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Gods
and the Universe.'Ed Everest
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Thoughts on Life, Gods and the Universe
First Edition, August 2002
Published by Ed Everest
on the Internet at www.life-gods-existence.com
Copyright © Ed Everest, 2002.
All rights reserved.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Everest, Ed, 1948- .
Thoughts on life, gods and the universe.
Bibliography.
ISBN 0 9581451 0 5.
1. Life - Origin. 2. Cosmology. 3. Religion and science.
I. Title.
113
To my dancing partners.
C O N T E N T S
1 Beachcombing the Shores of Our Mysterious Existence p 1
2 Explorations p 20
3 Where Did We Come From? p 38
4 More Thoughts on the Self p 49
5 Was the Universe Designed for Life? p 57
6 Chance, Gods and Nature p 73
7 Looking to the Future p 84
Notes p 92
Bibliography p 94
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to specifically acknowledge the following authors for encouraging through their writings, my thinking on various topics relating to this book: Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, Paul Davies, Daniel Dennett, John Gribbin, John Barrow, Steven Weinberg, George Smoot and Keay Davidson, Terry Lane, Bryan Appleyard, Bert Keizer, and Stephen Hawking.
Thanks also to Lindi for her gentle encouragement, and to Gail for her thoughtful appraisal of the manuscript.
CHAPTER ONE
BEACHCOMBING THE SHORES OF OUR MYSTERIOUS EXISTENCEIn this chapter there are 154 one-paragraph thoughts relating to the mystery of our existence. Although I have occasionally grouped some where they refer to the same topic, generally they are in no particular order, remembering that the human mind often works best when considering a variety of ideas. In later chapters I will look at some of these and other ideas in more detail.
The universe was here before I came. I didn't make the universe. I would like to understand it. How come I live in a place, this universe, that I don't understand? Why did the universe spend billions of years making us without telling us what our role is?
Are we a central part of the great cosmic drama, or are we merely ants on the stage, of no relevance to the play, wandering around with no idea what's going on, and likely to be trodden on at any time?
Like fish in a vast ocean, we peer into the immensity of existence from a tiny vantage point in space and time.
Does the universe exist for no reason at all, and for no purpose? That seems unlikely to me.
Whatever the universe is, whatever the explanations, it has produced the miracle of life, it has given each of us our own existence.
2
We are on a voyage of exploration to discover the way the universe actually is. Are we game to make that journey, or do we cling to our dreams of what we would like the universe to be?
This universe produced each of us. Can we now turn to the universe and say "You have no meaning or purpose"?
Because we don't know the meaning and purpose of the universe doesn't mean there is none.
Are the answers staring us in the face but we simply aren't seeing them?
If we could see the broader context in which our universe may exist, it might seem much more intelligible.
The universe may not be analogous to anything we know, not to machines, or computers, or living organisms, or anything else we have experience of.
Have the gods created us, or have we created the gods?
Are gods and religions completely creations of the human mind?
We may have created the gods, but we have not created the
universe.Perhaps the universe really is as it appears to be, without gods, and without life after death.
We are born, we do various things, we die.
For each of us, this may be all there ever is.
Humans may have as much importance in the cosmic scheme of things as stones on the ground.
3
We ask, is there a purpose to the universe, and are our individual lives included in that purpose? Ants and humans come and go in their countless millions. Are the lives of individual ants relevant to any purpose of the universe? Ants, mice, dolphins, humans.
There are beliefs or stories in many cultures that a god or gods created the universe, and there's an understandable reluctance to think that the creation may have been a purely natural event.
Does the world look like it was designed by a compassionate intelligence, or by natural processes?
With our feelings, desires, our sense of compassion and fairness, we almost seem to be aliens within this physical universe.
The whole thing - the universe and life - is simply so bizarre and unlikely.
Is it possible for a universe that spawned us to be less complex than we are? The universe dwarfs us in space and time but we appear to dwarf the physical universe in complexity.
This universe is clearly and unambiguously a working natural system. It's not a chaotic universe. The fundamental building blocks seem to be extraordinarily compatible. They have dovetailed together beautifully to make elements, stars, planets, life, awareness, you and I.
We are a result of about 15 billion years of unfolding of the universe. Our lives of 3 score years and 10 seem a bit short by comparison.
Is the universe in some sense alive, and does it know we're here?
4
By finding the actual answers to our questions we can abandon all the invented answers.
Speaking anthropomorphically, this universe looks to me like it knows what it's doing.
On Earth, life has taken on a life of its own.
Why create a world where there is such pointless unfairness as in this one?
Because we can imagine gods, heaven, life after death, does not mean that these things necessarily exist.
'Divine revelation' does not seem to have told us about one god, but about many gods. Do you believe in the gods of earlier cultures, Sun gods and Moon gods for example? Imagine the totality of worship given to those long forgotten deities. What does that tell us about our own present day gods and religions? Humans are clearly capable of believing in and worshipping purely imaginary non-existent gods.
Traditional religious ideas on the creation of the world and our place in it were thought up when our ancestors knew a lot less about the universe than we do now.
I know what an apple is, but what is a god?
Whether nature or gods made the universe, we are working to find out how.
A famous ornithologist (bird scientist) and a student were out walking in the woods, and the ornithologist, seeing a bird said "Look, there's a Variegated Fairy-wren." The student looked and said "That doesn't look like a Variegated Fairy-wren to me." To which the ornithologist replied "It may not be your idea of a Variegated Fairy-wren but it is the gods' idea of a Variegated Fairy-wren." (From the late Shane Parker.)
5
In this universe you can only make one journey at a time.
Looking for theories of the universe that make sense, that intuitively feel right, where we can say, yes now that sounds right.
Perhaps life does have a purpose in the universe at large, but its fulfillment lies in the far future. Our main task is to do what our ancestors have successfully done for 4 billion years, survive and reproduce.
It seems extremely unlikely to me that the universe could have been made by some sort of superhuman, which I suspect is the basic image of a god that many people including myself, have.
We tend to assume that there are 6 billion humans in only one universe. But could it be that there is an entire universe for each human, that it's simply not correct to consider humans collectively? Perhaps existence has no collective meaning, it is an individual event only, each of us exists and is aware.
Am I a part of this universe, or is this universe a part of me?
We were made in this universe, born in this universe, this universe is our home. We want solutions to our fundamental questions that include our presence in this universe, our participation.
Which is correct: "I am this particular body" or "I am in this particular body"?
Putting the concept 'gods' aside, and working to explain the universe as we see it.
We find ourselves at one particular location in a vast universe, with no means of getting anywhere else, and no indication of what we are doing here.
6
Okay, so planets may be abundant in the universe, but planets with oceans or lakes of liquid water continuously for several billion years, how common are they?
How did our universe come into existence? When we've discovered the real answer to that question, we can consider whether anything resembling our concept of a god was involved.
It's entirely speculation that there was a creator of the universe.
I wonder if life is a property which could be predicted if we had a complete understanding of the properties of the fundamental building blocks of this universe.
Could a sufficient knowledge of mathematics enable us to predict life?
Our universe must have properties and a past history consistent with the existence of ourselves.
"Because I am exactly the way I am, the universe must be exactly the way it is."
"Because the universe is exactly the way it is, I must be exactly the way I am.""I am glad I am a human living in the twenty-first century and not a human living in the eleventh century."
"I am glad I am a human living in the thirty-first century and not a human living in the twenty-first century."
"I am glad I am a human, able to think and reason and observe the universe, and not an ant."
"I am glad I am an Andromedan (highly advanced creature from the Andromeda galaxy), who knows the meaning and purpose of the universe and will live for many thousands of years and has orgasms lasting for months at a time, and not a human or an ant."7
Will science find a god? If scientists should discover that the universe was created by gods, that it has meaning and purpose, and that there is life for us beyond death, I'm sure they will be as delighted as the rest of us.
Scientists should be as free as anyone else, priests and philosophers included, to speculate and theorise about the meaning and purpose of life and the universe.
There is a widespread belief or assumption that there are some things science cannot explain. Is that equivalent to saying that there are some things that do not have explanations?
A rejection of true science is a rejection of reality.
The dogs of science have been let loose among religions.
What's the difference between a computer printing out "Why am I this computer and not another computer?" because it's been programmed to print out that question, and a computer printing out that question because it's thought about its own existence and asks that question of its own volition, without being programmed to do so?
Imagining going to the Moon led to our actually going to the Moon. One day human imagination might find a way to free us from the constraints of our biological mortality.
Where did you come from? Your parents begat you. And where did they come from? Their parents begat them. And so on back to the first replicating molecules begetting new molecules about 4 billion years ago. You're a product of unbroken chains of successful begetting stretching back 4 billion years.
8
At various periods in history, if you insisted that the world is round, that rocks fall from the sky, that continents drift, that we evolved from ape-like ancestors, you would have been laughed at if you were lucky, or maybe burned at the stake. Obviously the world is flat, obviously rocks don't fall from the sky, obviously continents stay where they are, and obviously humans don't have ape-like ancestors. I wonder what we currently believe to be obviously true that isn't?
Many people in my culture, myself included, imagine that the universe once 'did not exist', and so we feel a need to explain how it came into existence from nothing. But perhaps this is an incorrect assumption, perhaps our universe, or at least a megauniverse, always has existed in some form. The idea that there ever was complete non-existence is surely simply speculation. It seems just as likely that there's always been existence. Need there ever have been a state of complete non-existence?
Could the universe simply exist, without any reason or purpose for it doing so? Here's an image I sometimes have. I picture a vast nothingness, which is all of non-existence, and suspended in it like a jewel, is this one island of existence, our universe. Simply there. For no reason, or for no reason we will ever know.
There's as much scientific evidence to support the hypothesis 'gods' as there is to support the hypothesis 'fairies'.
In the evolution of human thought, who invented the division between 'natural' and 'supernatural'? Perhaps this division is only imaginary. Perhaps there are only natural explanations for everything. Perhaps Existence (the totality of everything that has existed, does exist and will exist) is an entirely natural system or entity.
Mystery in the natural world doesn't necessarily equate with supernatural as we have discovered many times in the past. Either a natural explanation has been found, or no explanation has yet been found, for everything ever investigated by science, but never a supernatural explanation.
9
One of the most important discoveries we are making in our explorations, is that there doesn't appear to be any magic involved in the day to day activities of the universe.
Chance plays a big role in this universe and in our lives, and yes, it would be valuable to have a god on our side, who can alter the odds in our favour.
There may come a time when we no longer need the hypothesis 'gods' and it will fade away.
Evolution could be the means by which the gods chose to make intelligent animals.
Until we can explain how this universe came to have the potential to produce life, intelligence, minds, who can say there are no gods.
It may be that a supernatural or natural intelligence had the knowledge and resources to design and set going our universe, but not the ability or intention to intervene once it was started.
Are we trying to write an inanimate universe into our own plays, the melodramas of our lives, trying to give the universe feeling, mind, purposes?
If there is nothing outside this universe, then can there be any reason for its existence that lies outside itself?
We may not be at the centre of the whole universe but we are at the centre of the visible universe.
The unknown is still a broad and extensive country. For example, what is the true nature of Existence, how did the universe come into being, how did life on Earth start, is there existence for us after we die, are there gods?
10
Believing in something doesn't necessarily mean it is true. It was once widely believed that Earth is at the centre of the universe, and is flat and has an edge, that a god created Earth and life more or less in their present form, that up there is heaven and down there is hell, that the scale of the universe is measurable in terms of Earth distances and human generation times. It is still widely believed that events on Earth are influenced by the positions of the planets in the sky, that human personalities and day to day lives are influenced by dates of birth, and that gods can intervene in nature.
Radio and television - two of the things our ancestors had no conception of, 'miracles' we had no right to think could exist. What other wonders await discovery we presently have no conception of?
Is 'existence' actually a property of observers rather than the things they observe? Does anything exist when there are no observers, no 'existers'?
The fact that this universe includes a process that builds a tree of life simply demands explanation.
What is this stuff called matter, that it can make such complex things as intelligent self-aware humans?
Oh to be able to compare Earth's tree of life with trees of life on other planets elsewhere in the universe.
For some reason I want this to be the only kind of universe that can exist, and the only make-up for a universe that is logically possible.
One of the properties of this universe is that you and I are in it.
The actual potential of this universe is a consequence of the actual make-up of this universe at its birth.
The quickest method of reaching an understanding of life, the universe and everything is to receive a message from an extraterrestrial intelligence that's already figured it out.
11
Are we going to live and die,
without ever knowing why?If the dinosaurs had developed telescopes and space rockets perhaps they could have deflected the incoming comet or asteroid 65 million years ago and prevented their own extinction, and radically changed the history of life on planet Earth. Then you and I would not have come to exist at all, or perhaps we would be intelligent dinosaurs.
Perhaps the explanation for our existence is something we haven't even thought of yet.
Seeds of mind or self could all be from the same source, simply placed in different brains to grow and develop. The individuality comes from growing in individual brains. So we might all be from the same pool, the same entity, but growing in different bodies. And perhaps when the bodies we inhabit die, we return to being part of the single entity.
If a rogue planet comes out of the darkness and collides with Earth and destroys it and all life on it, would it make the slightest difference to the rest of the universe? Would it mean that any purpose the universe has in existing would never be fulfilled?
The universe has been ticking away, a second at a time, for about 15,000,000,000 years, that's approximately 5,000,000,000,000 days or 500,000,000,000,000,000 seconds. A lot. Imagine a high school maths lesson that long.
And a god said "Be fruitful and multiply." And we were fruitful and we did multiply, to the tune of about 6 billion at the time of writing. At least we seem to have got that right.
12
One of the most amazing things about this universe is how gravity and other processes conspired to place the nine planets of our solar system (and probably the planets of countless other
solar systems) in stable orbits for literally billions of years.Gods - either an invention of the human mind, or an expression, however imperfect, of something that actually exists.
Science may not be the way to discover gods.
We want a pathway to follow and goals to fulfill so we can move on to a next stage in our existence after our bodies die.
If the make-up of the universe was designed for the production of planets such as Earth that are suitable for life to develop on, we might expect these kinds of planets to be common in the universe. If the make-up of the universe had nothing to do with life, then life-suitable planets might be uncommon, perhaps exceedingly rare.
"This is it folks. Your own packaged universe, on special at only $23.95. Includes a complete set of fundamental particles with their own working rules, an internal energy supply, and its own spacetime. Wound up ready to go, all you do is press a button, and watch the action. In almost no time at all, see life forms developing on millions of planets. Watch as primitive life including yourself, make love, war, and think up bizarre theories to explain their own existence. Be amazed, as they evolve into a superintelligence that attempts to take over the entire universe. Will they succeed in stopping the big crunch or the eternal expansion? Can they spawn new universes? Guaranteed a trillion years of entertainment or your money back."
Are we the smoking gun for the hypothesis that this universe was designed to produce intelligent life? Or are we the smoking gun for the hypothesis that this universe was designed to produce unintelligent life? Perhaps smoking guns are the smoking gun for the hypothesis that this universe was designed to produce smoking guns.
