How We Believe_ Science and the Search for God - Michael Shermer [132]
In his 1977 book, The First Three Minutes, the physicist Steven Weinberg speculated on the human need for centrality, but he was even more direct in his assessment of where we actually fit in the cosmic scheme of things:
It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning. It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.
Was our existence foreordained from the beginning, or are we nothing more than a “farce,” a fluke product of a “chain of accidents?” Modern astronomers and physicists may be the theologians of science, but these questions date back at least to the ancient Greek historians and philosophers who, twenty-five hundred years ago, identified a central tension in the nature of change, as to what must be versus what may be—that which happens necessarily versus what happens contingently. Is our existence a necessity—that is, are things such that it could not have been otherwise? Or is our existence a contingency —something that need not have been? Must we choose between contingency and necessity? Is there not an interactive middle ground that more adequately describes the history of the universe, the world, and life? There is.
One of the most common reasons people give for believing in God is that the universe, the world, and life appears to be designed—in other words, it looks necessary, not contingent. If the universe, the world, and life were not necessary, however, it would imply that there is no designer. And without a designer there is no necessary meaning to life other than what we humans impose upon it. If life is contingent, then we might not have been: Rewind the tape of life and play it again and we would not be here. This is what makes contingency such a “dangerous” idea. Most people find the prospects of this worldview existentially devastating. In fact, contingency can be both liberating and empowering.
IF THE TAPE WERE PLAYED TWICE
I first discovered the notion of contingency in 1987 when I entered a doctoral program in history at Claremont Graduate School. In preparation for a course in the philosophy of history, I turned to the Syntopicon (109 “great ideas”) of the Great Books of the Western World and read what the great minds of history said about fate and chance, universal and particular, and especially necessity and contingency . Here were the grand and timeless debates about history and the nature of change. To my surprise and disappointment, however, not only did we not discuss what these great minds said about these great ideas, we did not even study these great ideas. Instead we explored the possibility that it was not possible to know any ideas, or understand any authors, great or not. Later I realized I was caught squarely in the middle of the postmodern, deconstructionist movement. I abandoned hope for the future of the philosophy of history.
Two years later, however, my flame of optimism was rekindled by the publication