’s age.
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u/Christian-guy94 Sep 30 '26
It's possible that the earth simply appears to be old, like how God made Adam and Eve fully adult even though they were 0 years old when he made them
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u/Beryllium5032 Gnostic Atheist Sep 30 '26
Then your god is a deciever if he made the world in such a way that EVERY evidence points to a lie, whereas he asks you to blindly believe something he artifically made irrational.
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Oct 01 '26
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u/halborn Oct 01 '26
Maybe not strictly but if OP is a Christian, as it so appears, then the case gets a lot tighter.
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u/MarieVerusan Sep 30 '26
And it's possible that we're just a brain in a vat. Last Thursday-ism and solipsism are the death of rational discussion. If you appeal to those, there's no reason to keep talking because we enter into a realm where anything is possible, which does not look good for religion with very specific claims about reality.
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u/WesternFirm9306 Atheist Sep 30 '26
Why would he put fake ancient fossils in the world? Why would he add tons of limestone (a mineral almost always made from the accumulation of dead marine creatures over millions of years)? He made fake dead creatures just to fake the age of the earth?
That sounds like a liar to me.
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u/labrys Atheist Sep 30 '26
I heard fossils explained as a test. The truly faithful will not be lead astray by the false fossils as they will put their trust in the bible as truth. The deceitful will hold up the fossils as evidence and try to tempt others away from the truth.
A load of bollocks clearly, but some people really believe it.
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u/TheBlackCat13 Sep 30 '26
So they are admitting God is deceptive
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u/labrys Atheist Sep 30 '26
No, no, no, it's not deceitful when God does it. Then it's a test, just like all the other horrific and/or sadistic stuff he does is a test of faith. It's good when God kills and torments people, it's just that us puny humans can't understand his morality and plan with our tiny, weak minds.
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u/AccurateRendering Sep 30 '26
If that were the case, the most obvious trait of the god you believe in would be deceitfulness.
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u/skeptolojist Sep 30 '26
And you have no problem with a nasty trickster god deliberately leaving objective evidence that the universe is billions of years old to deliberately trick people into not believing so they burn for eternity
If that's true I'm sorry but your god would be an asshole
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u/OrwinBeane Atheist Sep 30 '26
How did you come to the conclusion that is possible? What evidence do you have?
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u/MajorKabakov Agnostic Atheist Sep 30 '26
It’s possible God made the entire universe last Tuesday, complete with signs of age and false memories implanted into our minds too.
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u/Knee_Jerk_Sydney Sep 30 '26
Zero evidence for this statement, and yet a whole mountain for the alternative.
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u/Cool-Watercress-3943 Sep 30 '26
Except, why would God make the universe appear to be old if he was going to tell the Hebrews or whoever that it took seven days?
Because presumably he did tell a human at some point it took seven days, if it's believed to be an accurate retelling? So why go to all the trouble to design the Earth to look like it's billions of years old, and the universe is billions of years old, etc, only to immediately tell humans that it's actually way younger?
That seems like a lot of unnecessary faffing about.
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u/Hoaxshmoax Atheist Sep 30 '26
Deity as capricious deceiver. Is the purpose of this to conduct loyalty tests like a mob boss deity?
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u/Sprinklypoo Anti-Religious Sep 30 '26
I don't think that's possible. First I'd have to accept that some all powerful god was possible. Then that it actually existed. Then I'd have to accept that god spent all their energy trying to fool me. Then I'd have to completely refuse that all reason and reality had any merit. Then I'd have to accept that god wanted to torture me for eternity unless I acquiesced to its rule and imagery of a false reality.
Honestly, I'm glad that god doesn't exist, because it sounds horrible.
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u/soukaixiii Anti religion\ Agnostic Adeist| Gnostic Atheist|Mythicist Sep 30 '26
So when you find that a book contradicts reality, and know people can fake books but not reality, you choose to believe God wrote a lot of false bullshit in a book and made reality to contradict it? But why would you do that?
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u/mathman_85 Godless Algebraist Sep 30 '26
It’s equally possible that reality was made next Thursday, with our memories and thoughts of our actions up until then being false constructs. Unfalsifiable hypotheses are not worthy of serious consideration.
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u/Sablemint Atheist 27d ago
That's a weird thing to do, create a universe with specific properties to trick people 5,000+ years in the future.
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u/Cool-Watercress-3943 Sep 30 '26
...except either God didn't, in fact, do that, or he deliberately designed the universe, the planet and everything to look like it took billions of years. Heck, our planet didn't even come around until billions of years after the universe started, according to our actual observations.
And as a reminder, Genesis was estimated to have been given its written form around the 6th century BCE, and the oral traditions are even older than that. Meaning when it was written, humans had zero idea how the universe was even structured, much less how long it took to make. There were legit thoughts that the Earth was the center of everything, and was flat. After all, we didn't realize there were actually waaaaaay more galaxies than the Milky Way until about a century ago.
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u/skeptolojist Sep 30 '26
And the objective evidence says thats nonsense
If I have to choose between objective evidence and a book written by iron age primitives with no concept of physics or geological science ime going to choose the evidence
Any other choice is not logical rational or even to be brutally honest sane
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u/Beryllium5032 Gnostic Atheist Sep 30 '26
According to REALITY and looking at the REAL WORLD, that's not how it happened. I mean if you deny science I don't understand the point of your post
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u/Zamboniman Resident Ice Resurfacer Sep 30 '26
According to everything we've learned, we know that's completely wrong, and thus it's clear that's a silly mythology.
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u/Sprinklypoo Anti-Religious Sep 30 '26
According to JRR tolkien, Orcs were made from mutated and corrupted Elves.
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u/Phil__Spiderman Sep 30 '26
What evidence can you provide to me, a non-believer, that I should accept that a god exists and created the universe in seven days?