13
The theory of evolution explains how humans apparently evolved from simple life forms by natural means without supernatural intervention. It doesn't explain how the fundamental building blocks of this universe came to be appropriate for the job.
What makes the pathway from simple subatomic particles to complex life forms available? You can't travel on a road if it's not there.
If the universe was made by an intelligence, and there is only one basic broad-scale type of intelligence possible in Existence, then our brains and our thinking may be developing along the same lines as those of the intelligence that made the universe.
Suppose that an intelligence of some kind, or even a god, designed the universe, and then disassembled into the fundamental building blocks of our universe in some way, in order to traverse the big bang. It is now reassembling into life, and self-aware creatures, including us.
The discoveries of deep space, deep time, the billions of stars in each galaxy, and the billions of galaxies in the visible universe, are mind-boggling but they are real. What other mind-boggling changes in our perspectives may still be coming?
Turning philosophy into science. Why shouldn't questions such as "Does the universe have a purpose in existing?" and "What is the nature of Existence?" be scientific questions? Perhaps it's an outdated mindset to regard these matters as outside the realms of scientific inquiry.
In many human families, the weakest sibling gets extra care and support. In many bird families, the weakest sibling gets tossed out of the nest.
Only on those planets which haven't been invaded by extraterrestrials, can intelligent creatures evolve that can say "We haven't been invaded." We know there is at least one such planet in the universe.
14
We are always moving forward to our future, and we will reach any point in our future in due course, but our past seems forever gone, it seems we can never go back. Time snatches away the present.
I am aware of the world only through this particular body. I receive 100 percent sensory input through this body, and zero percent through any other body. I'm very much aware of what my left and right hands are doing. But I'm completely unaware of what even my closest genetic relatives are doing (unless they happen to be nearby). Even our children are entirely separate individuals from us, even genetically identical twins appear to be entirely separate. Every person is an island.
Human thinking about gods has produced wide-ranging influences on the course of social and cultural development, and the paths that individual lives take. So while there is as yet no scientific evidence that gods exist, our thinking that they do exist is influencing our lives, and hence this tiny part of the universe.
Perhaps life after death, if it exists, is not given to us by our gods, it's given to us by the universe.
I think humans would be very reluctant to accept that the universe could be an entirely natural system without any spiritual or supernatural aspect to it at all.
If there are other intelligent objects in the universe, where could they have come from? They could be products of evolution as we are, or they could be made by products of evolution, as intelligent computers would be. It was far too hot for any intelligent objects to survive the big bang, and it seems unlikely, based on our present understanding of physics, that they could get into this universe from somewhere else. Perhaps the only way that intelligent objects can appear in this universe is via processes of evolution familiar to us on Earth.
15
Has mind been built entirely by nature? And only in our imaginations can we see a world where we would be free of the constraints of nature, including our own deaths? Or have seeds of perfect mind somehow come into these bodies, to grow with the bodies, be subjected to the constraints of nature, but at death to be free again, to fly to some other place, paradise perhaps, or another body?
The Christian religion has been strongly influenced by the idea that humans fell from some perfect state in the Garden of Eden, and we need to be forgiven our sins and rescued. But if I were a Christian, I would abandon the idea that humans ever fell from grace, because the reality seems to be the opposite. We're building compassion, fairness, love of various kinds, morality, from an evolutionary past where they never even existed. If there's a Garden of Eden, it lies in the future and not in the past.
According to the widely accepted big bang scenario, the whole of our visible universe was once a fireball at a temperature of billions of degrees. It seems unlikely to me that any creators of the universe would have been present in that environment. Perhaps they were outside our universe, and if they were outside it then, they may still be outside it.
Where was I before my brain grew? Where was a computer before it was built? Imagine that we build a very complex computer, so complex that it is intelligent, conscious and self-aware. After a working life of 3 score years and 10 it short-circuits and burns out, and as a mark of respect we bury its remains. Would we expect it to have a life after its death?
Imagine that you are one of a group of lions discussing the nature of life. You say "We lions depend for our existence on chasing, killing and eating some of our fellow creatures on Earth. Would a compassionate god really be responsible for creating such a system?"
16
We find ourselves in bodies made by evolution. We want to fly, to be like the gods, to do in real life what we can do in our imaginations.
To an observer from another part of the universe, we are simply billions of individual people. None has centre stage, some are luckier than others.
We are each the resident and guardian of our one body.
It seems that at present there's only one way to physically exist and be an observer at least in our tiny part of the universe, and that is to occupy, or be, a living creature. Perhaps in the future, an alternative will be to occupy or be an intelligent self-aware computer.
I wonder if it will ever be possible to transfer human minds into very complex computers. It would be one way of prolonging our lives, perhaps indefinitely. And if there's a shortage of computers for storing individual minds, perhaps large numbers of minds could be merged into a few maxi-minds.
As far as I know, no-one has ever made a prediction based on sound scientific principles that they will appear again as another person in the future.
We tend to think of our ancestors as adult humans. But our ancestors were also children, babies, fertilised eggs, and individual eggs and sperm.
Because a human has no memory of events before its own memory cells developed, it has no memory of where it came from, of how it came to exist. It has no memory of its own conception, or of the life and times of the egg and sperm that made it, or of the life and times of the millions of eggs and sperm that were its direct ancestors.
If there is reincarnation, does it matter if we have no memories of any former lives? It may be enough to say, I am alive, I am aware.
17
The picture of a god handing out souls to new bodies in a somewhat arbitrary manner, captures to some extent the seemingly arbitrary way each of us is one particular person.
If there are no gods, then unless we are contacted by extraterrestrials we will presumably never receive any moral guidance from an external source. As far as moral guidance goes we would be completely on our own. And all guidance given by all religions that ever existed would be coming from mortal humans with no divine authority whatever.
We may not know exactly what our minds are, but we do know where they are, inside our heads. The brain is the home of the mind.
A human is made of non-living ingredients - the atoms that make us up, put together by a variety of natural processes.
Some theories stand as tributes to human ingenuity, but ingenuity does not necessarily equate with correctness
We discover what we are. Ants discover they are ants, humans discover they are humans. Or perhaps ants don't have the property of self-awareness, so they never know they are ants. Perhaps they have no awareness at all. I personally hope they don't.
Suppose when you were a baby you received a toe transplant or a heart transplant. You would still be you. But if you received a brain transplant, you would presumably not be you. I need scarcely state that this would be somewhat confusing for the parents. The body of their child, with an adopted brain. Would the child have an adopted mind?
I wonder if dolphins, whales, chimpanzees, cats and dogs ever wonder why they are not humans or some other animal.
18
A lesson from human life: whatever you want to do in this life, do it while you are still able to do it, there will inevitably come a time when you are no longer able to do it, ever. Time is absolutely relentless, it eats away at your available life, a second per second, day per day, year per year. You can never go back, even one second.
Plants grow from a seed, reproduce and fulfill their purpose in existing, and die and decompose. They don't reproduce and fulfill their purpose in existing and then contract back into a seed and then vanish at a point.
The universe is a very big place. How did we come to be living at this particular location in the universe and not somewhere else?
Most of us would rather be living in a universe that has compassion and fairness as fundamental components rather than E = mc² and 'every particle in the universe attracts every other particle with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them,' as fundamental components.
It's better to have hair with dandruff than no hair at all.
Something we learn in life is, there is real life, and there is imagination and fantasy. In seeking answers to our fundamental questions, we surely need to distinguish between the two.
Suppose scientists discover a new fundamental particle, the 'i' particle. These appeared at the big bang along with the other fundamental particles, and vast numbers have been flying around the universe ever since (as vast numbers of neutrinos have been doing since the big bang). When a new person is conceived, one of these 'i' particles lodges in the developing embryo, and is the seed of the person's identity, their essence of self. Maybe that's where 'you' came from.
19
On Earth a tree of life has grown, of complexity beyond the wildest dreams of those first self-replicating molecules.
Can we foresee a day when, through scientific or other kinds of inquiry, we will know the full story of how and why we and the universe exist? Humans may be a lot freer then. Freed of reliance on myths and accounts of shadowy events in the past that are frustratingly out of reach of verification.
For me, there are two foci to existence - the existence of this universe, and our own personal existence. I think that any theory describing the universe that doesn't take into account both of these foci may be an incomplete theory.
Within our universe, clouds of gas and dust have collapsed to form stars, countless trillions of times. Each collapse is a unique event, each produces a unique star, perhaps with a unique set of planets. Each of these events is a new roll of the dice, no two solar systems and no two planets in our visible universe could ever be identical. And on each planet where life commences, more rolls of the dice, as evolution of that life takes its own unique path.
As regards any design, meaning and purpose the universe may have, only the actual reality is the true reality, and we simply don't know what that is yet.
If you don't thoroughly mix the ingredients, you won't bake a successful cake.
There's an old Chinese saying, 'Don't judge a day till night falls.' Perhaps we shouldn't judge the universe just yet.
There was a time when many humans believed the Earth was flat and at the centre of the universe. Who could have imagined that this terra firma, stretching to the distant horizon in every direction, is actually a sphere spinning slowly in the vastness of space, orbiting one star in a galaxy of over a hundred billion stars, itself only one among billions of galaxies.
There was a time when humans thought that ours was the only 'sun', wrong by a factor of countless trillions. There was a time when we thought the Milky Way was the only galaxy, wrong again, by a factor of billions. And there was a time, now, when many think that ours is the only universe. (note 1)
Are we required to make yet another giant leap of our imaginations, of our perspectives? Can it be that ours is but one of a multitude of universes? Perhaps our universe is only a tiny part of an immensely larger scheme of things in both space and time.
In the visible universe there are zillions of electrons and atoms, countless trillions of stars, billions of galaxies, mice and humans. Would we be surprised if it turns out that there are at least billions of other universes? ¤21
We exist at an atypical time in the total life span of this universe, relatively close to its beginning. We occupy the surface of a planet, a very atypical place in a universe consisting mostly of virtually empty space. And we are a very atypical species on Earth, probably the only one among millions that can ask questions about the universe.
Based on our present level of knowledge, we appear to be
orbiting a fairly typical star in a fairly typical location in a fairly typical galaxy (although none of this is certain - the Sun, our location, and our galaxy couuld all have highly unusual features we haven't detected yet).
But we have no idea whether Earth is a common, uncommon or perhaps very rare type of planet in the universe. And we have no idea whether humans are a common, uncommon or perhaps very rare or even unique kind of life form in the universe. That knowledge still awaits discovery. ¤Who can see into the mind of an ant? In the bush near my residence, the largest ants are about 2½ centimetres long. We call them inch ants or bull ants. They have menacing jaws and a painful sting.
It's difficult not to make value judgments when watching them at close quarters. If we're ever attacked by aliens from outer space, I hope they're not giant ants.
It's fortunate for us mammals that ants never evolved to a size comparable to the big cats. I don't think we'd have been a match for them. We might have had to take to the water.
Thinking about these ants reminds me of a disturbing question. Do any animals, apart from humans, have any kinds of religions?
What meaning would the concept 'god' have for an inch ant? Not much I expect. 'Juicy defenceless caterpillar' yes, 'exposed skin of large unsuspecting two-legged animal' yes, but 'god'? What about chimpanzees, cats and dogs, do they have any conception of gods? Why don't pet owners take their dogs and cats to church? Do you see any signs of religions out there in the animal kingdom? I don't.22
Were gods absent from the face of the Earth for 4 billion
years, till humans evolved? It seems a fair bet that humans are the first animals on Earth to discover, or invent, gods. Is there any role for gods in the rest of the animal kingdom?
A question to ponder is, why would gods only be relevant to one species among the millions alive today, and none of the astronomical number of living things that have come and gone over the past 4 billion years?
If gods were responsible for starting life on Earth, it would appear that for 4 billion years they were content to let evolving life battle it out, eat and reproduce if you're lucky and be eaten, red in tooth and claw, survival of the fittest, before sufficiently complex minds evolved that would be receptive to gods and religions and new ways of living.
Or maybe gods weren't responsible for starting life on Earth. Maybe we will need to look beyond the reassuring belief that compassionate all-powerful gods made Earth and its tree of life and now tend the garden and stand guard at the gates.
It's a warm summers day and a group of us are swimming at our favourite beach. A rubber ball is being tossed around with happy abandon, the sunshine sparkles on the water, young children frolic in the shallows. Suddenly a distant voice cries "Shark!" and we dash from the water and stand on the shoreline, staring out to sea. The ocean, so placid and peaceful just a few minutes ago, now assumes an air of danger. Was it a false alarm, or is there something lurking out there, just beneath that shimmering surface? ¤23
Could the universe itself be in some sense, a god? The idea
is at least on solid ground. It does exist, we know that, and it did in a sense make us. But from what we can see of our universe, it doesn't look like it. It looks much too simple.
As far as we can see in every direction with our best telescopes, we see galaxies of stars (such as our own Milky Way) dotting virtually empty space. And although there may be a honeycomb pattern of galaxy rich and galaxy poor areas permeating the universe, we've seen no evidence of any larger scale complex organisation.
No sign whatever that galaxies are tiny units (analogous to cells in a human body, or neurons in a brain perhaps) that link up or interact to form a vast superentity or superbrain, a god encompassing the entire universe.
If gods are subject to the constraints of physics, then there is a major practical problem with the idea of a god encompassing the whole universe.
We know of nothing that can travel faster than light (about 300,000 kilometres per second). It seems to be an absolute speed limit that can't be exceeded. It's not some minor barrier that could be overcome with improvements in technology, but a fundamental part of the fabric of this particular universe.
Now different parts of the human brain can communicate with each other almost instantaneously because the distances are so short. This allows us to think and to respond to external stimuli extremely quickly.
But the universe is at least tens of billions of light years across, so any signal travelling at the speed of light would take at least tens of billions of years to cross it. (note 2)
A god whose brain encompassed the entire visible universe might have awesome thinking power due to sheer size, but it could be a very ponderous thinker.
If it was using anywhere near its full brain capacity, and thus requiring far distant regions of the universe to communicate with each other, then it might take many billions of years to actually think a particular thought. Perhaps that's why your prayers haven't been answered yet.24
Speaking of prayers, how fast do you think that prayers, and responses from gods, travel? If it's no faster than the speed of light, then let's hope our gods are somewhere nearby. If they're as far out as the outermost planet Pluto, then it will take several hours for a prayer to reach them, and several more hours for a response to come back. Not much use if you're being run down by a lion out on the African savanna, or all four engines of your plane are on fire.
This could be a bit frivolous but I may have made a discovery here. If prayers and responses from gods do indeed travel no faster than the speed of light, then we can estimate how far away our gods are (and how far away heaven or paradise is, if our gods live there).
I've never heard anyone report that there's a regular time delay in two-way communications with their gods, nor do I know of any religions that teach that there is such a delay. And if gods are to be any use in emergencies, they need to respond to our cries for help within a few seconds.
The general feeling seems to be that communicating with gods can be as instantaneous as talking to a person standing nearby.
This would rule out virtually the entire visible universe as possible abodes of our gods (including the Sun about 8 light minutes distant and all the planets).
