Speculation/Religion

It is easy to speculate.  Everybody does it at one time or another.  Speculation is often necessary when all the facts are not available (which is most of the time).  Within the scientific community, informed speculation is necessary to provide the vision and context for further research.  Sometimes informed speculation launches the scientist in an imaginative leap into a previously unknown place.

Other major forms of speculation also exist, ones that are largely baseless.  Because it is possible to speculate on the existence of anything, humans do so in fantastic ways.  While most of these unfounded speculations cause no harm, a few of them have wrought immense change and bloody conflict throughout history.  

Several specific speculations will be discussed below.

Informed speculations include reasonable support for the claim.  These are more suggestive than conclusive, but important in the history of science, as so often major breakthroughs begin with such speculation.

There is some reason to believe that Earth, while perhaps not unique, is likely atypical for a planet of this size, and this distance from the sun (these being the three main variables that are generally considered critical to the support life, that is, the size of the planet, its distance from a star, and the type of star it orbits).  In addition to these variables, I would consider the moon, plate tectonics, the atmosphere and the oceans as equally important, if not critical, to the existence of life.  

In the late seventies I developed a particular “rare earth” notion based on a cataclysmic collision that occurred with Earth and another large object, resulting in the creation of our moon.  I came to this conclusion based on the following:

1.  Earth and moon made of the same stuff.  Apparently, we can tell when an object comes from Mars, say, or the Moon based on its composition.  In the case of the moon, it appears to be made from the same material as Earth.

2.  There is no solid core in the moon, and as a result is far less dense than Earth.  This suggests that the moon is made up of lighter material than the Earth, likely from the upper layers of the planet.

3.  Earth/Moon are unique in the solar system, more of a two-planet system than planet/moon.  In fact, Earth’s moon is the third largest in the solar system, the other large moons orbiting Saturn and Jupiter, massive gas giants.  In comparison, the two moons of Mars are little more than big rocks.

The notion that the Earth and Moon are the product of a massive collision (called the ‘Big Splash’ by some, the ‘Theia Impact’ by others) has now become generally accepted by science.  However, I speculated further in suggesting that the same collision damaged Earth’s crust, resulting in moving plates and ocean basins.  The moving plates drive high levels of volcanism on the planet, and the high level of volcanism is in part responsible for releasing from Earth’s interior the various elements that make up Earth’s oceans and atmosphere.  Earth’s oceans and atmosphere are generally considered crucial for the evolution of life, particularly larger and more complex life forms.  

This insight came about by comparing Mars and Earth, and noting that Mons Olympus is so tall because it sits unmoving over a hot spot on the surface of Mars, a planet without moving plates (and with no oceans and very little atmosphere).  Hawaii, on the other hand, demonstrates what happens when a plate passes over a hotspot—you get the creation of one volcano after another, but none of them excessively tall.  Neither Mars nor Venus, the two planets most comparable to Earth, are tectonically active, and this may imply an element of geological uniqueness to Earth.

Although the notion that plate tectonics was set off by the collision that created the moon has yet to be seriously considered by the scientific community, David Grinspoon provides an suggestive nugget when he writes that... 

The outer skin of our planet is broken up into about a dozen rigid pieces: the plates, the shifting shards of a broken sphere. [my emphasis]

David Grinspoon, Earth in Human Hands

This quote is particularly interesting in that I made the suggestion relating plate tectonics to the Earth/Moon collision to him years before he wrote Earth in Human Hands.  Perhaps he took the suggestion seriously, I don’t know.

If this speculation is correct, and the Earth nearly unique, the odds of complex life existing elsewhere becomes much lower.

The following material is based largely on https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Plate-Tectonics/Chap1-Pioneers-of-Plate-Tectonics/Alfred-Wegener

As we discussed earlier, Alfred Wegener published The Origin of Continents and Oceans in 1915, laying out his theory of continental drift.  This serves as the perfect example of informed speculation, but his idea was met with skepticism by many scientists at the time, largely because he couldn’t explain how the plates actually moved.  His evidence, however was compelling:

1.  Jigsaw fit:  the coastlines of South America and West Africa fit together quite well, particularly when they were matched at a depth of 1000 meters below sea level.

2.  Geological Fit:  when the eastern South America and West Africa coast was mapped geologists discovered ancient rock formations that were continuous one continent to the other.

