To analyze the world in which we find ourselves, it is necessary to have an interrogatory starting point: a foundational principle upon which we, brick by brick, can build the knowledge we think, with some confidence, that we possess about this world. Much like how I, when I get my vision checked every few years, look through a variety of lenses to see which one gives each eye the sharpest, most in-focus image, the process of choosing an interrogatory starting point—a First Principle—is one in which less compelling principles are rejected in order to embrace the single one most able to serve as an enduring foundation. The First Principle upon which I have settled, that being evidentialism, can be summed, at least in my case, as follows: Evidence is the best, most reliable way for humans to approximate truth as we interrogate the world of experience. All of my reasoning—which is to say, all conclusions I draw that are not obvious, manifest facts of the world—is driven by this principle.

Given the centrality of the evidentialist principle to my reasoning, it is worthwhile to parse the actual statement a bit. What is “evidence,” first of all? According to the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, “evidence” is anything that helps to prove that something is or is not true. Typically, when I am asked to define the word, I say something along the lines of, “Evidence refers to the relevant facts pertaining to any matter of controversy, uncertainty or dispute.” Thus, following my First Principle, if there is a dispute about a matter for which an actual answer exists—for example, either Harry did kill Sally, or Harry did not—weighing relevant facts is the most reliable method to approximate the correct answer. The word “approximate” also appears in my statement of evidentialism, and this is because, even though recourse to evidence has proven repeatedly to be our best tool for discovering truth (i.e., in the legal/judicial world, in medical settings, in day-to-day life, etc.), it is not an infallible tool; we, as mere evolved creatures with large and advanced brains, cannot hope to possess absolute certainty. We are forced to settle for provisional truths in which our level of confidence is commensurate with the available evidence.

The last part of my statement of evidentialism refers to “the world of experience,” as distinct from a hypothetical “world of actuality” to which, for whatever reason, I might not have access. Think of it this way: For Dr. Cliff Huxtable, the main character in “The Cosby Show,” the world of that show was his actual world. Dr. Cliff Huxtable does not live in our world; rather, he is a character who exists only in the world of the television program. In an analogous way, consider the possibility that, in actuality, I am a brain in a vat; some kind of super-intelligence has merely created the illusion that I exist as a free-roaming primate when, in fact, I am just a brain soaking in a vat. Because this fact, presumably, is inaccessible to me in the illusion in which I live, I could gather no evidence of this “actual world” to which I have no access. By the same token, though, an “actual world” from which my consciousness is permanently isolated and of which I have no evidence might as well not exist at all; its existence is indistinguishable from its non-existence and, thus, inconsequential. The only world about which I care—the only world consequential to me and, thus, worthy of interrogation—is the one in which I find myself: that being, the world of experience.

What, then, is so persuasive about evidentialism as a First Principle, anyway? Why, to use the eyeglass-lens analogy, is my vision so much better with evidentialism than with, say, a First Principle centered on biblical Christianity? As hinted at earlier, evidence can easily be adduced in support of evidence's pervasive utility in approximating truth, thus making evidentialism a self-subsisting, rather than self-annihilating, First Principle. Criminal justice systems that are driven by evidence gathering and examination are clearly much more likely to zero-in on criminals than are systems in which evidence is shunted aside when trying to determine guilt. In the medical field, those doctors who ascertain what symptoms a patient manifests (gather symptomatic evidence) before reaching conclusions about what afflicts that patient are clearly much more likely to diagnose the illness correctly than are doctors who gather no symptomatic evidence. And, inarguably, in nearly every person's everyday life, he or she constantly gathers, and acts upon, evidence. For example, when, upon seeing brake lights illuminate in front of us, we apply our own brakes, having realized that the evidence of the brake lights indicates the car in front of us is slowing. Stated simply: Evidence works.

There are some who mischaracterize me as a doctrinaire materialist or naturalist...as a committed and unshakeable atheist or physicalist. In fact, though, the only commitment I make—the only notion to which I have presuppositionally wedded myself—is to the validity of evidentialism as First Principle. I am, in ascending order of importance, an atheist, a naturalist and a nihilist, and I am all of these things as a result of my evidentialism; theoretically, all three of those descriptors could change—indeed, could be negated entirely—if the evidence were contrary. That is why the oft-heard charge that, through my presuppositions, I have ruled out biblical Christianity rings utterly hollow. Biblical Christianity is, in principle, fully compatible with evidentialism. This is demonstrated even within the bible—in 1 Kings 18, for example—leading Jaco Gericke, in his contribution to the book The End of Christianity, to note that, presumably, Christians have confected their own reasons “why these things no longer happen and why no philosopher of religion will agree to a contest on Mount Carmel.”

I would be foolish, indeed, to reject supernaturalism entirely if the world looked fundamentally different from how it actually looks. For instance, suppose that true, pious Christian believers were able to resuscitate the dead, a feat that nobody of any other religion—and no impious, casual Christian—could ever do. Surely, if such a thing were actually the case, it would be meaningful, and it would be difficult to maintain a purely naturalistic stance. Consider also a hypothetical possibility raised by Richard Carrier, who, in his extended essay on why he is not a Christian, envisages true Christian bibles that are all indestructible, unalterable and self-translating. It might be a bit primitive for one to shout, “Lo, a miracle!” in response to such a phenomenon—surely, a natural explanation might exist, however unlikely—but any evidentialist would have no choice but to reweigh the odds of the supernatural existing. I am a naturalist because, in interrogating the world of experience, I find no compelling evidence for the supernatural, and no need for recourse to it. In the same way, I am an atheist because I have discovered no persuasive evidence for gods, and no need to appeal to them. Finally, and most importantly, I am a nihilist because, given the current evidence, the cosmos, and everything in it, seems to be ultimately meaningless, purposeless and lacking objective value.

Although, as noted, “nihilist” is the most important appellation that I apply to myself, it is worthwhile to explain, especially given my relentless criticism of the religion, exactly why I reject biblical Christianity and embrace atheism. The reasons are numerous and include the flood—the word just seems right—of absurd claims contained within the bible's pages (not absurd in the sense of being self-contradictory but, rather, in the sense of failing utterly to comport with the world of experience as we all collectively know it), the text's seeming incompatibility with Darwinian evolution and a 13.7 billion-year-old universe, prayer's uselessness in actually effecting desired results, people's pronounced tendency to embrace the religion of their parents and peers, and the problem of statistical improbability regarding a hugely complex being—god—simply existing without a satisfactory explanation of origins. There are, however, three principal reasons I reject Christianity, each of which is probably sufficient to falsify the faith and that, when taken collectively, ring its unmistakable death knell for all but the most presuppositionally committed.