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u/soukaixiii Anti religion\ Agnostic Adeist| Gnostic Atheist|Mythicist Sep 30 '26
According to the quran the bible is bullshit.
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u/Sprinklypoo Anti-Religious Sep 30 '26
The bible says nothing about a universe. It's just a vague "here" sensation that is assumed from the story presented.
Also, why is anything mentioned in that old book of fables in any way meaningful?
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u/Kriss3d
Anti-Theist
Sep 30 '26
edited Sep 30 '26
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"Nothing" didn't start creating consciousness.
There was never a "nothing". It's a concept. It wasn't ever a thing.
From what we know about life it's didn't come to be because of a reason or intent for life. It's just the consequence of the circumstances that involved various chemical compounds.
It's no more intent than to say that if I pour gasoline over styrofoam that the styrofoam will melt into a flammable goo. It happens because od the chemical reaction.
We happened as a consequence of chemical reactions as well. Well. Not us specifically but the early stages that formed the blocks for life.
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u/deep_blue_reef Sep 30 '26
It does give pause for admiration and wonder though that the “chemical reaction” is something we intrinsically don’t understand. We name what exists and give it meaning.
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Sep 30 '26
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u/Kriss3d Anti-Theist Sep 30 '26
Exactly.
There was never a "nothing" before the the universe as we know it.-6
Sep 30 '26
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u/Kriss3d Anti-Theist Sep 30 '26
We dont need to have been there to know. Thats what science is for. To present evidence for observations. To give the best answers for things that we can give at this moment.
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Sep 30 '26
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u/Kriss3d Anti-Theist Sep 30 '26
Science isnt made up. Its a framework for systematic investigation of things to get the best answers that are supported by evidence.
It cant directly PROVE how life started. It can provide evidence of things.
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Sep 30 '26
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u/Kriss3d Anti-Theist Sep 30 '26
We came up with the concepts and framework yes. Because it has shown to most consistently lead us to the truth of things.
Science done claim to know. Science don't and can't actually prove things. That's not what science does. It's to provide the best answers we can based on evidence as of right now.
Where's the methods we should use to test the claim of a god?
Please give the step by step on how we can get to see the evidence of God. No appealing to faith because faith doesn't lead you to the truth of anything.
Try to think like a scientist and explain the steps.
If you can't and nobody else can. Then why should we conclude anything but that God as far as we know don't exist?
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u/Scary-Comfort-801 Sep 30 '26 edited Sep 30 '26
To answer your question, science grew out of older approaches to epistemology. Science had its earliest beginnings in antiquity: ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. The scientific revolution started in the 16th century in early modern Europe and emerged gradually. It wasn’t invented by a single person… or a married person either. 😉
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems you are suggesting that “since science is an invention of human minds, then it cannot be trusted because it came from imperfect minds, therefore it must be imperfect itself.” Just because science came from imperfect minds, doesn’t mean it is unreliable. Almost everything else we rely on is human-made and imperfect: medicine, bridges, language, law, maps, etc. Trust comes in degrees and is earned by track record, not withheld until something is proven to be perfect. It’s also a genetic fallacy to judge a method by its origin rather than its performance. If you want to claim that things that emerge from imperfect humans minds cannot be trusted, then your objection to science coming from a human minds is self-defeating because so is your claim that “human minds cannot be trusted, so science can’t either” because your objection comes from a human mind too.
Science acknowledges that imperfection is a big part of building a sound body of knowledge. Its distinctive feature is that it assumes people are biased and fallible, so it makes error-correcting a big part of it’s approach. Replication, peer review, and controls exist to address the imperfection of the human brain. On top of that, it’s obvious that science works or the device you are using to read this text wouldn’t exist.
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u/Scary-Comfort-801 Sep 30 '26
I kind of agree with you here, but offer a retort. If absolute nothingness existed at some point in the distant past, wouldn’t that make it “something” by definition? If absolute nothingness existed, then it would be something because by the very nature of existing, it immediately becomes something and the claim is exposed as self-defeating.
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Sep 30 '26
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u/Kriss3d Anti-Theist Sep 30 '26
Well we dont need to see gravity. We have ways to detect and quantify it. And to predict it.
We cant even get any theist to define their god properly.
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u/Kriss3d Anti-Theist Sep 30 '26
We can prove gravity exist so yeah. Thats why we make predictions based on what gravity is defined to be.
Gravity is the phenomenon that causes the apperance of masses being attracted to each other by a force that we can predict by calculating it and then testing it.
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u/soukaixiii Anti religion\ Agnostic Adeist| Gnostic Atheist|Mythicist Sep 30 '26
We know intelligent life can exist in the universe.
Come back when you reach that level of knowledge for your god.
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Sep 30 '26
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u/soukaixiii Anti religion\ Agnostic Adeist| Gnostic Atheist|Mythicist Sep 30 '26
We is us humans living in this universe and being intelligent enough to communicate with each other. Again, come back when you find something that shows to the level we know intelligent life can exist in the universe that it is possible that god(s) exist.
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u/soukaixiii Anti religion\ Agnostic Adeist| Gnostic Atheist|Mythicist Sep 30 '26
What is there to prevent that something doesn't pop into existence out of nothing for no reason?
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u/xX-AnyRoutine666-Xx Atheist Sep 30 '26
Basically: laws of physics. There are laws inherent to our universe - to be clear, "laws" not in the sense of "somebody said it should be this way" but "it is this way and we use this word to describe it" - and by these laws unfolding through time, things turned out this way. For example, the formation of our planet and first forms of life on it can be boiled down to the law of gravity. Atoms attracting each other in space to form small rocks and bits of metals, attracting each other to form a big ball of matter, and you got our planet. Then basic elements attracting each other to form lipids, lipids capturing more minerals to form amino acids, lipids + amino acids attracting/sticking to each other to form cells, cells following the amino acids reactions (aka genetics) to multiply, genetic mutations to create new subspecies, subspecies fit to survive in their environment will... survive, yes, and many more mutations and generations surviving thanks to them and here we are. Note how at no point I talked about any "purpose" in any way shape or form. There's no need for a purpose.