The Moon is only 1¼ light seconds away. We could receive a response from a god living on the Moon about 2½ seconds after we uttered a prayer for help, sufficient for most emergencies but still a noticeable delay.
If prayers and responses do travel no faster than the speed of light, then it's a fair bet that our gods are right here on Earth, perhaps even as close as our minds. ¤25
The supposed creation of the world and humans by the Christian god about 6,000 years ago, has inadvertently deprived many of us of a heritage of several million years of the history of our human ancestors. The gradual physical evolution of humans, the invention of tools, languages, early developments in religions and agriculture, complex migrations to lands as distant from our African origins as South America and Tasmania, adaptions to environments as diverse as desert, rainforest and tundra, the complex lives of billions of real people. Everything in human history before the claimed 6 day creation event in about 4,000 BC, all missing from the Christian history book.
Think of the melodramas, the intrigues, the soap opera, involved in the lives of our ancestors over the past few million years. Imagine if that whole vast history had been captured on video and was available for us to study at our leisure.
Consider the past 2½ million years of human existence. If we assume that the average generation time over that period was 25 years, that's an amazing 100,000 generations. Over the past 2½ million years you have about 100,000 generations of ancestors.
Every one of your direct ancestors had sexual intercourse leading to the conception of your next ancestors in line. Your existence depends on millions of successful matings in the past 2½ million years. What dramas, what chance meetings, what secret liaisons, great loves and brief encounters, did this include?
It seems certain that along the chains of ancestral matings that eventually led to our own existence there were numerous illicit liaisons. And yet if a single one of these had not occurred, would you still have come to exist? We would probably disown many of our ancestors and many of our ancestral matings (our descendants will probably disown some of us and some of our matings), and yet we appear to depend on them for our very existence. ¤26
On early Earth there was no life, but there was plenty of mindless geology and mindless chemistry going on.
There was no lack of energy sources to stir it all up, including radiation from the Sun, internal heat of the Earth, radioactive decay, volcanic activity, lightning, and occasional collisions with asteroids and comets to add to the merriment.
The mix of elements present was being stirred, heated, cooled, exposed to the atmosphere, irradiated, buried, pressure cooked, melted, solidified, dissolved, precipitated. Not so surprising then if some very complex chemistry and some very complex molecules developed.
I would love to go back in a time machine, and search that early Earth for the precursors of life, the chemistry and the molecules that first started the tree of life.
Mind you, it would be a hazardous place to visit. There was little or no oxygen and ozone in the atmosphere so we would need to wear space suits. And collisions with space debris would have been frequent.
We would need to be extremely careful not to release any microorganisms that could survive and reproduce there. If even a single one escaped onto the lifeless early Earth, it might proliferate and prematurely start the tree of life. Evolution and the whole history of life would then take a different course, which certainly would not have included us existing at the time and place we do, so we could not have built the time machine to visit early Earth in the first place.
This demonstrates a fundamental problem with the concept of time travel. Change the past even slightly, as you are certain to do if you land a time machine in the past, and you inevitably change the present. Perhaps the disturbance of a few rocks where we land might have minimal effect on the present, but the accidental release of one tiny living spore could change the present we know beyond all recognition.27
But I digress from another point I was going to make about early Earth, at the time the first replicating molecules that began the tree of life were just forming. These molecules were the first ancestors of all life on Earth including us.
It seems likely that the development of these replicating molecules was a completely mindless process, simply natural physics and chemistry. There was no intelligence there to guide it and watch over it.
(Although if the universe itself was designed by an intelligence or supernatural entity, then the hand of intelligence was present in the design of the matter and energy forming those first replicating molecules.)
It would be difficult to dispute the claim that the development of these self-replicating molecules was the most momentous single event in Earth's 4.5 billion year history (apart from you being born of course).
These molecules would start the entire tree of life.
It might even have been one of the most momentous events in the history of the universe. There may be p1anets galore throughout the universe, but I wouldn't be surprised if planets as favourable for the long term evolution of life as Earth is, are quite rare. ¤I find it a fascinating thought that when life first started on Earth there was no-one there to decide whether this was good or not, whether this was an appropriate or inappropriate development in this universe.
If you are reading this just after sex with your loved one, you would probably be inclined to say that life on Earth is a good thing. But if you are about to be torn apart by lions, or slowly being eaten alive by internal parasites, then you might have a different opinion.
Well, the fire of life started, no-one threw a bucket of water
over it, and here we are. And I guess most of us are thankful for
that. ¤28
It's likely that any extraterrestrials that arrived from a faraway solar system would be a lot more intelligent or technologically advanced than we are. They might well treat us with the same disregard as we've treated our fellow life forms. Humans think little of destroying entire ecosystems with chain saws, bulldozers, fire, and overgrazing, and calling it progress.
Experience here on Earth suggests that invaders and colonisers do not treat even our own species kindly, to understate it. Think of how the English colonisers treated the Aborigines in Australia, and the Spanish invaders treated the Native Americans.
This is how human invaders have treated fellow humans. Could we expect anything different from invading extraterrestrials, who aren't even from the same tree of life?
Let's rewrite history, just a little.
Imagine the year is AD 1500, and we're among a group of wise elders of the Aztecs, discussing the possibility that intelligent life could exist elsewhere on Earth. Perhaps, we speculate, such intelligent life is more knowledgeable, more technologically advanced, wiser, than we are. What knowledge we might gain, if we could only contact them.
What do we do? On sheets of gold, we carve pictures of ourselves and aspects of our culture, and some astronomical observations, roll the sheets into scrolls, and seal them in watertight containers. We drop them into the sea at various locations, hoping that ocean currents will carry them far beyond the horizon.
Years later, one of these drifts ashore on a Spanish beach, and our society is doomed.
A lesson from our history on Earth is that it's not a good idea to draw attention to ourselves. But we've already made several attempts to do so, we could already have sowed the seeds of our own destruction.29
Four spacecraft (Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager 1 and 2), now heading out of our solar system never to return, carry information aboard giving among other things, our location in the galaxy (it probably seemed like a good idea at the time). Fortunately they are moving at a snail's pace in astronomical terms, and it seems unlikely they will be found by extraterrestrials.
In 1974 we beamed a powerful radio message, to anyone who might be listening, towards the globular star cluster M13. Fortunately this cluster is about 25,000 light years distant, so doesn't pose any threat for at least 50,000 years.
(Imagine how human society and culture might blossom in the coming tens of thousands of years. What a tragedy it would be if our distant descendants say 100,000 years into the future, were invaded by hostile aliens because of a message we naively sent out into space in good faith in the twentieth century).
More worrying are our radio and television transmissions. These have been spilling out into space at the speed of light, like it or not, for several decades now, like smoke from a fire. Any intelligent life with sufficiently advanced technology within fifty or so light years may already know we're here. They could be on their way now. And they may not be friendly.
If there are any potential invaders in this galaxy, let's hope they don't live nearby.
We do have some protection. We're protected by sheer distance. It's 4 light years to the nearest star and hence presumably to the nearest possible abode of intelligent life, a distance our present spacecraft would take tens of thousands of years to traverse.
If the nearest life form more technologically advanced than we are, is at least 100 light years away, as seems likely, that's a long journey, through an environment, empty space, that's probably lethal to most or all intelligent life forms in the universe without protection every minute of the journey.30
It's very unlikely I think that Earth's gravity, and atmospheric pressure and composition, would in combination be close to those of the home planet of the extraterrestrials. Even if extraterrestrials arrived from several different solar systems, perhaps none would find conditions suitable for colonisation without extensive modifications to our planet. (Imagine the consequences for the present day life on Earth if they found that oxygen was poisonous and they removed it from the atmosphere.)
It would be a pity if after 4 billion years of uninterrupted evolution of the tree of life on Earth, we were invaded by elements of a completely different tree of life from another world, and maybe us exterminated as troublesome vermin (to the delight dare I say it of many of our fellow creatures on Earth). ¤Some afternoons I go for a walk in a local nature park. In one valley butterflies are particularly common. They flitter and glide among the trees in the sunshine, chase each other, occasionally alight on a flower to feed on the nectar. To the human observer, this is beauty, peace, tranquillity.
One day I came across two of these butterflies trapped in a spider's web. It was a large web, an engineering masterpiece strung between two trees.
Their wings were hopelessly stuck to the web. There they were, suspended in midair, watching their fellow butterflies flying freely past, but only able to struggle helplessly. They had probably been there for hours.
I imagined their fate. The spider was probably hiding during daylight under the bark of one of the trees. When darkness came, it would emerge, run out along a guy supporting the web, discover the butterflies, and administer fatal bites.31
Yesterday I was hanging some clothes out on the line, when I noticed a bee struggling on the ground. I looked closer.
The bee was frantically trying to shake off a small black ant, running about buzzing its wings but it couldn't get airborne. After several minutes of this, the bee crossed the path of another ant, which scurried around this way and that as excited ants do, and then also attacked the bee.
More ants arrived on the scene. Some seized the tips of the bee's legs and anchored it to the ground, while others ran over the bee attempting to bite it. Soon ants were swarming around the bee.
Bees have very hard exoskeletons impervious to ant bites but there are vulnerable spots. I didn't time it but I guess it took about an hour before the bee ceased all movement.
Next day the dead bee was still there where the ants had killed it. The ants had not dismembered the bee but had cut a hole in its abdomen and removed the contents presumably including any nectar the bee had gathered.
How many worker bees meet this particular fate? I don't know but my guess is a substantial number. Once a bee nears the end of its life, perhaps it simply runs out of sufficient buzz to keep it airborne, and down it comes. Those ants which looked so harmless around the flowers the bee visited now become its deadly enemies.
Do bees have minds? Are they aware of their fate? Can they feel the ants crawling all over them? I hope not. I hope the brains of all insects are simply computers, mindless, without awareness.
The bee certainly looked like it was aware of the attack of the ants, it struggled mightily to free itself.
I thought, as I have done a thousand times before in other circumstances, what kind of a god would create a world like this, where this kind of death for animals is commonplace, the norm. Mindless evolution might build such a world, but surely not compassionate gods. ¤32
Are there gods, a spirit world, the supernatural? Did gods design and set going the universe? Have gods influenced the unfolding of the universe, did they start life on Earth, did they guide the course of the evolution of life? Can gods intervene in nature, can they direct a hurricane around our city, start rain when there's drought, help make a pregnancy, cure illnesses, protect our loved ones when they're in danger?
Or are gods purely products of the human imagination, made up to explain the mysteries of the universe and our existence, because we can't see any natural explanation for these things?
Humans invented fairies. Humans invented Father Christmas. Can it be that humans invented gods? That gods have no actual existence at all? Is the totality of all gods of all human cultures merely human invention?
Obviously we need to face the truth of the matter whatever it is. I need scarcely state that a sizable part of all human thought and activity has been and is being devoted to these concepts.
Who first invented the concept 'god'? Is this idea an intuitive response of human minds to our existence? Why should an explanation for us and the universe involve something called god?
If we hadn't been told by others about the concept god, would we have deduced the existence of this entity from either scientific observations or our everyday lives? I wonder.
Fear probably played a big part in the development of beliefs in gods. When the causes of lightning, floods, earthquakes, diseases, locust swarms and other natural disasters were not understood, it's not surprising that we came to see these as weapons of some higher authority, to be 'visited upon' errant humans.33
The idea that there is a god or gods is so firmly established in our minds that many of us simply take it for granted that there is such a thing, although we are unsure what a god actually is.
Religious concepts were taught to most of us when we were too young to question them, and they colour our whole lives. None of us have experienced seeing the world through eyes innocent of these concepts. What would our lives be like, what would the universe look like, what would we make of it, if humans hadn't discovered or invented spirits and gods?
Perhaps we will eventually find the explanation for the existence of our universe, and the life within it, and this explanation may not include anything resembling our present day concepts of a god at all. We may find that the explanation has nothing to do with gods.
We may be completely alone here on Earth, no gods to intervene on our behalf, no gods to help make decisions for us. No gods to 'play god' and give us moral guidance on difficult issues. If anyone is to play god and make the difficult decisions, maybe it will need to be us.
If we do find out the answers to our fundamental questions, there's no guarantee the answers will be things we want to hear. There's plenty we've already discovered about our world that we would prefer had been otherwise.
Perhaps we will discover that life arose purely by chance. That there is no purpose to the existence of the universe. That there are no gods, no spirits, no life after death, no heaven, that this life is the only existence any of us ever will have.
That life, self-awareness, love, intelligence, morality, sexual desires and fulfilments in the arms of our lovers, are all things built entirely by mindless evolution, and have no spiritual significance at all beyond what we ourselves give them.
If this is the way it is, then so be it. ¤34
How old are you? Whether you are 10 or 100 years old, that seems ridiculously short in comparison with the 15 billion year age of the universe. But look at it another way. You are in fact at one end of an unbroken chain of life extending back about 4 billion years to when life began on Earth. You are in a sense 4 billion years old, about a quarter the age of the universe. (notes 3 and 4)
And before that, the universe wasn't sitting idly by. The story in our region is one of more or less continuous development of increasing complexity for about 11 billion years, right from the big bang to the formation of the solar system. We then see another 4 billion years of generally increasing complexity, sometimes interrupted by spectacular extinction events, as the tree of life evolved to its present level and produced us.
To me, this is suggestive. There seems to be a match-up here, although it could be coincidence. Isn't this pattern of development what we would expect if the universe were designed by some means (natural or supernatural) to produce life, intelligence, self-aware creatures? We would expect it would always be developing in the direction of these things, and that's what it seems to have done.
We can imagine that it could have been otherwise. Suppose we discovered that the universe had existed for 15 thousand billion years instead of only 15 billion, and its history had followed some random wandering course that happened seemingly by chance to have stumbled on life a mere 4 billion years ago, suggesting that perhaps it had no design and no purpose to produce life but had done so purely by chance.
But what we actually see is a universe that has been heading in the direction of intelligent self-aware life for the whole of its 15 billion years. It was always coming our way. ¤35
If science found a way to stop the ageing process, so that by taking a pill weekly, you would stay the same biological age indefinitely, and live on at that biological age perhaps for many thousands of years, barring accident, would you take the pill, or would you allow ageing to continue to take its course? It would certainly put your religious views to the test. You could opt to age and die, in the belief that a better life, going to heaven perhaps, awaited you beyond death, or by taking the pill continue indefinitely with your present life.
If most people opted to take this pill, the death rate would drop spectacularly. And many of our children might decide to grow to adulthood and have children of their own before taking the pill and arresting their ageing. This would result in a completely unsustainable growth in population.
What to do? We could decide to ban the use of the anti-ageing pill. Laws could be passed. But not everybody would comply. A black market in the pills would flourish. You're not taking the pill, your hair is getting grayer, more wrinkles, but what about your neighbors, they certainly don't look as if they're getting any older. Are they cheating?
And what about the Pope? He's been counselling against illegal use of the anti-ageing pill for years now, but neither he nor his minders look a day older. The Pope claims it's divine intervention but some of us are beginning to think it's chemical intervention.
