In an infinite universe any phenomenon that does not violate the laws of nature is inevitable. Life is such a phenomenon, and sentient life inevitably evolves from simple life. The following explains in seven eras how it all began, why life is very rare, and what the role of humankind is in the cosmic scheme.
1. In the beginning there was light. Time and space and light all began together in the same instant. There was no time before this instant. Thus to ask what was before this instant has no answer. In the beginning the light was hot. Light was hotter than it would ever be again for all time. In the beginning space was small. Space was smaller than it would ever be again for all time. The first era of creation was over in the instant of the beginning. And all was as it should be.
2. While light was still very hot , part of the light congealed to become material in the form of a plasma. And the uncongealed light mixed with the plasma and could not escape from the plasma because the plasma was hot and opaque. As time passed, space grew, and the light and the plasma cooled, and the cooling plasma became a transparent gas. Then the light escaped from the gas which filled all of space. From that time, and for ever after, very little of the escaped light would again touch any of the material forms into which the plasma changed.
The gas at first filled all of space. As time passed, the gas formed into clusters, and the clusters formed into galaxies, and the gas in the galaxies collapsed to form stars. And as time passed, the stars exploded. The exploding stars created new forms of material which became dust. The dust and gas in galaxies mixed, and the gas and dust mixture became clouds, and the clouds collapsed to become new stars. Around some of these new stars, the dust and gas collapsed into planets and planetoids, and around some the planets, planetoids became their moons.
Some planets were large and were made mostly of gas. The moons and some planets were small and could not hold much of their gas, and their dust became compressed into rock. On the moons and small planets, the rock was at first hot and molten.
As time passed the rock cooled and solidified. And the rock was pristine and sterile. The second era of creation was complete, and all was as it should be.
3. On some rare rocky planets , at a special distance from their respective suns, liquid water appeared. In the gas that remained as the atmosphere of these planets, the water vapor condensed, and the water fell from the skies as rain, and the rain cooled the hot surface rock. The rain water filled rocky basins and became oceans. The rain water fell on high rocks, and the water flowed downward to the oceans as rivers. The light from each of the suns evaporated the water. The evaporated water vapor condensed into rain again, and the cycle repeated. The flowing rivers dissolved the minerals of the rocks over which they flowed, and the rivers carried the dissolved minerals to the oceans.
As time passed on each of these rare rocky planets, the elements of the planet's environment interacted. The light from the sun, the gasses of the atmosphere, the lightning from the rain storms, the dissolved minerals, and the heat of volcanic magma, all interacted to create an ocean which was a thin broth of the complex chemical compounds that are the building blocks of life. Yet the rock remained pristine and sterile. The third era of creation was complete, and all was as it should be.
4. On some of these rare rocky planets with oceans of thin, slightly acidic broth, natural geological processes created unusual rock formations. As time passed, the unusual rock formations, the solar tides, the oceanic broth, and the mineral laden rivers combined to create self-replicating long-chain molecules. Some of the long-chain molecules formed into shapes that enhanced the chemical processes of molecular evolution. But these processes remained limited.
Still the rock remained pristine and sterile. The fourth era of creation was complete, and all was as it should be.
5. In a very small fraction of the infinitude of galaxies, a unique planet formed. Such a planet had a large moon as well as liquid water and an unusual rock formation. The large moon caused tides much larger than the solar tides. The combination of solar and lunar tides had a complex rhythm. As time passed, the complex tidal rhythm, the unusual rock formation, the oceanic broth, and the mineral laden rivers combined to create a living cell. Thus the planet developed an infection. And the rock was no longer pristine and sterile. The fifth era of creation was complete, and all was NOT as it should be.
6. The life infection evolved. As time passed, one-celled life feeding on the oceanic broth evolved into one-celled life that directly used the light of the sun to grow and procreate. As time passed, one-celled life became multi-celled life, and multi-celled life became plants and animals, trees and grasses, carnivore and herbivore, predator and prey. As time passed the environment constantly changed. And the new life forms, created by accumulated random mutations, were tested by procreative competition with the other life forms. Some life forms reproduced themselves successfully, and they survived and continued evolving. Other life forms disappeared.
As time passed, the life infection changed the character of the planet from a natural pristine sterile rock with little variation into something very different. What began as a few salty oceans and a few land masses with rivers and lakes of clear water, changed into a blue ball swathed in strands of white clouds, with its land masses covered with green forests and grasslands, and with all of its rivers, lakes, oceans, forests, grasslands, and skies inhabited by a multitude of ever evolving life forms.
As time passed, the living planet inevitably evolved a life form which changed the planet so as to cure the planet's infection. This life form became sentient, and became aware of the process of creation and called this process by various names, such as, Odin, Zeus, Krishna, Yahweh, Allah, and God. By whatever name the life form called the process of creation, the life form came to believe that they had been created with this awareness for the purpose of ruling all the other life forms on the planet which lacked this awareness, and that all the other life forms on the planet had been created for them to rule.
This life form mined eons of stored carbon from the rock and released it into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide. This life form destroyed vast forests which had once removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This life form polluted the ocean waters and depleted the surface layer of the ocean of the creatures which had once removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As time passed, the increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere gradually made the temperature of the planet rise higher and higher. Thus the planet's infection produced a fever. As time passed the fever created higher and higher temperatures which finally destroyed the environment that sustained life. The planetary fever sterilized the planet of all of its life.
Inevitably, the infection of life upon the rock had run its natural course. The life form that was the ultimate result of life's evolutionary process created the planetary fever which returned the planet to its natural pristine sterile rock state. The sixth era of creation was complete, and again all was as it should be.
7. Now the creative process rested. The seventh era of creation continued, and all was as it should be forever more.