The Blue Disc

by William B. Waits

  “In the 1830’s, young Charles took a multiyear voyage from England on the H.M.S. Beagle as the ship’s naturalist. His task was to collect biological specimens and information from different environments around the world. His most important observations were made on the Galapagos Islands, which lie off the west coast of our continent. What he discovered changed the course of Western thought. He concluded that the form of species had changed gradually over time. They changed color and size, and they developed wings, lungs, claws, etc. The specific mechanism for these changes resulted from individual struggles for survival in their environment. In this struggle, individuals within the species that had favored genetic characteristics for their environment—for example, having a beak shape suited for digging insects—survived at a higher rate than those with less favored genetic characteristics. Over many generations, the favored animals would come to dominate the population, thereby changing the form of the species. Life moved forward, but not the prior form of the species. His discovery that the form of species had changed, published in 1859, conflicted with the prevailing religious belief that species remained exactly as god had created them in 4004 BC.”

  Again a pause.

  “If you think that Darwin is right, you must give up the belief that the form of species has not changed,” she intoned.

  “We must give it up.”

  “May science be with you.”

  “And with you.”

  “Species had changed, but the mechanism for the change was also significant. Darwin proposed ‘natural selection’ to explain the origin of species. Natural selection claimed that species looked the way they did because the genetically favored members of the species had survived in higher percentages over many generations and had thereby come to dominate the gene pool, not because god had created the species that way. Darwin’s explanation was naturalistic and did not require action from god to bring about changes. No divine power of creation or ongoing intervention was needed. God need not be hovering above the clouds, watching and influencing the course of life on Earth. He might not even be interested in earthly affairs.

  “If you think that Darwin is right, you must give up the belief that differences in the form of species is the result of actions by god,” she intoned.

  “We must give it up.”

  “May science be with you.”

  “And with you.”

  “Importantly, natural selection applied not only to animals but also to humans. According to Genesis,

  Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image and likeness to rule the fish in the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all wild animals on earth, and all reptiles that crawl upon the earth.’ So, God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

  ‘It is not good for man to be alone. I will provide a partner for him.’

  And so the Lord God put the man into a trance, and while he slept, he took one of his ribs and closed the flesh over the place. The Lord God built up the rib, which he had taken out of the man, into a woman. He brought her to the man…

  “However, as Darwin argued in The Descent of Man, published in 1871, man has no special, divinely conferred place in the world of animals. True, humans are smarter than other animals, but only because the environment has selected for humans with large brains.

  “If you think that Darwin is right that natural selection is the mechanism through which humans were shaped, you must give up the belief that god shaped the form of man.”

  “We must give it up.”

  “May science be with you.”

  “And with you.”

  “Because the form of man came from natural selection, not from divine creation, it follows that god did not make man in his image, nor woman from man’s rib, for that matter. Further, it follows that, if god did not make man in his image, the form of man provides no clue to the form of god.

  “If you think that the form of man provides no clue to the form of god, you must give up the image of god as looking like us—the old bearded person sitting on a throne.”

  “We must give it up.”

  “May science be with you.”

  “And with you.”

  “Evidence from fossils led Darwin to conclude that natural selection takes many years to operate. Older animals appear in the lower geological strata and newer animals in the higher strata. This pattern is consistently confirmed in all geological evidence unearthed since the advent of geological science and paleontology. As we know from Hutton and Lyell, the lower strata are old, indeed. If you think Darwin and the paleontologists are right that fossils are very old, get progressively older as we go lower in the strata, and become a historical record of evolution over many millions of years, you must give up the Genesis version that the creation of the species was done in a few days and Ussher’s belief that it happened only a few thousand years ago.”

  “We must give them up.”

  “May science be with you.”

  “And with you.”

  “The fossil evidence challenged religion in another way. Fossils of some species appear in lower strata but are not found anywhere in the higher strata or living anywhere on Earth, a fact that indicates their extinction. For example, no dinosaur fossils have been found in geological strata deposited during the last sixty-seven million years. They became extinct. Importantly, dinosaur fossils are always found below human fossils because dinosaurs existed earlier than humans and became extinct before humans evolved. Because fossils from these two types of animals have never been found in the same strata, we know that dinosaurs and humans lived on Earth during different ages. The ordering of fossils in geological strata has been consistent and continues to be confirmed on an ongoing basis as additional fossils are discovered. They are direct evidence of the history of the evolution of life on Earth.

  “If you are persuaded by the location of fossils in geological strata, you must give up the Genesis version that all animals—including dinosaurs and humans—were created in a few days and lived contemporaneously.”

  “We must give it up.”

  “May science be with you.”

  “And with you.”

