Why Questions are the 1st to Ask about the Universe

Three-year-olds are always asking why questions. Why? Why? Why? As they grow up, they want to know; they want complete, coherent answers.

At our age, we’ve been trained not to ask why questions—or we’ve forgotten how to ask them.

At our age, we've been trained not to ask why questions--or we've forgotten how to ask them. What a shame. Click To Tweet

Yet, Why questions are much more important than what? or how?  Either we’ve become fixed in our answers and think we know the why’s or we’ve become disillusioned because we haven’t received complete, coherent answers from the time we realized that Santa Claus was a fake.
(Origin of the Universe chapter 2.2)

We rarely, if ever, think about the why questions anymore. This book, Origin of the Universe, will answer the basic why questions. In this blog post, I’ll summarize some of the questions I left you with in Inventory of the Universe for Chapters 1-6 from Space to Fauna. Think about them–where are the answers?

Space (Expanding Infinity – chapter 1)

• Two protons in the helium atom both have positive electric charges. How can this nucleus stick together instead of the protons pushing each other apart? (page 13)
• Electrons are little, negatively charged magnets that should cling to the positive mother nucleus instead of moving about the empty space of the atom. Why don’t they? (page 14)
• Why is it that if we modify, in the slightest way, the four fundamental forces that govern our entire universe, it would simply not exist? (page 19)
• How do we know the universe started as a pinhead and is expanding? If so, from what central point does gravity exercise its pull? Is there still a “pinhead” point from which gravity dominates? (page 24)
• Why did the Big Bang explode and spread the primordial soup—later the universe—with the precise speed to produce that universe? But in our present moment, we have to ask: why is the universe expanding at just such a pace? Why should it be so? How do we know it is so? (page 24)
• How can an ever-expanding explosion come from a pinhead? What is the force that caused the initial inflation of the universe? Why wasn’t the blast of elementary particles homogenous like a bowl of creamy asparagus soup but rather like chicken soup, with bits? (page 29)
• How is it that the conditions of the Big Bang resulted in life on Earth? How is it that humans developed on Earth to ponder these questions? Why do we ask these questions and turn to people who we think have the answers? (page 32)

Atmosphere Cocoon (chapter 2)

Want to live on Venus, Mercury, Mars? No. You want Earth. It doesn’t have any of the dozens of catastrophic conditions in those other bad neighborhoods. How can that be? (page 45)

Why is Earth fertile? With freshwater? What about waste elimination? (page 47)

Why do the layers of Earth’s atmosphere have a different composition from space: 78 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen? Even more enigmatic, why do entirely different gases have predominance within Earth’s confines? Why are nitrogen and oxygen in the majority on Earth? Where did they originate? How and when did our atmosphere trap them? How and when were these proportions established? (page 51)

How can nitrogen, this lifeless element, representing 78 percent of atmospheric content, be assimilated into plants, animals, and humans that have no direct absorption process for this fundamental building block of life? (page 53)

Nitrogen is inert and needs live bacteria to render it biologically consumable, but live bacteria must have nitrogen in their amino acids to be alive, so which came first? (page 54)

What is the origin of the material and energy in the pinhead? If they came from a divine source, where did the supernatural power originate? (page 54)

Planet Water (chapter 3)

• What’s the origin of the 1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers of water in the oceans, and the 24,064,000 cubic kilometers of freshwater stored in the ice caps and glaciers? Why does the surface of a planet called Earth consist of 71 percent water? (page 79)
• Think of some of the other why questions to do with water. Why is it that water is one of the only elements that is in the three states of solid, liquid, and vapor at ‘humankind’s living temperature?’ Such why questions expand our minds and our thinking.

Land (Our Earth – chapter 4)

What does pure dirt have to do with the cosmic tableau? Why is Earth, to our knowledge, the only planet with soil, into which we can dig our hands and feet? How is it that Earth can produce such a wide variety of foodstuffs? (page 83)

Why are there so many uninhabitable planets with “land” that won’t support us? (page 84)

Who am I? Who are we? How did we get here? What’s our purpose? What are we accomplishing here? Where is this stage of man on Earth heading? Is it just a stage? Is that all there is if anything? What’s the point? (page 84)

Why is it that under our feet, the colossally hot core of Earth is at 6,000 degrees Celsius? And the sun, just eight minutes away at the speed of light, with its fifteen million degrees Celsius core over our heads? How is it that the skin membrane of Earth remains at a steady 15 degrees Celsius? How is it that this skin supports life in the form of plants, animals, and soil bacteria? We’re pondering the fact that soles of our bare feet on the Earth make us realize that this temperature is just right for water to flow, worms to squirm, animals to burrow, seeds to germinate, roots to absorb, and for humankind’s agricultural and other activities. (pages 85-86)

