Are we just atoms?
[/b]
To scientists, this universe is made up of energy/matter, space and time. To scientists, humans, animals, forests, rocks and deserts are simply made of stardust.
What is stardust? It's a term that refers to all the elements in the Periodic Table.
Everything, dead or alive is made of these elements... but why the term stardust? It's because these elements have been cooked (and are being cooked) in the hearts of stars and when these stars die, they explode into dust (a mixture of these elements). From this dust, planets like Earth with everything on it are created.
So man is created from stardust. But being made of stardust, how is man different from all other creation? The fact is, even without any advanced knowledge in biology, the similarities between man and other animals are rather remarkable. Man eats, drinks, defecates, urinates, sleeps, ages, and dies like all other animals... and like many animals man has 4 limbs, 5 fingers, two eyes, two ears, etc. What sets man a world apart from any other animal is 3 things: Man is bipedal, can speak, and most importantly, man is a million times more intelligent than any other animal.
Yet, amazingly man shares more than 90% of his genes with many animals... In fact, any human being shares about 99.9% of his genes with any other human being. Man shares 99% of his genes with Chimps, and 97% of his genes with rats.. on the other hand, and quite surprisingly, man shares 50% of his genes with a banana tree. But in light of the fact that everything comes from the same Periodic Table, that everything dead or alive shares the same origin (stardust), it is rather amazing that, despite of all the similarities, Man is very different at least when it comes to his intelligence.
But are we really just stardust? What seperates intelligent beings from dead matter all around us? Our bodies, the whole lot of us are just a big walking clump of atoms? Isn't it rather obvious that there is something beyond nature, beyond matter?
Forget about "us". How about our pets? Are they just too sophisticated machines, composed of infinitely amazing combination of atoms and that their feelings, emotions and awareness are solely the end result of brain chemistry?
Is it because of sophisticated chemistry, we feel alive? How can we (and other intelligent animals), while we are formed from the same stardust (Periodic Table) as everything else in this universe, how come ONLY we (and intelligent animals) have non-material attributes like awareness, emotions and feelings?
Chemistry is only a necessary (but not sufficient) condition to having feelings, emotions and awareness. All of these side effects of the brain chemistry are in themselves non-material.
I wonder if scientists view it as some sort of a rule, an unbreakable taboo, that despite KNOWING and EXPERIENCING non-material phenomena every second of our awareness, we should robotically repeat that there's nothing beyond nature? Is it some sort of a religious belief that they subscribe to?
Or is it that any scientist MUST see the clothes on the emperor's naked body, or everyone else would think them a fool?
Non-material attributes cannot be solely dependent on the material world, and thus a non-material element is indeed missing from the picture.
Take the most basic emotion, FEAR for example. All humans/monkeys/zebras/etc, if they saw a charging lion they'd feel fear. Without the required chemistry in your brain, however, you cannot feel fear. Yet the emotion of fear itelf is non-material... it's a manifestation of awareness (of our existence, for example)... When you are asleep, you aren't aware, but when cortisol rises to a certain level in your body, melatonin vanishes, etc, etc you wake up... you become aware.
Material is necessary but not sufficient, required but not everything. Awareness, attention and conscienceness are only manifestations, or evidence for this missing element that is beyond nature, beyond the Periodic Table, beyond the STARDUST. Many religions give this element the name, SOUL. If we were merely electrons/protons/neutrons, then there's no reason whatsoever for us to be aware of our own existence, for example.
You can prove a hypothesis wrong, by giving only one example contradicting it. The hypothesis that the natural world (all by itself) accounts for all phenomena is proved wrong by giving the example of us being aware of our existence.
Remember: ALL the natural world is simply energy/matter and while these are necessary for us to be aware of our existence, these aren't sufficient.
But what is the SOUL according to Quran?
[17:85] And they ask you about the soul. Say: The soul is of the commands of my Lord, and you are not given aught of knowledge but a little. Indeed, no matter how much we know, it'll always be a drop in an infinite ocean.
Topic: Hello people