“The Ordinary Miracle of Existing” from Atlantic magazine.
Alan Lightman, the renowned physicist and author, has a lovely, very informative article in the Atlantic on how preposterous any one of us individual human beings having been born is: that is, how our unique configuration of DNA – each OUR OWN mix of genes is one of trillions that could have come together at the moment of our parents coupling.
Given that your Mom has 300-500,000 eggs in her ovaries, and your Dad deposited roughly 40 million sperm in her at the moment of climax, there could have been conceived at that moment a 100 trillion different brothers or sisters of yours created by the mix of the different blends of DNA (actually a random mix of your grandparent’s genes): instead of the also unique assortment from the one egg and the one sperm that did become you. The chances of any of us being here, being born, being alive for our brief moment in one tiny corner the cosmos are to not avoid the pun: astronomical. Neil de Grasse Tyson has some clips on social media that make this same point and for the same reason as Dr. Lightman: perspective. Who we are, and our place in the world as we know it as revealed in modern knowledge.
Each of us is at once preposterous, yet also quite an ordinary result of sexual recombination of animal DNA. Its just Biology, after all and living things by the kabilllions have been born over the eons by the same process.
The fact that each gamete (sperm or egg sex cell), that could have come together instead of the pair that made you (or me) is genetically unique containing their own random mix of the genes your Mom and Dad got from their parents – means that any one of 10 to the 14th potential siblings of yours could be reading this instead of you – or me writing this for that matter. That’s a ten with 14 zeroes behind it, one hundred thousand billion: all the different possible combinations of Ma and Pa’s little critter creators…
And it works the same way in dogs, frogs, chickens, and chimps, so you may be special, but not THAT special.
His point is perspective, and his essay delves into a number of ways modern knowledge gained by science has overturned much of what was thought before about the human condition, how the world actually works, and our place in it.
Lightman begins with the history of early 14th century sea exploration around the West coast of Africa. Since the days of Ptolemy over a thousand years before, it was believed that an ocean full of whirlpools and sea monsters lay beyond the bulging coastline of Northern Africa and none could venture there and come back alive. Portugal’s navy attempted 14 trips around that coast and all turned back – they just couldn’t handle the weather or the fear of what lay ahead. The 15th seafarer steered farther out to sea, rounded the cape and initiated the exploration of the bulk of that huge continent; for our author “enlarging our perspective”. No sea monsters, no whirlpools, just the bottom 2/3 of Africa, full of more people, animals, and land, lots of land…filled with people, not monsters: some exotic but still regular old animals, not mythical creatures.
The Ptolemaics and their beliefs, carrying all the way through to the Middle Ages – were just plain wrong. Centuries of utterly fanciful beliefs dispelled in a short decade or two with no apology deemed necessary on Dr. Ligthman’s part at this point in the essay.
However, as to the unlikely fact of any one of us individual humans being born out of the trillions that could have been conceived, he also correctly considers another stark fact of our existence:
“There is a little more to the story. There will never be another you in the future of the Universe.
(Some apologies are due to the Buddhists and Hindus, who believe in rebirth…)”
emphasis mine.
Let that sink in, despite what the Reincarnation religions teach: “There will never be another you…”
Not only are any of us highly unlikely to the point of improbable, but we are ephemeral as well, a one-off, never to be seen in the Universe again! Once we die and our configuration of atoms and molecules that make up our body, and more importantly our brains, with our neurons arranged and wired up by our personal development and experience, finally unravel into mush and worm food – our behavior, our thoughts, our minds, our selves dissolve with it.
I suppose there are no living Ptolemaists around today so an apology for dispelling their early, crude, and just plain wrong beliefs about the ocean around West Africa was deemed wholly un-necessary by Dr. Lightman, but of course, the just as absurd and primitive musings about souls and their reincarnation of the Buddhists dating also as far back as the time of Ptolemy (1st century AD), and of the Hindus even centuries before – required an apology.
The Buddhists and Hindus evidently haven’t learned anything regarding human birth and death. Biology as we know it today, as we have learned through discovery – just like rounding the Western Horn of Africa and finding no sea monsters or other mythical suppositions, doesnt apply to them. They still cling to ridiculous and utterly unfounded beliefs: millennia old guesses about how the world might work – proven wrong through centuries of modern painstaking research and observation. Despite the pleadings of religionsists and many philosophers for 3,000 years or so, there is no evidence of any soul or mind: that somehow our personalities and intellects somehow survive the death of the brain and exist in some realm, somewhere beyond it. The reincarnation religions remain smug in their teaching another generation of children completely wrongheaded ideas – with no evidence for them, ever, – clinging to religious nonsense. THAT deserves an apology?!
Religion often gets a free pass for peddling 1,000’s year-old utterly wrong ideas as “eternal truths”
And many of us feel compelled to apologize for dispelling their nonsense…
Recently, on the US morning TV Talk Show “The View” the ladies there were discussing LGBTQI month and the heroic efforts of gay-lesbian-trans activists working hard to dispel the entrenched cultural norms against the validity and normalcy of their kind. The show lasts around an hour and not once, as is typical of not just mainstream media, but even of most alternative and social media in general- the elephant in the room is NEVER mentioned: Religion.