Why, then, am I not a Christian? First, because god is absent or, at the least, silent. In essence, those of the Christian faith proclaim that our universe, and all that is part of it, is in the hands of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent creator deity who takes a personal interest in human affairs. It is completely inexplicable, then, that this creator deity would be entirely undetectable and utterly absent from day-to-day life. If one reads the bible, one finds an active, present, immediate god; moreover, one finds copious miracles and prodigies that are unlike anything with which we are familiar.

The reliably perceptive David Hume, in Of Miracles, writes:

It forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations, that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations ... When we peruse the first histories of all nations, we are apt to imagine ourselves transported into some new world; where the whole frame of nature is disjointed, and every element performs its operations in a different manner, from what it does at present. Battles, revolutions, pestilence, famine and death, are never the effect of those natural causes, which we experience. Prodigies, omens, oracles, judgements, quite obscure the few natural events, that are intermingled with them. But as the former grow thinner every page, in proportion as we advance nearer the enlightened ages, we soon learn, that there is nothing mysterious or supernatural in the case, but that all proceeds from the usual propensity of mankind towards the marvelous ...

Hume rightly adds, "It is strange, a judicious reader is apt to say, upon the perusal of these wonderful historians, that such prodigious events never happen in our days."

Why would a god who, in barbarous and ignorant times, was so clear, present and active suddenly, upon the emergence of a scientific understanding of the natural order, become a silent, inert sluggard whose presence could only be discerned in the most obscure, skepticism-baiting ways? Where are the miracles and prodigies for our scientific age? Because god, if existent, would be a do-nothing layabout, Christianity is falsified.

Second, the bible, despite the fact it is purported to be inspired by god himself, wallows in pitiable prescientific primitivism and yawn-inducing mundanity. Certainly, considering its alleged divine inspiration, one might expect the bible to be full of dazzlingly specific information of which no one had been previously aware. In light of its purported inspiration, one might expect the pinnacle of all intellectual achievement. This is not so. Sam Harris, in The End of Faith, writes, “[The bible] does not contain a single sentence that could not have been written by a man or woman living in the first century.” There is nothing about the actual age or size of our universe. There is nothing about the germ theory of disease, heliocentric theory of the solar system or atomic theory of matter. Earth's vast geography is shrunk down to claustrophobically local levels. It is not even clear from the bible whether the creator of our universe is aware of Australia. The bible is not a product of divine inspiration but, rather, lamentable ancient ignorance.

How, Christopher Hitchens asks in god is not Great, can Genesis be proven the mundane work of ignorant humans in merely a paragraph? He writes:

Because man is given “dominion” over all beasts, fowl and fish. But no dinosaurs or plesiosaurs or pterodactyls are specified, because the authors did not know of their existence, let alone of their supposedly special and immediate creation. Nor are any marsupials mentioned, because Australia—the next candidate after Mesoamerica for a new “Eden”—was not on any known map. Most important, in Genesis man is not awarded dominion over germs and bacteria because the existence of these necessary yet dangerous fellow creatures was not known or understood. And if it had been known or understood, it would at once have become apparent that these forms of life had “dominion” over us, and would continue to enjoy it uncontested until the priests had been elbowed aside and medical research at last given an opportunity.

The bible's mundanity belies the claim of divine inspiration, thus proving Christianity false.

Third, I am not a Christian because worship of Yahweh as the singular creator deity did not arise independently among numerous geographically isolated populations. Any delusional belief system, if designed with sufficient cleverness, has the potential to “catch fire,” as it were, and spread pervasively throughout our species. Much less easily explained, however, would be for the same delusional belief system to arise independently—as though through universal identical revelation—in many different places. Imagine if, around 2000 BCE, worship of Yahweh had arisen, nearly simultaneously, in the Middle East, China, the Americas and central Africa. What would the odds have been of an identical god character—with distinctive quirks, commandments, preferences and fetishes—having been invented by completely different populations? They seem infinitesimal. There is, however, no evidence of Yahweh-worship arising independently among geographically isolated groups. However spiritual they might previously have been, primitive populations began to worship Yahweh specifically when believers in Yahweh arrived at their shores: The omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent deity's message, therefore, is spread by the veritable Pony Express method of human beings.

Christopher Hitchens, in god is not Great, writes, “One recalls the question that was asked by the Chinese when the first Christian missionaries made their appearance. If god has revealed himself, how is it that he has allowed so many centuries to elapse before informing the Chinese?” Whatever deities might have haunted Chinese history, none was distinguishably Yahweh. The failure of god to reveal himself independently to several geographically isolated populations, then, also falsifies Christianity.

As noted earlier, though, I am not principally defined as an atheist or a non-Christian but, rather, as a nihilist, particularly a moral nihilist and an existential nihilist. As explained on Wikipedia, moral nihilism is the meta-ethical view that nothing is moral or immoral. Indeed, moral nihilists reject the very concepts of objective good and evil...right and wrong...righteous and wicked as pertains to the actual, existent world. Wikipedia defines existential nihilism as the belief that life has no intrinsic meaning or value. Broadened a bit, existential nihilism refers to the belief that the universe is meaningless and purposeless, as is its every component. On this view, humanity, for instance, is to the universe as a single grain of sand on a beach is to the Earth. The entire species could go extinct in an enormous nuclear blast—indeed, the Sun could incinerate the entire solar system, or the Milky Way could vanish—and the universe would not take the slightest notice, nor would the event have the faintest objective meaning. And, as previously explained, my nihilism, both moral and existential, directly results from my evidentialist First Principle.

The natural starting point is with existential nihilism, because, in my view, moral nihilism follows quite directly therefrom. The foundational background knowledge with which I approach the issue includes, but is not limited to, the fact of Darwinian evolution by natural selection, the fact of an old universe (about 13.7 billion years) and an old Earth (following some 9 billion years later), and the utter absence of compelling evidence for the veracity of religious revelation, including that of Christianity. The cumulative discoveries of science over the past two centuries have confirmed that all living creatures on this planet share common ancestry. That is, there is a single Darwinian tree of life, of which every species, including human beings, is part. Although different species possess different traits—some have eight legs and some have large brains, some have antennae and some can fly—every variety of creature is fundamentally connected through common Darwinian ancestry.

