Why I Don't Believe - The Great Chain Part 5

Assume by some cosmic fluke that the Sovereign of the Great All were to reach a point where it actually looked at our Solar System.  Assume further that it was interested in more than merely capturing the tremendous energy emitted by the Sun.  Under those conditions, it is highly likely that such a being would probably be most interested in our planet.  In comparison to the rest of the planets in our Solar System, Earth is far and away, the most interesting. Boasting a powerful magnetic field, thick atmosphere, enormous chemical diversity, liquid, gaseous and solid water, and active geological and hydrological systems, our world is, in a purely physical sense, probably the most intriguing single location in our solar system.

Keep in mind, however, that it appears that most, if not all stars, have planets orbiting them. Indeed, since the advent of exoplanetary science in the late 1990s, humans have discovered over 500 planets orbiting distant stars. While the technology to detect these planets is still in its infancy and is only capable of detecting a handful of planets whose plane of orbit is aligned with ours.  Nevertheless, we have already confirmed what many have suspected for years, that there are likely trillions of planets in our Galaxy. Even more astonishing, as of the moment of this writing, astronomers announced the discovery of GJ1214b, a planet only six times the size of earth that is believed to be completely covered by water. While the surface of this planet is scorching hot and is unlikely to support life, it cannot be overstated how critical, how fundamental liquid water is to the formation of life. Indeed, it is the presence of liquid water that gives Earth its preeminent place in the list of interesting places in the Solar System because liquid water is a necessary condition for the single most interesting feature of planet Earth, life.

Earth is the only KNOWN location in the Solar System, indeed, in the Universe that possesses something more precious and vastly more diverse and interesting, than a complex geology and hydrology or an interesting physical, chemical or electromagnetic profile - an active biosphere.

The entire surface of our planet is quite literally alive. From thousand of feet deep in the earth, to thousands of feet into the atmosphere, our world seethes with life. Quite literally, wherever water is present, life thrives. Our oceans teem with life, our landmasses are carpeted not only with massive trees and fields of grasses, but the very soil in which they grow is alive, filled to bursting with an endless array of microbial life to which we are largely oblivious. To be sure, much of that life is far, far, far beneath our level of existence and goes utterly unnoticed by large terrestrial creatures like humans, dogs, cats or elephants, but the mere fact that we are largely unaware of its existence in no way means that life is not there. The fact that humans were utterly unaware of the existence of single celled organisms until Louis Pasteur discovered the first microbes does not negate the fact that single celled organisms have dominated our planet for the vast majority of its 4.5 billion year history.  Indeed these humble organisms, utterly beneath our everyday existence, form the basis of entire ecosystems, quietly using solar energy to replicate and in the process providing food to those slightly higher on the food chain.

Often, humans look at the world around us and see it in purely human terms because we are largely incapable of transcending our level of association.  When we see an empty beach and see nothing but the waves rolling in and out, it is hard to really grasp the concept that literally everything we are looking at is alive. That the waves are filled with bacteria, algae, plankton, that with every step in the sand, we compress the world around tens of billions of tiny creatures, that each grain of sand is coated with hundreds of minute critters eking out a humble existence, that with every breath, we inhale countless thousands if not millions of other creatures. Indeed, our eyes are simply not capable of seeing the true scope of life. If life were to glow, we would be blinded by the life that surrounds us. Our world would be suffused with light, every surface, every nook and cranny, the air itself would glow. Sadly, we are not capable of such sight, however, the fact that we cannot perceive the extent to which life truly dominates our planet in no way diminishes the fact that our world is, in a very real sense, alive.

While all of the preceding assumptions about God and the Great Chain of Existence really make no sense, this one does. Our planet is AWESOME, it is hard to overstate how truly amazing, how truly marvelous and mindblowingly rich our planet truly is. It is easily the most distinguishable planet in our solar system, yet even our planet, incredible as it is, cannot meaningfully associate with any of the other objects in the solar system. While Jupiter's massive magnetic and gravitational field may associate with us in the sense that it cleans up a lot of the asteroids, comets and stellar debris floating around the solar system, thereby protecting us from harmful impact strikes, Earth is unable to reciprocate in any meaningful way. Similarly, while the Sun pours life giving energy on the Earth every second of every day, the Earth can do absolutely nothing to meaningfully associate with its parent star. Indeed, even if the Earth were to collide with the Sun it would not notice and would simply continue fusing hydrogen into helium for another 5,000,000,000 years, utterly oblivious to our demise. Indeed, the only way our planet will ever meaningfully associate with anything else in the Universe is through us – the achievement of which, would be a transcendent moment both for our species and the world that gave us birth.

