So the kiddo has a question and has been quite argumentative with me about it. Actually, she has several questions.

1. If god doesn't exist, where did life come from? Her answer is evolution isn't the answer because we had to come from somewhere.

She says logic and reason doesn't make sense. The big bang doesn't make sense and can't explain it because an explosion can't create things when explosions destroy things. That can't explain why there's life.


Her words. Have at it because I tried to tell her that you don't just throw in the excuse that "god did it", when there's no definitive answer to these things.

Depending on how old your daughter is, try explaining that (even though the BB wasn't an explosion), explosions do create things - they release a lot of energy which can cause chemical reactions.  They can create a million little rocks where they was only one big rock before.  They create heat and light and big honking holes in the ground.  Explosions can be very creative.

If she doesn't think that logic and reason make sense, why is she trying to argue logically and reasonably?

Nobody knows how life got started.  But life is essentially just clumps of chemicals that got together in a certain way.  One clump got together to be a frog, another got together to be a hamster, and another got together to be her.  Without getting too technical, perhaps you could explain to her that the BB made so much heat that the little chemicals (hydrogen and helium) got turned into bigger chemicals (carbon, sulfur, phosphorous) and it is the bigger chemicals that clumped together to make her.

Alternatively, you could tell her to stop asking difficult questions and get on with her homework.  

Boru

Ultimately, we don't know where the energy of the big bang came from or if it even had to come from anywhere. But - it wasn't an explosion, it was more like akin to a vessel of hot water expanding and cooling, and in the course of that, the water condenses and complexice crystals and snow flakes form. The cooling atoms fused together to form more and more complex matter.

She's 14 and in advanced and accelerated classes in 8th grade, with one class being Advanced honors algebra One.

And she wanted to clarify that using logic and reason does make sense.

And she's still going on about explosions not creating life. She gave an example of "if this house exploded, would it create life? The answer is no, it wouldn't."

I can't win.

---

(January 18, 2017 at 7:00 pm)Alex K Wrote: Ultimately, we don't know where the energy of the big bang came from or if it even had to come from anywhere. But - it wasn't an explosion, it was more like akin to a vessel of hot water expanding and cooling, and in the course of that, the water condenses and complexice crystals and snow flakes form.  The cooling atoms fused together to form more and more complex matter.

I read this to her. Her question is:

How do we have any proof that this happened?

Judi, simple.

Tell her everything is illogical until we understand it, then it becomes logical.

Tell her what really is illogical is to make up stuff and accept it as fact...

(January 18, 2017 at 7:04 pm)Nymphadora Wrote: How do we have any proof that this happened?

She can start here. https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/fo...e-big-bang

Tell her I did it. 

And then tell her that makes about as much sense as some made up invisible superpower.

Ask why is it important to know exactly when/where/why/what/how at this particular time. Knowledge is evolving and growing, that's science (among other things). Just because we don't know today does not mean that we will never know. At one time we knew that the world was flat and the sun revolved around us.  How's that holding up?

Everything we have learned so far points to no god. Why do we need a god to explain things we don't have and answer for ............................. yet?

I have no clue. Seems like there's lots of wisdom in the replies above. Just curious, is the father figure (I thought there was one) an Xian? I wonder how she's acquiring these thoughts. I will say that I was pretty rebellious as a teen. I never attended a Christian church (well, since 9), but one of my high schools was Catholic (and I actually rather liked it for some reason).

(January 18, 2017 at 7:04 pm)Nymphadora Wrote: She's 14 and in advanced and accelerated classes in 8th grade, with one class being Advanced honors algebra One.

And she wanted to clarify that using logic and reason does make sense.

And she's still going on about explosions not creating life. She gave an example of "if this house exploded, would it create life? The answer is no, it wouldn't."

I can't win.

---

(January 18, 2017 at 7:00 pm)Alex K Wrote: Ultimately, we don't know where the energy of the big bang came from or if it even had to come from anywhere. But - it wasn't an explosion, it was more like akin to a vessel of hot water expanding and cooling, and in the course of that, the water condenses and complexice crystals and snow flakes form.  The cooling atoms fused together to form more and more complex matter.

I read this to her. Her question is:

How do we have any proof that this happened?

I wouldn't be too harsh on her.  Even if she's clever I tend to notice 14 year olds being crazy and argumentative as fuck because of hormones and puberty, from my own experience and my friends kids.

The big bang didn't really create life.  Saying the big bang is how life is created is like saying people have sex by opening the hinges of a door.  Technically people probably will have to open a door at some point in order to get in and out of bedrooms or to get in and out of cars or just to actually go somewhere.  But as an explanation for how sex happens it's a bad explanation.

The big bang is an explanation as to how the universe went from being a singularity to being open space with lots and lots of rocks, energy, gravity, materials and whatever else.

So she's right an explosion doesn't create life.

But let's use her example of a house exploding.  What would happen is the house explodes rocks fly everywhere and when those rocks are left lying around moss does grow on them, plants grow underneath them, entire ecosystems will arise around the remains of the house in the absense of humans.

Scientists don't know what originally created life on earth but you can take your pick in using examples of evidence for evolution.  And evolution seems to point towards one life form that all other living things evolved from. Although what that is and how it came about is a mystery.

So... young-nymph is being infected by the creatard bug, huh?

The big bang is one event which describes what happened after all the energy in the Universe already existed... and it seems it existed in a very small container, where all the Universe's space was compressed.
It then spread out... like a rubber band.... and is still spreading out.
While it's spreading out, that energy got turned into matter, which made gravity, which made stars. Stars fuse single-proton elements (Hydrogen) into multi-proton nucleii (Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, .... up to Iron in atomic mass.... and a few other trace amounts of heavier elements)
Those heavier than Helium elements (all but Hydrogen) get formed in supernovas, so the elements to form the Earth require the pre-existence of a supernova... and those take a long while to occur... billions of years.
So, then gravity did its thing and our sun coalesced and some lingering material then formed the planets.
After some time, this proto-planet would cool enough so that water could form... in there, other elements could mix and match to form organic matter. There is such a thing called "Organic chemistry", no need for actual living matter.
But, eventually, (the details are a bit beyond current scientific knowledge... maybe someday...) eventually, self-replicating organic mater came into being.
Some of that matter became more and more complex... eventually there were bacteria.... and the rest is archeology.