With respect to the cosmos, we live in a universe whose size and age exceeds man's ability to imagine adequately. The Milky Way, our home galaxy, is a hugely vast cluster of stars and their planetary systems. The Milky Way contains roughly 200 billion stars, of which our Sun—inside which 1 million Earths could fit—is merely an ordinary one. Our solar system is only a speck as a component of the Milky Way, which is but one insignificant galaxy among perhaps 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. The Big Bang is estimated to have occurred 13.7 billion years ago, with Earth's formation following long after (again, 4.54 billion years ago). Perspective can be gained by putting this in the context of a calendar year: Imagine that the instant of the Big Bang equates to the stroke of midnight on January 1, and the present day equates to precisely midnight on the following January 1. On this imagining, Homo sapiens sapiens would appear on the scene seven-and-a-half minutes to midnight on December 31. It is surprising that man, according to Christianity, is made in the image of god and is the object of god's special attention and love, but then does not appear for aeons and aeons in a universe in which humans are confined to the tiniest conceivable speck of available space.

In the absence of compelling evidence for a god, and lacking persuasive evidence to support any religion, I have provisionally concluded that we are alone in the universe: not alone in the sense of there being no extraterrestrial life but, instead, in the sense of being unsupervised and uncared for. Sure, we, as human beings, care for one another, particularly for family members, friends and others for whom we have developed feelings. But, in a quite literal sense, we—and all creatures—are composed of the same dumb “stuff” that also composes inanimate objects, like rocks and concrete. The molecules of which we are constructed are made of atoms whose origins trace to the crucibles that were the cores of high-mass stars, whose chemical contents exploded into the galaxy aeons ago. We are the universe become conscious, a thought that, while exhilarating, is also humbling. We, like rocks, are a mere atomic assemblage—albeit, yes, a conscious one—whose existence is accidental and, thus, objectively purposeless. We certainly can imbue our lives with personal, subjective meaning, and we can assign personal, subjective value to those we love, but none of those things can be considered an actual fact: not in the same way the speed of light in vacuum can be so considered.

“Value” is a concept that requires an assigner or assessor. As noted, one atomic assemblage can assign value to another one, but, inasmuch as any living creature is destined to die—and, in the grand cosmic scope, to do so almost immediately—any value assignment is ephemeral: not enduring...factual...objective. On the universal scale, none of us matters and none of us is significant, thus undercutting the consequentiality of any value assessment any of us might assign. Essentially, all of this is to say that if one meaningless, insignificant thing declares another meaningless, insignificant thing important to it, that importance, itself, is meaningless and insignificant by extension, since importance cannot come from unimportance, nor the meaningful from the meaningless.

It is with all of this in mind that I proffer moral nihilism. To call an action—any action—righteous or wicked is to imply that the action is a significant one and, moreover, either comports with or transgresses an established moral code. Again, though, there is no reason to believe that significance can arise from insignificance, making it quite difficult to say that any action undertaken by any human has a moral dimension. To whom might human actions matter? To other humans? That is to suggest, to other accidental atomic assemblages whose vanishingly brief existence will ultimately come to nothing? Well, on the scale of the universe, so what? The question also arises of against whose moral code human behavior might transgress. In the absence of god, there is no moral code handed down from on high. Those who subscribe to the superstition of actual, objective morality must be appealing to some source of right and wrong....

There is, of course, the natural moral framework inculcated by Darwinian evolution, which essentially is a utilitarian code intended to permit survival and, most importantly, gene propagation. Richard Dawkins, in The Greatest Show on Earth, gives an illuminating explication of natural selection, writing, “It is all about the survival of self-replicating instructions for self-replication.” He continues, “Viruses and tigers are both built by coded instructions whose ultimate message is, like a computer virus, ‘Duplicate me.’ In the case of the cold virus, the instruction is executed rather directly. A tiger’s DNA is also a ‘duplicate me’ program, but it contains an almost fantastically large digression as an essential part of the efficient execution of its fundamental message. That digression is a tiger, complete with fangs, claws, running muscles, stalking and pouncing instincts. The tiger’s DNA says, ‘Duplicate me by the round-about route of building a tiger first.’” This is whence objective, prescriptive morality is meant to come? The whole purpose of Darwinian evolution, as Dawkins writes, is gene propagation. There is no right or wrong...no virtue or wickedness...just cool, unfeeling, ruthless efficiency. A human being is no less a fantastically large digression than a tiger is; we just like to enchant our existence with delusions of meaningfulness.

The evidence is unmistakable: There are no gods, no revealed religion comports with reality, human existence is wholly accidental, no human being—either singularly or as a collective—has any enduring meaning or value, and morality is but a useful illusion inculcated into us by Darwinian means in order that our genes might be more effectively propagated. This is simultaneously diminishing and liberating, much as the realization that we are organic products of the universe—stardust from long-dead worlds—is at once humbling and exhilarating. We live in a world with no “shoulds” and no “oughts”...no “shouldn'ts” and no “ought nots.” None of it matters, and none shall be remembered. One might as well have fun—if one chooses, that is—because, in the last analysis, one is only answerable to oneself.

1. The universe is far older and unspeakably more enormous than the average person realizes. The universe was born 13.75 billion years ago, and Earth formed 4.54 billion years ago. The Milky Way is but one galaxy, among hundreds of billions of others, and the Sun is but one star in our galaxy; individual galaxies can contain hundreds of billions of—if not a trillion or more—stars, many of which are considerably more massive than our Sun is. Our solar system is an unimaginably tiny—completely insignificant—part of the Milky Way, which, itself, is just as infinitesimal, and insignificant, a part of the universe as a whole. Our planet is minor, and the star it orbits is ordinary.

2. The insignificance of our galaxy, our solar system and our planet in the scope of the larger universe is mirrored by the triviality of human beings in the context of Earth's ever-branching Tree of Life. As noted, Earth formed 4.54 billion years ago, with life's initial emergence on this planet having been pegged at approximately 3.8 billion years ago. However, mammals have only walked the planet for 220 million years; the genus Homo made its first appearance only 2.35 million years ago; and hominids bearing close resemblance to humans of today have only been around 200,000 years or so. This, of course, means that hominids bearing resemblance to modern humans have treaded the Earth for less than one-hundredth of one percent of Earth's natural history.