Why I Don't Believe - The Great Chain Part 4

The Milky Way Galaxy, even considering that it is merely a single galaxy amongst an endless sea of galaxies is still an unimaginably huge and varied structure. Spanning over 100,000 light years across, the Milky Way is mindbogglingly vast. To put that figure in more human terms, it is approximately 587,796,000,000,000,000 miles across, meaning the fastest spacecraft ever built would take approximately 1,917,142,857 years to travel across it. Traveling at a more modest 65 miles per hour, it would take some 1,032,307,692,307 years which is about 78 times as long as the Universe itself has existed. The Milky Way is easily the largest structure that is visible with the naked eye and as anyone who has ever sat out in the wilderness on a clear night knows, the Milky Way is a marvel of unsurpassing beauty.

And despite all of its majesty, our entire Galaxy would be but one faint point of light in the Hubble Deep Field image.

Level 4 - Galactic Phenomena

Assuming that God is interested in our Galaxy, it should be noted that there are no shortage of marvels in this Galaxy, any one of which is equally worthy of divine attention or use. Given its massive size, it is unsurprising that the Milky Way contains some 200,000,000 to 400,000,000 stars of all ages, size and brightness. The Milky Way also contains enormous clouds of gas, brilliant nebulae, supernovas, supernova remnants, diamonds the size of burnt out stars, magnetars, pulsars, innumerable stellar mass black holes, four spiral arms and a single supermassive black hole.  Given the huge variety of phenomena within a single galaxy does it necessarily follow that God is interested in stars rather than the panoply of other pheonomena swirling in the interstellar medium?  Of course not.  Religious understanding simply assumes that God must care about stars and their attendant planets because we happen to live under those conditions.

Virtually none of these individual features are able to effect anything outside of the Milky Way in any way whatsoever.  Indeed, few of these features are able to impact more than a tiny portion of the Milky Way itself. Indeed, with a handful of notable exceptions, in terms of meaningful association, few of these features impact anything else in the Milky Way in any meaningful way at all – the distances are simply too vast.

The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, is probably the most noteworthy feature of our galaxy as it forms our gravitational center and has an approximate mass equivalent to some 4,000,000 suns crammed into an area the size of our planet. This gravitational behemoth probably has the single greatest impact on our galaxy as a whole as the majority of the mass in the Milky Way has been drawn towards its center. When an unfortunate star falls within its gravity well, it is simply ripped apart and absorbed by the black hole.

Most of the other features in our Galaxy rarely, if ever interact with one another in any meaningful way. Stellar mass black holes occasionally cross orbital paths with stars or gas and will simply devour them, but such occurrences are rare. Of far greater importance in a galactic sense is the death of a massive star. When stars much larger and more massive than our Sun die, they explodes in an indescribably violent explosion. These supernovas can decimate nearby stars with both the shockwave of the explosion and the lethal radiation that follows. Such explosions, however, also serve as the single most important act of creation in the Universe.  When such stars explode, they spew their innards out into the galaxy, seeding the surrounding space with heavy elements, oxygen, carbon, iron, silicon that otherwise would not exist.  The shockwaves trigger new rounds of star formation within the galaxy. It is the death of these stars and the deposits of heavy elements and new star formations they leave behind that allow individual stars to have the most meaningful association with the Milky Way as a whole.  The death of such massive stars dramatically enhances cosmic evolution.

Seen from another Galaxy, the Milky Way's most striking features would clearly be either the massive bar of stars in the galactic bulge at the center of the galaxy or its graceful spiral arms. Seen from any distance, individual stars appear negligible.  Yet Religious understanding assumes that God is not really interested in most of the staggeringly beautiful and monumentally powerful galactic marvels spread across our night sky, but is really most interested in stars, more specifically, OUR star.

Level 5 – A Grain of Sand in Sea of Stars

Assume that God prefers matter over energy, further, that God is interested in ordinary matter over dark matter, and that out of all the matter in the universe, God prefers gravitationally bound structures, and that out of the approximately 200,000,000,000 to 400,000,000,000 galaxies in the portion of the Universe we can actually see, God has chosen our middle aged, mid-sized, galaxy, the Milky Way. Assuming that God has chosen our Galaxy out of the virtually endless sea of galaxies, further assume that God is truly interested in Stars rather than some of the more exotic and clearly more powerful phenomena that exist in virtually all galaxies. Even if one assumes that God prefers stars and their attendant planets over all such phenomena, it should be noted that the Milky Way contains between 200,000,000,000 and 400,000,000,000 different stars. Our sister Galaxy Andromeda contains nearly 1,000,000,000,000. When you consider the sheer number of stars that exist in our own galaxy, let alone ALL of the other galaxies, the idea that God would be interested in our Star over and above all others is an utterly ludicrous conceit.  The pinnacle of narcissism.