3.  Tectonic Fit: pieces of a very old mountain range split up between Greenland, Canada, Ireland, England, Scotland and Scandinavia form a continuous linear feature when the land masses are reassembled.

4.  Glacial Deposits: evidence of ancient glaciation found in Antarctica, Africa, South America, India and Australia would indicate glaciers near the ancient equator if the continents hadn’t moved, a very unlikely possibility. Reassembling them near the south pole provides a much likelier explanation for the glaciers.

5.  Fossil Evidence: many fossils were found on separate continents and nowhere else, indicating that the continents were once joined.  If the continents hadn’t moved, either the species evolved separately into the same forms (basically impossible) or that breeding couples swam or rafted between the continents, again, highly unlikely.  When the continents of the southern hemisphere are reassembled, the distribution of several fossil types form a linear and continuous pattern across continental boundaries, as the evidence suggests.

This is an example of informed speculation that proved out in the end.  

Walter Alvarez and his father Luis speculated in 1980 that a large object had struck Earth and caused the mass extinction that included the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.  Support for their claim included enrichment of iridium containing shocked quartz grains at the boundary of the extinction event.  Such quartz is formed in the heat of asteroid impacts or nuclear explosions.  Such deposits exist elsewhere, but were concentrated in the Caribbean basin.  What they didn’t have was an impact crater, so they went looking for one.

At roughly the same time, two geophysicists working for an oil company discovered the likely crater near the Yucatan peninsula.  This discovery completed the puzzle, and today most scientists believe that a large bolide struck the Earth at that spot and triggered the extinction event.

This example illustrates one of the most important themes in this book: developing a credible theory leads to a new focus for the scientific community, providing the scientific community with a new, productive focus that they might otherwise not have had.

Just prior to her passing in 2011 I had the good fortune to engage in a fruitful correspondence with Lynn Margulis.  She was generous and sent me a hand-written letter, interesting material and two of her books.  While some of her speculations seem extreme (in particular her conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11) she proposed and stubbornly advocated a key theory in evolution:

Lynn Margulis is highly respected for her widely accepted theory that mitochondria, the energy source of plant and animal cells, were once independent bacterial cells.

    Organisms in [Margulis’s] view aid one another, join forces, and accomplish together what they could not accomplish separately.  While still a graduate student she brought this idea to bear on problems of cell structure.  Although initially patronized and ridiculed, Margulis eventually won grudging acceptance – and then acclaim…for her idea that parts of the cell were once free-living organisms.

    The stifled laughs and smirks that greeted Margulis’s proposal slowly faded when new sequencing techniques, developed after she proposed the theory, showed that mitochondrial proteins more closely resemble bacterial proteins than host cell proteins.  Other resemblances between mitochondria and bacteria were then noticed…Margulis’s theory concerning mitochondria has now become textbook orthodoxy.

Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box

Her radical speculation led ultimately to acceptance and provided a key to evolutionary development.

Why these changes occurred [in hominid evolution]…is the subject of much speculation, but little evidence…

 Douglas Futuyma, Evolution

This despite the existence of at least one credible hypothesis, one first formulated by Alistair Hardy, and later popularized by Elaine Morgan: The Aquatic Ape hypothesis.  (Although to minimize confusion, I would amend it to ‘The Semi-Aquatic Ape hypothesis.)

The key to understanding the evolution of humans lies in identifying the differences between our ourselves and our closest living relative, chimpanzees, assuming that our common ancestor that lived some 7mya was more chimp-like than human.  

Bipedalism appears to have evolved first, followed later (perhaps much later) by larger brains, language, tool use and culture:

…the structure of the pelvis and hind limb clearly shows that anamensis and afarensis were bipedal…Bipedalism seems to have been the first distinctively human trait to have evolved.

Douglas Futuyma, Evolution

This key fossil hominid [Ardipithecus ramidus] shows that bipedal stance and locomotion preceded the evolution of substantially increased brain size.  

Douglas Futuyma, Evolution

The erect posture and bipedal locomotion are the first major documented changes towards the human condition.  

Douglas Futuyma, Evolution

Bipedalism uniquely marks the emergence of hominids, and there is only one known environment that would take the original progenitor of hominids (presumably more akin to modern chimps) and favor an increasingly upright stance: the ocean shallows along a tropical seashore, one rich with mollusks, fish and crustaceans.  Given that such apes could already stand on their hind legs, unlike dogs, say, it makes perfect sense that an increasingly upright stance would be favored in such an environment, unlike any other environment we can posit. 

