The Soul of the Matter

by Bruce Buff

  “If anyone can do it, you can,” Nancy said.

  “I don’t know about that, but I’ll give it everything,” Dan answered.

  As he turned to leave, Nancy hugged him and whispered, “Stephen trusted you for a reason. I’m sure you’ll find out why.”

  Chapter 49

  Tell me again why we’re here,” Trish asked, standing beneath a whale skeleton suspended from the ceiling.

  “Well, according to Darwin and everything in this exhibition hall, we’re the result of an accumulation of a very large number of very small, successful genetic changes over very long periods of time, filtered by natural selection that happens to align with what’s beneficial and, without any evidence to the contrary, is purposeless and unguided. If all of this is true, there is no ‘why’; only ‘how’ has relevance,” Dan replied matter-of-factly.

  They were inside the great mammal hall within the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Skeletons filled the lower level of the long, rectangular room. A second-level balcony, containing displays of birds, ran along the room’s perimeter, leaving space for the whale skeleton. Other halls featured arthropods, dinosaurs, flowers, and minerals. One hall focused on the animals and plants that Darwin studied when developing his theory of evolution.

  At this time of day, few other people were present. In the quiet of the hall, Dan reconsidered his answer to Trish. At first, he had thought of saying Damned if I know, Didn’t think about it for most of my life, or That’s what I’m trying to find out, but they were flip answers that the Dan he now wanted to leave behind would have given. Instead, he had chosen a response that, while arguably truthful, was a diversion from what she had asked.

  Without saying anything, Trish tilted her head sideways and gave him a look that said she was disappointed.

  Dan would have preferred an angry look rather than one that left him nothing to react to other than his own behavior.

  “Okay, I’m sorry. The truth is pretty much what I said earlier. Somewhere along the line, Stephen collaborated on his work with someone outside of HBC. I think that person may have the information we need. I don’t know anything more than that, so I’m checking out places mentioned in Stephen’s journals. They’re long shots and could all be a waste of time. You might want to reconsider your decision.”

  As he said this, Dan felt an odd combination of wishing Trish would stay back and hoping she’d insist on coming along. He didn’t want to endanger anyone in case Stephen’s abductors came looking for him, but there was a presence around Trish that he now wanted to understand instead of avoid.

  “Nancy asked me to go with you, so that is what I’m going to do,” Trish said with finality.

  “If that’s what you think is best.”

  “It is. Now, who are we here to meet and why?” Trish said quietly but firmly.

  “The director of the evolution exhibit. He was here when Stephen had a discussion with Claudine Rudner, a renowned biology professor and vigorous defender of Darwinian evolution. Something they discussed influenced Stephen’s thinking and set him out on a direction that altered his research. Neither the director nor Rudner is a medical researcher, so the only thing Stephen could have gotten out of the discussion is other contacts.”

  “And you got all of this from Stephen’s journals?” Trish asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to see them. I’ll be more help if I know what we’re looking for. There’s also a chance I might see something that seemed insignificant to you that may mean something to me.”

  “Sure, after I’m done scanning them. I can’t carry them around,” Dan said. He didn’t want to give the journals to anyone until he knew more about Stephen’s work and had found Galileo.

  “Why don’t you give me one while you go through the others? That’ll speed things up.”

  “They need to be kept secure. Other than Nancy, no one knows they exist. If government investigators find out, they’ll take them,” Dan said.

  “Keeping them secure is a good idea, given we were followed here,” Trish said nonchalantly.

  Dan was surprised, as he thought the car that had trailed them, containing what looked like two government types, had done a decent job of staying out of sight. He had spotted it, but he was trained to do so. Laughing, he said, “I’m impressed. What tipped you off?”

  “A dark sedan made an unusual series of turns and parked farther away from the entrance than needed. The men in the car are dressed like the investigators that were in the Bishops’ house once when I was there.”

  “You have sharp eyes,” Dan said.

  “I’ve always had strong vision,” Trish said. Dan tried to figure out whether she meant more than mere sight, or was it just the way she said things?

  Dan smiled and looked at his watch. “We should head over to the director’s office.”

  As they started to walk, Trish asked, “What are your thoughts on evolution?”

  “When I was younger, I accepted it without thinking much about it or understanding its implications. After all, what effect did it have on my day-to-day living? Later, when I had stopped believing in dogmatic religion and applied more critical thinking, I realized evolution was incompatible with a theistic god, the only answer that could make sense to me. Given the evidence on hand for one and not the other, I completed my journey to atheism.”

  “I’m not religious, but it seems like you hit an intellectual dead end,” Trish said. “Why couldn’t a God have directed evolution without it being visible, or just start it and let it run its course? Just because things change over time doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist. ”

  Dan knew he had to back up. “The abbreviated phrase ‘evolution’ is misused and misunderstood. It should go by the full name of how it is intended and used today: materialistic, neo-Darwinian evolution. No one is arguing over whether things change. The argument is over what causes the changes and whether final intent is involved. But, to answer your question, you can’t have a materialistic process governed only by the inviolable laws of science and a deity who created everything from the beginning according to explicit intent, unless each and every molecule in the whole universe was arranged so specifically, from the big bang onward, that uninterrupted natural processes led to our specifically intended existence, without any apparent divine intervention. We’re talking the ultimate stacked deck of cards of unimaginable complexity.

