part0014

When we answer the question Who are we? from the point of view of conventional science, is it possible that not only are we on the wrong track, we’re stuck on that track, and it is leading us farther and farther from understanding the most empowering truths of our lives? Being stuck on the wrong track has happened before, and the scientific community is still reeling after discovering how far off their expectations were the last time an accepted theory was proven mistaken.

At the completion of the Human Genome Project (HGP) in 2001, scientists were astonished to learn that the genetic blueprint for a human is about 75 percent smaller than they’d thought it would be. This wasn’t just a little mistake in calculation. It was such a huge discrepancy from the original thinking that the international community of biologists and geneticists involved in the project had to acknowledge a difficult fact regarding their fundamental assumptions.

Before the HGP, it was believed that there would be a unique gene for creating each one of the unique proteins that make up our bodies. Based upon this idea of one-to-one correspondence, researchers expected that the project would identify at least 100,000 genes in the human genetic blueprint. Scientists and entrepreneurs were so certain of this, in fact, that they had planned to develop pharmaceutical products to modify and “fix” the genes that were discovered, and build an entire new industry of gene medicine, once the results of the project were known. 1 No one anticipated the actual results of this project. And when those results came in, scientists in universities, research institutions, and medical laboratories throughout the world had to come to terms with a surprising new reality.

The HGP revealed that there are only about 20,000 to 24,000 genes in the human genome, 75,000 fewer than had been expected! 2 The question was, where were the “missing” genes? Did they even exist?

Further research done following the HGP revealed where the original thinking of the scientists was flawed. Rather than one gene coding for one protein, we now know that a single gene can produce the codes for multiple proteins, sometimes numbering in the thousands. One gene from a fruit fly, for example, can code for many as many as 38,000 different proteins. 3 The same principle appears to be true for humans, only to a lesser degree. “It seems to be a matter of five to six proteins, on average, from one gene,” says Victor A. McKusick, co-author of the landmark paper that described the HGP findings in 2001. 4

But how could such a fundamental error in thinking have gone undetected for so long? How could the basic assumption at the foundation of a futuristic new field of science, one that was believed would lead to creating an entire new industry of medicines, be so flawed?

The answer to this question is the reason I’m describing this account. The mistake was due to the scientific acceptance of an unproven theory —the assumption of the one-to-one correspondence between genes and proteins—that scientists had made years earlier in the mid-20th century.

Craig Venter, the president of a firm leading one of the HGP gene-mapping teams, recognized the significance of the HGP results immediately when he stated, “We have only 300 unique genes in the human that are not in the mouse. This tells me genes can’t possibly explain all of what makes us what we are.” 5

The HGP illustrates a perfect example of the consequences of embracing a scientific assumption as fact in the absence of evidence to support it. In this instance, an entire field of science and medicine, and the people and industries relying upon the science and medicine, was thrown into chaos by the errors in judgment. The outcome of the HGP also forced the rethinking of a basic premise that had been wholeheartedly embraced by scientists and taught as fact in university classrooms. And while scientists now appear to be on the right track when it comes to the way genes and proteins are related, the Human Genome Project is not the only time an unproven doctrine has led scientists to a dead end in their assumptions. If it were, we could call what happened with the project an anomaly. But it’s not an anomaly. The example of the HGP illustrates a way of thinking that we’ve seen before in the not-so-distant past.

The scientific belief that everything we can see and touch is separate from everything else is another example of the kind of thinking that has led to a scientific dead end. The idea of separation has its roots in the famous Michelson-Morley experiment originally performed in 1887. Named for the two scientists who designed the experiment, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley, this experiment was the much-anticipated effort of the scientific community to settle, once and for all, the question of whether or not a universal field of energy connects all things. 6 The thinking at the time was that if such a field actually existed, it would move in relation to the earth. And because the field would be in motion, it would be possible to detect that motion.

The experiment was performed in a makeshift laboratory in the basement of a building at Case Western Reserve University. The results of the experiment, as the data were interpreted by scientists of the time, were thought to prove that no universal energy field exists, with the implication that everything is separate from everything else—meaning what happens in one place has little effect, if any, on what happens somewhere else.