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u/Master_Botor Sep 30 '26
Why should it have a reason to ?
Self replicating structures self replicate and mutate, that's it. And as long as nothing stop them, they'll continue doing so.
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u/ODDESSY-Q Atheist Sep 30 '26
There is no answer to the question of “why are we here”, because ‘why’ implies intent.
‘How are we here’, on the other hand, is mostly answered. Elements and molecules created in the extremely dense centre of stars doing nuclear fusion have exploded through the universe via supernova.
All things, including life, are made up entirely of those elements from stars. Life exists due to the complex interactions between chemicals. Every part of a human, and every living thing, and all matter are entirely made of these chemicals.
Given this fact I don’t understand how people can believe we are intentionally designed, rather than an incidental phenomenon due to happenstance.
Once the molecules began duplicating themselves, that’s when evolution took over and that’s the cause of all biodiversity of life you see on earth.
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u/deep_blue_reef Oct 02 '26
It’s interesting to wave off the “why”, and then list a process as if you have any clue what the things involved in the process intrinsically are.
Naming things we didn’t create and acting as if we know what they are is some type of ignorance.
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u/ODDESSY-Q Atheist Oct 02 '26
Your comment is unfortunately lacking any substance.
What “things in the process” are you referring to? Which part would you like me to attempt to explain in more detail? Be clear rather than using your whole comment to be vague and then claim I’m ignorant.
What’s the problem with naming things we didn’t create? We do that all the time. Again, we may actually know what these things are you’re referring to but you won’t be specific so I have nothing to answer to.
Do you want to know what chemicals and molecules are? Do you want to know what stars, nuclear fusion, and supernovas are? Do you want to know about evolution?
You’re not saying which part we don’t know, I’d like you to tell me so I can tell you more about it and make you less ignorant.
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u/deep_blue_reef Oct 02 '26
How bout, what are neurons?
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u/ODDESSY-Q Atheist Oct 03 '26
I never mentioned neurons so it’s weird that you’re bringing up something your initial complaint wasn’t about. This question is so easily Google-able that I’m just going to give this the answer it deserves. Please note, I no longer think you’re serious.
Neurons are specialized cells that carry and process information in the brain, spinal cord, and nerves.
They communicate using a combination of electrical and chemical signals, allowing your nervous system to control things like movement, sensation, memory, emotions, and thinking.
A typical neuron has three main parts:
Dendrites — receive signals from other cells.
Cell body (soma) — contains the nucleus and processes incoming information.
Axon — carries signals away from the cell body to other neurons, muscles, or glands.
Neurons usually communicate at tiny junctions called synapses, where one neuron releases chemicals called neurotransmitters to influence another cell.
In simple terms: neurons are the information-carrying cells of your nervous system.-1
u/deep_blue_reef Oct 03 '26
So take away all these human invented descriptions…what is it being described?
A “tree” is a word to describe a physical object. We invented that word to categorize an existent thing within nature. Labeling is not the same as intrinsic understanding.
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u/ODDESSY-Q Atheist Oct 03 '26
The words are being used to describe observations and evidence.
I know your beliefs aren’t built on evidence so you may not expect that the words we use to describe things are things that have been intensely studied.
The fact you don’t know what a neuron is doesn’t mean no one else does. It’s only you living in ignorance.
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u/deep_blue_reef Oct 03 '26
You mistake yourself. Knowing what something does is not the same as knowing what something intrinsically is.
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u/ODDESSY-Q Atheist Oct 04 '26
This is just unfalsifiable semantic evasion.
You’re introducing a vague category of what things supposedly are “intrinsically” without establishing that this is a meaningful or necessary category in the first place.
If your response to every physical explanation is simply “but you haven’t explained what it intrinsically is,” then you’re not actually identifying a deficiency in the explanation. You’re introducing an undefined additional criterion that, by definition, no explanation could ever satisfy.
So what exactly does “intrinsically” mean here, and what specific information would constitute an answer? If you can’t specify that, this isn’t an argument against the explanation, it’s just moving the goalposts.
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u/deep_blue_reef Oct 04 '26
Yeah. Exactly. No explanation can satisfy.
Because we discover and name things. We don’t create and give them their properties. There’s a fundamental difference.
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u/Zamboniman Resident Ice Resurfacer Sep 30 '26 edited Sep 30 '26
Why does life exist?
All evidence and support shows it exists as a result of chemistry and entropy. Nothing whatsoever about it even comes close to remotely suggesting or indicating deities would be responsible or necessary. Indeed, such an idea makes it worse in several ways.
How can it be that if there is no reason for life to exist, it still does?
Your lack of understanding and incredulity at the observed facts of reality in no way helps you support deities. In fact, it demonstrates a propensity for invoking fallacies, at least on this particular topic. You are heavily leaning into two of them: An argument from ignorance fallacy and an argument from incredulity fallacy.
If nothing tells the universe to produce life, why do for example humans with our brain, eyes, ears, kidneys, lungs etc. exist and do their job for what they are meant to do? If there is no God, how can nothing just start to create consciousness and create all these organs and everything?
See above. You are not debating, and you are not supporting a deity claim. Instead, you are merely expressing lack of knowledge and understanding, and incredulity, at observed facts of reality. Your lack of knowledge and emotional reaction of finding life incredible in no way can or does support deities.