  “However, via quantum mechanics and probabilities, science rejects this idea as too extraordinary, except for all but the most fervent believers. Now, of course a God could have intervened throughout an evolutionary process in an undetectable manner, but we couldn’t tell and that would not be strictly natural selection. Since science says natural mechanisms are sufficient to explain how we got here, a God did not intervene. So it’s either strictly Darwinian evolution or God, not both. And if it’s Darwinian evolution, the existence of a God would be of no consequence to us.”

  “You know a lot more than most people.”

  “Stephen gave me a lot to read.”

  “What did he think?”

  “That the complexity of the human genome argues against unguided evolution, that the genome manifests divine intent,” answered Dan.

  “And what do you think now?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve seen no reason to believe in God or evidence of His benevolent work. Yet there are things I can’t explain, and I’ve found atheism, taken to its logical conclusion, unlivable. That doesn’t mean it’s false, only that I’ve found it wanting. Forced by circumstances, and Stephen, I now intend to find truth wherever it leads. I’ve got a long ways to go and have a lot to learn,” Dan was surprised to hear himself say.

  “That’s unexpectedly humble of you. And humility is the first fruit of wisdom.”

  “Thanks, I seem to be hearing that a lot these days. But humility only matters if wisdom matters, which i
t does only if we matter and there is a God that matters, meaning unguided Darwinian evolution is wrong, and we are more than just matter.”

  “It’s impressive that you are willing to consider that you have been fundamentally wrong about something really important about you and life. Few people can do that.”

  “Most people are too focused on today, or carry too much baggage, to consider anything different than their unexamined beliefs. Until very recently, that was me,” Dan said, soulfully, unable to stop sadness in his own life, Stephen’s death, and Ava’s illness, from breaking the surface of his stoicism. Continuing, Dan said, “I didn’t mean to say all of this. We have more important things to do.”

  “It’s fine. It’s better to feel too much than too little.”

  Dan didn’t know how to respond to Trish’s comment, so he changed the subject. “What do you think about Darwinian evolution?”

  “Like the younger you, I never questioned or truly understood it. It was simply an interesting fact that had no impact on me. I already felt the worth of each person—in your words, that everything does matter. That’s been enough for me. What I haven’t understood, perhaps, is how things tie together. Like you, I hope to learn,” Trish explained. She paused. “Stephen really set that out in front of both of us, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, he did,” Dan answered, wondering if it was just Stephen, or if somehow Stephen was right about things being orchestrated in ways beyond normal visibility.

  “For now, let’s focus on Ava. We may find that other stuff is wrapped up in it, but we can deal with it then,” Dan said. He hoped they would indeed find much more.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Trish said with an enthusiasm that Dan found heartening.

  They had now arrived in the evolution gallery and were headed to the director’s office. As they walked through the gallery, Dan stopped at an animated exhibit called Tree of Life, showing the evolutionary branches and the ancestry and relationships of major species over the course of hundreds of millions of years. Dan was amazed that scientists had been able to construct it. He examined the exhibit closely, looking for anything like the symbol Stephen had drawn in the dirt.

  “It’s remarkable,” Trish said.

  “I have to say that under different circumstances, I’d get a kick out of being in Cambridge, between Oxford and Divinity Streets, discussing Darwinism. Rather fitting, all things considered,” Dan said.

  • • •

  Dan had decided to approach the museum’s director using a ruse of Stephen’s having authored a book. “Thank you for meeting with us on such short notice, Dr. Erving. As I said when we spoke earlier, Stephen Bishop was writing a book on the origin of the human genome. Given the way today’s media work, the book’s sales prospects, and therefore its benefit to Stephen’s survivors and other interested parties, are improved by a quick publication.” He shrugged apologetically. “One of his chapters that was not finished pertained to a meeting that took place here fifteen months ago with Dr. Bishop, yourself, and biologist Claudine Rudner. It had a big impact on Dr. Bishop and is prominently featured in his book. It speaks admiringly about you and this museum. Do you recall the meeting?”

  “Tragic death, Dr. Bishop’s. What a terrible loss. I’m honored to hear that he wrote well of us,” Dr. Erving said with obvious pride and importance. “And it was a memorable meeting. Hard to forget, really. I don’t think Dr. Rudner enjoyed it by the end, though. And I had my own doubts about some of the things being said.”

  “From Stephen’s notes, it appears the focus was gene encoding and expression.”

  “That’s right. Dr. Bishop wanted to discuss the evolutionary mechanisms and implications for the processes by which the DNA template controls biological processes. At this point in our understanding of the origin of life, there can be an apparent ‘chicken or the egg’–type problem.”