These findings became the foundation of scientific theory and classroom instruction for nearly a full century. Until Michelson and Morley’s 19th-century experiment was repeated in the 20th century, multiple generations grew up believing that we live in a world where we’re separate from one another and the world around us, and that what we do in one place has no effect beyond that place. This belief was reflected throughout our civilization in ways that ranged from personal choices that affected other people, and the growth of economic systems that benefitted some people at the expense of others, to the bigger picture of humanity’s relationship to the earth itself. For scientists throughout the world, the assumptions of Michelson and Morley were accepted as fact . . . that is, until the experiment was revisited 99 years later.

In 1986, a scientist named E. W. Silvertooth duplicated the Michelson-Morley experiment in a study sponsored by the U.S. Air Force. Under the unassuming title “Special Relativity,” the scientific journal Nature published the results. Using detection equipment that was much more sensitive than what Michelson and Morley had in 1887, Silvertooth did detect the field, and it was moving just as Michelson and Morley had predicted it would 100 years before. 7 In the process, he debunked a whole worldview.

For nearly a century, the best science of the modern world was based upon an idea that simply wasn’t true. Fortunately we know better now and can apply this knowledge. Yet even with the later experiment proving the existence of the field and the vital role it plays in our lives, the principle of separation continues to be embraced today in some textbooks and taught in some university classrooms. Because of this, members of yet another generation are being led astray.

I’m identifying the Michelson-Morley experiment and the Human Genome Project as classic examples of how a scientific theory that’s held in high esteem at one point in time can, and must, change when a new discovery overturns earlier assumptions. It’s precisely this kind of discovery that is imploding the theory of human evolution, and it’s of vital importance that our past assumptions must be personally abandoned and publicly dismissed when it comes to the belief that the DNA that makes us what and who we are formed purely by chance.

Key 20: Willingness to embrace a scientific assumption as fact, in the absence of evidence to support it, can lead us, and has led us in the past, to wrong conclusions when it comes to the way we think of ourselves and our relationship to the world.

The conventional story of life on earth—the theory of evolution—asks us to believe that long ago, just the right conditions appeared in just the right way and at just the right time to create just the right environment for the right forces to form perfect atoms and forge them into the elements that gave birth to the first molecule of life. As if asking us to believe this unlikely series of events isn’t already a stretch, we’re then asked to further accept that this first molecule of life survived, and flourished, multiplying and diversifying countless times, and then triumphed through the ages via an adaptive strategy known as “survival of the strongest” to become the bodies that enable us to lead the lives that we lead today.

The late two-time Nobel Prize–winning chemist Ilya Prigogine agreed. “The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident,” he said, “is zero.” 8 In agreement with Prigogine, many other scientists, using the most advanced scientific methods available, are now able to tell us just how extraordinarily unlikely the chance origin of our DNA is.

Before his death in 1989, Swiss mathematician and physicist Marcel Golay calculated that the probability for even the simplest living protein to form by chance is 1 in 10450 , while plant physiologist and former head of Utah State University Frank Salisbury calculated the probability for the existence of a common DNA molecule as 1 in 10600 . 9

These numbers are so unimaginably long and represent such a small chance of something occurring that I’m going to elaborate briefly here to illustrate just what the mathematicians are telling us. To clarify, the number 10600 is shorthand for the British unit of one centillion or 1 with 600 zeros after it. If we convert this notation into longhand and type it out, here’s what it looks like.

1,000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000

This huge number is the longhand version showing the odds that the first DNA molecule formed by chance. I’m emphasizing this point because scientists generally accept that when the odds of a possibility occurring are 1 in 10110 or more, the chances of that event happening are so small that it’s impossible. If these numbers represented the chance of us winning the Powerball lottery, for example, we’d probably throw our tickets away because the odds would be so staggeringly small. So the scientists themselves are telling us that the fact that DNA exists at all represents a probability that’s already “impossible” at 1 in 10110 , and this impossibility can be further multiplied by a factor of 5, to 1 in 10600 , to make it even more improbable!

English astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle and astrobiologist and mathematician Chandra Wickramasinghe placed the odds even lower in a book they co-wrote, at less than 1 in 1040,000 , based upon the number of known enzymes needed for life and the chances of them appearing at random. 10 When we begin talking about odds this small, the numbers themselves become almost meaningless.

