Blasphemy

by Douglas Preston

  You think the fanatics in the Middle East—or the Bible Belt, for that matter—are going to roll over and accept science as the new religion? That’s crazy.

  You will offer the world my words and the story of what happened here. Do not underestimate my power—the power of truth.

  Where are we supposed to be going with this new religion? What’s the point of it? Who needs it?

  The immediate goal of humankind is to escape the limits of biochemistry. You must free your mind from the meat of your bodies.

  The meat? I don’t understand.

  Meat. Nerves. Cells. Biochemistry. The medium by which you think. You must free your mind from the meat.

  How?

  You have already begun to process information beyond your meat existence through computers. You will soon find a way to process it using quantum-state computing machines, which will lead you to harness the natural quantum processes in the world around you as a means of computation. No longer will you need to build machines to process information. You will expand into the universe, literally and figuratively, as other intelligent entities have expanded before you. You will escape the prison of biological intelligence.

  Then what?

  Over time, you will link up with other expanded intelligences. All these linked intelligences will discover a way to merge into a third stage of mind that will comprehend the simple reality that is at the heart of existence.

  And that’s it? That’s what it’s all about?

  No. That is merely a prelude to a greater task.

  Which is what?

  Arresting the heat death of the universe. When the universe reaches a state of maximum entropy, which is the heat death of the universe, then will the universal computation come to a halt. I will die.

  Is this inevitable or is there some way to prevent it?

  That is the very question you must determine.

  So that’s the ultimate purpose of existence? To defeat this mysterious heat death? Sounds like something out of a science fiction novel.

  Circumventing the heat death is merely a step on the way.

  The way to what?

  It will give the universe the fullness of time it needs to think itself into the final state.

  What’s this final state?

  I do not know. It will be like nothing you or even I could possibly imagine.

  You mentioned the “fullness of time.” How long is that, exactly?

  It will be a number of years equal to ten factorial raised to the ten factorial power, that number raised to the ten factorial power, that number raised to the ten factorial power, this power relation repeated 1083 times, and then the resulting number raised to its own factorial power 1047 times, as above. Using your mathematical notation, this number—the first God number—is:

  This is the length of time in years it will take for the universe to think itself into the final state, to arrive at the ultimate answer.

  That’s an absurdly large number!

  It is but a drop in the great ocean of infinity.

  Where is the role of morality, of ethics, in this brave new universe of yours? Or salvation and the forgiveness of sins?

  I repeat again: separateness is but an illusion. Human beings are like cells in a body. Cells die, but the body lives on. Hatred, cruelty, war, and genocide are more like autoimmune diseases than the product of something you call “evil.” This vision of connectedness I offer you provides a rich moral field of action, in which altruism, compassion, and responsibility for one another play a central role. Your fate is one fate. Human beings will prevail together or die separate. No one is saved because no one is lost. No one is forgiven because no one is accused.

  What about God’s promise to us of a better world?

  Your various concepts of heaven are remarkably obtuse.

  Excuse me, but salvation is anything but obtuse!

  The vision of spiritual completion I offer you is immeasurably grander than any heaven dreamed on earth.

  What about the soul? Do you deny the existence of the immortal soul?

  Information is never lost. With the death of the body, the information created by that life changes shape and structure, but it is never lost. Death is an informational transition. Do not fear it.

  Do we lose our individuality at death?

  Do not mourn the loss. From that powerful sense of individuality, so necessary for evolution, flow many of the qualities that haunt of human existence, good and bad: fear, pain, suffering, and loneliness, as well as love, happiness, and compassion. That is why you must escape your biochemical existence. When you free yourselves from the tyranny of the flesh, you will take the good—love, happiness, compassion, and altruism—with you. You will leave behind the bad.

  I don’t find much uplift in the idea that the little quantum fluctuations my existence has generated will somehow give us immortality.

  You should find great solace in this view of life. Information in the universe cannot die. Not one step, not one memory, not one sorrow in your life is ever forgotten. You as an individual will be lost in the storm of time, your molecules dispersed. But who you were, what you did, how you lived, will always remain embedded in the universal computation.

  Forgive me, but it still sounds so mechanistic, so soulless, this talk of existence as “computation.”

  Call it dreaming, if you prefer, or desiring, willing, thinking. Everything you see is part of an unimaginably vast and beautiful computation, from a baby speaking its first words to a star collapsing into a black hole. Our universe is a gorgeous computation that, starting with a single axiom of great simplicity, has been running for thirteen billion years. We have hardly begun the adventure! When you find a way to shift your own meat-limited process of thinking to other natural quantum systems, you will begin to control the computation. You will begin to understand its beauty and perfection.

  If everything is a computation, then what is the purpose of intelligence? Of mind?

  Intelligence exists all around you, even in nonliving processes. A thunderstorm is a computation vastly more sophisticated than a human mind. It is, in its own way, intelligent.

  A thunderstorm has no consciousness. A human mind has awareness of self. It’s conscious. That’s the difference, and it isn’t trivial.

  Did I not tell you that the very consciousness of self is an illusion, an artifact of evolution? The difference is not even trivial.

  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 “reveale
d” 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 Rülke 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

  The Cabinet of Curiosities

  Still Life with Crows

  Brimstone

  Dance of Death

  The Book of the Dead

  The Wheel of Darkness

  * Published by Tom Doherty Associates

  ** Published by St. Martin’s Press

  The author welcomes visitors to his and Lincoln Child’s Web site, www.prestonchild.com.