Dawkins ventures that the ultimate gratitude that led to religious belief was perhaps amazement that we exist at all. That’s certainly a valid thing to be amazed about in modern society, because science has now shown just how unlikely life is. But by the same token there’s no reason to believe that primitive humans had any reason to experience this particular strain of gratitude, because unlike Dawkins they had no reason to know their existence was against all odds. Dawkins waved away inconvenient details like the origin of life by appealing to the “astonishing stroke of luck that we are here.” He speculated that life might have begun accidentally, that maybe it was indeed extremely rare in the universe, but nonetheless we are here so we should just chalk it up to a natural surprise event. Is this truly the best argument Richard Dawkins can muster in favour of atheism? It appears so, but let’s return to The Divinity Code to see just how “astonishing” the existence of life on earth is.
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alileo’s discovery that the earth revolves around the sun is often cited as a turning point, the moment that science trumped religious belief for the first time. Its significance, according to atheists, is that it showed the Earth was not the centre of the solar system, let alone the universe, and that really we inhabit an insignificant speck of rock, three planets out from the sun, in a forlorn and minor arm of an inconsequential galaxy in a far-flung corner of the cosmos. Some scientists – the late Carl Sagan, for example – are so certain that we are not unique, and that the universe must be teeming with life that they set up projects like SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, which harnesses the power of millions of home computers over the internet to number crunch radio telescope data in the hunt for intelligent messages from outer space. As anyone who has seen Star Trek or Star Wars knows, the appeal of other civilizations in far off places is at the core of modern science fiction, touching as it does on the deep human need to explore, seek out new frontiers and to boldly go where no man has gone before! Well, you get the picture. In a sense, our search for aliens is a reflection of our deeper search for meaning and truth in the universe. What is life for, if not to seek out the unknown? What most people don’t appreciate, how54 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM April 2010
ever, is that our location appears to make us unique in the universe. If the earth was not placed precisely where it is in space, none of you would be here, let alone reading this book. Romantic as science fiction is, there are growing signs that the universe is not teeming with life, and that we may indeed be alone. Part of this is because of the brick wall evolutionary biology has hit in trying to find out how life arose on earth. As I explained in my earlier book, Eve’s Bite, experiments to create life from scratch have failed. The best that science appears able to do is cobble together components of existing life forms to create new hybrid organisms. Creating life from a puddle, even with the best amino acids, electricity surges and ideal conditions, has flopped. Various alternative theories have been put forward, such as life arising elsewhere in the universe and arriving here either on a comet or via aliens “seeding” Earth (panspermia theory); or alternatively the “RNA World hypothesis”, which suggests that RNA molecules might have powered primitive life forms on our planet before evolving into DNA life. The problem with panspermia theory is that if life is too complex to have arisen on the planet most suited to sustaining life (Earth), then how likely is it to have arisen somewhere else in the universe and survived millions of years of cosmic radiation while being transported here on a comet? And how did it survive the journey from its own planet onto a comet in the first place? Christopher Hitchens, in God Is Not Great, says “Francis Crick even allowed himself to flirt with the theory that life was ‘inseminated’ on earth by bacteria spread from a passing comet.” Not so fast, Hitch. In an interview with Bible Code author Michael Drosnin, Crick denies the comet idea: “I called,” writes Drosnin, “the most eminent authority in the world, Francis Crick, the Nobel laureate biologist who discovered the double helix, the spiral structure of DNA. It was one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time. As Crick himself declared in the first moment of revelation, ‘We’ve discovered the secret of life’. “ ‘Is it possible,’ I asked Crick, when I reached him at the Salk Institute in San Diego, California, ‘that our DNA came from another planet?’ “ ‘I published that theory twenty-five years ago,’ said Crick. ‘I called it ‘Directed Panspermia.’ “ ‘Do you think it arrived in a meteor or comet?’ I asked.
“ ‘No,’ said Crick. ‘Anything living would have died in such an accidental journey through space.’ ‘Are you saying that DNA was sent here in a vehicle?’ I asked. ‘It’s the only possibility,’ said Crick. “I asked him to explain his theory of the genesis of DNA. The DNA molecule, Crick said, was far too complex to have evolved spontaneously on Earth in the short time between the formation of this planet 4 billion years ago and the first appearance of life 3.8 billion years ago. “ ‘But it is unlikely,’ said Crick, ‘that liv-