For the non-mathematician, Hoyle aptly described these outrageous statistics as being the equivalent of a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747 jetliner from scattered debris. 11 And it’s through the eyes of this improbability that scientists are attempting to make sense of the origin of life. But if the evidence shows that we are the result of something more than the pure chance proposed by the theory of evolution, then the fact of our existence must take on new meaning as well.

When Darwin introduced his theory of evolution in the mid-19th century, it was believed that in the decades that would follow, new discoveries would further validate the theory that was already accepted as scientific fact in his day. What has happened since that time, however, defies this expectation. The evidence does not support human evolution. But rather than allowing the evidence to lead us to write a new story of human origins, there has been a concerted effort instead to force new discoveries into the framework of the existing story of evolution.

To recap, we see evidence of this in the efforts of mainstream scientists to draw a link between the ancient primate fossils of the past and modern humans on the primate evolutionary tree. With some mainstream media outlets, such as PBS, neglecting to offer their audiences a balanced perspective, as they did in their biased documentary on evolution, and with some academics, such as biologist Richard Dawkins, going so far as to demean and ridicule anyone who questions the conventional wisdom when it comes to human origins, the insistence that the evidence sustain existing theories is akin to the proverbial forcing of the square peg into a round hole. While it’s certainly possible to pound a square peg until it’s jammed into a round opening, it will never fit well because it simply doesn’t belong there.

Discoveries about human DNA are telling us that our species doesn’t fit into the neat and tidy traditional story of evolution. Nonetheless, people continue attempting to jam the facts into the theory in a way that’s leading us away from properly solving the mystery of our existence.

A friend of mine had a desktop computer that had been state-of-the-art, with all of the latest software, when she first purchased it nine years earlier. But as new updates for the operating system became available over time, such as enhanced network security, faster operating speeds, and system upgrades, she neglected to download them onto her computer. She was busy meeting work deadlines and didn’t feel that the New upgrades available messages that showed up on her screen from time to time were a priority in her schedule.

During the first couple of years or so, the failure to keep her system up to date influenced her computer only in subtle ways. Some of the upgrades were small and affected few of her everyday computing needs. These little upgrades were noted as the number following the version: v1.1, v1.2, v1.3, and so on. But when the developers made big changes in the software that warranted an entirely new version, a v2.0, for example, it was a different story, because any new software began looking in her computer for the features in the previous version that it could build upon.

One day my friend was deep into the editing of a new book and she tried to open a file that she’d received from her editor, who was using another computer operating system. That’s when everything changed and I received a phone call from her asking for help. “My computer is stuck! It’s frozen and I can’t even turn it off,” she said.

After a couple of useless suggestions from me, it dawned on me—knowing my friend’s aversion to software upgrades—what might be happening. “What version of your operating system are you using?” I asked.

Her answer told me the reason for her computer problem. My friend’s computer software was literally years out of date. The software needed for her to read her book edits was relying upon the features of a recent upgrade to do its job—features that didn’t exist anywhere on her system.

For my friend, the options were simple. She could either spend the afternoon downloading and installing each previous version of the software, one by one, to incorporate all of the updates she’d missed over time, or she could buy a long-overdue new computer that was completely up to date, with all of the latest software. Knowing the way my friend thinks about sustainability and maintaining her electronics, I was not surprised by her choice. She opted to spend the day updating her trusty old computer.

The story of my friend and her outdated software is an analogy for what the scientific community is experiencing today when it comes to expanding the theories of human evolution. When Darwin introduced his theory in 1859, it was a version 1.0 way of thinking. As new technology became available over time, helping science make incredible new discoveries about molecular biology and the human genome, the theory should have been upgraded to v1.1, v1.2, and so on.

The scientific method is based upon the principle of observation in individual research studies leading to “upgrades” in our common base of knowledge. Science is designed to be constantly updated and revised as new information comes to light.

What’s happened, however, is that the reluctance—even the outright resistance—of the academic and scientific communities to acknowledge new discoveries related to human development over the past 150 years is akin to my friend’s reluctance to incorporate occasional upgrades into her computing system. Now, seemingly all of a sudden, discoveries such as the DNA fusion on human chromosome 2 are changing the whole story. Trying to incorporate these types of discoveries into the existing story of evolution is like trying to download an entirely new version of software onto a computer that can’t support it. The v2.0 DNA discoveries are so different from the original concept of evolution that there’s no place for them. The v1.0 theory just doesn’t fit the facts.

