If all we are is atoms and molecules, does that make us less, or does it make matter more?

Question

Undoubtedly mis-quoted, but inspired by the wonderful and much-lamented Carl Sagan.

daniel: No-one is suggesting that you put a bunch of atoms and molecules in a big soup and stir it until a human comes out. We have this little thing called evolution, and an entire planet and 4 billion years for it to work in. You live in a self-organising universe and you should be fascinated and delighted by that, not indulge in banal religious mythologies.

Answer 1

There is far more beauty in being more than the sum of our parts. It is wonderous that we can be broken down into quarks and yet together we function. I think taking God out of it makes it more wondeful. There is something special in knowing that some super being didn't just click.

Answer 2

We are made up of atoms or ectoplasm stuck together in unique ways. Even giving us the ability to reproduce our own kind.
When this electrical energy called life is gone we turn back into the elements of the soil. Or to dust.
At conception there really is that electrical spark. Even though the ovum and sperm together are no larger than the period at the end of the sentence. It remains until that person dies.
Once the electrical energy is gone so is the person.

Answer 3

Lamented by whom?

We are not merely atoms and molecules. As Sagan himself noted, you can stir and stir and not get a human out of all the chemicals. We are a specific ORGANIZATION of atoms and molecules that carry information--more than you'll ever know. This organization of information cannot happen by random processes. There aren't enough atoms in the whole universe to throw those dice even once.

Answer 4

Does it 'matter'? What you are made of doesn't make you who you are, we are so caught up in a load of nonsense contemplating atoms, matter,dna. What does it matter where we came from and how we got here, we should all make the best of what we have and not ponder such mindless pap and start to concentrate on more meaningful things that do 'Matter'

Answer 5

More.
The universals that underlie the organization of physical matter are all the more amazing if we remove any concept of the immaterial.

Answer 6

It's amazing to think that it takes billions of billions of billions of things to make one of us.

Answer 7

The fact that we are more than the sum of our parts is a wonderful mystery...

Answer 8

Matter more...how about we are all connected and we are the moveable fruit of the source.

Answer 9

Which atoms and molecules create consciousness? Go ask the dead man and see if God ever told him - on his way to hell.

Answer 10

Sunman beat me to it. It makes matter matter more, because it matters to _us_.

Or as your mother probably said:

Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind, don't matter.