3. In light of facts one and two, we can say with sufficient certitude that humankind, as a whole, is completely and comprehensively insignificant in the context of the cosmos. Our galaxy is of no importance in the broader universe; our solar system is of no importance in our broader galaxy; Earth is but a minor planet in its larger solar system; and humankind—in the context of the broader Tree of Life that has been growing for 3.8 billion years—has just emerged on the scene this instant. Human beings happen to have evolved: Evolutionary forces were not “building toward” us; nor was our evolution a goal, pinnacle or conclusion; nor does our momentary perch atop the animal kingdom confer onto us unique specialness, value or intrinsic worth.

4. Given the comprehensive insignificance—of the Milky Way, of our solar system, of our planet and of humankind as part of the Tree of Life—discussed above, we can go one step further. If the Milky Way galaxy were to disappear tomorrow—sucked into a black hole the size of which no astronomer has yet imagined—the universe would look, well, pretty much exactly as it does now; the Milky Way's presence would not be missed. If the Sun experienced violent star death tomorrow, and its death throes obliterated the entirety of our solar system—including, of course, the Earth—the Milky Way would look more or less identical to the way it looks today; the destruction of our solar system would go unnoticed in our galaxy. And if human beings, in an inexplicable mass extinction, all dropped dead tomorrow, Earth, life and evolution would continue on in our absence. Earth is critical to us because it is our home; we, however, are far from critical to Earth.

5. Humanity is to the universe as a single grain of sand on a beach is to Earth; the entire species could go extinct in a nuclear blast tomorrow, and the universe would not take the slightest notice, or miss our kind. If humanity as a whole is of no cosmic significance, then it follows that no individual human possesses cosmic significance, either. And if no individual human possesses cosmic significance, then it certainly follows that no human action—whether it be deemed virtuous or wicked by those who would judge it—is ultimately significant, either. The Milky Way's formation was not a significant moment in the universe's development; the Sun's birth was not a moment of importance in the Milky Way's history; humankind is not a significant branch on the Darwinian Tree of Life. Importance we assign to ourselves and to our actions is subjective and comes from ourselves, not from objectively grounded cosmic significance that actually exists as a matter of fact.

Although I, myself, have been accused of trafficking in faith, inasmuch as I have a First Principle—that being, evidence is the best, most reliable way for humans to approximate truth as we interrogate the world of experience—on which all my reasoning is grounded, I remain somewhat in awe of the faith possessed by Christian theists: a faith that seems impervious to evidence-based attack. And make no mistake, the Christian faithful make no apologies for the secondary or tertiary (if not quaternary or quinary) importance they assign to evidence.

Consider this, from William Lane Craig, in Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics:

“Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa.”

Additionally, consider this, from Answers in Genesis, the pseudoscientific creationist website:

“By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information.”

(Taken from The AiG Statement of Faith, accessible here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/about/faith)

In light of the overwhelming importance of “the witness of the holy spirit” and “the scriptural record” to Christians of a particularly devout nature, I cannot help but wonder what, exactly, could conceivably convince them that their beliefs are erroneous and that the bible, for all its poetry and rhetorical beauty, is a dusty collection of ancient mythology written by ignorant individuals for whom a wheelbarrow would be an exciting new technological development. In the spirit of probing this question more deeply, I present a brief thought experiment below.

Anybody who reads the bible objectively—without an agenda or an apologetics-related motivation—will admit that its authors believed the Earth was flat and still, with the heavens positioned above it, and with the Sun, moon and stars subservient to, and moving with respect to, it. Although I do not think anybody of intellectual goodwill could plausibly deny this, I nevertheless will provide a couple of passages to underscore the point.

“He commands the sun, and it does not rise;

He seals off the stars;”

Job 9:7 (New King James Version)

For the passage above, look at the celestial body to which the command is directed. The rising and setting of the Sun each day is based upon our movement with respect to it, and yet, in the bible, god commands not the Earth to stop spinning on its axis but, instead, the Sun not to rise.

“Have you commanded the morning since your days began,

And caused the dawn to know its place,

That it might take hold of the ends of the earth,

And the wicked be shaken out of it?”

Job 38:12-13 (New King James Version)

For the passage above, it is rather difficult to imagine taking hold of an oblate spheroid from its “ends” to remove, via shaking, the wicked therefrom.

Do not focus too much attention on the quoted passages above, though, because I have no doubt whatsoever that committed Christians have already discovered “fixes” to such problematic passages (of which there were nearly innumerably many I could have chosen). The thought experiment is hypothetical in nature.

Suppose that, instead of its actual wording, Job 38:12-13 were phrased differently:

“Have you commanded the morning since your days began,

And caused the dawn to know its place,

That it might take hold of the ends of this flat earth,

And the wicked be shaken off of its plane?”

For purposes of this experiment, presume that the rest of the bible is precisely as it actually is and, additionally, grant that the scientific evidence relating to astronomy, cosmology, geology, etc. is exactly as it actually is. When confronted with my revised version of Job 38:12-13, what would you conclude?

(a) That the passage, sometime over the years, became corrupted and, thus, lost its intended meaning? (For this experiment, presume that all extant witnesses have my revised wording, and none has the wording as it exists in the real world.)

(b) That the author of The Book of Job made a mistake, but that the author's mistake does not undercut the credibility of the rest of the bible?

(c) That the author of The Book of Job made a mistake, and that the author's mistake does undercut the credibility of the rest of the bible? (Please specify the extent to which the bible's credibility and, thus, your faith beliefs would be injured.)

(d) That the passage did not become corrupted and that the author of The Book of Job did not make a mistake because, in fact, astronomic, cosmological and geologic evidence notwithstanding, the Earth is indeed flat and similar to a plane?

I seek to get to the root of how deep—and, indeed, how unshakable—this abiding faith in “the witness of the holy spirit” and “the scriptural record” truly is.