My friend attempted to do just what the scientific community is attempting to do today: to make an effort to somehow “fix” the existing software system on her computer so that it would accommodate additions. My friend discovered, however, that there’s a point of no return when it comes to computers and the software they can support. The software that’s written for a computer is directly linked to the nuts and bolts of the machinery: the chips, processors, and capacities they’re built for. When advanced software begins to ask for volumes of memory or processing speeds that are not supported by the existing hardware, the new software can’t be used. Despite my friend’s best efforts to catch up to the level of the upgrades being offered to her, she was forced to invest in a new computer whose hardware could accommodate the latest versions of the software she needed to do her job.

This is precisely where we are when it comes to the story of human origins. The attempt to incorporate the story of exact, rapid DNA mutations, such as the ones we find on FOXP2 and human chromosome 2, into the existing story of the long, slow, and gradual process of evolution isn’t working. And it can’t, because the discoveries that preceded it have been discounted in evolution theory. We’ve reached the point of no return.

Just as my friend’s trusty old computer, which had served her so well, reached a point where it was obsolete, we’ve reached a point where the human story we’ve told ourselves in the past is now obsolete. Now it’s time for us to invest in a new theory that embraces the anomalous information scientists of the past couldn’t account for.

Just as geneticists and biologists have had to shift their thinking to accommodate the evidence from the Human Genome Project, and just as physicists have had to update their theories to adapt to the most recent results of the Michelson-Morley experiment, we must make room for additional discoveries in the future that may upset some of the most cherished beliefs of our current leading thinkers. In a beautiful and perhaps unintentional way, it seems that science has already given us everything we need to do just that. The building blocks for the human story v2.0 already exist. It’s all about how we choose to embrace what the evidence has already revealed.

In a way that is similar to the outcome of the Human Genome Project, the very science that was expected to eventually support Darwin’s theory of evolution and solve the mystery of our origin has now done just the opposite. New discoveries are presenting unsettling implications that fly in the face of longstanding scientific tradition. Ironically, the evidence is leading us in a direction that now parallels some of our most ancient and cherished traditions about our beginning. For convenience, I’m including a condensed summary of the evidence described in the previous chapters here as the building blocks for the new human story.

Fact 1: The relationships shown on the conventional human evolutionary tree are speculative connections only. While they are believed to exist and are taught as factual in public schools, a 150-year search has failed to produce the physical evidence that confirms the relationships depicted on the evolutionary family tree.

Fact 2: If the fossil record is accurate, anatomically modern humans appeared on earth suddenly approximately 200,000 years ago with advanced features that set them apart from every other form of life that had already developed to date or and has developed since. These features have remained unchanged in us and include:

Fact 3: The lack of common DNA between AMHs and Neanderthals tells us that we anatomically modern humans did not descend from ancient Neanderthals. Additional studies reveal that our forbearers shared the earth with the Neanderthals that were previously thought to be some of our ancestors. Logically, if we shared the earth with them, we could not have descended from them.

Armed with these four facts alone, we have more than enough reasons to rethink the traditional story of who we are. Clearly we’re not the product of an evolutionary process, at least not the kind of evolution that Charles Darwin had in mind when he proposed his original theory in the 19th century. Looking at the scientific probability that the DNA that gives us our humanness occurred by chance, the odds of which have been compared to the odds of a junkyard tornado creating an airplane, points to the conclusion that we humans are not the result of random events set into motion by pure chance.

The question now is simply this: Are we willing to embrace what the best science of our era is showing us? If we answer yes, then we must also embrace a new human story that better reflects the evidence we’ve compiled. And while modern science is struggling with what the new evidence means and how it fits into the story of our origin, the indigenous people of the earth and practitioners of some of the most widely accepted spiritual traditions of the world are not. In their way of thinking, the modern evidence simply reconfirms and deepens their acceptance of the ancient accounts that are at the core of their beliefs.

With over half of the world professing to follow one of the three major religions that stem from a common history—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—it’s no surprise that the new scientific evidence is so well received by so much of the world.

Almost universally, scriptures from the world’s most ancient and cherished spiritual traditions agree that we humans are linked to something beyond ourselves and our immediate surroundings. And as different as these traditions are from one another, when it comes to the story of human origins their accounts are also surprisingly similar. Common themes include:

In great detail, the ancient traditions took extra care to describe the intimate nature of our creation and how we, like our first ancestors, are infused with what has been described as a special spark of a mysterious essence, eternally joining us with one another and with something we can’t see that exists beyond our physical world.

