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By Root 641 0

The next chapter will begin the process, explaining why physics tells us everything we need to know about the nature of reality. Once we have a handle on the fundamental nature of reality, we’ll then be able to see exactly how physics, by itself, makes the process Darwin discovered the only way that any life, and ultimately intelligent life, could have emerged in the universe. We’ll learn why the purposelessness of the physical universe also pervades biology, neuroscience, social life, and even conscious thought. By the time we get to the end of this book, we’ll see that science beats stories.

We’ll have to accept that the answers to the relentless questions won’t come packaged in a lot of stories. And understanding the answers won’t produce that sudden relief from curiosity we all experience from a good bedtime story. But if we can work through the details, we’ll get something much better—a real understanding of life, the universe, everything, warts and all.

HERE IS A BRIEF GUIDE to the landscape of scientism we will travel through on the way to the (story-free) scientific answers to the persistent questions. I’ll admit here and now that sometimes the tour guide will break down and tell a story or two. Remember, when I do, it’s just to help you remember things, not to help you understand them.

Scientism starts by taking physics seriously as the basic description of reality. Fortunately, we don’t need to know much physics to answer our unrelenting questions. Even more fortunately, what we do need is relatively easy to understand and not at any risk of being overturned by future discoveries in physics. The slogan of Chapter 2, that the physical facts fix all the facts, will get repeated throughout the rest of the tour.

First, we see how these facts determine the biological ones, and then through biology, how physics fixes the rest of the facts about us.

Taking physics seriously has the surprising consequence that you have to accept Darwin’s theory of natural selection as the only possible way that the appearance of purpose, design, or intelligence could have emerged anywhere in the universe. We’ll see exactly why this is so and what this means for the persistent questions about the meaning of life in Chapters 3 and 4.

Scientism dictates a thoroughly Darwinian understanding of humans and of our evolution—biological and cultural. But that does not in any way commit us to thinking about human nature or human culture as hardwired, or in our genes. It does mean that when it comes to ethics, morality, and value, we have to embrace an unpopular position that will strike many people as immoral as well as impious. So be it. Chapter 6 takes the sting out of the charge, however, without denying its basic accuracy. If you are going to be scientistic, you will have to be comfortable with a certain amount of nihilism. But as we’ll see, it’s a nice sort of nihilism.

Adopting nihilism isn’t even the hardest thing scientism will force on us. If physics fixes all the facts and fixes the biological ones via natural selection, then it will fix the psychological facts about us the same way. Consciousness tells us that we are exceptions to the physical world order, but science requires us to give up consciousness as a guide to the truth about us. Chapter 7 catalogs some of the empirical discoveries of the last 50 years that make this conclusion inescapable. Freed from the snares of introspection, in Chapters 8–10 we will be able to put together the whole “story,” showing how our own mind seduces us into being relentless conspiracy theorists. The love of stories comes to us in a package that also includes the illusion of free will, the fiction of an enduring self, and the myth of human purpose. A scientistic worldview has to give up all of that. In exchange, at least you get correct answers to life’s questions.

So, individual human life is meaningless, without a purpose, and without ultimate moral value. How about human history or human culture, civilization, or the advancement of our species as a whole? It’s even easier for science to