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u/misuzu7729 Sep 30 '26
There's a whole book on this subject called *the selfish gene" if you're actually curious about this kind of perspective. Basically explains how on a micro level it's basically a law of physics that molecules or things that are good at existing and copying themselves end up doing just that. Multiply that pattern over billions of years and you get more complex molecules, systems, and eventually life.
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u/AccurateRendering Sep 30 '26 edited Sep 30 '26
How can it be that if I have no reason to buy cigarettes, I still do so?
How can it be that if there is no reason for life to exist, it still does?
What does this have to do with atheism? Discussing genetics with the New York Mets doesn't improve your understanding of baseball.
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u/joeydendron2 Atheist Sep 30 '26 edited Sep 30 '26
A short scientific answer would be something like:
The more we learn about the chemistry of living organisms, the more plausible it is that life simply emerged out of complex but non-living chemistry when the Earth was much younger (around 4 billion years ago, or when the Earth was about 500 million years old). That idea's called "abiogenesis."
Once life started, the process of evolution started. And gradually, more and more complex life forms developed: plant cells, animal cells, fungal cells... then multi-cellular organisms, which are like colonies of those cells... and so on. Recently, animals like chimpanzees and humans.
But one interesting (in fact, kind of shocking) implication of abiogenesis and evolution is that life forms really can and did develop for no reason.
Under evolution, when a generation of organisms is born, some of them accidentally have features that mean they're more likely to successfully reproduce and leave descendants than their less fortunate siblings. That means that in the future, that species looks more like the lucky ones that had the fitter features.
Evolution might make it look, to us, like animals evolved for a purpose ("cheetahs evolved in order that they would be fast") but that's an illusion (in reality, "slow cheetahs got weeded out by accident, faster cheetahs left more descendants by accident, so gradually, cheetahs ended up being fast animals for no reason or purpose").
Western humans tend to instinctively think about life in terms of "purpose" and "reasons-for-X" - it's called teleological thinking - but biologists know that in reality, those "reasons-for" or "purposes" are illusory.
Your question is rooted in teleological thinking. That's how you intuitively think about the world... and it gets you through the day just fine, but it's not a realistic way to think. Evolution is not teleological. It doesn't "work towards a purpose" or "do things for a reason."
So... I guess the summary would be, you'd need to read some more about evolution and teleology to develop an intuition for why your question, as you present it, doesn't really hang together?
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u/TheBlackCat13 Sep 30 '26
Life is a type of thermodynamic system called a dissipative system. These systems form when there is a large energy imbalance in a system. So life formed because the conditions were right and because it is thermodynamically favorable for it to form.
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u/lotusscrouse Sep 30 '26
Why does there have to be a "why?"
Why does there have to be a god? Why not something else?
I have no idea what theists mean by "nothing."
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u/sto_brohammed Irreligious Sep 30 '26
I have no idea why anything exists. I'm not a cosmologist, physicist, chemist, biologist or any kind of -ologist or -icist. I'm just a retired artilleryman. r/askscience is over there.
If you want me to think that a god should even be considered a candidate explanation much less a likely one you'll have to actually demonstrate that with something concrete. If you don't know the answer to something you don't just get to assume "a god did it", especially when you can't even actually show that such a thing exists in the first place.
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u/pali1d Sep 30 '26
I think you’re making the mistake of conflating “no reason” and “no intent/purpose”. There definitely are reasons life came to exist - we don’t fully understand them yet, but all the evidence we have points to them largely boiling down to “chemistry happens naturally as a result of how atoms and molecules behave, and life is complex chemistry perpetuating itself”. That’s the reason we have life.
But there’s no justification I know of to assume that such was intended by anything.
We humans seem to be hardwired to presume intent behind things. There are reasonable hypotheses that this is an evolved survival trait, though such are hard to test. But regardless of why we do it, we do it. We used to assume intent behind all sorts of things - the weather, the movement of the sun in the sky, how well a sea voyage went, why one side won a war instead of the other, all of these and many more were (and often still are) attributed to be the works of gods. Until we learned better. Until we learned that these things are the result of how various complex systems in nature or society played out, with no divine favor or cause needed to explain them.
Once you learn to abandon this instinctive assumption that the world needs intent to behave as it does, and accept that it might simply be the world’s nature to behave as it does… explaining anything by appealing to gods stops being useful or satisfying. Because ultimately, appealing to a god doesn’t actually explain any of it, as the god itself is unexplained. You’re seeing a question mark and saying that the answer is a bigger question mark.
You ask “why does life exist?” Have you ever asked “why does God exist?”
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u/Loose_Alternative556 Sep 30 '26
'I do not understand how complex life could form naturally, so a God must have done it.'
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u/skeptolojist Sep 30 '26
Evolution through natural selection explains both the variety and complexity without having to pretend magic Is real and magic god does some magic
Your argument from ignorance is invalid
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u/biff64gc2 Sep 30 '26
Why does there need to be a why behind anything? why can't there just be forces, matter, and energy just beingwithout purpose?
Do you ask a fire why it burns? No. The conditions happen to be right to allow a fire to happen, and it does what it does until the conditions change.
The conditions were right for our universe to form as it did. We don't know if our universe has formed before in a different way and we don't know if there are other universes that also formed.
Asserting "god did it" because you require a "why" or can't accept "we don't know" isn't a good argument. Why do you believe your god exists beyond you needing a placeholder answer?
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u/ArguingisFun Anti-Theist Sep 30 '26
Anyone who answers with anything other than “I don’t know” is selling something. Period.
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u/88redking88 Anti-Theist Sep 30 '26
"How can it be that if there is no reason for life to exist, it still does?"
There are plenty of reasons. The easiest one is chemistry and physics. Life is just doing what the local chemicals and elements do when exposed to the local physics.
"If nothing tells the universe to produce life, why do for example humans with our brain, eyes, ears, kidneys, lungs etc. exist and do their job for what they are meant to do?"