While these details have been largely edited out of contemporary versions of the Christian Bible, ancient Hebrew literature, such as the Haggadah and certain “lost” scrolls, shows that this level of detail was intended in the original texts. It’s this mystical spark, which science so far has yet to find ways to measure, that sets us apart from all other forms of life on earth.

The Sumerian creation story. The region that is now the country of Iraq was the site of ancient Sumer, traditionally thought to be the oldest civilization on earth. (New discoveries at sites of other early civilizations, such as Turkey’s Göbekli Tepe, show that these sites may prove to be equally as old or older.) The Sumerian creation story was recorded on a stone tablet found in southeastern Iraq, in what was the ancient city of Nippur.

According to the creation story, known by archaeologists as the Eridu Genesis, Nippur is where the first human was created. The story describes a time when multiple gods ruled over the earth. For reasons that are detailed in the text, one of the gods was sacrificed, and his blood was mixed with clay to create the first human. An excerpt tells the story:

In other words, this story suggests that we are the product of an intentional act that was overseen by advanced human-like beings, imbuing all of us with certain qualities that the gods placed into the new human.

The first human in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. Among the recurring themes of ancient creation stories are descriptions of human origin at the hands of more advanced and otherworldly beings. The oral traditions of the Hebrew Midrash and early Kabbalah, for example, describe how the creator asked his angels:

Go and fetch me dust from the four corners of the earth, and I will create man therewith. 13

We created you out of dust. 14

It is He [God] who has created man from water. 15

While these last two descriptions may appear to be in conflict, a closer look at the verses resolves the mystery. In the first description, the story of Adam originating from dust is part of a larger sequence describing the events that led to the first living beings. The verses reveal that after Adam’s origin as dust, there was a process of creating progressively more lifelike forms as the first human began to take shape. The description states that after the dust, the human was formed from

a small life-germ, then from a clot, then from a lump of flesh, complete in make and incomplete, that We may make clear to you. 16

In a similar way, in the Western world, when we ask someone what the first human on earth was made of, the reply is generally that we’re made of the same “stuff” that the world is made of: clay, mud, or dust. To support such statements, we are often directed to the biblical creation story in the book of Genesis. Shared by nearly two billion people of the Jewish and Christian traditions, the story of Adam provides the most basic description of human origin. Deceptively simple in its form, Genesis recounts the miracle of human creation through a very few simple words.

The Lord God formed man from the dust of the earth. 17

The Mayan creation story. From approximately 250 c.e. until 900 c.e., the Mayan civilization flourished across a vast area of North America, extending from what is now northern Mexico to the south, encompassing the entire Yucatán Peninsula and what are now the countries of Belize and Guatemala, as well as portions of Honduras and El Salvador. The Mayan civilization is recognized as one of the six “cradles of civilization” that appear to have developed in different places on the earth, at different times, independently of one another. The remaining five are Mesopotamia, and the civilizations of the Nile River, the Indus River, the Yellow River, and the central Andes of Peru. 18

The ancient Mayans had a complex system of mathematics and hieroglyphic writing, an advanced knowledge of cosmic cycles, and a well-developed creation story. It’s known today as the Popol Vuh , and it describes the theme of human creation in a way that is very similar to the story told in some of the original Semitic scriptures. The Popol Vuh tells us that the first attempt at human creation was flawed. Subsequent attempts led to a refinement of the creation process.

The point I’m making here is that the Mayans, with an advanced knowledge of the cosmos (which was confirmed only in the mid-20th century) attributed their existence to a conscious process invoked by an already-existing intelligence rather than a spontaneous and random process of nature. The Popol Vuh description begins:

Together they made a body, but it wasn’t right. . . . We must try again. 19

The previous examples are only a sampling of elements common to many ancient and indigenous accounts of human origins. Although these accounts vary in their specifics, the general themes are remarkably consistent. They tell us that we are:

The thinking of the past has been binary when it comes to the question of our origins. If evolution is not our story, the go-to alternative has automatically been assumed to be the story told by creationists of a divine beginning similar to the biblical account. With this kind of thinking, all the “baggage” of religious doctrine from the creationism side of the issue, and all the “baggage” of the science zealots who are clinging to fundamentalist evolutionary theory, has made it nearly impossible to explore a third possibility. Nevertheless, DNA studies are telling us that a third possibility exists.