At present our biological immortality could only be achieved at the expense of future generations. If most of the 6 billion people alive today wished to live indefinitely, then the birth rate must be reduced to close to zero before overpopulation becomes an overwhelming problem.
Although most of us would prefer not to die, at least we do know that for 4 billion years it has been nature's way. But that same nature has given humans a strong survival instinct. When a flood comes, we desperately cling to the rooftops. If an anti-ageing drug were available, I wonder how many of us would resist the temptation to take it. ¤36
Is there a god at the beginning of the universe? If we open all the doors there, will we find a god, a supernatural presence, an intelligence? Or will we see a purely natural landscape?
When I imagine visiting the beginning of our universe, I see myself standing at the edge of a garden, it's quiet and still. I can see nobody there, but I sense that somewhere nearby is a presence, a presence who lives there and who created the universe and so created me.
Visiting the beginning in our minds may be a little difficult for some of us, because in our hearts we may think there is a creator living there, a fundamental belief that there is a god who made our world and who made us.
We may still see the birthplace of the universe as a sacred place, as a home of the gods, the way we may once have felt there were gods at the tops of mountains.
Will we anger the gods if we contemplate natural rather than supernatural explanations for the birth of the universe? Are we apprehensive about having thoughts that perhaps the god or gods of our religions didn't make us or our universe?
Demystifying the birth of our universe. Developing the freedom to explore it, and to ask what there may have been before the big bang. There's a reluctance to disturb a perceived home of the gods. Some apprehension, even sadness, that we may be removing gods from the beginning of the universe.
Getting used to the idea of examining it scientifically, of seeing it simply as another natural event, like we would investigate a supernova explosion, or a pebble dropping into a pond. If it does turn out to have a supernatural aspect, well and good. If any gods do dwell there, I'm sure they won't mind being woken by curious inquisitive humans.
If we are made by gods, I'm sure they will welcome us when our investigations finally uncover their homes, when we finally discover where they live. ¤37
In an ideal world our religious and spiritual thinking would not conflict with common sense or with our developing knowledge and understanding of the universe. It's painful to think of the total amount of stress and anxiety caused by the conflicts between people's religious beliefs and the discoveries we have made by physically exploring the world. (note 5)
If gods made the world, then presumably they would be happy for us to explore it, find out as much as we can about it, including how it all works, and incorporate that knowledge into our lives and our religions. I don't see the logic of believing that gods made this universe and yet rejecting some of the discoveries we make about it, e.g. the big bang and evolution. If gods made the real world then where is the sense to having beliefs that conflict with that reality?
One of the great things about believing that a god made the universe is, here it is all around us. We can observe it, walk and run and swim and fly in it, and study its workings to our hearts' content. Ancient scriptures and stories won't tell us what the universe the gods made is like, getting out and exploring it will tell us.
Surely religions need to be open to real life, able to absorb and adapt to our developing understanding of the universe. There would appear to be abundant scope for carefully modifying our religions to be more in harmony with our knowledge of the universe and life, without any need to abandon any god we may believe in.
And if you've just made glorious love on the warm sand in celebration of this being a universe made by the gods, and you're lying back contemplating the wonder of it all, and idly brushing sand grains from various parts of your anatomy, as like as not an ant will come and sting you on the bum, a reminder that the explanation for this universe might not be quite so straightforward as it seemed just a few minutes ago. ¤
CHAPTER THREE
WHERE DID WE COME FROM?A key question, that lies at the very heart of human thinking about our selves is, where did we come from?
In a line of people extending back into the past, and hopefully forward into the future, for hundreds of thousands of generations and involving billions of individuals, why is each of us a particular person?
Why did the tree of life make billions of humans that aren't you, and then one that is you, and then billions more that aren't you?
We now know where our bodies came from. But where did our selves, what we identify as 'I', come from? Is the self, like our hair, simply another aspect of the whole person that develops from the fertilised egg? Or does our self, in the form of some essence, or seed of mind, or a spirit, or a soul, come from another place, from the gods or a spirit world perhaps, to occupy these bodies in a symbiotic relationship?
These appear to be two fundamentally different explanations for the source of our selves. Strangely enough, I think most people who have lived in the past several thousand years have believed that our selves come into our bodies from elsewhere. The idea that our sense of self is purely a natural consequence of the existence of our bodies, hasn't even been recognised as an alternative explanation in many cultures, although it is simpler and makes no assumptions about mysterious unseen essences or spirits floating through the ether.39
Suppose you are an observer from another part of the universe, watching millions of humans being born each year, and growing and becoming self-aware. Would you think that their awareness and their sense of self is fully explainable as a consequence of their developing brains, or would you feel that something additional needs to be added, a seed of mind, a soul or a spirit for example?
If I was able to observe the whole process of a fertilised egg developing into a self-aware human, I don't think I'd feel there was any need for some outside essence of mind or self to come into that developing person to explain its self-awareness. I'd say that the self-awareness simply developed within that person along with the development of their brain.
If this view is correct, then the totality of us is brand new, both body and self. No essence of self comes from elsewhere, it's made along with the rest of the body. In the same way as, if we made a new self-aware computer, we would say "This is a brand new computer, we made it, its self did not come from a heaven or a spirit world."
As an observer of the world around me, this is exactly what I see. New humans being made, with new bodies, and new awarenesses. Taken at face value, what we observe is that the tree of life is making brand new minds and selves that never existed before.
Consider your brain. Did your brain ever exist before you were conceived? Of course not. Billions of similar ones did, but they weren't your brain. Your brain is a brand new object, that never existed before and never will again. Even if you have an identical twin, your brain is an entirely separate object from the brain of your twin.
Surely we can apply the same reasoning to your mind and to your sense of self. These too must be brand new entities, that never existed before. If your brain is brand new and unique, then your mind and self are brand new and unique.40
The existence of your mind including your sense of self, is a consequence of the existence of your brain. And your brain is a consequence of the fusing of the sperm and egg cells that made you. And that was a consequence of your parents mating, which was a consequence of their parents mating, and so on back and back, which was a consequence of life starting on Earth, which was a consequence of Earth forming, which was a consequence of the coming into existence of this particular universe.
It would seem that the explanation for the existence of each of us is found in the past. We must look back into the past. The explanation for our existence lies with everything that happened in the past that led to the making of us. Nothing came into our developing bodies from elsewhere, no spirit from a spirit world, no seed of mind or self from the gods above.
Eventually, in searching for an initial cause of our existence, we get right back to the birth of this particular universe. It is that event that is the first identifiable cause of our existence. When this universe came into existence, it came with the potential to make stars and planets, Sun and Earth, you and I.
Some religions have explained the mystery of our existence as particular humans by saying that our spirits came into our bodies from a spirit world, or from a previous life, or the gods placed our souls, minds, or seeds of self into these bodies. But maybe the potential for each of us was already there, in the baby universe, and since then, purely natural processes have in the fullness of time, made you and I.
Many of us would accept the proposition that the formation of Earth was an entirely natural consequence of the coming into existence of this universe. Contained within this universe at its birth, was the potential for Earth to form by purely natural means.
So why not apply the same thinking to the existence of each of us? The formation of each of us was an entirely natural consequence of the coming into existence of this universe. Contained within this universe at its birth, was the potential for each of us to be made by purely natural means.41
We can study everything about the universe, including its history from the big bang to the present. We can include the processes of star and planet formation, the processes of evolution, and the sexual activities of our ancestors. And then we can say, this is how we came to exist, this is the history and these are the processes and events that resulted in us existing.
But we haven't yet explained the roots of our existence, the origin of the universe that made us.
We're like self-aware apples on an apple tree, slowly coming to an understanding of all the natural processes of growth of the tree that led to our existence, but yet having no understanding at all of how the seed came into existence that grew into the tree. To fully explain the existence of a particular apple you need to explain the existence of the tree it grew on. To fully explain the existence of a particular human you need to explain the existence of the universe it grew in.
As a first approximation, we have no idea how this particular universe came to exist. Perhaps gods made it, perhaps it was made by natural processes. The birth of this universe remains mysterious and therefore our own existence remains just as mysterious.
We need to explain not only how the matter and energy of this universe came to exist at the big bang, but how the potential for you and I came to exist at the big bang.
If we rigorously insist that explanations for the present must be found in the past, then the final answers to our questions about our existence will lie at least as far back as the birth of our universe. And if our universe is part of a larger scheme of things, then perhaps further back still.
We have come a long way in our understanding of the natural processes that led from the big bang to us. But we are surrounded by a universe whose origin and purpose remains a complete mystery.
Ultimately we must seek the explanation for ourselves in the explanation for this universe, and perhaps in the explanation of Existence itself, because we are part of both, and therefore a consequence of the existence of both. ¤42
So far we don't have any sound natural explanation for the existence of the universe, only speculations. So at present, we can only give a partial explanation of our own existence, of the following form: 'Given the birth of this particular universe, we have identified and explained many of the natural processes including evolution, that eventually led to the making of each of us'.
There are a variety of alternative religious explanations for our existence, e.g. a god directly created the universe and humans a few thousand years ago. But there is abundant evidence that the visible universe is many billions of years old, there is good evidence that it began its present life as a mere point about 15 billion years ago and has been expanding ever since. If gods made the universe, they made it at the time of the big bang, or even before that, but not later.
If we think that our religious views and beliefs should be in accord with reality, then we can safely abandon the idea that gods made the universe and humans in the recent past. They clearly did not. But we are still free to believe that a god or gods created the universe at the time of the big bang or before, because we have found no evidence to contradict this. ¤Consider the game of chess. There are constraints on what can happen, including the rules governing the movements allowed for each piece, and the number of squares on the board. Within these constraints there are a vast range of possible unfolding paths of the game. But for any one game of chess that two people play, only one path actually unfolds.
43
Suppose we are about to start a game of chess and I asked you to predict the exact positions of the pieces after half an hour of play. Impossible you'd answer. Even if you had the world's most powerful computers at your disposal you couldn't do it. You couldn't even predict the exact state of play after one turn each, because you and your computers would have no way of knowing what move I will make.
The actual path a game of chess takes is a consequence of numerous decisions made by two sometimes interacting human minds, completely impossible for a bystander, a computer or even a whole team of chess grandmasters to predict in advance.
A similar but more complex situation prevails with this universe. The unfolding history of the contents of our universe is strongly influenced by chance events, randomness, chaotic processes, perhaps quantum uncertainty, and at least in the case of Earth, the minds of animals. These influences make it absolutely impossible to predict the exact position of all the atoms in the universe even seconds into the future. note 6
How for example could anyone or anything predict the exact behavior of a human an hour ahead? Let alone the entire soap opera of human life over millions of years.
It is said that even the gods can't change the past, and neither can they predict the future.
There are constraints on what can happen in the universe, for example, the types of elementary particles and their properties are fixed (analogous to the types of chess pieces and the rules of play). And the number of dimensions is also fixed.
But given the huge number of elementary particles to play with, and many billions of years of unfolding play time, there's an uncountable number of potential histories the universe could follow. But as with any particular game of chess, only one of these actually happens.44
The presence of chance, randomness, chaos, quantum uncertainty, and the minds of animals, means that the universe has godzillions of possible histories. Only one unfolds, and it's clearly included us. Bullseye? Bingo? note 7
What if a different history had unfolded, for example one that didn't include a planet similar to Earth in this vicinity (and most of them wouldn't). Would you and I still exist? If we are each unique creations that depend for our existence on the actual past history of the universe, then perhaps any other alternative past history would not have produced you and I.
Is it pure chance then that you and I were made (rather than having the potential to be made, but not actually being made)? The universe could have unfolded in an almost limitless number of ways that wouldn't have made you and I, but it actually unfolded in this particular way and so produced us.
The idea that the explanation for the existence of each of us lies in the past history of the universe, a history determined in part by chance, leads to the strange conclusion does it not that you and I exist by chance. It's by chance that the universe has the exact configuration of atoms it has at present, and therefore it's by chance that you and I exist. Is this correct? Are we to accept that our existence is a chance event, or is there some missing ingredient here, is this an incorrect interpretation?
All we can say at present is, this is how the universe actually unfolded, it produced us, that's all we know. ¤45
One consequence of the influence of chance, randomness, chaos, quantum uncertainty, and the minds of animals, is that the detailed history of the contents of the universe could not be predicted, even in principle, from a knowledge of its initial state at the time of the big bang. Even if you or the gods knew everything about the initial state. Just as you couldn't possibly predict, even in principle, the life history of any person at the time of their birth, even if you knew everything about that baby.
This would seem to lay to rest the idea that gods could have designed a universe they knew would eventually make each of us as Homo sapiens, the idea that our existence as humans was predetermined from the beginning.
Is there any way our existence could be a certainty in a universe where chance and other factors simply shred up predictability and certainty?
Our appearance would be a certainty if we existed as souls or seeds of self in heaven, and gods placed these in bodies of their own choosing. Which bodies we found ourselves in would be by a decision of the gods.
In this scenario, the gods design the universe so it's certain to produce life on a wide range of planets scattered throughout the universe. They don't try and predict what planets will form where, or exactly what life forms will evolve. It is enough to make a universe with a recipe they know will eventually produce numerous trees of life on numerous planets. When the gods see that some animals have evolved to a desired level of intelligence, they place souls or selves into each one. You and I are in these particular bodies by choice of the gods.
If this universe had followed any one of the countless other possible histories, the gods would have put you and I into two other bodies that developed in that particular history. That way, we would be certain to have an existence regardless of how the universe actually developed.
This scenario removes the aspect of chance from whether we exist or not. But it still allows for the role of chance in determining which actual planets form and which species actually evolve, and which animals are available for the gods to place our selves or souls in. ¤46
In this universe it would appear that only the tiniest fraction of its total potential will ever be realised. Why is this? Because as it evolves, it follows only one specific pathway or history, and not any one of the other countless pathways it has the potential to follow but is not. We are on that pathway. Every galaxy, star, planet, life form and self that would have developed if it was following its other potential histories, never will come to exist.
It is the same with individual human lives. We each forge (is that the right word?) one pathway through life, one history, one autobiography. But just think of all the countless other lives we could have led but didn't. A human can only have one history. A universe can only have one history.
But there is another side to this. Although each person can live only a single one of countless possible lives, and develop only a small part of their full potential, in total we are presently living 6 billion different lives, and developing 6 billion different expressions of the human potential.
It may be a similar story with the universe, with its billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars and perhaps billions of planets. Over its entire history a significant part of the full potential of this universe could come to be realised, as countless trees of life evolve in their own unique directions on their own unique planets, and not just one but perhaps billions of intelli- gent self-aware life forms evolve and explore the possible. ¤Should we see the baby universe as simply an ultrahot ultradense physical system that expanded and happened by chance to produce an Earth and its tree of life and a you and an I? That view sounds like an incorrect mindset to me.
Or should we see it as a fabulous seed, that included the potential, and all the necessary ingredients in some form, for you, me, Earth and its tree of life, and the whole of the visible universe for all of its history, packed into a volume less than the size of an atom?