  “Our forebears were intrigued by Darwin’s discovery that humans had descended from other species of animals through the lengthy process of evolution. We described Darwin’s discovery to some neighboring societies and, to our surprise, they readily accepted and accommodated this idea, without nearly the difficulty that roiled outside society. You see, many of the groups in the rain forest had believed for some time that they were descended from animals. They usually named their kinship group after their particular animal ancestor, whether jaguars, gibbons, parrots, anacondas, or eels. Anthropologists call them totem animals. Thus, in their own way, our neighbors already believed humans were descended from more primitive forms of animals. This is a case in which native thinking was closer to scientific reality than was thinking in outside society.

  “Scientific advances revealed that humans were less important than the Bible had led them to believe. Humankind, apparently, had no special, divinely ordained place in the biological world, and could become extinct like dinosaurs and other species. Furthermore, if humans did become extinct, there would be no frustration of god’s purpose because god hadn’t created humans anyway; natural selection had. Human extinction would result from the failure of our species to live, struggle and reproduce successfully in our environment. Nothing more.

  “If you think Darwin is right, you must give up the belief that man holds a special or divine place among the species.”

  “We must give it up.”

  “May science be with you.”

  “And with you.”

  “Darwin’s view of the biological world has survived remarkably well. As we learn more about life on Earth, new discoveries confirm, refine, and enrich the framework that Darwin devised rather than challenge it. That’s the truest indicator of the validity of his work. With that said, it shou
ld not be surprising that some modifications have been made, for example, that evolutionary change commonly occurs in fits and starts rather than incrementally, as Darwin thought. We also know about genetics and DNA—which Darwin didn’t—although they fit comfortably in his framework. The fundamental validity of Darwinism remains.

  “If you are persuaded by Darwin and the other scientists, you must give up the Genesis version of the creation of humans and other animals. Scientists have figured out that god didn’t do what the Bible says he did. You should accept those findings, especially given that they continue to be validated as more observations are made. If you can’t accept the findings of Darwin and its implications for the Genesis version of creation, you aren’t being empirical and you should change your thinking. In the challenging environment of the rain forest, we need to think based on facts and be wary of mere beliefs.

  “As you know, beginning in 1825, we started travelling to La Puerta and back. Over the ensuing decades, we brought back books by a wide range of authors, including ones we have discussed today: Copernicus, Galileo, Hutton, Lyell, and Darwin. Once we had read and absorbed those works, with their formidable proofs, the Genesis version of creation was left a smoldering ruin. We’d been forced by the cumulative evidence to abandon so much of it that what was left had no value.

  “There was one final challenge to the Genesis version of creation. In 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble published his findings that the red shifting of star light meant that the stars and galaxies were much farther away from us than we had thought, and were moving farther away continually. He made the first accurate measurements of the distances to heavenly objects and determined that the universe was bigger by many multiples than previously believed. As we’ve acquired additional data through subsequent observations, they fit into Hubble’s model of the universe.

  “Through improved instruments for observing, astronomers now have better views of our solar system, the stars in our Milky Way galaxy and beyond our galaxy to the billions of other galaxies that populate our universe. Since the light from some observed galaxies that now strikes our telescopes was emitted from those galaxies billions of years ago, we’re in effect looking backwards in time when we view light from the galaxies. We can see directly what happened billions of years ago, obviously much farther back than Bishop Ussher’s 4004 BC.

  “If you think that Hubble is right about the distances in light years to distant galaxies, you must give up belief in Bishop Ussher’s short time frame for the creation of the universe.”

  “We must give it up.”

  “May science be with you.”

  “And with you.”

  “There is another reason why Hubble’s discoveries in astronomy are significant. They tell us that we are living on a tiny, dark speck in a huge space, so huge that it’s best expressed mathematically. Even our sun, which dominates our sky during the day, is an unremarkable star, visible to the naked eye from only a small part of our Milky Way galaxy. Stated another way, our sun is invisible to almost the entire universe. One of its minor satellites, the Earth, is—in relation to the universe—trivial, dark, and irrelevant, a mere infinitesimal speck.

  “If you think that Hubble is right, you must give up the belief that Earth is large or significant in the universe simply because Genesis says that it is or because it looks to be so when you stand on it.”

  “We must give it up.”

  “May science be with you.”

  “And with you.”

  “The more we learn about the origins of life and the more we learn about the number of galaxies in the universe, each with billions of stars and planets, it seems highly likely, if not certain, that there is life elsewhere in this giant universe. Humankind is not alone. We’re not a unique creation in god’s image, fulfilling some special divine purpose.

  “According to Genesis, life is god-created, unique to Earth, and part of god’s divine plan. However, given the high statistical odds that there’s life elsewhere, you must give that up that belief.”

  “We must give it up.”

  “May science be with you.”

  “And with you.”

  “We have been brought to this point through advances in science over the past five hundred years. At its beginning, we thought that god hovered just above the clouds, that he had created us only a short time ago, that he was centrally interested in the course of events on Earth, and that he actively guided human affairs. We thought that we were literally the center of the universe and that everything in the heavens orbited us. Now we know that only the moon orbits the earth, one small object out of the entire night sky. Our size is infinitesimal, and we are not part of any verifiable divine plan. In short, we have been above the clouds and god was nowhere to be seen. It has been a humbling half millennium for our self-regard.

