"Even if god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent one"
-Voltaire
Tracing the origins of life can never be fulfilling, since it demands the knowledge of the origin of the universe itself, which, sadly enough, no one knows. Currently weak in our knowledge, there are theories. The Big bang, M-theory, etcetra. Though much has come to be, singularity, branes, it's a question no one knows the answer to. Our current attempts simply put up more questions than what gets answered. Even if big bang definitely happened. Why did it happen? Even if universe is expanding now, will it forever? Or will it stop and collapse towards the singularity again for another big bang? Is what we see now result of a universal black hole that accreted all the matter of a previous universe, imploded then exploded resulting in the cosmos and at some point in the space-time fabric, conditions became favorable enough for human beings to exist and inquire as such? But what about dark matter and dark energy?
But why do we want to know answer to any question at all. We weren't here. We won't be here. We're weak, not in our cognitive abilities, but in our very existence. Firstly, every living thing stops living at some point. Secondly, everything is just beyond our reach. The universe seems to be answerable to only those who can respond to countable infinity in every aspect. Our biggest mistake is to grasp the grand through mere numbers, something that helps us make sense. Billions of years, trillions of miles, we forget about our weak state, but we had to. But it's satisfying more than anything on earth. Everything else just seems shallow. So we do what we can do best. We try to think. We're trying, and that's progress for us. For example, the Starshot Breakthrough project. Perhaps someday.
Human beings are social creatures and require perpetual gratification. In that, love and aim in life makes us care about the finite, our loved ones and the accompanying success and acceptance. It makes us remember our own finite existence, so as to care about the loved ones and what we want to do. Only few are capable of dedicating themselves otherwise. The search for truth makes us really think. No past experiences, nothing intuitive, no idea, we think. We're miserable when we don't think, when we think we think.
Some of us have found the easy way out though. From what I have come to know, mankind is filled with arrogance. Though there is much we understand now, or so we believe, there is much more we know we don't know. For that, instead of expressing humility, we hide our weakness of intellectual understanding of nature through God. And that's not all bad, for the faith in him is what regulates this otherwise arrogant and hostile species, doesn't it? We look for cause and effect, and where we can't reason about cause, the effect is, Hi God whereas when we do understand, Bye God. From what I feel, God must've took birth when civilizations came into existence. Our forager ancestors must've been humble enough to know they know little, and didn't concern themselves with trying to influence the events around them through praying.