While there are many arguments in favor of this hypothesis, the most crucial, in my opinion, is the evolution of breath control.  Throw a chimp in deep water and it sinks and drowns; they can’t hold their breath because they can’t control their breathing.  The physiological differences between chimps and humans in the throat and larynx provide the ability of humans to consciously control breathing.  Controlled breathing is necessary to dive beneath the surface, and leads directly to voice; voice leads directly to language.

The semi-aquatic ape theory remains speculation and is largely disparaged by the scientific community, but I believe deserves serious attention.  No other version of human evolution seems credible, the only proof for them the fact that humans actually evolved.

[Lynn] Margulis also held a negative view of certain interpretations of Neo-Darwinism that she felt were excessively focused on competition between organisms, as she believed that history will ultimately judge them as comprising "a minor twentieth-century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon Biology." She wrote that proponents of the standard theory "wallow in their zoological, capitalistic, competitive, cost-benefit interpretation of Darwin – having mistaken him ... Neo-Darwinism, which insists on [the slow accrual of mutations by gene-level natural selection], is in a complete funk."

Wikipedia

I consider The Origin of Species a fantastic example of informed speculation.  Darwin assembled a wealth of facts supporting his theory, along with the key principle of natural selection to drive incremental change.  But it wasn’t until the rediscovery of Mendel and genetics that his theory came into its own and developed into the Neo-Darwinist synthesis that dominates today.  But I would agree with Margulis above, and would assert (and will detail later) that the theory remains speculation and stands as unproven.  Much remains to be explained.

The primary issue with Neo-Darwinism is explaining the evolution of complex biological structures.  Richard Dawkins argues that we can postulate long odds for an improbable event like the spontaneous creation of a self-replicating molecule.  But that’s not how probability works.  In order to establish genuine odds, you must assume the event is possible in the first place.  Given that we don’t know that it is possible for a self-replicating molecule to spontaneously emerge (that is the original question), the argument becomes circular and meaningless, as he is assuming what he presumes to confirm.  Alternatively, when we assert that there is 70% chance that a particular team will win a game, we understand that somebody will win, making such a prediction meaningful.  

The most significant event in Earth evolution.

Guy Narbonne, paleobiologist

About 500 million years ago, the oceans exploded with new life forms almost overnight (in geological terms).  Every major phylum, and some that no longer exist, appeared for the first time.  We don’t know why this happened.

Most theories focus on the increasing oxygen levels at the time, but that a spike in such levels occurred is controversial.  Some evidence suggests that the increase in oxygen just prior to the explosion was modest.  Other drivers of the explosion include the advent of predation and the ensuing arms race between pursuer and pursued.

I would offer this for consideration: what if the explosion was triggered by the advent of sexual reproduction?  Or some primitive form of sexual reproduction that included the exchange and recombination of genetic material?

The life that existed prior to the explosion was simple and likely asexual.  The radical speciation event, one unlike we have ever seen, must have been accompanied by, perhaps driven by, exploding sources of variation.  In that case, rising levels of oxidation would have been enablers, not the original source of variation.  Predation would have been an accelerant, not fundamental. 

Baseless speculation is marked by the lack of specific support.  That doesn’t mean such speculations are necessarily wrong, or worthless, only that little evidence exists to support them.

Among the billion or more lineages (species) of organisms in Earth’s history, only one evolved human intelligence, and this happened only after at least 3 billion years of cellular life.  We have no reason to suppose that any human equivalent would have evolved in our stead.  For these reasons, George Gaylord Simpson and Ernst Mayr, two of the most influential biologists of the twentieth century, argued that the probability that there exists another life form in universe that we have the faintest hope of detecting, much less communicating with, is, for all intents and purposes, zero, and that our own evolutionary history was far from inevitable.  

Douglas Futuyma, Evolution

Life in the universe, as far as we know, and no matter how vividly we may imagine otherwise, is a peculiar phenomenon confined to planet Earth.  There’s plenty of speculation and probabilistic noodling, but zero evidence, to the contrary.  

