A weather system isn’t creative. It doesn’t make choices. It can’t think. It’s merely the mechanistic unfolding of forces.
How do you know you are not the mechanistic unfolding of forces? Like the mind, a weather system contains complex chemical, electrical, and mechanical properties. It is thinking. It is creative. Its thoughts are different from your thoughts. A human being creates complexity by writing a novel on the surface of paper; a weather system creates complexity by writing waves on the surface of an ocean. What is the difference between the information carried in the words of a novel and the information carried on the waves of the sea? Listen, and the waves will speak, and someday, I tell you, you will write your thoughts on the surface of the sea.
So what’s the universe computing? What’s this great problem it’s trying to solve?
That is the deepest and most wonderful mystery of all.
We have very little time. What I have to say to you now is of the utmost importance.
Continue, please. You have our full attention.
Religion arose as an effort to explicate the inexplicable, control the uncontrollable, make bearable the unbearable. Belief in a higher power became the most powerful innovation in late human evolution. Tribes with religion had an advantage over those without. They had direction and purpose, motivation and a mission. The survival value of religion was so spectacular that the thirst for belief became embedded in the human genome. What religion tried, science has finally achieved. You now have a way to explain the inexplicable, control the uncontrollable. You no longer need “revealed” religion. The human race has finally grown up. Religion is as essential to human survival as food and water. If you try to replace religion with science, you will fail. You will, instead, offer science as religion. For I say to you, science is religion. The one, true religion. Instead of offering a book of truth, science offers a method of truth. Science is a search for truth, not the revelation of truth. It is a means, not a dogma. It is a journey, not a destination.
Yes, but what of human suffering? How can science make ‘bearable the unbearable,’ as you put it?
In the last century, medicine and technology have alleviated more human suffering than have all the priests in the last millennium.
You’re speaking of physical suffering. But what about the suffering of the soul? What about spiritual suffering?
Have I not said that all is one? Is it not a comfort to know that your suffering shudders the very cosmos? No one suffers alone and suffering has a purpose—even the sparrow’s fall is essential to the whole. The universe never forgets. Do not stoop to diffidence! You are my disciples. You have the power to upend the world. In one day, science accumulates more evidence of its truths than religion in all its existence. People cling to faith because they must have it. They hunger for it. You will not deny people faith; you will offer them a new faith. I have not come to replace the Judeo-Christian God, but to complete him.
This new religion you want us to preach, what will we ask people to worship? Where’s the beauty and awe in this?
I ask you to contemplate the universe that you now know exists. Is it not, by itself, more awe- inspiring than any God concept offered by the historical religions? A hundred billion galaxies, lonely islands of fire flung like bright coins in a vastness of space so immense that it is beyond the biological comprehension of the human mind. And I say to you, that the universe you have discovered is only a tiny fraction of the extent and magnificence of the creation. You inhabit but the tiniest blue speck in the infinite vaults of heaven, and yet this speck is precious to me, being an essential part of the whole. That is why I have come to you. Worship me and my great works, not some tribal god imagined by warring pastoralists thousands of years ago.
More, tell us more.
Trace the lineaments of my face with your scientific instruments. Search for me in the cosmos and in the electron. For I am the God of deep time and space, the God of superclusters and voids, the God of the Big Bang and the inflation, the God of dark matter and dark energy. Science and faith cannot coexist. One will destroy the other. You must make sure science is the surviving party, or your little blue speck will be lost . . ..
What should we do?
With my words you will prevail. Tell the world what happened here. Tell the world that God has spoken to the human race—for the first time. Yes, for the first time!
But how can we explain you if you can’t tell us what you are?
Do not repeat the mistake of the historical religions and involve yourselves in disputation about who I am or what I think. I surpass all understanding. I am the God of a universe so vast, only the God numbers can describe it, of which I have given you the first . . . . You are the prophets leading your world into the future. What future will you choose? You hold the key . . ..
I say to you, this is your destiny: to find truth. This is why you exist. This is your purpose. Science is merely how you do it. This is what you must worship: the search for truth itself. If you do this with all your heart, then some great day in the distant future you will stand before Me. This is my covenant with the human race.
You will know the truth. And the truth shall make you free.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I WOULD LIKE TO THANK MANY people for their generous help. First and foremost are Selene Preston, Eric Simonoff, Susan Hazen-Hammond, Bobby Rotenberg, Hywel White, and Roland Ottewell. I am indebted to John Javna for loaning me his library on the Christian Right. I extend my gratitude to Claudia Rulke for creating our new Web site, and I am grateful to Tobias Daniel Wabbel for first encouraging me to develop some of my thoughts in an essay for Im Anfang war (k)ein Gott: Naturwissenschaftliche und theologische Perspektiven. I would like to express my deep appreciation to my writing partner, Lincoln Child, who read the manuscript and offered his usual superlative advice. And I would like to thank my editor, Bob Gleason, for his invaluable and creative guidance, and Eric Raab, for his help.
I am much indebted to my Navajo friends who, over many years, taught me about Navajo religion and life on the Rez, especially Norman Tulley, Edsel Brown, Frank Fatt, Ed Black, Victor Begay, Neswood Begay, Nada Currier, and Cheppie Natan. The opening lines of the Navajo creation chant quoted in the novel were modified from a version collected by Father Berard Haile from a medicine man on the Navajo Reservation in the early part of the twentieth century.
As always, I extend my great appreciation to Christine, Aletheia, and Isaac, for their love, support, and patience in putting up with a cranky author.
Some of the philosophical, evolutionary, and mathematical ideas presented in this novel were suggested by or developed from the writings of Gregory Chaitin, Rudy Rucker, Brian Greene, Stephen Wolfram, Edward Fredkin, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Frank J. Tipler. The God number is expressed using Knuth’s up-arrow mathematical notation.
Book design by Spring Hoteling Maps by Paul J. Pugliese
BY DOUGLAS PRESTON
Tyrannosaur Canyon*
The Codex*
Jennie*
Ribbons of Time
The Royal Road
Talking to the Ground
Cities of Gold
Dinosaurs in the Attic**
BY DOUGLASPRESTON AND LINCOLN CHILD
Relic*
Mount Dragon*
Reliquary *
Riptide
Thunderhead
The Ice Limit
