Just saw this on @Zaski1 twitter… Ignoring the second part, yes, atheism makes sense. Not perfect sense, but it’s not crazy. The point: it’s difficult to understand without scientific knowledge.
There’s an interesting theory about Big Bang, related with strings theory. But it’s pretty hard to understand and explain in less than 500 words. So, if you’re really interested in this theory I recommend you the book “The elegant universe”, from Brian Green. In short (and probably imprecise): at first, there was a 11 dimension brane, a dot. It was a singularity and unstable, so it expanded. Three of the dimensions expanded: our space. Another one, the time. The ones which didn’t expand remain as the microscopic structure of the universe, and they’re collapsed. I said this part was pretty difficult. But it makes pretty good sense, promise.
Next: the creation of the particles. This is easier: everything tends to the state of minimum energy. Quarks alone have more energy (each one) than together, so they make another particles, like protons, neutrons and electrons. Oh, and these particles have also more energy alone than together: here comes the atoms. And I suppose you can guess what happens here about molecules.
An interesting point here. The transitions between states are allowed or forbidden depending on the energy. An example: you have two molecules, A and B. But you discover that the molecule AB is more stable (has less energy) than A and B alone. Why they’re not joining? Didn’t I say that everything tends to the state of minimun energy?
Yes. But tends does not mean “always passes”. Some transitions require energy. In this example, maybe you have to heat A and B (give them energy) to break their structures and allow them to form the molecule AB. This leads us to the “stable states”. Mainly, this means that a stable structure does not have enough energy to go to another state of less energy. That’s because things are not destroying themselves everytime and the cause we (and the whole universe) have not become a single dot yet.
Ok, so we have arrived and somewhat explained all of the things before biology and cells and all of that. This should be easier… except I’m not a biology man so I think I’m not able to explain it in a simple and correct way. But, as always, Wikipedia does it job very well. The rest is simple: evolution, the most adapted survive, the ones not adapted die. This, together with random modifications in cell replication and billions of years of time to evolve leads us to the world we have right now.
And the final question: why is the world like it is? Well, no one knows, but the most acceptable answer I’ve heard is this: It is like it is, but it also could have been in another way; just like when you throw a dice. The point is that, if it would not have been like this we would not be alive. So we are mainly a product of casuality and probability (this may not sound acceptable to you, but when you understand and accept quantum physics it does not seem so strange).
PD: A good book about quantum physics: How to teach physics to your dog. Funny, interesting, easy and short.