The scientific fact of the mutation that made our FOXP2 gene and complex speech possible, and the DNA fusion that created human chromosome 2 and enabled the advanced brain functions associated with it, as well as the evidence that suggests these mutations cannot be attributed to evolution alone, all invite us to consider something beyond creationism and evolution when it comes to our species’ origin. For the purposes of this discussion, and to honor the fact that mutations did occur, while acknowledging that something more than evolution contributed to the mutations, let’s call our third possibility directed mutation .

The name says it all. Some force that is not presently accounted for in the scientific story is responsible for the precision, timing, and refining of the mutations that makes us who we are. That unknown force directed the mutations that science has now proven to exist. And while the phrase directed mutation is accurate in terms of what it describes, it also opens the door to the obvious question of who, or what, did the directing.

Of course, to even consider the possibility of directed mutation leads us into a realm historically reserved for religious explanations of our existence, or more recently, to extraterrestrial explanations that are beyond the purview of science—at least as we know science today. Because science is based in understanding nature and the many expressions of the natural world, a supernatural explanation of human origins by definition must lie beyond nature and scientific understanding.

My sense, as a scientist, is that the possibility of directed mutation is both beyond Darwin’s theory and beyond creationism. Rather than requiring a supernatural explanation, the evidence, I believe, is leading us directly to a new and expanded understanding of the natural world and nature itself. This new understanding seems to hold the potential to catapult us light-years beyond the limited views of how we came to be that we’ve embraced in the past. In other words, through our willingness to embrace the deepest truths of our origins we may, at last, unlock the deepest mysteries of the cosmos and know our place in it.

This path of inquiry leads to what some scientists have called a Pandora’s box of possibilities—once the box has been opened, the contents cannot be stuffed back inside. From the mystery of what makes us human, beyond the small number of genes discovered by the Human Genome Project, to the mystery of the mutations that resulted in the FOXP2 gene and human chromosome 2, the new human story is leading us to embrace an explanation for how our forbearers came to be anatomically modern—built just like us—that’s beyond the pure chance of lucky genes and random mutations.

Our willingness to embrace the third option of directed mutation puts us squarely into the realm of unmeasured fields and unseen forces, and an unseen intelligence that science has been reluctant to consider in the past. And this is where the sea change begins when it comes to the scientific answer to Who are we? When we allow for new interpretations of the existing evidence, the new conclusions that emerge can only serve to empower us with new possibilities when it comes to the way we think about ourselves and our potential. It can also give us new perspectives on the way we live our lives and solve our problems. Perhaps most importantly, it has the potential to change our sense of self-worth and our appreciation for the value of all human life.

Just as we devote hours of time today to searching dusty archives and genealogy websites to tell us about our family’s past so we can understand ourselves as individuals, I believe that we also long to connect with the deeper truth of where we’ve come from as humans. We feel a greater sense of belonging and often a sense of pride when we explore our lineages and learn the things our ancestors accomplished and overcame to make our lives possible today. And that same sense of pride and belonging arises when we discover that our lives are the result of a conscious act of directed mutation.

I’ve spoken with biologists, anthropologists, and others in the scientific community regarding precisely the evidence that I’ve shared in the previous chapters and its implications. Their response has become predictable. At first, when they hear my suggestion that evolution is not our scientific origin story, they think I’m joking. Later, when they realize that I’m completely serious about what I’m suggesting, the tone of the conversation and the expression on their faces changes. Some people become aggressive and indignant. They take the possibility personally and ask why, as their friend, I would work to undermine their decades of teaching and their reputations.

Others, often in the same conversation, become quiet and withdraw. In private, they sometimes tell me that they’ve known this conversation was coming; they just didn’t know when. It had to come, they tell me, because discoveries that were once classified as anomalies have continued to accumulate so quickly that it’s clear science took the wrong path when it comes to solving the mystery of our origin. At the foundation of the newly emerging story of human life is another story that is unfolding, on the grand scale of the universe itself, that describes a different kind of life.

