Star Stuff

Carl Sagan once said, "We're all made of star stuff." What sounds sweetly poetic is in fact literally true: every element, every scrap of everything that makes us us, was made first by the tremendous power of the stars. And a lot of it has been around for most of that time. Matter decomposes, it changes forms, it moves about, but it is always there. So in consequence, it means that no part of you is original. You are entirely recycled parts--every atom in your body has been a good many other things long before you were here, and all your parts will continue on as parts of many more things long after you are no longer you. You are simply borrowing them for your brief twinkling of life.

But this isn't a bad thing. It means that in you, right now, could be anyone or anything you might imagine. Within you is Jefferson, Newton, Mozart--you could be sabretooth cat, or lumbering mammoth, the first of our kind to climb down from the trees and stand up. Your time here on earth is extraordinarily brief, but the pieces of you are effectively immortal.

This doesn't apparently sit well with quite a lot of people of a religious bent. A natural explanation for life--how we and everything before us came to be without the hand of any great being needed to guide it--is deeply offensive sometimes. Regardless of my feelings on the matter, I don't know why people are so determined that science and faith must be so diametrically opposed. That if we happened without the hand of the gods, then we aren't special and our origins mean nothing.

A good many creation myths throughout the world echo the genesis of the Abrahamic religions. God made Adam out of clay and mud and made Eve from his rib. Many others follow a similar pattern, of gods building people up from clay like objects and bestowing life on them. I can see how that might be appealing but I don't see how it's the only 'acceptable' answer. In any case, I don't especially want to be made of mud. It sounds messy.

But apparently it's a better story than nature offers.

Believe whatever you like.

As for me--I would rather be flora and fauna, Cambrian and Triassic, Nefertiti, and Amelia Earhart, and Shakespeare, and the stars.