  “Can you please explain that?” Dan said.

  “As Dr. Bishop said, it’s hard to envision the processes whereby DNA, or even just self-replicating RNA, that have no informational meaning by themselves, consisting of seemingly random strings of text from a four-letter base-pair alphabet, independently came together with mechanisms that could turn sections of those strings of letters into something that biochemical processes, which also came about independently, can use to create living species. Of course, we’ll understand this eventually. Right now our knowledge of it is in its infancy.”

  Interrupting, Trish said, “The chicken and egg part is how can code for something that doesn’t exist come into being before that thing exists, or that thing come into existence before the code that will be subsequently used to create it, exists?”

  Dan was impressed by her quick mind, but, given her occupational success, that shouldn’t have been a surprise.

  Dr. Erving continued, “It’s an apparent chicken-or-the-egg problem. Anyway, there are two main concerns that people raise. The first is all the elements needed to make an organism, such as the different components of cells, developing independently and then coming together at once to create that first organism. Of course, that still leaves the question of how those first components developed when there was no means of replication, and therefore no natural selection. The second concern is how all the elements needed for the first life would have had to develop incrementally together. The challenge here is needing a combination of a large number of elements, that had no previous functions, just assembling themselves into a functioning whole, that can self-replicate, and then change incrementally, radically, over time without breaking what first worked.”

  “It makes the Darwinian evolution of species look like a trivial exer­cise,” Trish said.

  “Ultimately, it’s a question of the law of large numbers; get enough chance occurrences and anything can happen. Get a universe full of a huge number of planets, and life was inevitable,” Dr. Erving said.

  “Wow. I never knew this. It’s incredible stuff. All I read in the press is about the origin of a few organic molecules, and everything just follows from that,” Dan said, downplaying the knowledge he had recently developed and his own beliefs.

  Dr. Erving said, “Journalists are writing for the masses and tend to simplify things.”

  “Still, it’s a big challenge to our understanding of how we got here. Could it lead to the idea that the Darwinian view of human origin is incomplete?” Dan said.

  “It’s just a gap in our knowledge, not an actual finding that contradicts anything. There are a number of major origin-of-life initiatives working to figure this out now. We have a big one here at Harvard—not that creationists wouldn’t try to exploit the gap of what we currently can explain. Which is why we don’t talk about it.”

  “So how did Stephen’s discussion with Rudner go? I’m looking to fill in gaps in the notes pertaining to what Stephen called algorithmic genetic expression. Was that discussed?” Dan asked.

  “Yes, that was at the heart of what became a contentious discussion. But it started quietly at first. Stephen asked how there were moments in evolutionary history where large numbers of new species and body plans seemed to appear spontaneously at the same time, in potential conflict with evolutionary theory, according to which mutations accumulate gradually and species change slowly. In other words, evolution is supposed to be extraordinarily slow, yet there are periods where a large number of things happened very, very fast, at least in relation to the evolutionary time scale. The most prominent of these spurts is the Cambrian explosion. Dr. Rudner responded that the Cambrian explosion was probably preceded by a long history of evolving organisms that did not fossilize.”

  “What about where the fossil record shows there was very little change in species over long periods of time and then all of a sudden new species arose, some seemingly without transitional species? Dr. Bishop referred to this in his notes,” Dan said.

  “Dr. Rudner explained to Dr. Bishop that
species, in a stable ­environment, don’t change much over time. But when something in the environment changes that creates a distinct advantage for features that present species don’t have or can’t fully exploit, new species will quickly arise with those features to occupy the new niches,” Dr. Erving answered.

  “This implies that the rate of beneficial genetic mutations is, relatively speaking, always very fast, but that natural selection kills off mutations before they can take hold when there is no niche to fill. It also means there should be a decent number of transitional species in the fossil records. Have either of these been observed?” Dan asked.

  “The lack of transitional fossils is indicative of periods of fast evolution. Fossilization is a very-low-probability occurrence, since organisms have to die in an environment that preserves their bodies long enough for sediments to encase them and minerals to be absorbed into the remnants of the bodies. You need a very large number of members of a species, over a long period of time, to get just one fossil,” Dr. Erving responded.

  “So what you’re saying is that evolution happen so fast, that even though there were other fossils from the same period, there were too few of the transition species to have left any fossils. The biggest activity happens off-camera, so to speak,” Dan offered. Seeing the director visibly tense by how he explicitly stated things, potentially exposing issues with Darwinian theory, Dan added, “I’m not taking a position, just repeating what I think you’re saying. Evolution in actuality is always a fast process held in check most of the time. Is the rate of observed genetic mutations fast enough to support the implied speed of overall rate of species mutations?”

  “They clearly have to be fast enough. Further research will show that they are.”

  “Actually, doesn’t present research show that error correction mechanisms prevent mutations, greatly slowing down the possible rate of evolution? Was that when Dr. Bishop mentioned potential alternative evolutionary mechanisms? Did that cause things to get heated with Dr. Rudner?”