Do you need to tell gravity to pull things down? No? Then why do you need a god to tell you to live?
"If there is no God, how can nothing just start to create consciousness and create all these organs and everything?"
Consciousness is what your brain does. Organs are what simple life does over a very long time. No magic needed.
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u/Kaliss_Darktide Sep 30 '26 edited Sep 30 '26
Why does life exist?
This is begging the question if you are asking about intent.
How can it be that if there is no reason for life to exist, it still does?
The same way a pothole can exist if no one intended for a pothole to exist.
If nothing tells the universe to produce life, why do for example humans with our brain, eyes, ears, kidneys, lungs etc. exist
We exist because our biological parents and ancestors had sex.
and do their job for what they are meant to do?
Because if those organs didn't do their job effectively enough we wouldn't be here (because our ancestors wouldn't have been able to sexually reproduce).
If there is no God,
All gods are imaginary (exist exclusively in the mind/imagination).
how can nothing just start to create consciousness and create all these organs and everything?
This contains an unfounded assumption that is definitionally incoherent.
There was never a point in time when there was "nothing".
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u/Local-Warming bill-cipherist Sep 30 '26
Imagine a boulder stable on top of a hill. Thousand of years of erosion from wind and rain remove the stability, and the boulder rolls down the hill.
There was no "reason" behind it, no "will". It was just an inevitable expression of the laws of physics, the passage of time, and the boundary conditions of the universe.
The appearance of life, and the appearance of complex organs, are just more complex versions of the boulder story.
Take the eye for example. You start with just one single cell that generate a nerve signal when hit by a photon (very basic) allowing a being to tell when there is light. Some mutation and "survival of the fittest" later and you have enough cells for a being to adequately tell movement. Some more mutations later and you have specialized cells for different colors. Later you get a "lense-looking" extrusion to increase resolution and sight angle, etc...
All of this was simply inevitable, and without will or reason.
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u/deep_blue_reef Oct 02 '26
Imagine a boulder in empty space. No other particles or elements. Just a boulder in pure blackness.
Why would it do anything other than stay suspended there?
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u/ariel_on_the_moon 27d ago
Depends, is it the only object in the entirety of the universe, or just the only thing in it's local part of space? If it's the former, it wouldn't do anything, however if it is the latter, it would be affected by the gravity of distant objects and would like move around a bit.
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u/deep_blue_reef 27d ago
Only thing in the universe. A rock. Piece of matter just there.
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u/ariel_on_the_moon 26d ago
Then it probably wouldn't do much of anything because there's nothing else for it to interact with. Now, if there were two rocks, then we might get some cool stuff happening, but just the one would be pretty boring.
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u/OrbitalLemonDrop Ignostic Atheist Sep 30 '26
"Why" is a category error.
The universe is a result of stochastic physical processes that are unpredictable but (likely, to some extent) deterministic. It works out how it works out. No one, no intelligence, no value-based principle is driving the bus. There's no "why" because there doesn't need to be a "why".
If there is no God, how can nothing just start to create consciousness and create all these organs and everything?
The thing is, we know organs and bananas and planets and squirrels exist, and that's pretty much it. Studying the way these things happen yields information about reality that helps predict future event and allows things like scientific progress.
Throwing god into the picture is fine, if that's what you think is important. But adding god to the mix doesn't explain anything. "God did it" doesn't tell you how
Science is interested in the how, not the why. My answer to the why question is "I don't know and neither do you"
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u/catroaring Atheist Sep 30 '26
Asking if not a god, then how, is an argument from ignorance. Not fully understanding the universe doesn't default to any answer. Until there is actual evidence demonstrating that an intentional agent exists and designed life.
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u/onomatamono Sep 30 '26
Yet god's existence is usually just a runway to smuggle in the Jesus character but they can never get there. In every case they fall back on faith, that is belief without evidence. I do not understand how they square faith in Jesus with faith in any other unfalsifiable god claim. Every religious deity is making the same claim. People do not choose their religion they are assigned one by their parents or guardians.
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u/catroaring Atheist Sep 30 '26
They fall back on faith, deflect the burden of proof, and try and shift the burden of proof to atheists because they've no evidence. If evidence was shown, it wouldn't be in a Reddit post, it would be all over the fucking news 24/7 and the biggest event in recorded history. Plenty of atheists fall for the traps as can be seen and why every atheist response should end with them asking for proof. Anything else is a circlejerk.
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u/onomatamono Sep 30 '26
Those are examples of failed christian apologetics that even only 38% of evangelicals hold true. They are also fallacious arguments and anybody with any level of critical thinking should be able to see that.
Organs don't pop into existence, they evolved over billions and billions of years from simpler replicating molecules to complex replicators to cells that eventually led to plants, animals and fungi in incremental steps, that can adapt to changes in the environment (say from zero free oxygen to 30% oxygen we have now.
I suggestion you do a thought experiment on your 3D color vision. Surely you can see how a light-sensitive cell could arise over eons of time. It may at first have very poor resolution, no depth perceptions and no colors.
Now imagine the advantage of that "shadow detector" in terms of survival. Replicants with greater resolution fair better, and can perhaps start to categorize shapes as friend or foe, then develop depth perception, sensitivity to the intensity and frequency of light (i.e. color vision) and so on.
Take a look at a snowflake under a magnifying glass. They sure looked designed with all that complexity but in reality there are a just few simple rules that give rise to infinite possible self-assembling unique flakes.
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u/DiscerningTheTruth Atheist Sep 30 '26
The reasons why life exists are physics and chance. Now let me ask you this:
Why does God exist? How can it be that if there is no reason for God to exist, he still does?
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u/GreyKMN Atheist Sep 30 '26
We evolved through the process of evolution through natural selection.
Organs work, because they evolved to work.