Without question, stars are an incredible physical phenomenon. Stars are the furnace of the Universe, the crucible in which all of the elements heavier than hydrogen and helium are forged. Without stars, the carbon atoms that comprise our bodies, the iron that makes up our blood, the oxygen that makes up water and our breathable atmosphere simply would not exist. Stars are beautiful, luminous marvels.   Massive cosmic structures where the mass of the object becomes so great and exerts such tremendous pressure that the hydrogen atoms in the innermost regions are driven close enough together by the force of gravity that they overcome the physical forces that normally keep them apart.  The massive gravity creates tremendous pressures and temperatures, eventually fusing hydrogen into helium and releasing incredible amounts of heat, light and energy in the process. As this process continues, a chain reaction begins and the star begins to burn with nuclear fusion.  The heat generated then acts to counteract the gravity of the star's mass, creating a perfect sphere of burning plasma.

Throughout a star's life, it fuses hydrogen to helium then begins fusing helium, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, silicon, etc., gradually producing heavier and heavier elements, finally reaching iron. At this point, the star cannot produce any more energy from fusion and cannot generate the heat necessary to counteract the force of gravity.  The star then either collapses in on itself and becomes a white dwarf star, or collapses into a black hole, shedding its outer layers in a massive supernova explosion and spewing carbon, nitrogen, silicon, oxygen, and all of the heavy elements that comprise life on earth out into the Universe. It is these heavy elements, forged in the hearts of massive stars billions of years ago that forged the atoms that comprise our terrestrial planets. Without those prior generations of long dead stars, no small rocky planets like earth could exist. So assuming God is interested in stars, and why wouldn't he be, they are amazing, beautiful, and incredibly powerful, why would he be interested in our star?

To be sure, our star, The Sun is Awesome, at least in comparison to our level of existential association. Indeed, The Sun is so central, so essential to our existence and life on this planet, that for the bulk of human history, the Sun has been either directly worshiped as a God, or directly associated with one. This is unsurprising given its role in our solar system. The Sun comprises approximately 99.86% of all of the mass in our Solar System. It is easily the most dominant feature in our Solar System and easily the most important single object in our cosmic neighborhood. In one second, the sun releases more energy through nuclear fusion than has ever been produced by humankind throughout its entire history. The sun provides virtually all of the energy necessary to power our weather and and through the process of photosynthesis, provides nearly all of the energy every living being on this planet has ever consumed.

Our Sun is absolutely critical to all life here on Earth and is the foundation of our very existence, yet despite its indescribably profound impact on OUR existence, our Sun is fairly unremarkable in a galactic sense because it simply exists on an entirely different level of existential association than the Milky Way. On a galactic scale, our star is merely another orb of plasma whose heat and gravitational attraction do not even reach its closest neighbor. To put it in perspective, our sun is slightly larger than average, slightly brighter than average and contains slightly more heavy elements than average. It is nowhere near the largest or most massive of stars, nor near the brightest or most powerful. Indeed, the Sun will likely never meaningfully associate with the galaxy as a whole because it is too small to either form a black hole, or generate a supernova.

Despite its preeminence in our lives, the Sun is in almost every way, an average star occupying a region of average stellar density as it orbits the center of our Galaxy every 225,000,000 to 250,000,000 years or so. While it is the easily the most important object in our lives, in the cosmic scheme, it is but one more brilliant orb of plasma in a galaxy containing some 200,000,000,000 to 400,000,000,000 similar orbs.

The Atheist can examine our star's place in the Universe without fear.  The Atheist can analyze the Sun's humble role in the cosmos without fear of offending any ancient tradition.  The Atheist need not come up with reasons why the Sun is important, or why it would catch the attention of the Sovereign of the Great All.  The Atheist is free to accept that we are but one among many, that we are small, that our star and our world are not the focus or the center of the Universe.  The Atheist is set free by humility and unfettered by the cosmic arrogance of Religious understanding.

Religious understanding necessarily shrinks God.  Religious understanding anthropomorphizes God in an attempt to make the incredible vastness of the cosmos relatable in human terms.  This does violence to the scope and majesty of the Great All.  Religious understanding, in its epic arrogance and narcissism seeks to place great cosmic importance on our existence that is wholly unwarranted.

