Underwhelmed

I can't figure out why it is that people, including maybe scientists, certain science reporters, and popular science, authors, make such a big deal out of the fact that most of the atoms of the universe other than primordial hydrogen and helium and a trace of the others were made in stars that later exploded, or shed material in a planetary nebula, and so on, spreading the stuff around.

The events of the Big Bang didn't last long enough for nuclear synthesis (what this is called) to get far, so where else could they have been made?

I observe that the awe about this is always expressed in the context of the stuff of life, but really it is the stuff of everything (again, except hydrogen, helium, etc., which is really the stuff of most things).  Well, you almost certainly cannot make life or anything like it out of just hydrogen, etc., so star stuff gets used by default.

I think this is a residue of thinking in terms of life as something magical, elan vital or along those lines.  It is not.  It is just aggregations of organic chemicals that reproduce, in complex ways, but mechanically.

The real mystery is where sentience and consciousness come from, and they were probably not spewed about the universe in supernovae and whatnot.