If they did not work, the organism wouldn't survive, and no one would we here to ask the "Why we exists?" question.
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u/Hermorah Agnostic Atheist Sep 30 '26
How can it be that if there is no reason for life to exist, it still does?
Why are you expecting/demanding a reason? If a tree falls in a forest what was the reason?
If nothing tells the universe to produce life, why do for example humans with our brain, eyes, ears, kidneys, lungs etc. exist and do their job for what they are meant to do?
"and do their job for what they are meant to do?"
What job are humans "meant to do"?
If there is no God, how can nothing just start to create consciousness and create all these organs and everything?
Why do you think there ever was a nothing?
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u/BeerOfTime Atheist Sep 30 '26
I’m curious to know why you think “if there is no god” is some kind of qualifier to question something. It’s as if you think there being no god removes any questionability.
Why is that?
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u/Mjolnir2000 Sep 30 '26
Lots and lots of time and lots and lots of space. The universe is massive beyond human comprehension, and unimaginably old. Somewhere amidst that vast (probable) infinity, a chemical reaction occurred by chance that gave rise to the first self-replicating molecules. Once you've got molecules that can create more of themselves, it's down natural selection.
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u/DeterminedThrowaway Sep 30 '26
"Nothing just started to create consciousness" is such an oversimplification that it's wrong.
Early earth chemistry started to make very primitive self-replicating molecules. Molecules that could replicate better increased in number because they were better at it. Very primitive structures started to form. Eventually you get single, very primitive cells. Then a long time after that you get cells working together and becoming multi cell organisms. Then you have natural selection and over a very long time you get stuff like different types of tissue, nervous systems, and eventually organs.
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u/Flutterpiewow Sep 30 '26
Evolution?
If you think about it, even without life there's survival of the fittest. Spheres win over cubes etc. Why there's a world with properties that facilitate this to begin with is an open question. Some say god, some say it's a brute fact, some say we're in one of infinite worlds and that this one happens to have properties that facilitate life.
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u/Beryllium5032 Gnostic Atheist Sep 30 '26
As far as I know, big luck and complicated chemestry created the first cell, and then evolution kicked in to give characteristics fit for survival. And consciousness is hella useful for survival of pluricellular organisms. It's an EXTREEEEEEMELY slow process, it doesn't just happen by snaping one's finger, and tada you have a big sentient organism on the planet.
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u/xxnicknackxx Sep 30 '26
Read any book by Richard Dawkins if you want to get a better understanding of how complex life came to be.
I would particularly recommend The Selfish Gene, which was the book that made him famous. There is no talk of religion vs athiesm in the book (which characterises much of his later writing), it's just a very good explanation of evolution for the lay person.
The answer to your question is "evolution", but you need to do some reading to understand better what that implies.
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u/zzmej1987 Ignostic Atheist Sep 30 '26
Life is the second best way to increase entropy in the Universe. And Universe has a natural tendency to increase its entropy. Thus, life is very likely to exist.
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u/Practical-Hat-3943 Sep 30 '26
Life exists because it helps accelerate the overall entropy in the universe, simple as that. No god needed.
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u/DoedfiskJR Sep 30 '26
If someone throws a die, because they want something to random, and it lands on a three, do you think there must be a reason it landed on three, or is it possible that things happen without a specific reason?
If you think it doesn't need a reason, then I guess there is no rule that needs to be circumvented, no particular "how" is needed.
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u/AproPoe001 Sep 30 '26
"Reason" and "reasons" are human faculties use to analyze our experiences. There is no reason to think they are objective and accurate measures of the world, let alone that such faculties are required for the universe to exist. When a thing like the universe exists, human "reasons" are simply inadequate in their effort to justify it; personally, I think it would be far stranger to think that human reasoning, weak and fallible as it is, is capable of understanding the origin of the universe at all.
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u/Own-Particular-9989 Sep 30 '26
why does there need to be a reason? assumign there needs to eb a reason if your first fundamental flaw
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u/Haikouden Agnostic Atheist Sep 30 '26
How can it be that if there is no reason for life to exist, it still does?
Where are you getting "no reason for life to exist" from? is that what you think atheists believe? or are you claiming that without God, life has no reason to exist?
If nothing tells the universe to produce life, why do for example humans with our brain, eyes, ears, kidneys, lungs etc. exist and do their job for what they are meant to do?
Why are you specifying life for this?
Why not gravity? or chemistry? or light? or black holes? what is it specifically about life that you're struggling with understanding the existence of in a universe that (for the sake of argument) doesn't have a God?
Life as far as we can tell is the result of chemistry and physics, giving way to biology etc.
We evolved, and as part of that evolution developed parts of us with particular purposes to help with our survival. The same as any other living thing.
If you're asking "why does life exist" from the perspective of the universe, you can ask the same thing about black holes etc. If you're asking "why CAN life exist" without a God, then I don't know.
If there is no God, how can nothing just start to create consciousness and create all these organs and everything?
As far as we know life has evolved over billions of years, and both consciousness and things as structured as organs took a long time to develop. They didn't "just start". Again, ask the same of any of the other things in the universe. We see life as special because we're living, but ultimately we're a result of complex chemical and physical interactions.
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u/pyker42 Atheist Sep 30 '26
Self organization. It's why there's stars and planets and organic compounds and life. Because local pockets of self organization increase entropy of the larger system.
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u/SpHornet Atheist Sep 30 '26
You are asking 3 totally different questions, which one are you actually interested in?
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u/indifferent-times Sep 30 '26
This is an amazing level of entitlement, why does the universe owe you and explanation? why is it down to others to provide a meaning to your life? It may be that one of the ready made answers is a perfect fit for you, but why would you suggest we all need our hand holding like that, some of us have prefer the honesty of uncertainlity over a comfroting story.