We have some experience, on a lesser scale, of fantastic things blossoming forth from tiny beginnings. A giant tree from a seed, an adult human from a fertilised egg, the tree of life from perhaps as little as a single self-replicating molecule. ¤47
Is there some process going on in this universe that science doesn't even recognise yet, that determines who or what we are? Religions say there is. They say we are what we are because of decisions made by gods or spirits. We could have been another person or an ant if gods or spirits had so decided. What we are is not determined by the original make-up of this universe and its particular unfolding history, but by decisions of gods or spirits.
Could there be some natural process that determines who or what we are, that isn't simply the natural unfolding of this particular universe? Is there a natural system or process fundamental to our existence as individual humans that is still unknown to us? Maybe there is (the fundamental process of evolution was completely unknown to humans before 1859). If you can discover one, advance to Go, and collect several Nobel prizes. ¤We are consequences, consequences, consequences - of past events, processes, activities. Wee seem to be totally dependent for our existence on past happenings. The birth of the universe, the formation of Earth, the start of life, the evolution of life, the meeting of our particular parents, the meeting of a particular egg and sperm. Maybe the gods didn't make us, but natural processes in the universe certainly did make us.
What does it mean for each of us to be purely a made mind, a made self? We appear to be entirely products of activities within this universe.48
We have two related analogies for this that most of us are familiar with: 'the gods created each of us', and 'we are all children of the gods'. In these ideas we have a particular relationship to the gods, they made each of us as individuals. Now compare that with 'we are each individual selves made by natural processes in this universe'.
Does this idea that we are each fully made by natural processes touch an essence of what we are? It challenges the almost universally held belief that some fundamental part of us comes from elsewhere.
It defines a relationship we have to Existence. We are not spirits or souls or selves living symbiotically in human bodies. We are each particular individual children of this universe. The totality of what we are has been made by a particular tree of life on a particular planet in a particular universe. At the present level of our understanding, is that the most fundamental thing we can say about what we are?
Perhaps there's more to this universe than meets the eye, more to it than we thought.
It's not simply a physical system that you and I have been implanted into from somewhere else, from heaven or a spirit world perhaps. This is a universe which was born with the potential for you and I included in it. That's where we came from. ¤
CHAPTER FOUR
MORE THOUGHTS ON THE SELFTrace your existence back to the fertilised egg that developed into you. Would you still exist if a different sperm had fertilised that particular egg? Would that fertilised egg have grown into a person that was still you, but with some different characteristics, perhaps you would be the other sex for example?
What if that particular egg had not been fertilised at all, would 'you' ever exist?
Suppose your parents, instead of having the intercourse that resulted in conception of you, had abstained for a month, then had intercourse resulting in fertilisation of a new egg. Different sperm, different egg. Would that fertilised egg have grown into you (genetically different yes but still 'you')?
The answer would appear to be no. Consider this for example. Suppose that at the time of your conception the next egg in line was removed, fertilised by one of your father's sperm, and implanted in another woman. The resulting child clearly would not be you.
Identical twins are created when the fertilised egg divides into two cells, and each of those develops into a separate human. They have identical chromosomal genetic information as they both develop from the same sperm and egg. And yet they are completely separate objects, separate identities, separate minds, separate selves.
Does either twin have the same self as the single person who would have developed if that fertilised egg had produced one person and not two?50
If the fertilised egg you started out as, had instead divided into identical twins, would 'you' still exist, would you be one of them (and if so which one), both of them in some way, or neither of them? Or suppose the unfertilised egg had divided into two cells, each with one set of chromosomes, and then each of these cells had been fertilised by a different sperm (thus producing 'half identical' twins), would you be one of them, both of them in some way, or neither?
What does your existence depend on? The particular egg that was fertilised, regardless of which sperm fertilised it? Or the combination of egg and sperm? Or perhaps the particular sperm regardless of which egg fertilised it?
I return to a question I asked earlier. Billions of fertilised human eggs have developed into people that aren't you. What was it about that one particular fertilised egg that caused it to develop into you?
Suppose a couple is deciding whether to have another child. If they decide not to, does that potential self never come to exist, does it never appear as the self of another person in the future? I am inclined to think it does not. But we needn't feel sorry for that potential person because potential persons are absolutely nonexistent until they are actually made. And if they are not made, they never know they are not made.
Taken at face value, decisions on whether or not to make another person are exactly that. Every potential combination of egg and sperm is a unique potential person, and it's either made or it's not made.
Is every egg that isn't fertilised a potential person who will never exist? (Or should I say half a potential person?) Several hundred eggs may become available for fertilisation during the lifetime of a healthy woman, but most of these are destined to remain unfertilised.51
What about every sperm that isn't fertilised? Is that a potential person or half a potential person that will never exist? There are about a third of a billion sperm in an ejaculation. In a lifetime a man could ejaculate more than a trillion sperm, but usually less than one in 100 billion will unite with eggs to create new humans.
If before fertilisation one of the chromosomes from the egg that developed into you had been replaced by one from a different egg, would the fertilised egg have still developed into you? Suppose the entire set of chromosomes had been replaced?
Does your existence depend on you having the exact set of chromosomes you possess, the exact genes, or could they have been slightly, even substantially different, and still have built you?
We each have genes that encode the recipes for our hair and eye colours, perhaps we also have genes that encode the recipe for our 'selves'.
Suppose you are a 20 year old male named Goliath, living in Australia with your mother. On your 21st birthday, you are given a sealed envelope. Inside is a letter from your mother and your now deceased father, written 20 years ago.
The letter tells you that you are a result of an unusual in vitro fertilisation. Twenty-one years and 9 months ago, two eggs were removed from your mother, and fertilised with your father's sperm. One of the fertilised eggs or zygotes was determined to be female, the other male. It was planned to implant the female zygote (named Petunia) in your mother, and the male zygote (named Goliath) in your mother's sister living in America.
But the fertility clinic, using microsurgery, secretly switched all the chromosomes (but no other material) between the two zygotes.
The zygote named Petunia (now with Goliath's chromosomes) was duly placed in your mother in Australia, and the zygote named Goliath (now with Petunia's chromosomes) was placed in your mother's sister in America.52
The chromosome switch was not revealed until law suits started flying after the surprised women had given birth to a boy in Australia and a girl in America. The two women kept their respective babies but switched the names to match the sexes.
Now you (Goliath) having learned of this complex saga, ponder this question. If the chromosome switch had not been made, would you be a female living in Australia or a male living in America?
My immediate answer to this question would be a male living in America. But wait, things might not be quite so simple. Suppose the fertility clinic had only switched half the chromosomes between the two zygotes, so that each had an equal mix of Goliath and Petunia chromosomes. Where would the adult self that is 'Goliath' find himself or herself (depending on where the Y chromosome was put) then? He or she could hardly be half a person in Australia and half a person in America, surely? ¤What happens to our minds when we die? If they are completely a consequence of our living brains, then on the face of it, as our brains die our minds fade away until there is nothing left. We literally blank out. On the surface, each individual human appears to be a unique object in the universe, to appear once, live out its life, and vanish.
Consider the idea that in the whole history of the universe, we are each made once, uniquely.53
Could an observer of the universe, at the time the universe comes to an end, or at least a point in time far into the future, look back and say "This unique universe followed one particular history, during which countless unique objects were made, including many billions of the animals called humans. Each human individual existed for a few brief years and then vanished, like a shooting star in the sky, like a match that briefly illuminates a small patch of the eternal darkness and then goes out, forever."
I find this a depressing picture I have to say. I hope there's more to our existence than this.
Does the human mind, after reaching a peak of knowledge, experience and understanding in adulthood, simply fade away and vanish forever and absolutely when we die? It would seem such a waste.
I would like the opportunity to build on my experiences and learn from my mistakes, to use everything I've learned, and not to see it all vanish on my demise. Would Existence really waste something as exquisite and complex as the mature adult human brain with all its stored memories and knowledge?
Has the incredible complexity of the human brain been built by evolution simply so the DNA of our ancestors could more successfully reproduce (to simplify things a bit)? It is one of the more fortuitous ironies of evolution for us humans that we need about 100 billion brain cells to achieve this end, and yet think of the countless single-celled creatures that are just as successful at reproduction without a single brain cell. ¤54
Are we in any sense predetermined? And from how far back can we predict that a particular human will be created?
Imagine travelling back in time, to the time of your conception. During the week you were conceived, millions of women around the planet had intercourse. How could you predict which of those women would give birth to you?
You could make an accurate prediction if you compared your DNA with the DNA of all those women. But what if you attempted to compare your 'essence of self', whatever you
think makes you you rather than another person, with the essences of selves of those millions of women. Would you be able to predict which of them would be your mother? I don't think so.
Suppose we could travel back in time, in a spaceship equipped with every conceivable piece of scientific equipment, and visit Earth as it was 1,000 years ago. From that position, could we predict, scientifically, that you and I would be born 1,000 years hence?
We could easily predict that there would be numerous humans born in 1,000 years time. But even if we could do the impossible and put into our computers the exact position and velocity of every particle in the universe, I suggest that we still could not predict the coming into existence of you and I.
You could go to libraries and study records of astronomical observations made in the nineteenth century, and find a prediction there that Halley's Comet would appear in our skies in 1985-86, which it duly did. But what information was present in the nineteenth century that you could find in a library or elsewhere that would predict your own existence and the date of your arrival?
Was there some essence of you that existed back then, that we could have observed if we'd known where to look? Certainly, your direct ancestors were living. We could have observed them, predicted they would have children who would have children and so on. But what could we have observed that would have told us that one of those children would be you?
Suppose you are a woman with an egg ready for fertilisation. You have intercourse, and there are now several hundred million sperm in your body, swimming around searching for the egg. None of the sperm are genetically identical, so there are several hundred million genetically different humans possible from this single liaison, although only one will usually result if fertilisation occurs.55
Can anyone predict which of the millions of sperm will
fertilise the egg? No. Therefore, even at the time of the mating that resulted in your conception, it was not possible to predict which of the millions of potential humans would be conceived.
Which actual sperm fertilises the egg is subject to numerous chance factors, for example the exact location of each sperm in relation to all of its competitors at the time of ejaculation, and a wide variety of muscle and body movements both during and after intercourse.
It seems we can't predict our own existence from as far back as the intercourse that led to our conception, let alone as far back as the big bang. ¤It would seem that the existence or otherwise of a human can depend on seemingly minor or trivial events. Consider this example. A couple debate whether to have another child. They decide not to, and so a human that would have existed if they had decided to, does not exist. A couple of years later, contraception by chance fails, and a pregnancy results, twins as it happens, so two new humans exist that depend for their existence on a purely chance event, and not only that, but they are each the ancestors of numerous humans into the future. Surely that entire line of humans, who knows how many, can say, on the face of it, we owe our existence to a chance event many years ago.
It's a strange world we live in. How many of us alive today are consequences of unplanned pregnancies? Imagine the number of humans in the future who will or won't exist depending on such chance events and decisions. ¤56
It's interesting to reflect that we can make as many new humans as we can find resources for them. There's presently about 6 billion of us, we'll soon be 10 billion, barring disasters.
Imagine that you are a delegate at a United Nations conference which will decide what figure the world's population will be stabilised at, for the next 1,000 years. There are two alternative proposals, for 10 billion or for 11 billion. You are called outside, and when you return a vote is being taken. It's tied, equal numbers have voted for 10 billion and for 11 billion, and you are the last one to vote.
You know that 10 billion is safer, less likely to overload the Earth's resources. On the other hand, a vote for 11 billion will mean an extra approximately 10 billion humans will exist over the next 1,000 years, At that moment you hold the fate of 10 billion potential humans in your hand. Your vote will decide whether 10 billion people will exist or not exist.
Suppose a group of us journeys in a spaceship to a nearby star, and we find an Earth-like planet, complete with a similar tree of life but without any more intelligent animals than monkey-like creatures. After much soul-searching we decide to colonise it. Conditions are favourable, and soon the population numbers 10 billion. We've made 10 billion new self-aware humans. Colonise 100 Earth-like planets and soon there are a trillion new humans.
What are these minds, these awarenesses, these selves, that we can create or not create in vast numbers at the stroke of a pen? Creation of new lives, new minds, the gift of life.
On Earth the existence or otherwise of untold billions of people in the future may rest on decisions made about population levels. If we set these levels lower than necessary, billions of people who could have existed, won't. Setting the levels too high will be counterproductive as it will overload the Earth's resources. Somehow we will need to balance, giving the maximum number of humans the opportunity to exist and to lead fulfilling lives, without overtaxing the Earth's ability to support them and their fellow creatures. ¤
CHAPTER FIVE
WAS THE UNIVERSE DESIGNED FOR LIFE?When I first started writing down thoughts on life, gods and the universe, I wrote this piece. Somehow the universe has conspired to put, we speculate, perhaps trillions of planets with stable orbits around trillions of stars, at variable distances and with variable surface environments, and gently and steadily irradiate them for billions of years. Sometimes I think we're mad to suggest this could all be simply by chance.
Look at a photo of Earth as seen by the astronauts. Contrast it with the blackness of space, or the surface of the Moon. Planet Earth with its precious cargo of life is surely a miracle. Even if Earth-like planets with life are common in the universe, it's still a miracle. Who could possibly have dreamed up such a bizarre story as the evolution of this universe, planet Earth and the life on it? They must have been on acid I think.
Who dreamed up this wonderful balancing act of planets orbiting stars with such perfect precision? Whose thoughts were big enough to encompass the billions of years of time necessary, the billions of light years necessary to make it all work? It stretches credibility way beyond breaking point to suggest that this was all some accidental happening.
If the universe was designed by an intelligence of some kind, we can speculate that this intelligence had a vastly greater understanding of the workings of physics than we do, an ability to think on the scale of the dimensions of a universe, and sufficient knowledge to predict that a universe built along the lines of ours would work to produce life, intelligence, consciousness. In our lives, typical dimensions of time and distance are years and kilometres. Is there an intelligence that lives a life where typical dimensions are billions of years and billions of light years? ¤58
Several years later, with the above piece forgotten, I wrote this piece.
Is it likely that life is merely incidental to the existence of the universe?
A vast cloud of hydrogen and helium gas condenses to form trillions of stars. Inside these stars heavier elements essential for making planets and life are produced. Some of these stars explode and blast these heavier elements, and others made during the explosion, out into space where they mingle with more hydrogen and helium gas, this condenses to form more stars, with planets this time, and some of these stars are so stable they shine steadily for many billions of years, and on some of the planets life develops and evolves. Could chance alone have written such a script?
There are billions of galaxies in our universe. Even if there is only one planetary system per galaxy (probably a ridiculous underestimate), that is still billions of planetary systems.
Imagine for a minute, around billions of stars, many billions of planets orbiting, with a wide range of surface environments, bathed in the radiation of their suns for billions of years, the cake mix of life being gently baked.
Why would the universe put billions of planets around billions of stars, and gently irradiate these planets for billions of years, if not to produce life?
Did the universe 'know' that if it produced billions of planetary systems and left them undisturbed for long enough, life, intelligence, consciousness, would develop in some of them? And with every planet having its own unique environment and history, on every planet where life does develop, that life will be different.