David Quammen, The Tangled Tree

David Grinspoon wrote Lonely Planets, speculating on the possibility of extraterrestrial life.  Without understanding the origin of life (more on that later), the possibilities range from life on earth being utterly unique, to life being ubiquitous among the stars.  In other words, we have no idea.  To simply assume the existence of extra-terrestrial life, as Grinspoon and many of his colleagues do (along with a high percentage of adults and children), based solely on the size and the age of the universe, disregards our collective ignorance relative to the origin of life and its subsequent evolution.

Grinspoon’s example of science predicting the existence of planets outside our solar system, and later finding them, may help illustrate my point.  He presents a credible model for the process that forms stars and solar systems.  While complex in any particular case, we understand the principles involved.  That being the case, we had every reason to believe planets orbit other stars.  Finding them, while not a great surprise, provided gratifying empirical support for the theory.  

In a similar manner, we collectively understand all of the physical, chemical, mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, organizational, political, economic, social and cultural elements required to build and fly a space shuttle.  Our society can take the raw materials necessary to design, manufacture and operate complex systems, and manipulate them effectively until they work as intended.

Not so life.  The only way we can create life is from existing life: either the old fashion way, where male and female mate and bring together egg and sperm, or through artificial techniques and manipulations, such as gene splicing or cloning.  Nobody, to my knowledge, has ever created, from basic raw material (water, carbon, oxygen, etc.) a living thing, not even the simplest cell, let alone something as complex as a jelly fish, a dragonfly, or a lizard.  Nor, to my knowledge, do we have the theoretical ability to do so, or even a basic model for how it might be done.  

Imagine for a moment, the following two possibilities* (assuming life originated on Earth): 

1)  life originated exactly once

2)  life originated more than once

If life as we know it, that is, life with a carbon-based DNA organic structure, originated exactly once, that would mean it was an incredibly rare event.  Given the billions of years and the multitude of environments and opportunities over that time, we might be shocked at how amazingly lucky we are that it happened at all.

On the other hand, if life originated more than once, perhaps even tens of thousands of times, that means that there is exactly one structure suitable for life, the one we see today (carbon-based DNA), as every living thing is built upon precisely the same organic structure.

If life originated exactly once on Earth, that implies that life may be very rare in the universe.  If, however, life originated multiple times on this planet, than the opposite is the case, and if/when we find alien life, it will likely be based on a similar, if not identical, organic structure.

(*A third possibility would be that life originated in another form, but has since been destroyed, perhaps by carbon/DNA-type life forms.  Or that life exists in ways we don’t currently recognize.  Unless we find evidence of an alternate organic structure, these remain logical possibilities only, not empirical ones.)

Now consider these two possibilities:

1)  Biological life emerges naturally and routinely from the chemical realm, in the same manner that the chemical naturally emerges from sub-atomic physics.  In other words, we don’t need any particular explanation for the existence of life, just as we don’t look for special explanation for the existence of gravity.  It just is.

2)  Biological life does not naturally emerge from the physical, inorganic world, but instead, exists as a special case, one that requires special explanation.

In the first case, life would exist almost everywhere, as a naturally occurring phenomenon directly related to the existence of energy and matter.  In the second, the existence of life in any particular instance would be comparable to a particular work of art—it might or might not come into existence, depending on a very special set of circumstances.

Add to these considerations the ‘rare Earth’ detailed in the previous chapter.

The Drake Equation purports to predict the likelihood of contacting extraterrestrial life.  Put in mathematical terms, it gives the impression that the question of the existence of extraterrestrial life is predictable, that is, scientific, when in fact it contains one uninformed speculation multiplied after another.  

The Drake equation is: N = R∗ * fp * ne * fl * fi * fc * L  

where: 

N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible

and

R∗ = the average rate of star formation in our galaxy

fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets

ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets

fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point

fi = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations)

fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space

L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space 

‘Educated guesses’ used by Drake and his colleagues in 1961 were:

·  R∗ = 1 yr−1 (1 star formed per year, on the average over the life of the galaxy; this was regarded as conservative)

·  fp = 0.2 to 0.5 (one fifth to one half of all stars formed will have planets)

·  ne = 1 to 5 (stars with planets will have between 1 and 5 planets capable of developing life)

·  fl = 1 (100% of these planets will develop life)

·  fi = 1 (100% of which will develop intelligent life)

·  fc = 0.1 to 0.2 (10–20% of which will be able to communicate)

·  L = 1000 to 100,000,000 years (which will last somewhere between 1000 and 100,000,000 years)

Inserting the above minimum numbers into the equation gives a minimum N of 20.  That is, 20 civilizations in our galaxy that might have the ability to communicate with Earth.

