What created life. What were the processes that started the whole ball rolling as it were?

An incredibly good book that describes the process (briefly) that created life on this planet is called "The Blind Watchmaker" it is written by Richard Dawkins and he is in fact on of the great intellectuals of our time. It addresses creationist theory and systematically debunks every argument in the name of creationism put forward while explaining in clear not technical jargon evolutions role in the creation of life on this planet. An excellent read.

The premise is if someone were to find a watch and examine its complexities it could not have arisen by chance and must have been designed, and thus life in its nearly infinitely greater complexity must also have been designed and couldn't have arisen by chance.

Scientists have attempted to explain life's origins by recreating the initial state of the planet, its chemical makeup, atmosphere, and environment to see if life can be created from nothing. The earth in those times was violent and radically different. The atmosphere was predominantly carbon dioxide, chlorine, sodium and toxic to todays life. Violent storms with great lightening strikes constantly hitting the primordial ocean, and the existing chemicals.

This is the environment that scientist have created. The lightening strikes into this environment created certain amino acids and that was the precursor for life. The primary building block if you will.

While they never created the spontaneous life they intended, its not so much surprising. Evolution is a process that took thousands of millions of years. The creation of life took time. Thousands of millions of scientists working for a year wouldn't generate life.

The concept of evolution itself is based on small change having large consequence. A lot of people wrongly assume that evolution happened with a goal in mind and that is hardly the case. As humans, a lot of us (myself not included) arrogantly assume that we are the goal of evolution but there is no goal in evolution.

When you consider the time that the earth has existed 4.57 billion years ago, and the first self replicating molecule (the original precursor to life on earth) formed roughly 4 billion years ago its not surprising a handful of scientists were unable to replicate this event in a few years of experimentation.

That initial self replicating module took another half billion years to become a true single cell organism that was the original common ancestor of life on earth. Later when photosynthesis came to be developed it slowly replace the carbon dioxide atmosphere with ozone and oxygen. The ozone eventually became the ozone layer in our atmosphere that we're recklessly destroying.

Groups of different single cell organisms working together (not truly working together but these organism adapted to what was around them which was other single cell organisms.) soon developed multicellular life. Simple creatures existed later and evolution slowly made these more complex. Eventually fish, and these left the water, they became reptiles some reptiles became warm blooded and became mammals. Some Reptiles became dinosaurs, some became birds.

Follow down the lines and you get to us, we exist and continue to change.

The concept of evolution is so hard to grasp for most because it takes place in spans of time that we can't wrap our minds around. For us a few years is a long time but its NOTHING evolutionarily speaking. We're not the goal, we're another step.

Luckily enough for us intelligence is something we possess, and we have come to terms scientifically how we came to be, but large portions of our society still cling to what was a precursor to science and that is religion.

We have developed a concept of right and wrong and these simpler ideas are what we need to govern our lives. What really counts is what you do and not what "God/Gods" you believe in. That truly is what is important.

There's no need to be a lost soul. Who you are and what you do defines you. The love you have and receive are what counts. Where we came from is kinda unimportant if you just want to be a good person. There is no need for a rewards based system like religion to guide you. If you look inside yourself and use the intellect that evolution has given us, moral decisions are easier without needing a book to guide you.