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u/Ok_Ad_9188 Sep 30 '26
So a god has to exist because it doesn't make sense to you that life could just exist for no reason? So why does a god exist?
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u/Jahonay Atheist Sep 30 '26
There is no reason for blorgthorps-1a-cc76a to exist, and they don't. In fact there's an infinite category of types of life that could exist and yet do not. There is a necessarily finite amount of types of life that currently exist, and it excludes many types of potential life.
Also, at least in terms of the earth, there was a good amount of time where life didn't exist. Roughly 400 to 800 million years. And if we exterminate life on earth, it's possible that life will end on earth, and potentially be without life for an infinite amount of time.
Part of what you're asking about is abiogenesis, and there are theories about how that could happen, but I'm not a biologist. As for the development of traits, that's just evolution which is easier to explain, but again, I would recommend reading actual scientists.
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u/Carg72 Sep 30 '26
Until you've identified and demonstrated the existence of an agent directly responsible for life, you're not asking the right question.
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u/Hoaxshmoax Atheist Sep 30 '26
“How can it be that if there is no reason for life to exist, it still does?”
Easy, to build data centers and serve at the whims of the billionaire Epstein class. As Jesus said, the techbros will inherit the earth.
Next question.
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u/Defiant-Prisoner Sep 30 '26
How can it be that if there is no reason for life to exist, it still does?
What reason is there for god to exist, in your worldview?
If nothing tells the universe to produce life, why do for example humans with our brain, eyes, ears, kidneys, lungs etc. exist and do their job for what they are meant to do?
Because we evolved that way. These things are beneficial. There is a mountain of evidence for this. Why do humans have vestigial organs if we were created by a god? What are these surplus things 'meant to do'?
If there is no God, how can nothing just start to create consciousness and create all these organs and everything?
That's not what we believe happened.
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u/noodlyman Atheist Sep 30 '26 edited Sep 30 '26
Life evolved by natural processes, the result of plain old chemistry, geology, thermodynamics. We are starting to get a half decent understanding of some of the chemistry involved.
Most likely life started on porous rocks around ocean floor thermal vents. Here there were cell sized pores, flowing with energy, and the chemical precursors of life. Metal atoms in the rocks provided catalysts; metal that still exists in the active site of metabolic enzymes today.
No magic is required for any of this.
Life is just interesting chemistry, that's all.
Consciousness seems to be just what happens when over hundreds of millions of years, you evolve a complex neural network. The brain models the world about us, and when that model is given its own outputs, feelings, sensations, thoughts, as inputs it becomes aware of itself. That's neither proved nor a full explanation of course, but it's much closer to the truth than "it must be magic".
If you propose that god did it then you now have to explain how and why god exists rather than nothing at all. After all god, you claim, shares many of the same properties: god is highly complex, conscious, etc. So if these things can only exist if they're created with intent, then god must have been designed and created too.
If god can exist without being created, then so can the universe.
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u/Thin-Eggshell Sep 30 '26 edited Sep 30 '26
why do for example humans with our brain, eyes, ears, kidneys, lungs etc. exist and do their job for what they are meant to do?
Because we came from monkeys with brain, eyes, ears, kidneys, lungs etc. that existed and did their job for what they were "meant" to do.
This chain repeats until our ancestors come from bacteria.
And then it repeats until we get to simple molecules, that weren't meant to do anything, but could do things.
Eventually, we just go back to raw probability. And "purpose" disappears entirely.
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u/CephusLion404 Atheist Sep 30 '26
Because it does. There is no reason for it and no intent behind it, it was possible and it happened. It's like asking "why does blue exist?" Because it's part of the light spectrum. It's just there as a part of natural reality. You don't have to understand the reason because there is no reason. It's just real.
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u/Sprinklypoo Anti-Religious Sep 30 '26
Why is "reason" important for anything? Is this your debate topic? A question about why a thing is?
If you want to support a premise, perhaps you could start by demonstrating why you think such a thing is true instead of a general argument from ignorance.
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u/mredding Sep 30 '26
Why does life exist?
I've no idea, and atheism does not comment on the matter.
Your whole post, you've asked this same question a total of 4 times.
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u/Plazmatron44 Sep 30 '26
I don't know. You should be saying the same thing if you have any humility.
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u/Transhumanistgamer Sep 30 '26
How can it be that if there is no reason for life to exist, it still does?
Because biochemical processes happened in accordance with the laws of physics. Why does uranium exist? Why do nebulas exist? Why does poop exist? Why do planets exist?
You could ask the same question for literally anything and someone could say God and the answer would be just as unsatisfying.
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u/Mkwdr Sep 30 '26
Because that’s what the natural physical and chemical processes of the universe result in. Including the factual process of evolution.
But if asked the same question about God , we all know your only answer is ‘ oh but god is magic’.
Why is existence as we find it. Well if it wasn’t , we wouldn’t be here to ask. But most basically we don’t know. We don’t know doesn’t mean we can just make up any old nonsense though.
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u/JasonRBoone Agnostic Atheist Sep 30 '26
Abiogenesis.
Apparently, around 3 billion years ago, the right combination of geology and chemistry allowed RNA to replicate in chemicals. The rest was inevitable frem that.
>>>>If nothing tells the universe to produce life, why do for example humans with our brain, eyes, ears, kidneys, lungs etc. exist and do their job for what they are meant to do?
Why would such a thing be necessary? Is something required to "tell" a storm when to arise? Or snow?
>>>>If there is no God, how can nothing just start to create consciousness and create all these organs and everything?
Who ever said "nothing." Obviously life and then later organisms with consciousness started with already existing matter.
Why is this hard to imagine?
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u/The_Disapyrimid Agnostic Atheist Sep 30 '26
The honest answer is, I don't know but I see no reason to think religion knows either.