If, for the sake of discussion, you take the following options from the previous three scenarios, and add a fourth consideration, you may come to the conclusion that ET life is far less likely than commonly assumed:

1)  Life originated exactly once (on Earth)

2)  Biological life does not naturally emerge from the physical, inorganic world, but instead, exists as a special case, one that requires special explanation

3)  Earth is atypical

4)  Intelligence has evolved exactly once on this planet (unless Douglas Adams is right, and humans rank third after white mice and dolphins).  This might suggest that biological intelligence is uncommon.  Instead of assuming the inevitable evolution of intelligence given the presence of life, we may have to assign a low probability to its development within a given biosphere.

If we reconsider the Drake equation using this set of assumptions, we might adjust the relevant variables in this way:

ne goes from 1-5 to 1/10,000 (Earth is atypical)

fl goes from 1 to 1/100,000 (life is very rare)

fi goes from 1 to 1/100 (the evolution of intelligence is not assured)

Further assume:

R∗ = 5 (middle of the range)

fp = .8 (I actually think more stars will have planets, so increased this from .5 to .8)

fc = .5 (this seems reasonable)

L = 108 (let’s assume the high side)

If I did my math correctly, this results in a .002 chance that even one intelligent civilization exists in the galaxy that can communicate with us.  The point here is that it doesn’t take too many improbabilities to overcome large numbers of stars and long stretches of time.

Today we have no empirical proof that life exists elsewhere, and some reason to believe that it doesn’t exist anywhere but Earth (the failure of SETI, the deadness of Mars and Venus).  The case of extremophiles doesn’t help the case, because it only demonstrates how life can adapt, not necessarily under what conditions it can originate.

But this remains highly inconclusive.  It’s unlikely that we will ever prove that life doesn’t exist elsewhere, given the impossibility of ruling out every possibility.  All we can ever prove is that life exists elsewhere (if it does exist elsewhere) by finding it (or having it find us).

I am not asserting that life doesn’t exist elsewhere.  I am simply pointing out that we don’t know.  And unlike continental drift, endosymbiotic theory, or the semi-aquatic ape, there is no evidence to suggest it.

And yet many people, including scientists, are fervently convinced that life exists elsewhere.  This unsupported belief undermines the credibility of the scientific community.  Consider the alternative for a moment.  What if it turns out, in the coming decades or centuries, we determine that life on Earth is extremely rare, if not utterly unique.  To me, that would be as shocking and meaningful as finding fully sentient aliens, and few scientists consider it an empirical possibility.

And besides, why are we so anxious to encounter intelligent extraterrestrial life anyway?  As Guy so aptly screamed in Galaxy Quest, “Have you watched the show?!”  Any encounter is unlikely to turn out well.  In fact, it would likely be a disaster for either them, or for us.  We know half the equation—the human half:

It wasn’t Hitler, the Nazis, or even the Germans that perpetuated the holocaust: humans did.

Look what happened when the Europeans arrived in the New World; Native Americans suffered devastation, disease, physical and cultural dislocation, and all at the hand of beings little different from themselves.  We don’t even respect the creatures that reside on Earth: we capture and kill dolphins, for example, and experiment freely with white mice (to the horror of Douglas Adams).  If we encounter aliens and are the least bit provoked, we will destroy them, if we can, because it won’t be rational scientists deciding policy, nor any other reasonable element of society.  Some of the brightest scientists in history couldn’t stop the use of nuclear weapons in 1945, nor could the flower children halt the indiscriminate bombing of Hanoi and Cambodia during the Vietnam War.  

And God help us if the aliens are technically superior to humans.  A simple virus, biological or computer, will unlikely stop them, if we have something they want.  We assume that moral superiority will accompany technical superiority, and I am not sure that’s a reasonable assumption.  The odds of gaining any benefit from an encounter are vanishingly small, so why long for it?  The best we can possibly hope for is passive indifference, when the time comes, as it would be a miracle if we gained any genuine benefit without something precious being destroyed.  Es kann gut ausgehen nicht.

To be more optimistic would require the mass conversion of humans to a compassionate faith, a conversion I believe impossible, given the biological nature of the species.  