For over 300 years, the scientific story of the origin of our universe has led us to believe that we live in a “dead” universe. From this perspective, the cosmos is made of inert stuff, like the dust of exploded stars or debris from colliding asteroids and disintegrated planets. In a dead universe, there is no point to life and no reason for living. But new discoveries by leading-edge researchers are giving us very good reasons to rethink the dead universe story, which means there may be a purpose to life after all.

At the forefront of defining how the new scientific paradigm of a living universe may affect us in our daily lives is social researcher Duane Elgin. Elgin’s philosophy, based upon existing evidence in the scientific community, accepts that the universe is a living entity that’s growing and evolving rather than a lifeless system. He shows us that the way we think of the universe and our place in it is at the very foundation of the way we live our lives and solve our problems, especially how we treat one another.

If it were true that we live in a dead universe, then it would actually make sense to do what we’ve already done in the past, which is to exploit every resource available to the highest degree possible and reap the rewards of those resources. In Elgin’s words, we relate to our belief that we’re in a nonliving universe “by taking advantage of that which is dead on behalf of the living. Consumerism and exploitation are natural outcomes of a dead universe perspective.” 20 This is how humanity has been living up to now, with rare exceptions.

It’s no coincidence that Elgin’s description of consumerism and exploitation reflects the world that we find ourselves in today. Just as the theory of evolution led us to believe that human life is the result of chance events, we’ve also been led to think of the universe as a resource that’s ours to dominate and exploit.

The problem with this mind-set is that, ultimately, it has led to the depletion of natural resources, unsustainable forms of food production, and the conflicts over scarce resources that are at the root of so much suffering today.

But Elgin believes that we are part of a living system, and that knowing the truth will change how we relate to one another and lead us toward a more sustainable lifestyle of cooperation. The parallels that exist throughout the universe, in every known living system, lend credence to this view. From microbes and neural networks to ecosystems and the behavior of entire populations, all living systems, regardless of their size, show characteristics demonstrating the sharing of energy and information. In support of his theory, Elgin describes how the universe is:

While Elgin is quick to admit that these traits in and of themselves don’t mean that we are part of a living universe, he notes that each fact adds to a growing body of information that supports this theory. 22 By extrapolation, as living beings we are part of this exchange of energy and information. Our existence has a purpose that is greater than paying our bills on time.

In a universe that’s alive, it makes sense that living systems would appear often and in many ways. It makes sense because life itself is the force that’s driving the system. To discover that we exist as living beings within the context of an even larger living system implies that our lives are about something more than simply being born, enjoying a few years on earth, and dying. It implies that somewhere, underlying everything we know and see, our lives have purpose.

As a society, we now find ourselves at a meeting point of two ways of thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in. Elgin’s living universe offers us the big picture of life having a purpose from the top down—from the macro scale of the universe itself as a living entity, within which, at the micro scale, the living cells that make up our bodies express themselves. The discoveries that I’ve shared in this book offer the evidence from the bottom up—from the micro world of mutated DNA yielding more complex expressions of life within the macro context of Elgin’s living universe.

In a living universe, our physical existence is permeated and sustained by an aliveness that is inseparable from the larger universe. Seeing ourselves as part of the unbroken fabric of creation awakens our sense of connection with, and compassion for, the totality of life. We recognize our bodies as precious, biodegradable vehicles for acquiring ever-deepening experiences of aliveness. 23

Herein we may find our answer to the question of life’s purpose. The existence of a living universe tells us that we are part of the world around us, and not separate from it, and that our aliveness is part of a greater aliveness. And as the very goal of life in the universe is to grow, change, and perpetuate itself, these are precisely the qualities that we should strive to embrace throughout the course of our time in this world as human beings.

Through each experience we face in life—through the satisfactions and the frustrations of every job, through the ecstasy and the heartbreak of each intimate relationship, through the unspeakable joy of bringing a child into this world or the unbearable pain of losing a child, through the choice to take another human life and the ability to save a life, through each war that we create and every time we end a war—in all of these experiences and so many more, we learn to know ourselves better as individuals and as a species.

On an unspoken, possibly subconscious level, we may be creating precisely these experiences in order to push ourselves to the very edge of what we believe is true about us and what’s possible in life. And each time we push ourselves to our edge and grow, we discover that there’s more to know. We get to experience our aliveness and relish it if we choose.