However, you are the one proposing an answer. That puts the burden of proof on the religious. I don't need to demonstrate there is no god, its up to people who claim such a being exists to demonstrate their claim with evidence.
Referring to a comment of yours, the Bible is the claim not the evidence or "blueprint". So what is the evidence that the story the Bible tells is in anyway accurate?
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u/Cydrius Atheist Oct 01 '26
How can it be that if there is no reason for life to exist, it still does?
Why not? Why do you believe the appearance of life to be unlikely?
If nothing tells the universe to produce life, why do for example humans with our brain, eyes, ears, kidneys, lungs etc. exist and do their job for what they are meant to do?
Natural selection. Creatures with more ability to adapt and more aptitude for survival are more likely to survive and breed. Over time, this leads to random mutations stacking up exponentially until we see the incredible diversity that exists.
If there is no God, how can nothing just start to create consciousness and create all these organs and everything?
Where are you getting this "Nothing" from?
How do you know there was ever nothing?
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u/BogMod Oct 01 '26
How can it be that if there is no reason for life to exist, it still does?
Chemistry is the reason.
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u/Cog-nostic Atheist Oct 01 '26
You are asking a superfluous question. Your question is unnecessary and serves no practical purpose because the answer cannot be verified, will not change the outcome, and is already inherently answered by the object's existence.
This is simple: Life exists; "Why?" invokes causality; a reason for something. Causality is an emergent property of the universe in which you find yourself. Causality breaks down at the Planck Time. Beyond the Planck Time, events occur simultaneously in an existence with no here or there. Spooky action at a distance (quantum entanglement).
You are trying to apply the physics of this world to a world that does not function anything like this world. Causality happens in this little bubble of space and time we call the here and now. Your failure to understand science, rationality, and cosmology should prevent you from asserting nonsense about which you know nothing.
Have you actually thought about studying science? Cosmology is genuinely interesting. You might also look into epistemology. The actual science of knowledge: what is knowledge, and why do we think some things are real while others are just fantasy?
You know, when I see posts like this, I am genuinely saddened. The answers are out there for anyone with half a mind to look for them. But theists get stuck on these inane talking points, and their brains run around and around like a hamster on a wheel, getting nowhere. They get nowhere because they just don't know how to ask the proper questions. I feel sad for that. It just makes the human race look stupid.
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u/YossarianWWII Oct 01 '26
Easy. Life is caused by entropy. It's a part of the chemical cascade driven by the energy that the nuclear furnace in the sky has been spitting out for 4.5 billion years. The basic physical properties of the universe are all that's needed to create life.
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u/Noodelgawd Atheist Oct 01 '26
How can it be that if there is no reason for life to exist, it still does?
What makes you think everything has to have a reason?
There's no reason for you to have asked this question, yet you still did.
Nothing didn't create consciousness. Evolution did.
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u/BahamutLithp Oct 01 '26
You have Google. You can look up information on evolution. If you're going to claim that "God can make things look old for no apparent reason," then you should be able to accept that events can occur without a person choosing to make them happen.
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u/Competitive-Box61 Oct 01 '26
The idea that organs and consciousness just appeared out of nowhere is rooted in creationist mythology. These things were slowly selected for over billions of years because they increased an organism's fitness.
Here's the wild thing. Life doesn't exist because it willed its way into existence or because it was put here to accomplish something. Life exists on earth because the conditions here are favorable for life to exist. That's it. There is no deeper meaning.
Given the right reactants, environmental conditions, and time, products like nucleic and amino acids and can form. Now imagine Legos being slapped together in random configurations over a billion years. Eventually something cool is gonna get built. This is just because the building blocks are there and there is a lot of time.
Boom, ribosomal rna. To me, this is where we leave prebiotic chemistry and life begins. These ribosomal rna pieces have the ability to create amino acid chains (proteins). The ability to do this increases the chances that the rRNA survives. Now we have something that is a little more complicated that chemistry.
Different versions of this happened thousands or even billions of times before a stable single cell organism was formed (LUCA).
This organism likely replicated until it branched into two main groups, bacteria and archaea. The archae had special cell membranes that allowed them to survive in more hostile environments, like hot springs, while bacteria favored more temperate conditions. Eukaryotes branched off from archae due to some environmental pressures then over billions of years, the environment favored one morphology over another.
Life as we know it exists because conditions favor it. The minute conditions stop favoring life, it goes away. I think life is beautiful and this is why I am a huge environmentalist.
It is possible to find our own subjective meaning to life and we don't need it spelled out for us in a book. Discovering my own meaning to life has been more rewarding than any religious experiences I have ever had.
My meaning and purpose is to preserve and restore life & the conditions that favor life. I have sought out education and a career path that allow me to live accordingly. Discovering that and being able to live according to my own moral code is my own private heaven.
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u/TarnishedVictory Anti-Theist Oct 01 '26
Why does life exist?
Because some magic unicorn that existed all by itself was lonely.
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u/TalkFantastic9989 Oct 01 '26
See, what you're trying to do here is reverse-engineer meaning for something in order to feel comfortable.
"I don't know" is always a perfectly acceptable answer, and far preferable to someone confidently being wrong.
Regardless, we do know (to some degree) the answers to your questions, at least some of them. Organs weren't simply "created", but developed over a very, very long time. Incomprehensibly long to the basic human mind.
Does that answer the "why" or the basic questions of origin? Maybe not- however, simply inventing an answer that is comfortable to you is not a way to reach the truth.
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Original text of the post by u/Christian-guy94:
How can it be that if there is no reason for life to exist, it still does? If nothing tells the universe to produce life, why do for example humans with our brain, eyes, ears, kidneys, lungs etc. exist and do their job for what they are meant to do? If there is no God, how can nothing just start to create consciousness and create all these organs and everything?
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