And, as a quick add on, here is another thought experiment to which I would greatly appreciate an answer. Suppose that a foolproof time machine were invented, to which you and I gained access. Further, suppose that we took the time machine to 30 CE (replace the year if you disagree with the approximation) and set the location to be Jesus' tomb. Now, suppose that we bore witness to the crucifixion and subsequent entombment in a tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea. Finally, suppose we watched for hours, stretching into days, and there was no resurrection. What would you conclude?

(a) That our presence affected the outcome and, thus, we prevented the resurrection?

(b) That, despite our 24/7 monitoring, which, for the thought experiment, we can presume was flawless, Jesus in fact was resurrected but we missed it?

(c) That, just maybe, Jesus was not resurrected after all, making Christianity false?

Humankind's pronounced predisposition to self-importance, bordering on haughty arrogance, leaves me with some combination of bafflement at our childlike taste for palatable delusion, frustration with our seeming inability to reason beyond it and weary resignation to our current solipsistic (in the sense of being characterized by extreme egocentrism) stance. Certainly, almost every successive discovery that is won through diligent scientific effort bespeaks the wondrousness of the world as we know it and the humbling majesty of the small planet on which we live. One need only consult the exciting developments emerging in disciplines ranging from biology to cosmology, chemistry to astrophysics, and paleontology to geophysics. However, our compounding and expanding scientific understanding only serves to testify to a universe far larger and grander than we will ever experience, and one in which we play such an infinitesimal role that we charitably could be said to have essentially no significance.

As a regular reader of my writing might expect, I believe the institution of religion is the principal cause of the delusive idea that humans, either as individuals or as a species, hold some special significance. And, for clarity, I speak not only of significance exceeding that of other animals but, in fact, of any cosmic-scale significance whatsoever. From extremely early childhood, those of us raised with religious inculcation are told that we are children of god, created in his glorious image, and cared for and loved by him. Moreover, we are told that god is deeply concerned with our thoughts and actions, down to the trivial and the mundane, and that he is comprehensively aware of what we, as individuals, do. If the intellectual cancer of creationism is grafted onto, or simply replaces, our scientific education, we might well be led to believe that the universe, our planet in it and we on that planet were literally and supernaturally created, making us, by extension, godly objects.

All of this is to say that, in youth, our intellectual development is so minimal that we have no defense against attractive delusion that is presented as fact by those whom we trust. If, in childhood, the fangs of religious indoctrination are plunged deeply into our bodies, pumping their unique brand of sweet-smelling toxin, we are likely to grow to be adults whose brains are hopelessly addled by nonsense. Recognizing religion as the robust, well-adapted phenomenon that it is, one cannot help but to approach it in Darwinian fashion in an attempt to understand why it is so pervasive. That religion, in general, promises an afterlife following earthly death certainly contributes to its appeal, inasmuch as the prospect of nonexistence seems to frighten and disturb most of us. In religion, many people also find not only solace and comfort but meaning and inspiration, too. For these people, god and religion, to some extent, provide life with an overarching purpose, without which, presumably, they would feel adrift. Religion also feeds into our innate egocentrism, inasmuch as many of us like to feel loved (especially by a supreme being!) and to believe that our actions, for better or worse, reverberate beyond our minuscule little sphere.

Although religion might well be the vehicle through which human self-importance most frequently reveals itself, and I certainly would contend that it exacerbates and magnifies whatever predisposition toward egocentrism people might have, it definitely is not the only way in which this mental distortion becomes manifest. And I would be dishonest to say that I, myself, do not fall victim frequently to variants of this selfsame delusion. I suffer from an extreme susceptibility to the rose-colored visions of pure, undying romance that have permeated cinema for decades and that are so frequently echoed in sappy love songs, causing me to be sucked into ideas such as "soul mates." By that, I mean two people who, among the nearly 7 billion who populate this planet, are romantically meant for each other to the exclusion of all other possible couplings. The problem with such ideas is the unanswered, and seemingly unanswerable, question: "Meant for each other" by whom? And even granting the possibility that there were an individual, among the billions of people on our planet, for whom you were personally meant, it seems rather silly to think that you would find that individual.

And let us not neglect to mention those old canards that it is sometimes just a person's "time to go" or that, if something happens, "it was meant to." One sometimes hears things similar to the former when a tragedy befalls somebody, such as, for instance, when a plane crash kills a happy young couple. Perhaps more to the point, somebody might say it was a young daredevil's "time to go" if he were to plunge to his death while mountain climbing. The apparent implication of this is that, if the daredevil were to have stayed home and watched television that day, some other accident would have offed him. Turning to the latter phrase, "it was meant to happen," I view it largely as a mental illusion one conjures to absolve oneself of blame and emancipate oneself from regret over an unwelcome development in one's life. That is, it involves believing that something was preordained, thereby allowing one to embrace the comforting notion that, no matter what choices had been made, the outcome would have been the same. The problems here are identical to the one previously identified: If one has a "time to go," by whom is it determined? If something "was meant to happen," to whom can we credit the planning?

These generally secular forms of self-importance might seem meaningfully different from those characterizing religious practice. For instance, freethinkers recognize that prayer is a useless exercise that is undertaken by those who, in a fit of childish delusion, believe they can effect change in the real world by falling to their knees and murmuring to themselves, all the while thinking they are communicating with the creator of the universe. However, whether secular or religious, all variants tie together inasmuch as they are part of a fallacious-idea web wherein humans are significant, subjects of a plan, qualitatively different from other life forms and imbued with a nebulous "special something." It seems that there is insufficiently abundant comfort, purpose, meaning, ego stroking and reassurance in the harsh light of science, leading many to crawl back to the cool, dark territory of unreason, like bugs beneath a stone.

From what, exactly, does the majority seek comfort? I argue that the answer is our proper place in a vast universe. The age of the universe--of which our solar system (as well as our entire galaxy) is the tiniest sliver--is 13.75 billion years, with an uncertainty of 0.17 billion years. The age of the Earth is 4.54 billion years, with an uncertainty of one percent. Modern forms of Homo sapiens first emerged on the scene about 195,000 years ago. Looking at these dates in context, we can say that humanlike creatures have been around less than one-hundredth of one percent of Earth's natural history. With a clearheaded comprehension of Darwinian evolution by natural selection, we understand that human beings happen to have evolved. We certainly were not bound to evolve, nor is evolution an efficacious stepladder that was designed to reach the heights of humankind, nor is humankind the "final product" toward which everything has been building. Furthermore, Darwinian evolution knows of only one Tree of Life, and we exist as part of, rather than standing apart from, that multiply branched tree.