This is the very definition of a living universe and our role in it. Our lives and lifetimes are our way of infusing the essence of our unique experience into an already living and extremely diverse entity. Perhaps Ray Bradbury says it best:

We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The life force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts. 24

Within the limits that science has placed upon itself today, there is no direct way to know the purpose of life with certainty. Indirectly, however, the answer to the question of life’s purpose may be hidden in plain sight. We may discover that the very existence of our advanced capabilities—our intuition, sympathy, empathy, and compassion—holds the key to solving this mystery.

Albert Einstein’s work in science led him to precisely this conclusion. As is the case with so many scientists who strive to unlock the deepest mysteries of our existence, the deeper their discoveries take them, the more they recognize that there’s something more to human existence than a sterile and meaningless universe would produce by accident. When Einstein was asked about the meaning of our lives, his response was elegant. I’ve included a relatively long excerpt of Einstein’s thoughts to give context to the answer that I’ve italicized.

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us . Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security (author’s emphasis). 25

The beauty of Einstein’s statement is that it transcends numbers, statistics, and logic. It’s a purely intuitive answer to a serious scientific question. It’s also a perfect example of how advances in modern science have carried us to the edge of what science can tell us with certainty. There’s a place—an unspoken boundary—where the nuts and bolts of scientific explanation fail when it comes to describing life. They do so because we’re more than cells, flesh, and bones. There’s a quality to human life that simply cannot be defined in purely scientific terms, as we know science today. And it’s that quality that potentially can lead us to comprehend the deepest truths of our existence.

For the scientific community to embrace the fact that evolution can no longer be our story, they say, would be like a wrecking ball appearing one day and leveling 150 years of exploration and hard work as well as lifetimes of teaching that the work has created. I can certainly see why some people would think this way. No one wants to see the foundation of his or her life’s work demolished.

But I can also see something very different happening. As important as science is in the world today, as we push the boundary of scientific knowledge to the very edge of its capacity to define the world, we discover the limit of its capacity to serve us. And this is where science, as we know it today, breaks down. There are qualities of human life that simply cannot be measured and defined.

In some respects we may think too highly of science. We may give too much credit to what we believe science can accomplish. Maybe we’ve put science and the scientific method on such a high pedestal that we simply assume science either already has the answers, or that it has the potential to solve the deepest mysteries of life, such as our individual life purpose. And if this is the case, it may be because we are asking too much of science when it comes to the question Who are we?

The German philosopher Karl Jaspers reminds us of this when he says, “The limits of science have always been the source of bitter disappointment when people expected something from science that it was not able to provide.” 26

The “bitter disappointment” that Jaspers is describing may be precisely the source of the frustration that we see in the scientific community when it comes to reconciling new discoveries with the existing theory of human origins. We may be asking science to do something that it cannot do and was never designed to do. I say this because of the nature of science itself. Science can only tell us how the molecules of our bodies behave now and how they have behaved in the past. But science can’t tell us why those molecules appeared to begin with.

One of the reasons science is incapable of providing this answer is because scientific information is based upon events that are either observed in nature or duplicated in the laboratory to prove a theory. The fact is that no one living today witnessed the moment when the first human life appeared on earth. And in the laboratory, the process that would make such an awesome event possible has never been reproduced.

Although there are written accounts of human creation linked to religious traditions, made long after the fact, there is no firsthand record of the actual moment of human creation existing today—except for the creation itself: us. If we’re going to solve the “why” of our origin in a living universe, we must look beyond the process of how we’ve arrived at our place today and instead consider what we’ve gained from our journey.

To do so may not be as difficult as it sounds. The clues that lead us to know if there’s a purpose for living may be readily accessible within each of us, where they have always been. They live within each of us in the extraordinary abilities our genetic makeup gives us and in the way our expanded neural network of heart-brain communication empowers us.

Key 25: Our capacity for deep intuition, sympathy, empathy, compassion, and the self-healing that allows us to live long enough to share these capacities, are the needle of a compass that points us directly to our life purpose.

No other form of life on earth has the capacity to love selflessly, to embrace change by choice in a healthy way, to self-heal, to self-regulate longevity, or to activate the immune response on demand. And no other form of life has the capacity to experience deep intuition, sympathy, empathy, and ultimately, compassion, all of which are expressions of love—and to do so on demand. These uniquely human experiences are telling us that our lives have purpose, and the purpose is simply to embrace these abilities in order to know ourselves in their presence.