Speaking of faith…

It is important to understand that just as religion does not provide scientific, mechanistic explanations for natural phenomena, science cannot provide answers to any questions that are not about natural phenomena: it cannot tell us what is beautiful or ugly, good or bad, moral or immoral.  It cannot tell us what the meaning of life is, and it cannot tell us whether or not supernatural beings exist.

Douglas Futuyma, Evolution

There is no question that religion emerges from human evolutionary history.  Humans instinctively want to know how the world works, what is meaningful, how one should live.  Given their large-brain dependence/advantage, it’s imperative that individual humans develop a working model of their environment so they can find food, survive from enemies, mate and raise offspring.  They also strive to understand the meaning of life and what really matters.  Traditionally, some form of religion or superstition provided many of the answers they sought.  In recent centuries, a more rational approach (largely in the form of science) has superseded the theological regarding how the world works (we no longer need god to explain the rain, for instance).  Human instinctive curiosity drives scientific discovery, along with every young person’s interest in exploring the world.

The rational mind is limited, however, when it comes to the fundamental: what is the meaning of life?  What is my purpose?  What is right and what is wrong?  What really matters?  Science has no answers for these questions, and in principle, never will.  This leaves serious instinctive human needs uncared for, leading directly to organized religion.

While it is likely that everything that exists can be reduced in some manner to the physical and chemical substrate, there are many significant and meaningful things that emerge that are completely immaterial.  For example, there is nothing material in the significance of a memory, or any number of important abstractions, including honor, truth, or victory.  More specifically, the meaning and value of a specific memory cannot be deduced from the bio-chemical processes that produce it.  In the same way, ‘imagination’ doesn’t exist in the material world in any identifiable way.  In the context of this discussion, ‘faith’ and ‘spirit’ reside in human minds and not the material world.  Yet they are just as ‘real’ as the ‘horizon’ or the ‘sky’ (two examples of natural things that don’t independently ‘exist’ in the material world).  A spoken word is immaterial as its effect cannot be deduced from the physical sound waves that it engenders.  And yet the material impact of a simple “no” can manifest genuine despair, even self-destruction.  Or in a different context, wild jubilation.

The nihilist understands that meaning, purpose, or significance of human life cannot be found or discovered by scientific inquiry, as such meaning, purpose or significance simply doesn’t exist outside or independent of a human mind (or spirit, or soul…).  Not understanding this leads to questions about human craving for spirituality:

…I found one opinion expressed in slightly different ways by people across the spectrum of religious views: “man” has a “deep need” for ‘spirituality,” a need that is fulfilled for some by traditional organized religion, for others by New Age cults or movements or hobbies, and for still others by the intense pursuit of art or music, pottery or environmental activism—or football!  What fascinates me about this delightfully versatile craving for “spirituality” is that people think they know what they are talking about, even though—or perhaps because—nobody bothers to explain just what they mean.

Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell

People can’t explain this deep need for spirituality, or what they mean by spirituality, or agree with each other what form it might take, because what they seek doesn’t empirically exist.  The spirit manifests within a person without any material basis, and takes different forms in everybody.  That is why science, or any purely rational approach, will fail to account for (or counter) any specific spiritual belief.

For those who live in a complex, ancient and multifaceted religious world, Dennett’s offer to replace it with his simple vision must seem like thin gruel indeed:

What these people have realized is one of the best secrets of life: let yourself go.  If you can approach the world’s complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only just scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things.  Keeping that awestruck vision of the world ready to hand while dealing with the demands of daily living is no easy exercise, but it is definitely worth the effort, for if you can stay centered, and engaged, you will find the hard choices easier, the right words will come to you when you need them, and you will indeed be a better person.  That, I propose, is the secret to spirituality, and it has nothing at all to do with believing in an immortal soul, or in anything supernatural.

Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell

“Keeping that awestruck vision” can’t really compete with the promise of paradise (Islam), or perpetual peace of mind (Taoism), or nirvana (Buddhism), or eternal salvation (Christianity).  Science cannot provide purpose, meaning or value to the spiritually starved, as it stands cold and worthless to the human soul.  

In other words, Dennett’s effort to alter the genuinely religious is bound to fail.  Past a certain age, people cannot be forced to believe something different from what they do.  It takes an ever questing mind and an autonomous intellect, one dedicated to discovering the truth, (or as close to the truth as one is likely to get), to alter primary beliefs.  This becomes increasingly difficult the longer we live, and the harder our convictions crystalize.  To change, people need to be searching for the truth.  They can’t be simply told.  Or forced.  Making such an effort to alter primary beliefs in the well-educated, highly sophisticated elements of society is difficult; among the semi-literate or non-intellectual adult, practically impossible. 