Finally, we also know that that which lives eventually will die and, despite a great deal of wishful thinking of both an explicitly religious and vaguely spiritual nature, there is literally no persuasive evidence to support the contention of an afterlife. The evidence, it turns out, is to the contrary. In God: The Failed Hypothesis--How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist, Victor Stenger writes, "We have seen that neurological and medical evidence strongly indicates that our memories, emotions, thoughts and, indeed, our very personalities reside in the physical particles of the brain or, more precisely, in the ways those particles interact. So this would seem to say that when our brains die, we die." Perhaps it is upsetting to accept, but the simple fact remains that each of us will die. There will come a day, whether distant or close at hand, when each of us will be but a cold, lifeless body, lying in a morgue or funeral parlor, or on a medical examiner's slab. Makeup and powder will be applied to our faces, our best clothes will be draped on our corpses and we will be injected with chemicals to forestall the process through which each of us will decompose...until we become nothing at all.

If one adheres to Christian dogma, quite a bit of the preceding discussion might be questioned or flatly denied. I recognize that, if one is a bible-believing Christian, one is fully entitled, if not outright obligated, to believe in the intrinsic specialness of humankind and our species' cosmic, enduring importance. That one's false superstition compels such beliefs, though, does not prevent me from pointing out that Christianity amplifies, distorts and exacerbates delusive self-importance, a condition that is well recognized if only partially understood. I see no particular reason to relitigate all the issues that I, and many others, have already discussed, such as the ludicrousness of prayer, the many frailties of Christianity and the profound weakness of the design hypothesis, but I do think it is worthwhile to reiterate the principal reason why I am not, and intellectually cannot be, a Christian. Quite simply, to subscribe to Christianity, one must believe that a god who, in barbarous and ignorant times, was eminently clear, present and active suddenly, upon the emergence of a scientific understanding of the natural order, became a silent, inert sluggard whose presence can only be discerned in the most obscure, skepticism-baiting ways. The Israelites had precious little need for abstruse philosophical prestidigitation like the Transcendental Argument.

Whether it is the seemingly endless succession of people predicting the end of the world in their puny, insignificant lifetimes, the thoroughly irrational masses who are convinced that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead sometime before they, themselves, would die off, or the people who foolishly pretend that Earth holds a place of significance in an observable universe that is estimated to measure 93 billion light-years in diameter, humans habitually betray a breathtaking ego that is completely unwarranted by the evidence. If one wishes to think and, as a result, behave in accordance with truth (as best as it has been currently ascertained), one should recognize that, qualitatively, we are no different from any other evolved creature, our current perch atop the animal kingdom notwithstanding. And if one requires meaning of some kind to persist in life, one must invent such meaning for oneself.

Because just as surely as there is no objective, prescriptive moral code weaved into the fabric of the cosmos, nor any god above, below or anywhere else to love, supervise, create or punish, there is no purpose to life, to humans, or to you or to me apart from whichever one we invent. And as much as we might like to believe we are a grand, towering thing of a sort that only a deity could assemble, the truth is contrary: We are the accidental product, among millions and millions of others, of a Darwinian trial-and-error process. Most importantly, the universe did not notice our arrival and does not notice our persistence; it will not notice our eventual, inevitable extinction and shall not remember our follies.

What if the entire scientific community is wrong? What if Darwinian evolution by natural selection, convincing though it has been since the time of Charles Darwin, has not occurred? Indeed, what if, far from modern notions of common descent, all species were specially created—all at once—by a supernatural Creator who personally designed every creature’s form? This Creator would be responsible for Homo sapiens sapiens, of course, but also for Drosophila melanogaster, Apatosaurus excelsus, Ornithorhynchus anatinus and Dendroaspis polylepis, along with every other species of living thing that has ever populated the Earth. Going down this particular rabbit hole is rather difficult; after all, Darwinian evolution by natural selection is scientific fact, a truth as well attested and irrefragable as the germ theory of disease or the heliocentric theory of the solar system. Nevertheless, if we take the enormous leap of faith required to reject Darwinian evolution, we can examine the world as we find it and, I shall argue, discern important qualities of the Creator. These qualities should offer no comfort to the religious.

And so, down the rabbit hole we go, looking at Earth not as an extremely ancient planet whose antiquity is confirmed by several converging lines of evidence but, rather, as a baby planet whose considerable biodiversity can be entirely explained within a several-thousand-year history. Yes, now we must look at Earth as the backyard garden of the Creator. But what kind of a Creator? Looking at the available evidence, I shall explain why we can conclude such a Creator is (1) a devious being, who wishes to trick humans into believing Earth is extremely ancient and the species have an evolutionary history, (2) remarkably odd, because the distribution of species on Earth, if consciously arranged, speaks to an extraordinarily queer mind, (3) peerlessly wasteful, given the presence of nonfunctional pseudogenes, and (4) idiotic, as evidenced by the utterly incompetent design that can be found throughout the creation, in humans as well as other species.

The majority of my material, as well as my initial inspiration, comes from The Greatest Show on Earth, by Richard Dawkins, and Why Evolution is True, by Jerry A. Coyne. When I use either author’s exact words, I shall quote him directly; if, however, I simply summarize a discussion in either text, I might not make a specific citation. Thus, let it be clear that Dawkins and Coyne’s fertile minds contributed invaluably to the whole of this piece.

First, then, surveying the evidence at our disposal, we can be certain that the Creator is devious, deliberately setting out to create a false impression of Earth’s antiquity and evolution’s occurrence. The first way in which this characteristic manifests itself is in the theory of plate tectonics, a geological theory that states the lithosphere of the Earth is divided into a small number of plates that float on and travel independently over the mantle. We now understand that the continents have not always existed as we currently know them. For example, Gondwana was an ancient supercontinent encompassing our present South America, Africa, Arabia, Madagascar, India, Australia and Antarctica. Gondwana broke up gradually, in stages.