Religious understanding is terrified of science, terrified of looking at the true size, scope and scale of the Universe because in actually looking at the Universe, it becomes clear that the stories passed down by our forebearers are not true.  It becomes clear that far from being the center of the Universe, we are merely passengers on a small planet orbiting a small star in an endless sea of stars themselves swirling endlessly within an ocean of galaxies.  Religious understanding, chained by its adherence to ancient texts, and the guesses of ancient peoples must always shrink the Universe and enlarge our importance.  The Atheist has no such need and is liberated.

But for the sake or argument, let us assume that God IS interested in our Star, perhaps because of the collection of tiny planets in its orbit, perhaps, because of one planet in particular and the spectacular array of life that dwells upon it.

Why I Don't Believe - The Great Chain Part 3

Understand that something on the order of 70% of the Universe is not matter in any way shape or form.  The vast majority of the Universe is not even made of the same stuff that we are.  Recognize that the kind of stuff that comprises our bodies and our world is only a tiny, infintesimal fraction of what the Universe is made of.  Does it naturally follow that God, sovereign over the Great All, is necessarily interested Matter?  Of course not.  Matter may well be an unwanted byproduct in some indescribably enormous cosmic construction project.

Level 2 - Dark Matter Versus Everything Else

But let us assume that God is in fact interested in matter.  That God's purpose in creating the Universe actually involves matter.  As God is the author of the ENTIRE Universe, it is prudent to understand how matter is organized in the Universe. Approximately 83.3 percent of the matter in the Universe is a substance known as Dark Matter. Dark matter only appears to interact with Ordinary Matter in one way – through gravity. In other words, Dark Matter could be pouring through you right this moment and you would be completely unaware of it.  We simply cannot and do not associate with Dark Matter in any meaningful way. Dark Matter only interacts with matter at all in the aggregate and on monumentally huge scales of existence.

This is important because Dark Matter through its predominance and its gravitational attraction forms the single largest object in the entire Universe – The Cosmic Dark Matter Web. This web is basically a massive gravitational structure of nodes and filaments that contains within it virtually all of the ordinary matter in the Universe. A vast gravitational scaffold holding the entirety of creation.

We can actually see the structure of the Cosmic Dark Matter Web through a process called Gravitational Lensing.  We can see the way in which gas and dust and galaxy clusters swirl endlessly within it.  A computer simulation of a small portion of this structure can be seen below.





This Web is unimaginably vast.  It extends as far as we are capable of seeing. Within this Web, is everything that the human eye has ever seen. Every galaxy, every supernova, every star, everything. Every object we have ever known swirls endlessly within this massive celestial scaffolding that we can neither see nor feel. Indeed, we can only 'see' its presence based on the way it causes the objects we CAN see to move and the way it causes light to bend.

Within this colossal web, lies all of the other matter in the Universe.  The remaining 16.7% of the matter in the Universe, everything made of atoms, all of the gas, dust, galaxies, stars and planets, constitute only a small fraction.  Endlessly swirling within the scaffold's gravity like sparkling specks in a snow globe.  And all that matter, all of those atoms, everything made of the same stuff that we are is less than 5% of the Universe.

The scale of this immense structure is truly awe inspiring.  It contains literally hundreds of billions if not trillions of galaxies. Each galaxy containing hundreds of billions if not trillions of individual stars, most of which host swarms of planets, comets and asteroids, just like our own humble star.  The complexity is staggeringly beautiful.  Elegant beyond anything the human mind or hand could ever achieve.  The product of billions of years of cosmic evolution.  The Cosmic Dark Matter Web is a wonder in and of itself and the Atheist is free to marvel in attempting to understand its enormity.  The Atheist can understand it free of any theological concerns regarding its age, its immensity, or what its innumerable galaxies portends for the significance of our species in comparison to the Sovereign of the Great All.  The Atheist is free to smile at our cosmic insignificance and allow the immensity of the Great All to set the mind free.

The Religious, in contrast, must contend with this immensity and explain how and why we, out of the entire Universe, are special to God.  Why we have captured his rapt attention.  Why our galaxy, our star, our planet, our species have captured his attention and caused him to intervene on our behalf.  While the Atheist can look at the stars and bask in our irrelevance, the Religious cannot do so.  The Religious must explain how and why our small, short lived, transitory, narcissistic species is important, despite the fact that every shred of evidence in the Universe howls that we are insignificant.

Even if one were to assume that God is interested in matter over dark energy, does it necessarily follow that God is interested in our kind of matter? That God is interested in atoms? Is it not equally plausible that such a being is far more interested in the immense celestial scaffolding that spans the breadth of the Universe? Is it not equally possible that God is interested in Dark Matter? The being that created the Big Bang is sovereign over the entirety of the Universe, after all. If that being is interested in Gravitational effects, is interested the collection of gas or matter or some other unknowable purpose, it is entirely plausible that God is far more interested in Dark Matter than our ordinary matter.

