Table of Contents
To all freethinkers, past and present, whose independence of mind isolates them from the sympathy and understanding of their community, but whose courageous and unwavering devotion to the scientific method has liberated their community from the Dark Ages
Foreword:
Paper Cut Stigmata
by Dorion Sagan
When I got a paper cut, slicing my thumb while reading the uncorrected proofs of this edition of Atheist Universe, I thought it might be a signnot as dramatic, perhaps, as being struck by a lightning bolt in a sensitive part of the anatomy during an extremely arduous act of premarital lovemaking, but a sign nevertheless.
Creationists are funny. They want to be taken seriously as scientific and have their or their comrades writings taught as science to our children in schools. But their attitude is unscientific. Rather than engaging in open-minded investigation to figure out how things are done, at the first glimmer of mystery they throw up their hands and say it is beyond science. This is like not knowing how a magic trick is done and thinking no one else can know, either. We can give up trying to understand because Godwho in their view is like a 2000-year-old petty Middle Eastern tyrant, quick to anger and condemn to the eternal prison of Hell those who dont obey Himmust have done it. As soon as they (to sound scientific) ascribe the phenomenon to irreducible complexity, Intelligent Design, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or something else, they have abandoned the search. Needless to say, suggesting something is beyond science evinces neither the spirit of entrepreneurial inquiry and American ingenuity nor is it, in any way, shape or form, science. Science does not stop at some artificial limit of inquiry. It continues on. It, to borrow an apposite religious term, perseveres. Creation science and Intelligent Design theory do not persevere. They throw in the towel.
Science, in the words of quantum physicist David Bohm, is about finding the truth whether we like it or not. Apparently some fundamentalists are not comfortable with the truthso much so that they have gone undercover, pretending to be scientists, except that (as David Mills shows here) they invent facts and contradict themselves to arrive at their preconceived conclusions.
One can hardly underestimate the power of religious fundamentalism. Nor is it limited to Christian fundamentalism. As shown by the recent Islamic example of suicidal terrorists attempting to reap their reward of 72 dark-eyed menstruation-, urination- and defecation-free houris, each more beautiful than any combination of earthly sexpots, the unlikelihood of a belief does not lessen its power. Not if it appeals to what we wish or fear to be true. A God who commands that you love Him (does this sound like true love?) and threatens you with eternal torture in Hell (no matter what good works you might have done) if you dont believe in Him may be an extremely effective transgenerational ideological scare tactic. But that doesnt make it true. As Mills shows in this remarkably clear textwhich should be taught in schoolsthe founders of the United States were not fundamentalists. Indeed, the phrase under God in the Pledge of Allegiance and the words In God We Trust on U.S. currency were only added during the fear-laden Cold War 1950s.
Fundamentalismwhether Christian, Islamic or some other distinct vintageis an atavistic human thought structure. It is, however, quite natural. When threatened, we revert to old patterns that aid group survivalnever mind the epistemological taint nor the abdication of an honest search for truth. The truth may set you free but societies require obedience, hierarchy and cohesionergo the paradox that the wheels of survival, especially during times of duress, are greased more readily by easy lies than hard truths. In terms of the scientific quest for human origins and those of life, the religious answer that God did it resembles the conclusion of a corrupt police official who frames a suspect without looking at old, let alone new, clues. When you look at creationism or Intelligent Design theory in this wayas pretend science involved in a dishonest investigationyou see it revealed in all the ultraviolet glare of its own petty offices. As David Mills shows, its not a pretty picture.
All of which is a shame, because there is no greater tonic for true spirituality than science itself. The word religion comes from Latin religare for re-linking. Ironically, such re-linking occurs most effortlessly and profoundly when backed up by the realities of science rather than the fantasies of religion. For example, when Nicolaus Copernicus showed that Earth was not at the center of the solar system, he provided part of the process that gave us cosmic passports and citizenship to the galaxypassports which have already been stamped with men on the Moon, and machines on Venus, Mars and photographing Earth from space. Friedrich Whler, the chemist who found that substances in urine were related to substances outside the body, deflated the notion that life was made of some special and magical stuff. But his revelation of lifes ordinary nature helped set the stage for understanding the role of DNA, for describing life as a complex chemical phenomenon. Our connection to the universe may be grounds for religious divorce but it is also a platform for spiritual renewal. We can confront reality and appreciate it; we can have our cake and eat it too.
So, too, the discoveries by astrophysicists of hydrogen, carbon and other chemical elements in and around the stars shows that the ingredients of life exist throughout the universe and may be present in extraterrestrials who have lessons to teach us far beyond anything we have yet learned. Each scientific realization is, in other words, the occasion for reflection on our connected-ness as well as our commonness.
Montana scientist Eric D. Schneider and I argue that not only is the stuff of our bodies common, but even the process of life as a complex energy-based system is shared. I am as pure as driven slush, quipped Alabama socialite Tallulah Bankhead. So are we: technological humans, and all life forms, are part of a class of three-dimensional complex systems that naturally cycle matter in areas of energetic flux. Such naturally complex systems include convection cells, cycling storm systems (e.g., hurricanes), and autocatalytic chemical reactions such as chemical clocks. All these systems, including life, not only obey the second law of thermodynamics, but disperse energy more effectivelymore quickly, more sustainably or boththan would be the case without them. That is their natural function. Complex systems arise in nature to disperse energy or produce entropy. Thus, we argue that lifes physical purpose as a processto disperse energy but to do so more effectively than would be the case without ithas been found. Far from violating the second law (as creationists wrongly claim), life is one of its most effective manifestations.
Lifes measurable function has been detected by weather satellites. This natural function is to reduce the long wave radiation gradient between Earth and sun, thereby dispersing energy in accord with the second law. Moreover, life is not random but displays direction over evolutionary time: There has been, since lifes inception, an increase in the kinds of life and number of species, an increase in the amount of energy stored by life and deployed in its operations, an increase in lifes areal extent, an increase in the efficiency with which energy is used, an increase in cell types, an increase in overall intelligence and sensitivity, and an increase in the number of chemical elements involved, either structurally or peripherally, with metabolizing, living beings. These evolutionary increases, while dependent upon gene-based reproduction and natural selection, reflect the growth of the massive second law-based baby blue biosphere, so striking when we look at it from space. Evolution (and here the religionists are right in their critique of neo-Darwinism) is not random but has a direction. However, this direction is not that of a willful deity; rather, it is the natural direction of spreading, naturally complex, entropy-fomenting systems. And again our cosmic humiliation or debasement is the occasion for a moment of cognitive uplift or expansion. We are part of a cosmic system of energy degradation.
