The Origin of Life

As you probably know from your elementary school days, everything, including you, is made up of atoms.

As you probably know from your pre-elementary school days, you are alive (well, you hopefully are alive if you are reading this. Zombies and vampires don’t count).

So you are made of atoms and you are alive, but your atoms are not alive. So how can you be alive if the parts that make you up are not alive?

Let’s imagine this on a larger scale. If you were to put together an extremely large number of rocks (which represent atoms), they wouldn’t suddenly become a giant rock monster that is alive (which represents life).

Now, let’s consider the saying “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” In a similar fashion, two inanimate objects shouldn’t make something that is alive.

Things that are alive are usually made up of the elements sulfur, phosphorus, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen, but if you were to mix all these things up in a giant bowl, it wouldn’t magically come alive.

If you are made of atoms, and a rock is made of atoms, and both of your atoms are not alive, then why are you alive and the rock is not alive?

With that unanswered question, let’s move on.

Where did life even come from? I understand the whole evolution thing, but how did life even start? The first thing that was alive had to come from something, right? I refuse to believe the first organism evolved from a rock. That is absurd. But what else was there on Earth other than rocks?

I’ve heard the theories that a lightning strike caused life or that a space rock with microorganisms on it struck Earth.

If a lightning strike caused life, it would imply that if we took our giant bowl of sulfur, phosphorus, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen and shot it with electricity, it would come alive, right?

Ned the Narwhal: …

If a space rock hit Earth and it had microorganisms on it, that poses the question, Where did life on that particular planet come from? And if that planet was hit by another space rock from another planet with microorganisms on it, then where did the life on that planet start? And the one before it? And the one before it?

Let’s consider the phrase “We are what we eat.” This is actually true. The atoms from the food you eat today will be your hair or skin or organs or blood later. Your food is (hopefully) not alive, but when it becomes a part of you, it is alive, but they are the same atoms, so how did it go from being not-alive to alive? And before your food was your food, it was a part of some plant. Let’s assume a carrot. And before it was a part of the carrot, it was carbon in the air, which became a part of the carrot through photosynthesis. The carbon in the air could’ve come from a large number of places. Let’s assume that at some point, it was a part of a dead leaf. But that leaf was alive at one point, but the carbon itself was never alive, but the leaf was alive and it was made of the carbon, which was not alive and I am confusing myself.

I should make a diagram.