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#17 Theism and the Weight of Time Why I struggle with the argument from design I am not a militant atheist. But from time to time, I encounter a particular argument from friends—delivered with sincerity, even emotion—that I find difficult to accept. The argument goes something like this: Look at this amazing world we live in. Its beauty, its complexity, its intricacy—surely it must be evidence of a supreme being, an intelligent designer. The world could not possibly exist without one. It’s an argument that has a certain intuitive appeal. I admire it, I respect it, and in some ways, I even envy it. But when I look more closely, the reasoning does not hold up. The Weight of Deep Time Science and paleontology tell a different story. The earliest evidence of Homo sapiens dates back about 300,000 years. That may seem like a long time—until we place it against Earth’s history. Life has existed here for roughly 3.7 billion years before the appearance of humans. That is an unfathomable stretc...
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#16 Living in Two Worlds

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  Living in Two Worlds How I learned to live with both love and science, meaning and indifference Living in Two Worlds We live in two worlds. One is the world of love, warmth, and human connection. The other is the world of science, where life is explained by forces indifferent to us, where death is inevitable and final. For much of my life, I could not reconcile these two worlds. They seemed like contradictions—one full of meaning and belonging, the other stripped of comfort, exposing a cold truth. The Struggle to Reconcile In my twenties, I lived with this tension uneasily. I wanted to believe in the human world alone, where love and hope make sense of existence. But I could not ignore the other world—the scientific one—that spoke in the language of atoms, entropy, and death. To hold both at once felt unbearable. A Turning Point After becoming a parent, something shifted. Life became more layered, more complex. My children were living proof of the warmth of one world, and at the ...
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#15  The Doubt That Proves the Depth Why Evolution Feels Impossible — and Why That Matters If you’ve ever found yourself watching a hawk strike its prey, or a tiger stalk through grass with muscle and intent, and thought, this cannot be the product of random mutations over time, you're not alone. Many scientifically minded people carry a quiet doubt: not about whether evolution is true, but whether it can really explain the breathtaking complexity of life. This isn’t ignorance. It’s not religious backlash. It’s something deeper — a moment when the mind confronts the scale and strangeness of what evolution truly claims. It says that all of this — the architecture of the eye, the logic of instinct, the beauty of the snow leopard’s leap — emerged not from design, but from selection. That there was no plan, no blueprint, no guiding mind. Only variation, replication, and death — repeated for billions of years. To fully accept that is to confront something almost mystical in its indiff...
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 #14  From DNA to Civilization How the Instructions for Life Built the City We tend to think of cities as cultural creations — designed by minds, shaped by choices. But what if the origins of civilization trace back further than we imagine? What if they begin in the quiet spirals of DNA? Life begins with a molecule that carries instructions. DNA is not alive in itself, but it holds the code for life — a language written in chemical sequences. From this molecule, through a chain of steps, comes a body: built of cells, wired by neurons, powered by proteins. It walks, breathes, thinks. It wants. For humans, that thinking body becomes a builder. It makes tools. It shares stories. It forms tribes. And eventually — it builds cities. But none of this begins with intent. It begins with a molecule. The Line from DNA to the City In the biological world, there is a clear hierarchy of structure and function: DNA encodes proteins Proteins form cells Cells become tissues and organs Organs c...
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#13, The Mind of the City Science as the Consciousness of Civilization We often speak of science as a tool — a method invented by humans to discover truth. But the longer one studies science, the stranger and more impersonal it becomes. Science tells us things we do not want to hear: that Earth is not the center of the universe, that we are the product of blind evolution, that the cosmos is not designed for us. It is not a comfort. It is not loyal. It is not under our control. What, then, is science? Perhaps it is something more than a method. Perhaps it is something that arises through us but is not for us. Perhaps it is not just a human endeavor at all — but the first stirring of awareness in something larger. If civilization is an organism — and there are good reasons to think it is — then what we call “science” may be its consciousness . Not a Metaphor, but a Function Consciousness, in biological terms, is the capacity of an organism to model itself and its environment — to dete...
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  #12 The Logic of the First Molecule How Life Began Without Purpose, But Not Without Direction Modern science has no room for purpose.  Processes unfold because of causes, not goals. Evolution has no end in mind. Atoms don’t want. Molecules don’t choose. Biology, chemistry, and physics all operate within this framework: things happen because they must — not because they should. So when we ask how life began, we must ask it without appeal to intention.  No plan. No designer. Just matter and chance. And yet, at the origin of life, something startling occurs. A structure appears — a molecule — that can make a copy of itself . That ability sets in motion everything else. Not because the molecule wanted anything, but because once replication began, it didn’t stop . A Structure, Not a Behavior The first self-replicating molecule was not alive. It had no metabolism, no cell wall, no genes. But it had one crucial property: under the right conditions, it could produce copies...
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  #11 Why Science Rejects Teleology We see purpose in everything — but science explains the world without ends in mind Teleology is the idea that things happen for a purpose — that events or structures exist in order to fulfill some goal. It’s how we naturally explain much of life: birds build nests to protect their young , people exercise to stay healthy , and seeds sprout to become trees . These explanations are so intuitive that they can feel like common sense. But science does not allow teleological explanations — at least not as a foundation for understanding the natural world. In science, causes must come before effects. You can’t explain something by appealing to what it will eventually accomplish. Instead, you have to explain it in terms of prior conditions, physical laws, and step-by-step processes. If sodium and chlorine atoms come together to form salt, it’s not because they intend to make salt — it’s because the nature of their charges and electron structures causes ...
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