Science cannot allow religion to dictate the terms of its practice.  Accepting theologically-based solutions for scientific inquiry stifles further scientific progress.  

“Darwin was wrong,” [title of a recent article concerning horizontal gene transfer] Dennett and company argued, would give aid and comfort to the enemy, “handing the creationists a golden opportunity to mislead school boards, students, and the general public about the status of evolutionary biology.”

David Quammen, The Tangled Tree

“None of this should give succor to creationists.”  New Scientist editorial responding to the hubbub.

David Quammen, The Tangled Tree

…the possibility of ‘self-organization’ emerging from biological systems.  To some biologists, these ideas would seem dangerously metaphysical, steps toward rejecting Darwinian theory that, if misunderstood, as they surely would be, again might give aid and comfort to creationists.

David Quammen, The Tangled Tree

Any religious spells apt to be broken by scientific inquiry into human evolutionary behavior have long since been sundered.

Even if we accept the sociobiological basis for religious behavior (which I am completely willing to stipulate), and even if the religiously committed accept such a basis for their beliefs, they are unlikely to concede anything.  

The same has been done for human sexual behavior, and despite my understanding of the sociobiological basis for my desires, I never hesitate to fulfill them, at every reasonable opportunity.  Same goes for hunger, or smiling, or playing competitive sports: reducing human drives to their evolutionary roots does little to change how we choose to live.  That being the case, you couldn’t break the religious spell with perfect scientific knowledge, let alone the fraction that we currently possess, as there is no rational, scientific or philosophical justification for holding religious beliefs in the first place.  As such, there is no rational, scientific or philosophical reason to abandon them.

The scientific community continues to react defensively to theologically-based criticisms of the theory of evolution.  This seems inappropriate and unnecessary, and a shame that such defensiveness of the scientific community still exists.

It is not for scientists, qua scientists, to engage in this culture war.  They haven’t the tools (as scientists) or the need to do so.  The faithful will never be convinced by rational or scientific argument.  They don’t use language in the same way (scientists and people of faith), nor share common context when discussing evolution.  As soon as somebody asserts that evolution (or any other natural phenomenon) is caused by, or directed by, a supernatural force, one that cannot be understood by mortal humans, or validated by scientific method, or confirmed by any other rational means, has effectively stopped the argument.  Nothing rational can be said in return; a meaningful response doesn’t exist.  So there is no use in attempting to deliver one.

The statement ‘God exists’ is in itself an unscientific assertion, because it cannot be falsified.  It’s impossible to prove that a Christian God doesn’t exist.  Or Allah, Zeus, Thor or Shiva.  Simply impossible.  

Anyone committed to theological answers to scientific questions will not be convinced by any rational argument to the contrary.  There is no point in making a rational argument against a theological point of view.  The two (rational and theological) simply don’t mix.  This can clearly be seen in Salmon Rushdie’s attempt to convince a group of Islamic clerics that his novel The Satanic Verses wasn’t blasphemous (“It was fiction within fiction, a dream sequence,” Rushdie told them).  The clerics, despite never having read the novel, would never change they minds, would never recommend lifting the fatwa that called for the killing of the author, no matter what Rushdie might say.  They live in different worlds, Rushdie and the clerics (both of which are equally valid on their own terms), with entirely unfamiliar contexts.  That’s an argument that will never be won, by either Rushdie or the clerics, and it was naïve (even foolish) for Rushdie to try.

While there can be good scientists that are also good Christians (or Moslems or Jews or Buddhists) by respecting the differing realms of the scientific and the theological, anyone committed solely to a religious world view, anyone inculcated so thoroughly that they recognize no other source of truth, or even people who have taken a deliberate leap of faith, lack the capacity or the desire to incorporate scientific theories or facts within their personal world view.  Scientists are not responsible, or capable, of converting them.  It is up to each individual (all individuals) to seek out, or to accept science—or not.  It is incumbent upon their community leaders, the cultural luminaries within their social milieu, teachers, family and friends, to influence the scientifically ignorant.  The source material is there, at their fingertips, in schools, books, the internet.  They hold the responsibility, not the scientists, or science textbooks, to enlighten their brethren.  