Is there a single human prepared to categorically state that the universe was not designed in some way to produce life? ¤59
Here's a different viewpoint.
Simply saying that life is as much a part of the universe as stars and rocks, may not be sufficient or even correct. Maybe life is radically unlike anything else in the universe.
Perhaps life and the inanimate universe are entirely separate systems. One system - the inanimate universe, by pure chance spawned another completely different system - life. Now we're erroneously trying to make the existence of the second system the purpose of the existence of the first system.
Perhaps on a few planets including Earth, there's been a window of opportunity for a sequence of very complex chemical reactions leading to what we call life, simply a by-product of the way the universe actually is.
Are we trying to make the universe fit into a scheme that life has developed? Is it or is it not, simply presumptuous conceit on our part, to think that our lives on this tiny planet have anything at all to do with any purpose the universe may have in existing?
Is this not simply a continuation of the thinking that the Earth is at the centre of the universe, that a god created the universe as a home for us, a continuation of the Earth-centric human-centric view of the universe? note 8
We're still looking to see if the universe was designed to create life and eventually us. Still looking to link our existence with design and purpose of the universe.
Still looking for that comforting 'gods made the universe for our benefit', still can't let go that idea.
Are we still searching for evidence that we're relevant to some grand design or purpose of the universe? Maybe the only purposes that will ever be relevant to us are those made locally by evolution here on Earth. ¤60
What are the laws of physics? Did they exist before our universe did, before the big bang? Were they made by the gods to direct the unfolding of the universe so it would in the fullness of time make intelligent aware creatures? note 9
The fundamental building blocks of this universe, including the subatomic particles and spacetime, all came into existence at the big bang with particular properties. The electron for example has a specific mass and a specific electric charge. These properties don't seem to vary in the slightest no matter where or when you are in the universe.
Because these properties remain always the same, the behaviors of the fundamental building blocks in given situations remain always the same. Perhaps the laws of physics are simply descriptions of some invariant behaviors of the building blocks, and of aggregations of the building blocks. Perhaps the laws don't have any independent existence at all.
It's not some mysterious law decreed by the gods that commands that all particles of matter shall attract all other particles of matter with a given force. It's the intrinsic properties of matter and spacetime that results in the attraction. The law of gravity is simply a description of that invariant behavior.
It's a temptation to see the laws of physics as independently existing entities that cause matter, energy and spacetime to behave in particular ways, and to wonder if the laws could have been designed by the gods, or perhaps even be a part of what a god actually is. But if the laws of physics are only descriptions and not causes, then the bigger mystery lies not in the laws but in the fundamental building blocks themselves and their properties. Why did those particular building blocks with those particular properties appear at the big bang, and blossom forth into the fantastic world we see around us today? Were they designed by the gods? Or by some natural process? Or did they appear by chance? ¤61
Computers are complex, but it required something vastly more complex to design and make them, to bring them into existence. What about life? Did life require something vastly more complex to bring it into existence, or did it develop from a much simpler state that never did contain anything anywhere near as complex as life? Are we a complex development within a more complex universe or within a less complex, even simple universe? (note 10)
We now know that plants and animals were designed by mindless evolution and not directly by a supernatural entity. However the theory of evolution tells us nothing about whether the universe or Existence itself might have required intelligent design in order to produce a world where life could develop by natural means.
Find a computer out in the deserts of Mars, and you could correctly deduce that there was an intelligence abroad somewhere. Find life and intelligent creatures in a universe, and what does that imply? Can life and intelligence arise in a universe or an Existence not specifically designed for life and intelligence?
We can imagine that our universe happened purely by chance, that it wasn't designed, and has no purpose in existing. We can also imagine that a god, or perhaps intelligent creatures in another universe, designed and set going our universe for particular purposes. In the same sense as humans design and build aeroplanes and computers for particular purposes.
Or perhaps our universe was designed by purely mindless natural processes, for some natural unintended purpose, in the same sense as eyes, legs, wings etc., have been designed by evolution for natural unintended purposes.62
With some exceptions, scientists have been surprisingly reluctant to entertain the hypothesis that the universe might have been designed to make life. You might wonder why, since it seems such an obvious possibility, along with the hypothesis that life happened by chance. After all, we humans are quite used to designing things for particular purposes, and we are surrounded by plants and animals designed by nature.
In part this reluctance is probably a reaction against religious ideas of direct creation. But for those uncomfortable with the idea of supernatural creation as a scientific hypothesis, the universe could still have been designed, but by natural means.
Now suppose that the universe really was designed for some purpose, by a god, or by intelligent creatures, or by natural processes. Then what we see around us today may give us clues about the origin of that design, and its purpose. The universe is about 15 billion years old now, so perhaps some physical manifestation of its purpose may already be evident.
Life and mind are far and away the most complex things we see around us, leading to the straightforward idea that they might be related to any design and purpose the universe may have. Their complexity doesn't in any way prove this, but surely it is suggestive. More suggestive than stones are for example.
We look around and we ask, is there anything we can see that might suggest that the universe was designed for a purpose? To the eyes of many there is - life, mind, intelligence, consciousness (and what these things may become or achieve in the future).
Surely it would be unscientific to dismiss out of hand and without direct evidence something as complex as life as simply a chance occurrence, just as it would be unscientific to simply accept without evidence the hypothesis that the universe was designed by a god to produce life.
We were in a similar position early in the nineteenth century, when puzzling over the apparent design of the wings of birds for example.63
Consider these three alternatives: 'the wings of birds happened simply by chance', 'the wings of birds were designed by some natural process', 'the wings of birds were directly designed by a god'.
If you had dismissed the apparent design of birds' wings as simply a chance occurrence you would have been wrong, and if you believed that birds' wings were directly designed by a god you would have been wrong.
Now we face a similar situation as we puzzle over how the universe came to produce life. Consider these three alternatives: 'the universe was not designed to produce life - life is simply a chance occurrence', 'the universe was designed by some natural process to produce life', 'a god designed the universe so it would in the fullness of time produce life'.
It seems to me that on the evidence to date we can't dismiss any of these hypotheses, any of them could be correct (or there could be some other explanation).
There is another reason why many people have tended to abandon the idea that the universe could have been designed to make life. Far from being at the centre of all things, we appear to be orbiting one star among trillions of similar stars scattered throughout an unimaginably vast universe. We've evolved from apes and microbes rather than being made directly by a god. And while we've discovered no evidence that gods influence nature, we've discovered that chance and mindless physics are ubiquitous influences. Some people have concluded from these and similar discoveries that life is but a chance occurrence in a universe with no design or purpose.
But we are certainly not entitled to draw such a conclusion based on the available evidence. Subatomic particles, quantum mechanics, deep space and deep time, the big bang, the expansion of the universe, relativity, chaos, biological evolution, - such discoveries are telling us what the universe is made of and how it works, but they don't tell us it was not designed. A designed universe could contain all of these features.64
If I was told my life depended on correctly guessing whether the universe was designed or not, I would be in a quandary. But with considerable trepidation I would choose design - the universe has been designed by some unknown means so that life will develop on a wide array of planets.
In a way it all looks like a giant experiment. Make a universe with a recipe that will result in life developing on billions of planets, set it going, stand back and see what develops. Don't ask me who or what might do that, or for what reason.
And if I let my imagination roam a bit, isn't it interesting that the stable lifetimes of countless trillions of stars in this universe are many billions of years, more than enough time, if Earth is any guide, for intelligent conscious creatures to evolve on suitable planets. And isn't it interesting that long lived stars tend to shine steadily for billions of years without dramatic fluctuations that could destroy life on nearby planets. And that planetary orbits can be stable for the billions of years necessary for life to evolve to great complexity.
And isn't it interesting that stars are typically so far apart that collisions or near misses are a very unlikely prospect for any particular star, even when galaxies collide. And so far apart that trees of life on planets in different solar systems are effectively quarantined from each other, thus ensuring uniqueness rather than homogeneity.
And isn't it interesting that the habitable lifetime of the universe appears to be at least hundreds of billions of years, more than enough time for intelligent conscious creatures to do who knows what, perhaps even take over the entire universe.
Is it simply chance and coincidence that all these things happen to allow or favour the very long term development of life in the universe, and by contrast there is nothing that would seem to prevent it? Or has the universe been designed that way, so that life will flourish for hundreds of billions of years, and reach its full and perhaps fantastic potential? ¤65
Hands up all those people who think that biology has nothing to do with the origin of the universe. I can see plenty of hands. Maybe you're right. Or maybe it actually has a lot to do with it, or even everything to do with it.
When thinking about life and the universe in creative moods, I sometimes have a seemingly intuitive feeling that a universe which has the potential to produce life must of logical necessity be in some sense alive, or at least involved in life at a fundamental rather than a chance level.
I wonder if there is a much broader dimension to life than we presently perceive?
When this universe was born, it contained within it the potential for life. This leads naturally to the idea that the universe itself may be part of the totality of what constitutes life.
Was the universe when it came into existence simply an inanimate object which happened by chance to have the potential to produce life? Or could it actually be an integral part of life?
Perhaps our own lives and the tree of life on Earth are tiny parts of a vastly greater entity, Life, of which we are presently unaware. Perhaps in the whole of Existence, trees of life on planets, and universes that produce them, are simply different aspects of the totality of Life.
The very make-up of universes could be under the control of Life, as the make-up of seeds is controlled by the parent plants.
Baby universes may not be the inanimate things we tend to imagine they are, but a kind of seed which contains the ingredients both to spontaneously start the kinds of life we know, and provide it with suitable habitats.
Perhaps it will be biocosmologists and not physicists who will eventually find the explanation for the origin and make-up of our universe. ¤66
Is a purpose of the universe to produce life, intelligence, consciousness?
We simply don't know whether life is an incredibly unlikely chance occurrence in a universe that exists for purposes unrelated to life, or whether life is a fundamental part of the universe, a certainty, part of a purpose of the universe.
Is life written into the whole nature of the universe, or was its appearance a chance event? One of our greatest challenges is to determine whether this universe is suited for life by chance or design. (note 11)
We now have considerable understanding of the evolution of the universe since shortly after its beginning, and of the evolution of life since shortly after its beginning. So it may seem amazing that we can't yet tell whether life arose by chance or by design.
But given enough opportunity, chance can mimic design very closely. It could be extraordinarily difficult to determine which it is.
Suppose there is a team of gods whose task it is to make new universes, lots of them, godzillions in fact. For each new universe being made, the gods choose a set of fundamental building blocks completely at random. Numbers of dimensions, types of elementary particles and their properties, kinds of forces and their strengths. All chosen at random from among all possible building blocks.67
In this way, the gods ensure that there is an immense variety of universes, and hence an immense variety of activities and outcomes within these universes, and a wide variety of life forms among those universes that are by chance suited to life.
(Only a tiny proportion of these universes might be suited for life to emerge, but if godzillions of universes are made, this tiny proportion could still be a lot of universes. In fact the gods know that if they choose to make an infinite number of universes whose building blocks are chosen at random, then all possible expressions of life that can exist in universes, will eventually come to exist.)
Every year on Guy Fawkes day in heaven, trillions of new universes are set going in an awesome cacophony of big bangs, to much applause and gasps of astonishment from the assembled masses.
Now a second team of gods has the task of observing all these new universes as they unfold, and whenever they see that new forms of intelligent life have evolved somewhere, they spring into action, frantically placing new souls or selves into new creatures as fast as the creatures can reproduce, which is pretty fast in some cases, as we know.
And so it was that our universe was set going on Guy Fawkes day in the year 14,221,362,940 BP, and in the fullness of time you and I eventually came to be placed in these two bodies.
This is how we came to be living in a universe with a make-up suitable for intelligent life to evolve.68
Now, if we didn't know of the existence of the vast array
of universes, and thought that our universe was the only one, we would puzzle over how come it has a make-up suited to the evolution of intelligent life. We might come to think that it was directly designed by gods or nature to produce life, but we would be wrong. And generations of our physicists would search for a 'theory of everything' that would explain the make-up of our universe in terms of some fundamental underlying principles of physics, but they wouldn't find one because none would exist. The building blocks of our universe were chosen by the gods completely at random, without any design at all, and without any underlying principles of physics guiding their choice.
Now let's revisit this scenario, this time without any input from the gods. Suppose that rather than the gods making godzillions of universes with properties set at random, there is a natural process that does this. The result is the same - a vast number of different universes, and a wide variety of life forms among those universes suited by chance for life.
Again, intelligent creatures evolve in a small proportion of universes, including you and I in this particular universe. (This time we will assume that our selves were made along with our bodies, and were not put into bodies by the gods).
If we didn't know of the existence of the vast array of universes, and thought that our universe was the only one, we might come to think that our universe had been directly designed for life by gods or nature, and we would be wrong. And our physicists would search for a theory of everything but they would never find one.
There could be more than merely godzillions of universes. Suppose there is an infinite array of universes, in which all possible histories of all possible universes are present. Now ours is, clearly, a possible history of a possible universe. So we know that if this infinite array does exist, it must include our universe, and us. Although we would not know it, our existence would be evidence that such an infinite array does exist.69
In an infinite array of universes whose initial make-ups are set by chance or at random, chance can mimic design perfectly. There would be universes which appeared to their inhabitants to be perfectly designed for intelligent self-aware life to arise. If their inhabitants did not know of the existence of the infinite array, and thought theirs was the only universe in Existence, they might be completely baffled as to why their universe appeared to be so perfectly designed for life. They might come to think it was surely designed by the gods.
Darwin's theory of evolution has power, for example the power to explain how plants and animals came to be so well adapted to their environments, without resorting to explanations involving direct design by a god.
Many-universe theories also potentially have power, the power to explain at least in part how our universe came to have a make-up that resulted in the evolution of intelligent life, without resorting to explanations involving direct design by gods.
All you need is some means of producing a vast number of universes whose make-ups are determined by chance, and some will be suited to the evolution of intelligent life purely by chance.
Whether gods put our selves into these bodies, or whether we grew here naturally both bodies and selves, we must be living in one of the universes suited to life. We could find ourselves in no other kind.
Some people seem a bit dismissive of many-universe theories. They might ask what relevance can other universes have if we can never see them or know they exist. Or they might invoke the principle of Occam's razor and suggest that postulating a vast array of universes to explain why our one universe is suited to life, is going a bit overboard.70
But should we have invoked Occam's razor to dismiss the ideas when they were first proposed that there are more stars than just the Sun, or more galaxies than just the Milky Way galaxy? Obviously not. And neither should we dismiss the idea that there is more than one universe.
I think there may be a hidden reason why some people feel uncomfortable with many-universe theories. They can appear to offer a natural non-religious explanation for why our universe began with a make-up that led to the emergence of intelligent life. They are a challenge to our beliefs and desires for a designed, purpose-built universe.
But if some many-universe scenarios would seem to fade gods from the scene, there is another step we need to take which might bring gods back into the picture.
We still need to go one step further back and ask, how come there is this array of godzillions of universes (or an infinite number), that has as one of its overall properties, that life will emerge in a small proportion of its members? Where did that potential for life come from in the first place?