  “As these proofs impacted our thinking, our denomination recognized that we had no evidence that god existed. Neither could we prove the other side: that god didn’t exist. Therefore, atheism was closed off to us in favor of a pessimistic agnosticism. We adopted a new name for god in our services: Hosfowotine, an acronym for ‘He or She for Whom There is No Evidence’. As is our custom, I have used the older term ‘god’ in this sermon when discussing historical texts.

  “Even if humbling, our march forward has been courageous and true to the facts. We, and the dominant trend in Western civilization, have followed the path carved by science. However, we conclude our service with a difficult point. Although the evidence presented by astronomers, geologists, and biologists is overwhelming, we must, as good scientists, embrace the possibility, small though it is, that their conclusions are subject to being disproven. This posture of disbelief is fundamental to science, and it’s also fundamental to our worship in the Church of Science. We do not encourage belief but rather disbelief. In the meantime, we operate on the basis of the most accurate facts that we have. Science is, far and away, the surest and best path forward. Any other path is perilous.

  “Please rise and join me in our recessional text,” she said as she raised her arms once again.

  The congregation rose and repeated with her:

  We are members of the Church of Science.

  We think data are good per se.

  We value conclusions derived from data.

  We value testing conclusions.

  We value doubt, not belief.

  We value irreverence, not reverence.

  Science is the most efficient method

  For increasing Hosfowotine’s goodness on Earth.

  Science is our religion.

  With that, the congregation filed out of the room.

  The immorality of large families lies not only in the injuries to the members of those families but in their injury to society.

  Margaret Sanger

  CHAPTER 23

  The Mexamamo

  Rick returned to his room, fatigued after a full day of work. Every day, from now until he left, he would goad himself forward in his research, hoping he didn’t get sick or injured, monitoring his progress all the while so he’d complete on schedule. He had to finish. He had risked too much to fail. Later, in New Haven, he would face the pressure of producing a high-quality dissertation, but he would worry about that then.

  After a short rest, he made his way to the dining room where he got the Euromamo version of Yorkshire pudding. It was slightly unusual, yet tastier than what he had eaten in outside society. As he was finishing, John stopped by his table, his status buttons glistening on his vest.

  “Have a seat, John,” said Rick with a smile.

  “Thank you. I hope you’re doing alright this evening,” John said pleasantly.

  “Well enough, I suppose.”

  “Your research? How’s that progressing?

  “I’m about where I should be, I think. Hard to know for sure though.”

  “We hope the knowledge you’re gathering about us works to our benefit in the long run.”

  “I understand. What�
��s on your mind today, John?”

  “We’re going to have another meeting with a neighboring group, this time the Mexamamo. I assume you want to attend.”

  “Yes, very much. Where’s their village?”

  “To the southwest and quite a distance but, for this visit, they’ll come here, so there’s no hiking involved.”

  “That’s convenient, although the walks to the other villages haven’t been too difficult,” Rick acknowledged.

  “They’re coming day after tomorrow. From now until then, the village will be fully occupied with hunting, fishing, and gathering so we’ll have ample food to host them.”

  “Will there be much eating at the meeting?” asked Rick.

  “Yes, indeed. The Mexamamo are festive and love to eat.”

  “It sounds like fun. Thanks for inviting me.”

  “You’re welcome, Rick.”

  “Before you go, John, I have a question about the meetings when neighboring groups come to the village.”

  “What is it?”

  “Aren’t other groups afraid to visit you in the Valley of Bad Spirits? The spirits have a fearsome reputation.”

  “Early on, other groups were wary, to be sure, but we convinced them that we will keep the spirits under control during their visits. Later, as they made a few visits here with no negative consequences, they became comfortable doing it. To this day, though, some still ask us, as soon as they arrive, if we have performed the appropriate rituals.”

  “What do you tell them?”

  “We say we’ve done everything needed to protect them from the spirits,” said John, with a wry smile. “If you’ve no more questions, I’d better go prepare for the meeting.”

  “Thank you again,” said Rick.

  While the village prepared for the feast, there were fewer men than usual around because most were out hunting and fishing to get food for the feast. They would bring in fish and game periodically, clean them, turn them over to the cooks, and return to the rain forest. The meat and fish was salted, smoked, and placed in a cool place to preserve it from the heat. In the communal dining room, women bustled about, hanging bright, fiber-cloth banners and placing colorful plants as centerpieces on the tables. They were sure to raise one’s spirits. A children’s play area was set up on the patio outside the room. On the morning of the meeting, Rick awoke to the smell of spicy food cooking, and it made him salivate. He stopped by the communal dining room for a quick look at the final preparations for the feast. Everyone seemed upbeat and active.