Our principal interest is when Africa and South America began breaking apart, which, according to current scientific thinking, was about 140 million years ago. The two continents are now separated by some 3000 miles, with the speed of separation being a couple of inches per year. If, however, Earth is actually quite young—merely several thousand years old—and the product of a Creator, such a snail-like speed would not be nearly enough to separate the continents to their current distance. Indeed, if, as some have proposed, Gondwana broke up during the Noachian flood, the continents would positively have had to hurtle away from each other. Because the speed of separation can be measured, and it is remarkably slow, we can be confident that any Creator who separated the continents at a very quick speed sometime in the last few thousand years is trying to deceive us into believing Earth is ancient. The Creator is deceptive.

The Creator’s trickster tendencies are also apparent in our radioactive clocks. Radioactive isotopes in igneous rocks (rocks formed by magma cooling down and becoming solid) are used for dating purposes, because the isotopes decay at a constant rate. It is important to note that there are several radioactive isotopes scientists use, and they often co-exist within the same rocks. The decay rate used is typically the half-life, that being how long it takes for half of the unstable isotope present to decay to something stable (to go from 100 to 50, 50 to 25 and so forth). Carbon-14 decays to Nitrogen-14; its half-life is 5730 years. Uranium-238 decays to Lead-206; its half-life is 4.5 billion years. Uranium-235 decays to Lead-207; its half-life is 704 million years. Other unstable isotopes include Potassium-40, Thorium-232, Rubidium-87 and Samarium-147. Importantly, as Jerry Coyne writes, “Several radioisotopes usually occur together, so the dates can be cross-checked, and the ages invariably agree.”

This is important because, with our half-life figures calibrated, we can use radioactive clocks to converge on an approximation of Earth’s age. In fact, scientists have done just that. Richard Dawkins writes, “The currently agreed age of 4.6 billion years is the estimate upon which several different clocks converge.” This fact surely means the Creator—who created Earth merely several thousand years ago—is devious beyond compare. Not only did he change the half-life figures of every radioactive isotope that we use for historical dating, but he also changed them in such a way that each one converges on the same ancient age—4.6 billion years—for Earth! To be sure, for every clock to converge on, say, 6000 years, every half-life would have to be tweaked differently.

Dawkins makes this point: “Bear in mind the huge differences in timescales of the different clocks, and think of the amount of contrived and complicated fiddling with the laws of physics that would be needed in order to make all the clocks agree with each other, across the orders of magnitude, that the Earth is 6000 years old and not 4.6 billion!” To do such fiddling, thus making every radioactive isotope that we use all agree that Earth is 4.6 billion years old, attests to a Creator who deliberately attempts to trick humans undertaking scientific study. The Creator is devious.

This deviousness extends to evolution, which, clearly, the Creator wants scientists to accept; that is the only explanation for the fossil record. When we talk about “dating fossils,” what we nearly always mean is dating the rocks around which the fossils are found. This is where the geologic strata become important. The geologic strata (singular is “stratum”) are layers of rock, one on top of the other, with the oldest rocks the deepest down and the youngest rocks the highest up. The scientific community refers to this layering as the geologic column, and it is extremely well evidenced. The salient point for our purposes here is that, when dating fossils (actually, the rocks around which fossils are found), they appear in a strict evolutionary order. When questioned by a creationist as to what observation could possibly disprove Darwinian evolution, the late J. B. S. Haldane famously answered, “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian!” On the evolutionary view, the Precambrian spans from Earth’s formation about 4.6 billion years ago to approximately 542 million years ago; rabbits are mammals, and the first mammals do not come onto the scene until about 250 million years ago. As Coyne writes, “Needless to say, no Precambrian rabbits, or any other anachronistic fossils, have ever been found.”

The complete absence of anachronistic fossils lends considerable credence to the evolutionary view. To reconcile it with a Creator, one absolutely must assume a devious trickster. Dawkins writes, “It is a fact that literally nothing that you could remotely call a mammal has ever been found in Devonian rock or in any older stratum. They are not just statistically rarer in Devonian than in later rocks. They literally never occur in rocks older than a certain date.” He continues, “There are literally no trilobites above Permian strata, literally no dinosaurs (except birds) above Cretaceous strata.” At the considerable risk of deceased equine flogging, Dawkins sums it up: “All the fossils that we have, and there are very very many indeed, occur, without a single authenticated exception, in the right temporal sequence.” How many dinosaur fossils have we found in the same rocks as Australopithecine fossils? Zero. How many zebra fossils have we found in the same rocks as trilobite fossils? Zero. How many anachronistic fossils have been authenticated? Zero. The only explanation is that the deceptive Creator is fudging the fossils to make Darwinian evolution an inescapable conclusion.

On creationism, the distribution of species on Earth makes very little sense, attesting to a Creator with an extremely odd mind, bordering on completely inscrutable. Nowhere is this sheer oddness more evident than in island biogeography. With respect to islands, there is an important distinction that is material to our discussion: the difference between continental islands and oceanic islands. Continental islands are those that once were connected to a continent but later became separated. An example would be Madagascar. Oceanic islands, by contrast, are those that never were part of a continent; islands of this variety arose from the seafloor. An example here would be St. Helena.

On a creationist theory positing a Creator who is not a weirdo, there is little reason to suppose there would be much difference vis-à-vis biogeography between continental and oceanic islands. However, the differences are dramatic, which has led many scientists to accept evolution and, in our case, for us to conclude the Creator is simply an odd duck. Coyne writes, “Oceanic islands are missing many types of native species that we see on both continents and continental islands. Take Hawaii, a tropical archipelago whose islands occupy about 6400 square miles, only slightly smaller than the state of Massachusetts. While the islands are well stocked with native birds, plants, and insects, they completely lack native freshwater fish, amphibians, reptiles, and land mammals. Napoleon’s island of St. Helena and the archipelago of Juan Fernández lack these same groups, but still have plenty of endemic plants, birds, and insects. The Galápagos Islands do have a few native reptiles (land and marine iguanas, as well as the famous giant tortoises), but they too are missing native mammals, amphibians, and freshwater fish. Over and over again, on the oceanic islands that dot the Pacific, the South Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean, one sees a pattern of missing groups—more to the point, the same missing groups.”

It takes only a moment of thought to recognize that plants, birds, and insects and other arthropods “can colonize an oceanic island through long-distance dispersal.” By contrast, land mammals, reptiles, amphibians and freshwater fish would have extreme difficulty colonizing an oceanic island unless, for example, some reptiles made it onto a log that happened to “raft” onto one. The topic of island biogeography is rich, and a great deal more could be said, but it exceeds the scope of this paper. Suffice it to note that, on creationism, with anything but an extraordinarily queer Creator, we would not expect such differential biodiversity on continental versus oceanic islands.