This line of inquiry takes us back to the nature of Existence itself.
In the beginning (if there was an in the beginning) was the appearance of Existence, including the potential for life, consciousness, ourselves. We can bypass the whole chain of cause and effect that eventually produced us, and simply ask, what is Existence, and how come it includes the potential for life and us?
Can anything as complex as life and mind emerge purely by chance in an Existence not designed for it? Does it even make sense to suggest that Existence includes this potential purely by chance? Doesn't chance require more than one object or entity, and isn't Existence only one entity? There's only one Existence, and it clearly does include this potential.
We may be able to find absolutely no trace of design for life in the make-up of our universe, but Existence itself could still have been designed.71
Some religions would say that a god or gods are responsible for Existence and its potential for life and us.
We are by no means fully ignorant of the nature of Existence itself. We have in our hands two complex pieces of the whole jigsaw puzzle of Existence - we ourselves, and the visible universe. The challenge is to deduce the true nature of the whole of Existence from the information contained in these two pieces of the puzzle.
If our universe is the only universe there is, and it constitutes the whole of Existence, then this may not be too difficult in the long run. But if our universe is only a miniscule and perhaps very atypical part of a vastly larger entity, then it will be a worthy challenge indeed for a creature whose brain took 4 billion years to evolve.
If our universe is only a tiny part of the whole of Existence, it's interesting to speculate on what we might be able to learn about all of Existence, with just two pieces of the puzzle.
If you'd never seen or heard about a dictionary before, and I took two pages from a dictionary and gave them to you, and asked you to try and deduce the nature of the whole book, you'd undoubtedly succeed at the challenge. But if I showed you two pages of the Bible or Gone with the Wind, and you'd never seen or heard about these books, you'd be able to learn something about the books from the two pages, but you'd never, even in principle, be able to reconstruct the entire stories.
Taking this to extremes, and who knows how much bigger and more complex Existence might be compared to our universe and us, suppose I asked you to reconstruct a book but gave you only two clues, the quotations "is" and "Ank-ank". (Some of you will have already guessed the answer, it is of course Frogs of South Australia by Michael Tyler). Let's hope we have more information, comparatively speaking, about Existence than this.72
Can we deduce the nature of an entire jigsaw puzzle of unknown size if we're given only two pieces to study? If both pieces contained the same repetitive pattern we might be able to do it. But in many cases, for example if it is a landscape scene or a depiction of a painting, while we might learn important information about the whole puzzle, we could never, even in principle, reconstruct the entire picture.
Whether there is enough information in our universe for us to eventually deduce the nature of the whole of Existence remains an open question, and there may be only one way to find out the answer, and that is to keep working at it and see how far we can get. ¤
CHAPTER SIX
CHANCE, GODS AND NATUREOne of the most fundamental yet disturbing discoveries made over the past few decades is the prominent role of chance in the universe.
We don't need to be scientists or probability experts to see and think about chance in action.
Just think about all the chance events that led to your existence. The chance meeting of your two parents, the chance meeting of their four parents, and so on back through the ages, is one example.
Another good example is your conception. There were hundreds of millions of sperm searching for the egg, think of the role chance would have played in deciding which one of those millions fertilised the egg.
Chance encounters between two humans can lead to great loves and new life, chance encounters between two aeroplanes can lead to tragic loss of life.
Another well-known example is the chance collision of Earth with an asteroid or comet 65 million years ago, that may have led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and the rise of mammals.
Imagine the scene. The days go by, the weather is its usual unpredictable self. Then another day dawns, a day like any other, but this is not to be like any other.
On this day, by chance, Earth and a large comet or asteroid happen to arrive at the same point in space at the same time. Countless billions of dinosaurs that would have come into existence in the future, never will. And countless billions of humans, including you and I, that would not have existed, are now destined to exist.74
A purely chance collision. In determining which living objects come to exist and which don't, it seems to me that chance doesn't simply play a role, it runs rampant.
So it is with individual human lives. I think most adults can look back and see more than one chance event that radically altered the course of their lives.
We are going to have to get used to the fact that chance plays a prominent role in the evolution of life on Earth, and in our own lives, and that this chance is a natural part of the universe, is mindless, and has nothing to do with gods.
Of course if we want, we can believe that gods can and do influence chance events, but I personally doubt if that ever happens.
Gods could influence chance events without us ever knowing, because in many cases their influence need only be extremely tiny, and occur in places hidden from our view.
Perhaps the lead sperm in the great race inside your mother's body suddenly swam backwards for a minute, allowing the second sperm in the race to take the lead, resulting in your conception rather than the conception of someone else.
Suppose two aircraft flying in cloud are on a collision course purely by chance. How easy it would be for gods to avert the collision, simply by causing one of the pilots to make a minor adjustment to the controls, so minor the pilot wouldn't even be aware of it, and yet sufficient so the planes just miss each other.
One day when I was running for exercise along a beach on the seashore, a thunderstorm drifted in from the sea, just to the north of me. I kept running although I was a bit apprehensive about the lightning. Well I might have been, because several kilometres to the north, a person lying on the beach was struck and killed.75
What are we to say about this? Chance was a dominant factor in this event. The person by chance was lying where the lightning was going to strike, the lightning by chance struck where the man was lying. There was no malice, intent or feeling in this. This was no god taking vengeance on some poor miscreant. This was simply a combination of physics and chance, neither of which have minds.
No laws of physics protect us from such chance accidents simply because we are living objects, or because we have lived long and complex lives, or because we have dependent children, or because we've been good all our lives, or because we are highly valued by the community.
Did a supernatural agency protect this person from being struck by lightning? Obviously not. There is no evidence that supernatural agencies protect us from such chance events, and there is abundant evidence, in the deaths of numerous people each year from chance accidents, that they do not.
Surely the many people around the world who are killed by lightning each year are just the same kinds of people as you and I, and no less deserving of supernatural protection.
Most of us can accept that there are no laws of physics protecting us from chance accidents simply because we are living objects or humans.
But the issue of protection by gods is a much more contentious matter. I think the majority of humans, if caught outdoors in a severe thunderstorm with no place to take cover, would ask for supernatural protection.
We know that on Earth, numerous people are killed by chance events each year. Obviously, neither gods nor physics protected these people simply because they were people.76
Lightning doesn't deviate off course simply because a person rather than a rock is in its path. Similarly, and more worrying for our species, there are no laws of physics that protect planets from cosmic catastrophes. The presence of life on a planet provides no protection from these potential disasters.
If chance determines that we are struck by lightning, then we are. If chance determines that Earth collides with another body, then it does.
In the natural scheme of things, on Earth individual humans appear to be expendable, and in the broader universe individual planets appear to be expendable.
If the universe has been designed by some means to produce life, intelligence and consciousness, it appears that some redundancy has been built in. Some life-producing planets will be lost due to chance catastrophes, but there will still be sufficient numbers to achieve whatever purpose the universe has in existing.
If our number comes up by chance, if Earth collides with a giant comet or asteroid and Homo sapiens goes extinct, in the overall scheme of the universe that may simply be the luck of the draw. There will be other planets where intelligent life will complete its journey into the future.
I think this is an uncomfortable scenario for many of us, myself included. We are not used to thinking of ourselves as expendable in this way. We do not like to think that after 4 billion years of evolution of life on Earth, it could all be destroyed in some purely chance collision.
But to a universe with billions of galaxies, the loss of a small percentage of life-bearing planets due to chance disasters may be neither here nor there.
Perhaps even as you read this, somewhere else in the universe, a life form at least as intelligent and self-aware as we are, is facing the imminent destruction of their planet due to some chance catastrophe - a collision or a nearby supernova perhaps. They and all other life on their planet are about to be destroyed absolutely. No laws of physics and no prayers to gods will save them. They can only hope that elsewhere in the universe other life forms will go on to fulfill whatever purpose there may be for life in the universe. ¤77
Study the workings of Earth's weather and climate, or study the processes that built the present day geology of the Earth. These are all natural systems, we find no trace of intervention or guidance by gods. Many of us nowadays simply accept that the weather, the climate, the geology of Earth, operate entirely naturally without input by gods.
But what about the evolution of life, the building of the tree of life? We are more reluctant to accept that this was an entirely natural process without any trace of intervention by gods.
To me, the single most persuasive argument against there being any involvement by traditional gods in the whole sequence of events leading from simple life forms to the evolution of humans, is that it looks like an entirely natural system developing entirely naturally. Not just a bit like a natural system but abundantly like it. And abundantly not like a system run or directed by compassionate gods. (note 12)
The same can be said for living nature as we see it on Earth today. It looks like a natural system running naturally.
It looks as if the tree of life on Earth has been built by natural processes, involving interactions between environments, reproducing life forms, and replicating and sometimes mutating DNA molecules. No gods were involved in its evolution, and no gods are involved in its day to day running.
Gods don't run the natural world, it runs itself.
With the aid of the study of fossils, genetics, plant and animal breeding, and a variety of other disciplines, we can now see how the tree of life was made, by natural processes of evolution, we can see how that has eventually led to the making of humans and us.
My suggestion is, don't blame the gods for the flaws in the system, e.g. children dying of cancer, the system was built by natural processes and not by compassionate gods. ¤78
Would a god who sits by and does nothing while millions of children die each year from cancer and other illnesses, really be a fit entity to be accepting moral guidance from? Would a religion with such a god really be an appropriate one to be in? What kind of a god will only cure childhood cancer if the parents pray?
Are you praying to a god who will only cure your child's cancer if you pray hard enough? Surely a god who could cure childhood cancers would do it, and not sit around waiting for the parents to rack up sufficient prayer points.
Perhaps gods can't cure cancers or any other biological ailments. Perhaps these things are simply part of nature and can't be influenced by gods.
It's a great idea that gods can bring us good fortune and cure misfortune, but perhaps the world simply doesn't work that way. It's an idea humans may eventually come to abandon.
We will still hope, for remission of a cancer, or for a particularly long and healthy life, or whatever, we'll simply no longer think we can sway the odds by praying to the gods.
Like it or not, illnesses and deaths have been built into the fabric of this life on Earth.
There's no point asking why did the gods allow my child to get cancer, because gods had nothing to do with it. It's a natural system, it's not run by gods, it's not influenced by gods.79
If you are reading this then it's inevitable that you were born and that you will eventually die. Everybody dies, it's purely natural. (note 13)
Death is not an incidental part of this system, it's an integral part of the processes of evolution that built you and I. Every generation of our ancestors died and made way for the next generations, and so evolution was able to continue through the ages and eventually make you and I. Inevitably you and I will die and make way for new generations of humans. ¤Here is a fundamental fact of life on planet Earth, that we observe to be true. There are numerous natural events every year around the planet which result in the deaths of humans. Earthquakes, floods, droughts, storms, to name a few. These are all events where all-powerful gods could intervene to save people, but don't.
Why don't the gods intervene? Perhaps gods exist but they can't influence nature. Or they can intervene but choose not to. Or they don't exist.
There are also millions of people every year around the planet who have narrow escapes from death. Many of these people feel that a god did intervene to influence the course of events and save them. They may be right. Or it may have been pure luck.
Should we abandon prayers where we ask gods to physically intervene in the world? Maybe we should. If the gods could improve our lot, cure a loved one from a health problem, save our city from an approaching hurricane, surely they would do so. Why wouldn't they do it anyway regardless of our prayers?
It would be great if gods did physically help us when we prayed, but I can see no evidence that they do, nor can I see any logic to thinking that they will assist us if we pray, and won't assist us if we don't pray.80
What god would let even one child die of cancer if it could be prevented?
Why would gods only bother intervening if we pray? If the gods care enough about us they would surely intervene regardless of whether we pray or not. If you saw your children in danger, wouldn't you rush to assist them regardless of whether or not they called for help?
My own view is that gods cannot cause or cure accidents or illness, and they cannot rescue loved ones from accidents or illness.
If gods could influence natural events in the way many people believe, they surely would have built a universe where their children were not subject to natural disasters in the first place.
Is it time to face the awful truth, that as far as physical assistance goes, we are on our own?
In my opinion we would be better off abandoning the idea that gods can influence the natural world, except through the minds of sentient beings.
Inanimate nature is totally mindless. Weather, volcanos, earthquakes, to give three examples, all controlled by purely mindless forces and processes.
Do we see tornados zigzagging across the USA, dodging all the houses where people are praying and destroying only houses where people are not praying? Of course not.
Do you believe in a compassionate god that can intervene in the world? Then you believe in a god that stands by and does nothing while millions of humans die each year from floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, illnesses and other natural disasters. I might worship such a god out of fear, but certainly not in admiration. It's not a god I would want in my life.
On the face of it, a god who has the power to intervene to save millions of people from untimely deaths each year, and chooses not to, would be committing a sin far greater than anything any human has ever done. (note 14)
I know it's hard to give up cherished beliefs and ideas, but I think if we abandon the idea of a god who can intervene to save people but chooses not to, we are on fairly safe ground. ¤81
One of the biggest problems we have in coming to an understanding of the human condition, and a central fact of life we have to face, is the unfairness in human life.
If we look at the life around us, by our standards there is a lot of unfairness in this world.
To give but one obvious example, it is an inescapable fact that millions of children die each year without ever having the opportunity to lead fulfilling lives, while millions of other humans reach a ripe old age.
The unfairness I'm talking about is not the fault of humans, it's built into the system. The kind of unfairness where for example every year many people discover they have a genetic disorder which means they can't have children or they are going to die young.
The kind of unfairness where millions of children are born into poverty-stricken families in the midst of famine, while millions of other children are born into rich families in the midst of plenty.
For those of us taught from early childhood that there is a compassionate god who watches over us, the unfairness in human life is one of the most difficult problems to reconcile with our religious beliefs. And it seems fundamentally at odds with the idea of a compassionate all-powerful god making the world and humans in one go.82
We imagine that, were we a god, we would surely not allow such unfairness, we would correct it. Would we even want gods that created such an unfair world of their own free will? Surely no compassionate god who could intervene, would allow this unfairness to happen. Would any one of us allow such unfairness, if we were a god able to alter things?
Life on Earth is, in part, complex biochemistry and physics. Fairness, as a first approximation, isn't relevant in chemistry and physics. It's no more relevant than in playing poker. If you are dealt a useless or losing hand in poker, do you say "Why me, what have I done to deserve this, it's totally unfair?" or do you simply accept it, recognising that fairness plays no role in poker. It plays no role in biochemistry either.
Most of us more or less accept that fairness plays no role in the hands we are dealt at cards. Whether we've been good or bad, whether we're elderly or young, the hands we are dealt are determined by mindless chance.
Some of us are going to get cancer and die before old age. "It isn't fair, why me?" we may ask. There are answers to this question - maybe because we smoked, or got severely sunburned 30 years ago, or inherited particular genes, or ingested a carcinogen, but never 'nature sitting in judgment on us' and never 'punishment from the gods'.
We'd be right about the unfairness though. It's a fundamental lesson we all have to learn about life on planet Earth, it isn't fair. So take your chances, opportunities don't knock twice, sail on the tides, make hay while the Sun shines and love while the Moon shines.
