Life is a result of self-replicating molecules (RNA or structurally simpler nucleic acids) with an intrinsic tendency to form ever more complex structures. This is plain chemistry. Given appropriate conditions, the occurrence of life is not accidental but a definite certainty. This is because self-replicating and self-organizing molecules do just that: replicate and organize, replicate and organize, resulting in ever more complicated structures.
Sexuality, too, is an expression of the self-replication of molecules.
Even a primitive organism, like the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, consisting of just about 1,000 cells (of which some 300 make up a nervous system), has it all, including a drive to eat, a drive to avoid destruction, and most of all, a pronounced sex drive.
Sexual motivation, based on the self-replication and self-organization of large carbon molecules, is the defining component of life.
Self-replicating and self-organizing large carbon molecules result in ever more complex patterns. And from a certain level of complexity onwards, there emerge consciousness, self-consciousness, and self-cognition.
It’s a gradual occurrence. Worms probably have none of the three, and lower vertebrate forms of life possess it to a lesser degree, while a few birds like the Hawaiian crow and Australian cockatoos, as well as primates, dolphins, and elephants, have clear and quantifiable consciousness and self-consciousness.
But consciousness and self-consciousness, however grandiose they may appear to us, are not the defining element of life. Self-replication is.
Consciousness is a result of a complex pattern architecture with self-reference. Mathematical functions, so to speak. They have been called strange loops. It’s quite plausible that computers may develop consciousness. They will easily surpass humans in the fields of knowledge, memory, and logic.
But they don’t have motivation. They still just execute programs. They are but tools, extensions of carbon-based life that created them for a competitive edge. They aren’t life in themselves.
And humans are not the final stage of the evolution of carbon-based life. Furthermore, evolution accelerates; it does not slow down.
There will be humans, or superhumans, or post-humans, with much longer lifespans and much greater mental powers than the legacy wetware which current humans are.
If it hasn’t happened yet outside Earth’s habitat, or on a different layer of Earth’s biotope that is outside the perceptive potential of humans, then the appearance and existence of gods is a logical consequence of evolution, and ultimately the result of carbon-based molecules and their inherent self-organization into ever more complex patterns.
That the evolution of gods has not happened yet is actually of very low probability, but maybe it’s true indeed that humans are the most advanced stage of evolution in our universe. That the probability of this is so small lends credibility to the multiverse theory.
One way or another, humans are a transient stage of evolution which logically must lead to gods, or maybe just one, who has or will have originated from carbon-based self-replicating molecules.
Evolution on Earth advances exponentially. In a few thousand years, humans, or the gods that are the next step of evolution, will have such immense capabilities that limitations to their power are much less defining than they are for current legacy wetware. The logic of forward-advancing time may be just one of the constraints that will be overcome.
And even though the origins of gods, or just one, are or will have been carbon-based molecules, gods obviously will have done away with dirty metabolism long before evolving into gods.
It is much more likely that in other universes, carbon-based evolution has passed the stage of humanity and, quite possibly with the aid of conscious computers, achieved a transformation into gods, or just one.
They, or he, may be toying with our universe, and sending a prophet every now and then.