If you really think about it, life truly is a miracle. In a sense, it is a way for the universe to know itself. That's because we are all made of star dust and since we are conscious as humans, we can ponder about the universe.
But it's not just us human beings that are special. All life is special in my opinion because ultimately our existence dates back to that first single celled organism that came alive.
This is also what boggles my mind. How can something, that is purely made up of non-living elements, suddenly come alive and start functioning as an intelligent system?
This got me thinking even more. What if we were someday able to create the perfect replica of the human body? I mean the bones, muscles, blood, everything down to the perfect detail. What would happen then? Would that body just come alive?
Think About It
I don't know whether or not you have thought about this but I have spent hours upon hours pondering endlessly what makes 'life' happen! How is it that a bunch of non-living matter is able to act so magnificently as if they had been programmed?
We are already beginning to develop 3D printing for human organs and one day we might very well be able to create an artificial human body that would match the real thing perfectly.
What happens next is the interesting part. If the artificial body is healthy, would it come alive? Or would we be missing a piece of the puzzle? Most people would say that the missing piece is the soul.
I won't pretend to know the answer because I don't. I really don't know what it is that animates a body. I mean, when a person dies, at the instant of death, he is just alive one second before and dead the next. What changes?
A Mind-Bending Mystery
It's ironic how life's greatest mystery is life itself. We still don't know how life started on the planet and when and the most important part - how some elements like carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitroge, decided to come together and become "alive"!!
It really is a mind-bending mystery. I said that because my mind feels like bending whenever I think too deep about this and I haven't even touched on the topic of consciousness!
Bringing something to life is one thing but making it conscious and intelligent (like us) is a whole different game. I wonder what happens at the molecular level for that to be even possible!
I can only hope that we can find the answers to all these questions within this century because I truly want to know these answers within my lifetime. I just have to know.