There is plenty of compassion and fairness among humans. In our human cultures, the concept of fairness is central. We care, for our partners, children, friends, our fellow humans (some of them anyway). We want to be living in a universe which shows compassion for each of us, which is fair to all humans.83
But fairness does not seem to exist in nature outside of minds, and nor would we expect it to in inanimate natural systems. These systems don't make decisions based on fairness criteria, it takes a mind to do that.
The unfairness in human life on Earth is a fact that is not going to be argued away, and it surely must be included as part of any realistic religious and scientific world views. Saying that gods work in mysterious ways their wonders to perform (as I frequently do), is simply avoiding reality.
It seems to me that if there are gods, they work through minds and not through nature. As far as nature goes, we're on our own.
If gods could intervene in nature they would do it. If they were going to influence nature directly, they would have done it by now, not secretively in a few cases, but abundantly and obviously, for all to see, they would have straightened nature out by now. They haven't done it.
What would we lose if we abandoned any idea that gods can influence nature? Nothing except hope sometimes fulfilled by chance.
If the world of us humans is going to be made a fairer place, we are the ones who are going to have to do it. Whether we believe that gods are working through our minds, or that we are on our own, it's up to us. ¤
CHAPTER SEVEN
LOOKING TO THE FUTURESuppose that one morning you turn on the radio to listen to the news, and you hear that a group of people meditating in the Sahara Desert have discovered the true nature, meaning and purpose of life and the universe. You listen to their explanation, it's amazing, brilliant, and it's obviously true. Perhaps it includes gods, perhaps it doesn't. It fits all the facts as we know them. Everything falls into place. This IS the answer.
This is a staggering revelation. It alters your entire perspective on life. You realise that all previous schemes we have dreamed up, all our present day religions, will simply be swept aside, rendered completely irrelevant.
Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and a multitude of other religions around the world, are about to vanish into history as surely as the old Sun-worshipping religions did. ¤Nothing I have seen in my life has conclusively demonstrated to me that there are gods, or that there are not gods. As far as I know, not a single piece of scientific evidence has been found that shows that gods exist, or that gods don't exist, and no logical, philosophical or theological discussion (and there's been plenty) has yet proved that there are or aren't gods.
Even the world's most powerful religious leaders such as the Pope don't have access to secret information locked away in the vaults somewhere and unavailable to the rest of us, proving that there is a god.
So, as a first approximation, each of us knows as much as any human alive about whether there is or isn't a god.85
Most of us are not able to determine whether or not E does equal mc² as claimed by Einstein, because we don't have the necessary physics and mathematics training.
If we live in the real world, we are not free to choose whether gravity exists or not, because there is abundant evidence that it does, which we would ignore at our peril.
But in thinking about gods, we are unconstrained by any compelling scientific evidence for or against - there isn't any, unconstrained by lack of special training - we don't need it, and unconstrained by lack of access to essential information available only to the high priests - there isn't any.
So we are as free as anyone else to creatively build our own spiritual lives, and to make up our own minds about what religions we may care to participate in, and whether or not there are any gods. ¤There is Existence. And within that Existence, there is the potential for various things. This obviously includes a universe, stars, planets, life, intelligence, humans. Perhaps fairies do not have the potential to exist. Humans have scarcely begun to explore what is possible and what is not possible within Existence. What can form and what cannot, what can evolve and what cannot, what can be built and what cannot.
What is the total potential that lies within Existence?
We know that Existence does include life and mind. We are the living thinking proof of that. If it includes these two things, incredibly complex as they are, what other wonders might Existence include?
Look how far life, intelligence and consciousness have already come on just one planet. What might these things achieve in future ages? What fantastic potential there must be for complexity in this universe.86
We may be trying to understand a universe that is capable of producing levels of complexity we don't even dream about, perhaps trillions of times more complex than us humans.
(Although there are limits to the potential. For example, the number of subatomic particles available to build things has a limit, the speed of light imposes another limit, the expansion of the universe imposes another limit.)
We can be confident we've seen only a tiny part of the full potential of Existence. How many other trees of life exist throughout the universe? Perhaps it's millions, billions, trillions. What are the full potentials of art, mathematics, computers, technology, space travel, sex?
Without Existence, no us. It's already given us one surprise, our own existence. What other surprises might it have in store for us? (Our deaths I hear some wag reply. I mean apart from that.)
Surely we can be optimistic that there's more in store for us when we shuffle off this mortal coil. ¤One human brain probably looks fairly much like another if you look at it from the outside. But if we could magnify the brain and see the entire structure in great detail, if we could tour the brains of a range of individuals at levels of detail that showed all the connections between neurons, and the detailed molecular structure of the memories, we might be quite astonished by the uniqueness of each person's brain at those levels.
Presumably the entire memory of each of us is physically encoded in our brains. Think of just how much information is contained in your memory. It must be a vast amount. Somehow, in your brain in a space smaller than your head, is a physical representation of your entire unique memory.87
Is there another human who has anywhere near your total memory? No. There isn't. Never has been, never will be. (For a start, no future human will live in our times, no past human lived in our times). The closest I can think of would be Siamese twins.
One sometimes hears the comment "Every human is unique". And it is explained that each human has a unique combination of genes. But a lot of our uniqueness comes from the immense capacities of our memories. Each human has a different environmental history, and a different history of experiences, and hence a unique memory.
Even if we could produce another human in the future with your exact genetic make-up, we could never reproduce the particular environment, or the times, in which you grew up, in which you lived.
When we engage in any creative activity, such as raising or helping to raise children, contributing to group decision making, teaching, building, making art, developing a relationship, or contemplating the mysteries of existence, nobody else has or ever will bring the same combination of memories and experiences to these tasks.
In the entire history of this universe, there will only ever be one you. ¤One thing to say about Existence is, it's here, we're here. The universe exists, we exist.
We're in it now, we're part of Existence. Maybe we'll stay part of it. The rest of Existence is unlikely to vanish when we die, so why should we? Maybe when we exist, as we do, we can't exit from Existence.
There could be a lot more to our existence than just this one life. Maybe we will survive death in some form. Perhaps the deaths of our bodies is not going to be the end of it. Perhaps our journey is just commencing, our journey in this universe.88
We're in Existence, and I reckon we're gonna stay in it. Be creative, build. In all of Existence, which we think may last hundreds of billions of years if not forever, is it likely that each of us lasts only a few decades and that's it? Are we to have existence snatched away from us again when we die, is this tiny cameo role all we get?
Do we not exist for an eternity, then exist for 3 score years and 10, and then not exist for another eternity? Intuitively that seems unlikely to me.
Consider these two alternative hypotheses: (a) you exist only for the length of your human life span and not before or after, (b) you exist in one form or another for at least the duration of existence of our universe.
Let's conservatively estimate the life span of our universe at 100 billion years, and let's say your life span will be 100 years, which is one billionth of our estimated lifetime of the universe.
Now, the chances of you being in your period of existence (100 years) rather than your period of non-existence (100 billion years minus 100 years) is one in a billion, vanishingly unlikely odds.
And yet you find yourself in your period of existence.
If we do only exist for this one life of 100 years, isn't it strange that this happens to be the one in a billion time period when we are existing? In a universe that exists for 100 billion years there will be 999,999,999 such periods when we won't be existing, and one solitary period when we do.
This suggests that the hypothesis that you only exist for 100 years might be incorrect. More likely that you exist all the time, and you simply happen to be in this human phase of your existence now. No surprise then to find ourselves existing at the present time.89
Now, thinking about our childhood discoveries of our own existence, our first encounters with existence. When we are growing up, we discover, we make the discovery, that we exist.
For those of us who are adults, the childhood discovery of our own existence has considerably faded from our memories. I wonder if in adulthood we become overly conditioned, overly narrow in our thinking about existence.
Children easily come to believe religious stories about life after death, eternal life, reincarnation. Does this in part reflect children's fresher experience of existence, their first encounter with existence still clear in their minds?
Children may have more awareness of the true nature of existence than adults, because they are in the process of encountering and coming to terms with their own existence. They are directly interacting with existence in a way that adults are not. Perhaps children see more clearly the broader possibilities in existence, and to them, life after death may not be a far-fetched idea at all.
Do we slowly wake from a long sleep, or do we come from a state of non-existence (as it appears we do at face value), or continue a journey we are already on, perhaps transferring to this human existence directly from some other form of existence?
My own guess is that there is continued existence for us in some form after our bodies die. I don't want to limit myself with an assumption (and that's all it is) that this life is all there is. I have a toehold in Existence now, and I'm determined not to give it up. The fact is we have appeared in Existence at least once, and while it's no guarantee we can do it again, it certainly is encouraging. ¤90
One reason that the answers to some of the fundamental mysteries are not obvious is that we're still on a steep learning curve, and it's a long journey.
Understanding is preceded by not understanding. We are still very much in a stage of exploring and learning, the exploring and learning have to be done, there appear to be no magic steps. We're still emerging from a state of absence of knowledge of the universe that characterised life on Earth for most of its 4 billion year history. It takes time to gain knowledge and understanding of very complex systems. We've only recently discovered the scientific method, and only recently developed the necessary skills to make instruments such as microscopes and telescopes that greatly magnify the exploring power of our senses.
Is the totality of knowledge a vast tapestry, and somewhere on the tapestry are the answers to our most fundamental questions? There may be no short cut to knowledge, to the answers. We will have to work for every inch and centimetre gained
Since the universe exists, all knowledge about it, in a sense, exists too. And it should all be connected, it's a reasonable assumption that no areas of knowledge are completely isolated from other areas of knowledge. By progressively building our knowledge we should eventually come to the answers to our fundamental questions about this universe and our existence.
Is it correct to assume that there are no areas of knowledge that are completely separate from the rest of the tapestry? Perhaps life after death, and other universes, are two aspects of Existence which are completely unconnected to our present world, and no information from them ever reaches us. In this life we will never find any physical trace of life after death or other universes. We can only attempt to deduce their existence or otherwise from the nature of our own lives and our own universe.
Our knowledge is steadily building. Even if we don't solve the problems during our own lifetimes, we are relentlessly closing the gap between where we are at present, and the answers. ¤91
It was a physical journey. Life had to come a long way to discover intelligence, consciousness, self-awareness, compassion, etc., a 4 billion year odyssey. Life on Earth entering into new landscapes of Existence. Now we're here we have much to explore. ¤
Most of us have experienced the strong feeling, an intuition, even a sense of certainty, perhaps when gazing at the night sky with its myriad of stars in the vastness of space, or watching a sunset with a loved one, that there must be more to life than meets the eye, that there is a bigger meaning to it all.
We don't need to know anything at all about science to have an intuitive feeling, right or wrong, that the world we see around us is so extraordinary that it could not exist by chance alone.
When the archaeologist Howard Carter uncovered the still sealed door to the tomb of King Tutankhamun, he did not know what lay beyond, but he sensed something wonderful. We are exploring a far greater mystery, the mystery of the origin and purpose of the universe, and of our own existence. If we can succeed in opening those doors, what will we find?
The End
92NOTES
1 A trillion is a thousand billion or 1,000,000,000,000; a billion is a thousand million or 1,000,000,000.
2 A light year is the distance light travels in one year,
about 10 trillion kilometres. A light minute is about 18
million kilometres and a light second about 300,000
kilometres.3 Scientists are very confident that the universe is between 10 and 20 billion years old, but it has proved surprisingly difficult to narrow this range of uncertainty. An average best guesstimate for some time now has been about 15 billion years, and this is the figure I use in the book. Some recent estimates have been lower, but we shall see.
4 I give 4 billion years as the approximate age of life on Earth. We may never know the exact figure, because most rocks from the early Earth have been destroyed by subsequent geological activities. The earliest definite fossils of life so far discovered are about 3.6 billion years old. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago.
5 See for example Bryan Appleyard discussing the influence of science on religions in his controversial book Understanding the Present (Pan Books, 1992).
6 See for example a discussion in Chapter 2 of The Matter Myth by Paul Davies and John Gribbin (Viking, 1991), on the influences of chaos and quantum uncertainty on future states of the universe.
7 A godzillion is any number between 1 followed by 100 zeros and infinity, numbers so large that even the gods have difficulty imagining them, and sometimes used to describe the number of rabbits in Australia.
93
8 In Chapters 1 - 4 of Pale Blue Dot (Random House, 1994), Carl Sagan discusses and cans Earth-centric human-centric views of the universe, and considers whether there is evidence in nature for a Designer of the universe.
9 For views of three cutting-edge physicists and cosmologists on whether there is evidence for a god in the fundamental underlying laws of physics and the workings of the physical universe, see God and the New Physics (J.M. Dent & Sons, 1983) and The Mind of God (Simon & Schuster, 1992) by Paul Davies, Dreams of a Final Theory (Vintage, 1993) by Steven Weinberg, and A Brief History of Time (Bantam, 1988) by Stephen Hawking.
10 There are valuable insights into this topic in Daniel Dennett's book Darwin's Dangerous Idea (Simon & Schuster, 1995).
11 This question is considered in some detail in Paul Davies' book Are We Alone? (Penguin Books, 1995).
12 See Richard Dawkins' book River Out of Eden (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995) Chapter 4 for a chilling picture of living nature, including humans, built by mindless evolution.
13 The inevitability of the loss of our abilities and death is graphically illustrated in Bert Keizer's book Dancing with Mister D (Doubleday, 1996), describing a doctor's encounters with people dying in a nursing home.
14 See for example the book God The Interview (ABC Books, 1993) by radio presenter and former clergyman Terry Lane.
94BIBLIOGRAPHY
Appleyard, Bryan, Understanding the Present, Pan Books, 1992.
Barrow, John, The Origin of the Universe, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994.
Davies, Paul, God and the New Physics, J. M. Dent & Sons, 1983.
Davies, Paul, The Cosmic Blueprint, Simon & Schuster, 1989.
Davies, Paul, The Mind of God, Simon & Schuster, 1992.
Davies, Paul, Are We Alone?, Penguin Books, 1995.
Davies, Paul, and Gribbin, John, The Matter Myth, Viking, 1991.
Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker, Longman, 1986.
Dawkins, Richard, River Out of Eden, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995.
Dennett, Daniel, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Gribbin, John, In Search of the Big Bang, new edition, Penguin Books, 1998.
Hawking, Stephen, A Brief History of Time, Bantam, 1988.
Keizer, Bert, Dancing with Mister D, Doubleday, 1996.
Lane, Terry, God The Interview, ABC Books, 1993.
Sagan, Carl, Pale Blue Dot, Random House, 1994.
Smoot, George, and Davidson, Keay, Wrinkles in Time, Little Brown, 1993.
Weinberg, Steven, Dreams of a Final Theory, Vintage, 1993.
95ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in 1948, Ed Everest was raised on a farm in country Queensland in Australia. He obtained a degree in Science and took up a profession as a field ecologist, surveying areas of native vegetation and their faunas. Also a keen naturalist, he has participated in many expeditions surveying the native wildlife in outback Australia. He brings valuable biological experience to his writings, missing from most modern literature on the mystery of human existence. He is single, and this is his first book.
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