Without religion, mainly Christianity in the US, there would be no need for pride parades, LGBTQI month, or the whole gay-trans rights movement.
There is only one source of trans and homo-phobia: Religion.
In the US its Christianity: worldwide; besides Christianity, Catholicism especially, Islam is particularly pernicious (read cruel and ugly – like throwing gays off a roof in Gaza), with Buddhism and Hinduism though less critical, are nonetheless outdated and obnoxious in their beliefs and teachings.
Christians get to repeat cruel, absurd, wrongheaded ideas about the sinfulness of homosexual behavior drawing on passages from both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Christians who take their religion seriously (most, thankfully do not) havent learned anything about Biology either – that differences in gender and sexual orientation are just normal variation due to the effects of genes and hormones in the womb on our bodies and brains. Period. Full stop. Whatever religions teach about sexual development and behavior other than what we know from modern Biology is as absurd as believing in sea monsters and whirlpools off the coast of Africa.
Dr.Lightman’s various explications of how our modern knowledge changed so drastically on so many fronts – each case contradicting and utterly refuting old fanciful ideas (held only by religions), are meant to change our perspective – but he feels compelled to apologize to those indoctrinated into the Reincarnation religions. They get a free pass to ignore modern knowledge and not change their perspective. Religions remain human-centered in perspective, the ultimate egocentric exercise of OUR religion knows best –
“It’s in OUR old book” – so to Hell with what we actually know about how the world works, whether its about gays or souls or sea monsters – OUR book has it right for all time – no matter what we find out to the contrary.
Science teaches us a different perspective: to think objectively, from the orientation of the reality we find ourselves in, instead of beginning and ending with ourselves. And that viewpoint and the knowledge that engenders it, works for everybody on the planet. As the secular writer Sam Harris points out, regardless of our religious beliefs, we all generate electricity the same way. Whether the Buddhists and Hindus like it or not, we aren’t recycled endlessly. We are here and gone, like any other critter – in an eye-blink on the cosmic scale – and we know how it happens. The findings of modern Biology work for all of us on the planet the same way as electricity. No apology necessary.
So you can think egocentrically: that the complexities of the Universe, with some simple atoms made over 13 billion years ago in the Big Bang, and more complex atoms made billions of years later in exploding stars, kabillions of them all coalescing on the tumultuous, hot, early-forming earth 4.3 billion years ago, and coming together as complex molecules eventually in one line of mammal creature: the bipedal primates, (after but another few billion years of chemical and biological evolution here on earth) – lastly ending up in the sex cells of your Mom and Dad, as parts of the genetic code human animals reproduce with, with your parents romantic attraction powered by other atoms made long, long ago, and far, far away in the hormones that caused them to couple and put your unique set of atoms, molecules, genes, hormones, proteins, organs, body, neurons and brain together to be born and develop into you – “It was all for me!” Moi. The Universe had me in mind from the beginning! The Ultimate Anthropic Ego Trip!!!
Or you can change your perspective and think a bit less egocentrically, and realize what we also know to be true: genetic complexity in all animals is staggering and can produce astronomical numbers of different critters of ANY kind that reproduce sexually. And that configuration of atoms and molecules and proteins and hormones and neurons that make us living, breathing, behaving, thinking, feeling human beings – yours or mine or anybody’s, will last approximately 80 years nowadays, out of 13.4 billion – that’s less than .0000001% of the Universe’s existence and you will have come and gone. And of the 100 billion or so other folks of our species H. sapiens who have ever been born, the vast majority of them popped in and out of the limelight in less than a third of the time you will enjoy on the planet, living today – in the 2000’s of the Common Era.
You will be here but once, in the briefest glimpse of cosmic time, one configuration of ancient atoms out of trillions of trillions of possible living combinations – one that produced a human and not any other life form, and but one particular human (you) for the briefest of moments, never to be re-assembled and seen again.
But of course, that’s all wrong because the Buddhists and Hindus know that the soul is as eternal as the Universe itself and that you will be born again, reincarnated as another human who might remember glimpses of their past life if they meditate just right and long enough to reach Enlightenment and break the endless rebirth cycle of Samsara, or consult with the right Guru to guide you through your previous lives…
Unless of course, you are gay: because then you may come back as a lower life form, like a cockroach or a mole rat, due to Bad Karma for having partaken in abnormal sex acts. Buddhism and many Hindu scriptures condemn any sort of non-vaginal sex as abnormal, even abhorrent. So even though these Reincarnation folks are so proud they don’t condemn you to Hell for having sinned horribly by living the gay lifestyle as many Christians do, they know you will still deservedly pay for those un-natural acts…
Right.
What a wonderful, enlightened perspective, yes?
end religion now.
(15)