The peculiarity with which the species are dispersed cannot be overstated, and Dawkins asks the questions as well as anyone does. He writes, “Why would all those marsupials—ranging from tiny pouched mice through koalas and bilbys to giant kangaroos and Diprotodonts—why would all those marsupials, but no placentals at all, have migrated en masse from Mount Ararat to Australia? Which route did they take? And why did not a single member of their straggling caravan pause on the way, and settle—in India, perhaps, or China, or some haven along the Great Silk Road? Why did the entire order Edentata (all twenty species of armadillo, including the extinct giant armadillo, all six species of sloth, including extinct giant sloths, and all four species of anteater) troop off unerringly for South America, leaving not a rack behind, leaving no hide nor hair nor armour plate of settlers somewhere along the way? Why were they joined by the entire infraorder of caviomorph rodents, including guinea pigs, agoutis, pacas, maras, capybaras, chinchillas and lots of others, a large group of characteristically South American rodents found nowhere else?” Dawkins notes that lemurs are endemic to Madagascar, and thus continues, “Did all thirty-seven and more species of lemur troop in a body down Noah’s gangplank and hightail it (literally in the case of the ringtail) for Madagascar, leaving not a single straggler by the wayside, anywhere throughout the length and breadth of Africa?” Once again, then, we have no choice but to conclude the Creator is profoundly odd.

The next two Creator characteristics can be discerned more briefly, and I shall do so to keep the information easily digestible. The third characteristic of a Creator is that he is peerlessly wasteful, and this fact is never more clear than in examining the pseudogene, which is defined as a sequence of DNA that is very similar to a normal gene but that has been altered slightly so that it is not expressed; by definition, they are incapable of producing a protein product. Coyne writes, “Virtually every species harbors dead genes, many of them still active in its relatives. This implies that those genes were also active in a common ancestor, and were killed off in some descendants but not in others. Out of about thirty thousand genes, for example, we humans carry more than two thousand pseudogenes. Our genome—and that of other species—are truly well populated graveyards of dead genes.” For what possible reason would the Creator litter the genome with pseudogenes—a gene that, by definition, does entirely nothing? Because, as I say, the Creator must be prodigal in the extreme. Perhaps shameless wastefulness is a virtue.

Finally, the evidence clearly shows that the Creator, far from being a designer of formidable intelligence, is rather idiotic. In so declaring, I am not referencing the mindless wastefulness of pseudogenes; rather, I refer to the shoddy engineering and craftsmanship of the species themselves. A classic example—indeed, it has been well mined by Darwinians—is the recurrent laryngeal nerve of mammals. Coyne writes, “Running from the brain to the larynx, this nerve helps us speak and swallow. The curious thing is that it is much longer than it needs to be. Rather than taking a direct route from the brain to the larynx, a distance of about a foot in humans, the nerve runs down into our chest, loops around the aorta and a ligament derived from an artery, and then travels back up (‘recurs’) to connect to the larynx. It winds up being three feet long. In giraffes the nerve takes a similar path, but one that runs all the way down that long neck and back up again: a distance fifteen feet longer than the direct route!” Of course, on an evolutionary view, this presents some evidence of common mammalian descent; on our creationist view, it simply reveals a Creator whose stupidity is reliable.

The examples I could mine in the vein of the Creator’s idiocy would fill a book—perhaps several. The vas deferens takes a similar nonsensical detour in its route from testis to penis. In his inimitable way, Dawkins writes, “It takes a ridiculous detour around the ureter, the pipe that carries urine from the kidney to the bladder. If this were designed, nobody could seriously deny that the designer had made a bad error.” Yet another example of idiocy comes in the form of goose bumps. In species with a full coat of hair, piloerection makes sense. If the creature is cold, it results in the erect hairs trapping air to create a layer of insulation. Additionally, if the creature is threatened, “puffing up” its body hair can create the impression that the animal is larger. In short, then, piloerection, though completely sensible for hair-covered animals, is utterly senseless in humans—the naked ape. It is as though the Creator, in a fit of idiocy, attached a steering wheel to a refrigerator. Thus, we can be assured that the Creator, responsible for humans and bats, dandelions and plesiosaurs, is formidably moronic.

Is this really what creationists seek? Do they really want a Creator who is devious, weird, wasteful and idiotic? We must go where the evidence takes us; we must look at the simple facts and draw our conclusions directly from them—we must never let the conclusion dictate the facts we choose to recognize. The facts that we find as we examine and analyze the natural order all lead directly to Darwinian evolution by natural selection. To make any creationism hypothesis work, we must (a) endow the Creator with numerous negative attributes that fundamentally contradict the holy books from which creationists lift their science and (b) flagrantly violate the principle of parsimony. Is the simplest, most parsimonious explanation for the recurrent laryngeal nerve of mammals really that the Creator’s idiocy was in full force when designing, for example, humans and giraffes? What about the geologic strata and the complete absence of anachronistic fossils? What about the radioactive clocks? Did the Creator really tinker with all the half-life values, making them all converge on a fictitious ancient age for Earth?

Some creationist worries are legitimate. On evolution, humans indeed are just another species of animal. Knowing our place in the single tree of life robs us of our specialness, to some considerable extent. It also undermines objective morality. A polar bear might eat its own young. Do concepts of “moral” or “immoral” apply to that situation? If not, why would such concepts apply to humans, who are a twig on the tree of life just as much as polar bears are? Natural selection might have favored “moral instincts,” but such inclinations are hardly objective or prescriptive in any conventional sense. Evolution provides no morality-oriented “ought to” or “ought not to” as far as behavior.

More than anything else, evolution puts us in our place. We are just another species of animal. One day we shall go extinct. Our universe shall not miss us—at least, not any more than it misses trilobites or the giant armadillo. The significance we attach to…well, everything…is overdone when one looks from a grand, cosmic perspective.

There is no devious, weird, wasteful and idiotic Creator. There is no Creator of any variety. There is only nature, of which we are a sliver. We can be happy—and, really, this is enough—that evolution has granted us brains that are sufficiently large and complex to understand from where we came, along with constitutions strong enough to accept, in the last analysis, our species’—indeed, our world’s—final destination.