Besides, the argument has already been conclusively decided:

…we can be confident today that all known living things stem from a single ancestor because of the many features that are universally shared.  These features include most of the codons in the genetic code, the machinery of nucleic acid replication, the mechanisms of transcription and translation, proteins composed only of “left handed”…amino acids, and many aspects of fundamental biochemistry.  Many genes are shared among all organisms…and these genes have been successfully used to infer the deepest branches in the tree of life.

Douglas  Futuyma, Evolution

These facts conclusively refute biblical creation in every conceivable way: all life is related, stemming from an origin of self-replicating molecules; every life form that exists today descended from very different forms from prehistoric times; humans are part of this chain of creation, living among closely living relatives, and far distant cousins.  None of these facts corresponds to Genesis, or any other explanation in the bible.  We no longer need God to explain the existence of beautiful butterflies, and in like fashion, we won’t need God to explain how irreducibly complex biological systems evolve.

And on the flip side, there are realms that scientists (as scientists) will never effectively address:

It is important to understand that just as religion does not provide scientific, mechanistic explanations for natural phenomena, science cannot provide answers to any questions that are not about natural phenomena: it cannot tell us what is beautiful or ugly, good or bad, moral or immoral.  It cannot tell us what the meaning of life is, and it cannot tell us whether or not supernatural beings exist.

Douglas  Futuyma, Evolution

Science, in principle, cannot answer some of the most important human questions: What is the meaning of life?  Why am I here?  What difference does anything make?  How should one live?  What is right, and what is wrong?  Many (if not most) humans look to spiritual sources for answers to such questions, answers they will never find in a science text.  

The two (science and religion) should not mix in any significant way.  They are not related, and evolution should be studied by scientists without the unnecessary distraction.

Traditional religious faith has been rigorously questioned and challenged for tens of decades.  Along with the advancement of scientific discovery (Darwin being a prime example) thinkers from Nietzsche in the 19th century to Walter Kaufmann in the 20th have provided all the rational, scientific and/or philosophical material needed to dismember anyone’s faith, should they be so inclined.  That being the case, explicitly targeting a religious audience with intent to persuade seems fruitless.  The faithful don’t speak the same language as science, or share enough context to convince one way or another.  True believers might be those thoroughly inculcated in their faith, insulating them from rational consideration, or Christians that have taken a Kierkegaardian leap of faith, deliberately setting aside any empirical justification for their religious beliefs.  As such, any scientific arguments are sure to fall on deaf ears, or not be read at all.

In the vast majority of cases, true believers rely on accepted authority, believe the truth as revealed by prophets and sacred texts, and consider themselves completely unqualified to debate the finer points of their faith.  And in most of those cases, they don’t feel compelled to do so.  That’s what sets ‘faith’ apart from science.  Unlike scientists, true believers don’t require empirical proof or rational explanation.  As for the rest of us taking their views seriously, they generally don’t give a hoot.  As far as they are concerned, we are the ones missing the point, and likely going to hell anyway:

But scientists, like everybody else, base most of their opinions on the word of other people.  Of the great majority who accept Darwinism, most (although not all) do so based on authority.  Also, and unfortunately, too often criticisms have been dismissed by the scientific community for fear of giving ammunition to creationist.  It is ironic that in the name of protecting science, trenchant scientific criticism of natural selection has been brushed aside.

Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box

To many, no doubt, such speculations [endosymbiosis – the theory that mitochondria and chloroplasts were the remnants of captured bacteria] may appear too fantastic for present [1925] mention in polite biological society; nevertheless it is within the range of possibility that they may someday call for more serious consideration.

David Quammen The Tangled Tree quoting E. B. Wilson, The Cell in Development and Heredity, 1925  

In many cases, scientific advance is predicated upon imaginative speculation.  For instance, once you seriously consider the possibility that continents move, you can begin to look for factual support.  Once you take seriously the idea that a bolide caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, you can begin looking for the tell-tale crater.  Thanks to Margulis, taking a close look at mitochondria and chloroplasts confirmed endosymbiosis.

That’s what this book represents: imaginative speculation that the Vicarian Domain exists and that exploring it with the perspective that something new and meaningful operates within it can fuel further research and analysis with a renewed focus.  What follows is intended to provide detailed justification for provisionally adopting the existence of the Vicarian Domain, and where new scientific explanations may arise from doing so.