THE PRIVILEGE OF EXISTENCE IS ITS OWN REWARD

First, there is consciousness, especially the human kind.  I mean recognizing myself as an individual, unique, with no one on earth now, the past, or tomorrow exactly like me (assuming we are not invoking infinite universes with unlimited repetitions of all life on earth).   I am self aware.  I believe I exist and am not someone else’s dream.  If you are reading this, I believe you, too, exist, and you are not a figment of my imagination.  I prefer reality to fantasy or the supernatural.  I accept a material universe devoid of gods, miracles, and spirits.  The world of science and the knowable universe is plenty for me.  This leads to a second privilege.  We can use our reason to interpret the world.  Do dogs, cats and other mammals have self-awareness?  I don’t know.  They may or may not know of their mortality.  They may or may not know how big their universe is. How big is the world of a bacterium?  Does an ant have a sense of a universe outside a reasonable distance from its colony?  Do worms know there are stars?  The privilege of knowing for me is insatiable.  I learn a lot and in my old age, I continue to seek new knowledge. Here are a few things I have learned about my universe. We are some 93 million miles from the sun, a star. The nearest star, proxima centauri,  is about 21 trillion miles from our sun (about 4.2 light years away).  Our sun is one of about 200 billion stars in our galaxy that we call the Milky Way.  The nearest galaxy, Andromeda, is about 1.5 million light years from us.  There are about 100 billion galaxies in the known universe.  The known universe is about 14 billion years old.  Our sun is about 5 billion years old. Life on earth is at least 3.5 billion years old. Dinosaurs went extinct about 60 million years ago.  The genus Homo is about 4 million years old. Our species Homo sapiens is about 200,000 years old.  The oldest civilizations are less than 10,000 years old. Most of what we know about the universe was learned in the past 100 years.   

Here’s the problem.  If we are one of 200 billion solar systems (2 times ten to the 11^th power) among 100 billion galaxies (1 times ten to the 11^th power), then there are likely to be 2 times ten to the 22 power solar systems.  If each has one planet in a habitable zone to sustain the evolution of life, the maximum number of earth-like planets would be about 2 times ten to the 22 power.  Let me write that out: 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.  Even if the odds of an earth-like planet around a star in the habitable zone (not too hot or cold) are one in trillion (that’s fairly rare), there would be 2 billion earth like planets, many them far more advanced than life on earth today. That pessimistic assumption would make intelligent life (self aware) present in only one out of every 100 galaxies. Eventually astronomers will be able to detect oxygen in the atmospheres of some of those planets in other stars of the Milky Way.  If they are fairly common (instead of rare), there might even be life sustainable solar systems within ten light years from our sun. 

Religion does not offer me any comfort or wisdom in thinking why a god would make so many galaxies in the universe and single out one of them, the Milky Way, and single out from that one star (the sun) to make intelligent life a unique event not present anywhere else in the universe.  Nor would it locate a heaven for me. Is it in our galaxy?  Is it near our sun? Is it millions of trillions of miles away, somewhere in intergalactic space favoring no single galaxy?  If intelligent life evolved on other planets in the Milky Way do they share a common heaven?  If the forms of these other intelligent beings do not look like vertebrates, do they have their own heaven?  Those speculations have no data behind them.  The best we can hope for is data from nearby stars (within a hundred light years) to seek evidence for such intelligent communication.   Think of the accomplishments of these other civilizations in other galaxies or other stars thousands of light years from earth, if they do at all exist.  We know nothing of their lives or deaths or accomplishments.  But in our solar system, on this earth, we are privileged to have lived a brief moment in the universe’s history and sampled many of the talents of our species, Homo sapiens.  These may be small potatoes to some, but to me it is a gift I continue to appreciate.