How is it that with all the interplanetary orbiting and the solar, stellar, and seasonal activity, average land temperatures vary very little and have been in a range that has supported life for millions of years? (page 86)

Working, eating, sleeping, and playing—Is that all there is to human life? (page 88)

We recognize that worms are good for the soil. But how good are they? (page 98)

The earthworm wouldn’t exist without the ideal conditions provided by the land, and indeed, vice versa. It’s another one of those, “which came first?” questions. (page 101)

The Flora Pivot (chapter 5)

• Why do water and nutrients travel upward when the force of gravity normally pushes them down into the soil? (page 107)
• The natural atmosphere is composed of just 21 percent oxygen. Where, then, do our travelers get the oxygen that is traveling down their windpipes? (page 109)
• Corn plants support the bean vines trailing everywhere, while the squash prevents weeds from growing. How do certain plants complement each other so well? (page 111)
• Like female wasps or bees to attract male wasps and bees, the Chinese orchids know the exact scent signals to emit to gain the desired result: pollination. Surprise! How can these orchids with their appealing petals and seemingly fragile appearance lure hornets efficiently by producing a particular scent when the orchids themselves look nothing like honeybees? (page 114)
• Why is it that flora, because it can transform nitrogen into an absorbable substance, is the pivot between the inanimate world of rocks and the living world of fauna and humans? (page 129)

Fauna (Animal Ability – chapter 6)

Warthogs display a kind of intelligence (or instinct, if you will). They enter their burrows in reverse so that they can charge predators that might be lurking nearby. The ingenuity of such an odd-looking creature makes us wonder: what else can animals do? (page 134)

Signs direct our attention. They read: “Communicators,” “Organizers,” “Navigators,” “Climbers/Swimmers,” “Toolmakers,” and “Home Builders.” How can animals have all of these capabilities? (page 134)

By all rights, a rattlesnake should eat a squirrel and its kits. But it didn’t, what happened? (page 136)

Animals can communicate, but how do they “know” to do this? Is it in the genes, as with the bees’ pollen dance? Are animals capable of planning as we know it? Can they build societies? (page 137)

How can bacteria living inside us and dwelling on common household surfaces (as well as everything we touch) organize without brains? (page 138)

Should we call bacteria intelligent? Perhaps. Why do they seem to have awareness and an ability to organize in the most practical sense at the cellular level? (page 140)

Baby rats have survival skills and mental abilities beyond those of newborn humans, who have larger brains! How can this be? (page 141)

In the spring, the butterflies return north, unerringly coming back to their point of origin. This migratory pollination ensures the survival of both the flowers and the butterflies. How does the butterfly do this? (page 143)

Why should hummingbirds be the only bird that can hover on the wind? Is it because they have no place to perch on the flowers? Why are they predisposed to this behavior? We know that we could not replicate their feats or efficiency. (page 144  )

Can animals eventually learn from their surroundings as well? Can they invent solutions to solve problems? (page 148)

Why do animals, which we assume blindly forage in the wild and locate food by instinct, demonstrate human-like problem-solving when they seek their dinner? (page 149)

Each honeycomb’s construction follows precise geometric angles. They are so precise that even mathematicians miscalculated them. Bees are not capable of doing math or using a slide rule or protractor to measure. How, then, can the bees design with the efficiency of Frank Lloyd Wright? (page 150)

Penguins waddle with their gleeful, all-black tuxedo tails spread out behind them. “Why don’t they fly?” someone asks. “They have wings.” “They’re short compared to the rest of their body,” someone else observes. While pondering what penguins can’t do, we observe their strengths closely. “Don’t their feet and legs get cold?” (page 153)

In other insects, ice can kill body cells, but the black scarab is immune. How is this possible? (page 154)

These animal species preserve themselves without thinking about it, in response to stimuli and triggers from the environment. How do they do this? (page 156)

We watch the chimpanzees, the rats, or the warthogs in their exhibits, and we imagine the un-animaginable: in the end, do these animals match humans in intelligence even as they surpass him in the abilities to resist cold, build cities, and fly in ways that inspire poetry? (page 157)

The above are some basic why questions about the physical universe. The why questions about human life, the brain, the mind, and man’s role compared to that of animals are coming up. It gets more exciting and interesting.

Remember that we are doing this exercise because the coherent, complete theology, the s/Sources sacred book, should be able to answer these why questions for us. The holy book that can give us the answers should be the correct one–if a s/Source exists and if that s/Source has recorded the answers to the why questions.

This blog post is an excerpt from chapter 2.2 of Origin of the Universe

 

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