Level 3 - Our Galaxy Versus Every Other Galaxy

And even if one assumes that God is interested in ordinary matter, does it necessarily follow that God would have any particular attachment or interest in our portion of the Universe, to our Cluster of Galaxies, to our Galactic Family, to our own Milky Way?  Of course not.

Within the Web, is all of the ordinary matter in the Universe.  Enormous concentrations of matter connected by filaments of gas and dust billions of light years long. These enormous concentrations of matter contain the majority of the free hydrogen and helium gas in the Universe as well as the majority of the galactic structures within the Universe. Over time these enormous concentrations of matter evolved into Supercluster Complexes, which coalesced to form vast walls of galaxies that can span billions of light years across. These Complexes are so vast that they appear to be clouds of innumerable galaxies. These clouds are in turn composed of Galactic Superclusters which span hundreds of millions of light years across.

The following image was taken by the Hubble Telescope.  Taken over 10 days, this image is of a patch of empty sky about the size of a dime... located 75 feet away.  Within that random tiny patch of empty sky, Hubble imaged over 1500 individual galaxies, like the Milky Way, each containing countless billions or trillions of stars.  All within a patch of seemingly empty sky easily covered by your thumb.  The wonder and majesty of that simple fact is breathtaking.

Each Galactic Supercluster contains tens of thousands to millions of galaxies. Estimates place the number of individual galaxies in the visible Universe at somewhere around 200,000,000,000.  To put some perspective on how enormous 200,000,000,000 actually is, recognize that the odds of correctly selecting all five balls and the powerball in the Powerball Lottery is 1 in 195,249,054. This means that if you randomly selected a single galaxy out of all of the galaxies in the observable Universe, you would be more than a THOUSAND TIMES MORE LIKELY TO WIN POWERBALL than you would be to select the Milky Way Galaxy.

Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is located within the Virgo Supercluster.  As Superclusters contain tens of thousands to millions of galaxies, these titanic collections of galaxies are divided into Clusters of Galaxies.  These Clusters tend to orbit one another, and these Clusters are in turn divided into Groups of dozens of galaxies. Our own Galaxy, the Milky Way, is a member of what is called the Local Group.  A small collection of about thirty galaxies containing our sister Galaxy, the Andromeda as well as a few smaller galaxies that are in the process of colliding with, and being consumed by, our own Milky Way Galaxy.

The groups within these Superclusters act like families of galaxies, slowly orbiting the common center of mass. Within the group itself, the constituent galaxies endless orbit one another around the group's common center of mass, occasionally merging with another galaxy. Indeed, our own Galaxy is in the process of merging with two smaller galaxies right this moment, slowly tearing them apart and incorporating their stars, black holes, gas and dust into itself.

In order to believe that God, out of all the Universe, is interested in our Galaxy, one not only has to assume that God is interested in matter over energy and prefers ordinary matter over dark matter, but one also has to assume that God has chosen our galaxy out of an endless sea of 200,000,000,000 other galaxies, that he has chosen the Virgo Supercluster, then the Virgo Cluster, then the Local Group and finally the Milky Way.

Does that seem logical?  The Atheist examines the Universe and sees not the hand of the divine, but cosmic evolution.  The Atheist watches and marvels as gravity drives clouds of gas into spinning maelstroms.  Smiles as the gas and dust within those maelstroms collapse into dazzling balls of individual light, endlessly circling within their galaxy.  Gapes as entire galaxies collide and merge.  Is filled with awe and reverence as stars explode, enriching the interstellar medium with the stuff of life - carbon, oxygen, silicon, iron.  The Atheist has no need to believe that our corner of the Universe is somehow special, that our planet, our star, our galaxy is somehow unique.  The Atheist can view the evidence and can approach an understanding of the Universe with humility and reverence.  The Atheist can allow the size and scope and scale of the Universe and the elegant machinations of gravity to wash over them.

The Religious confront that evidence with skepticism and arrogance.  Because to understand our smallness, to understand our cosmic insignificance directly conflicts with their sacred texts.  With their Religious understanding.  And unlike Atheism, Religious Understanding must always be filtered, must always adhere to ancient understandings regardless of whether those understandings can withstand the sea of evidence uncovered as we began to see the true nature of the cosmos.

Why I Don't Believe - The Great Chain Part 2

Everything in our Universe exists along a continuium, a Great Chain extending from the largest objects imaginable to the smallest.  Everything in the Universe, matter, energy, time, and space interact with everything in their immediate environment.  Meaningful interactions, however, can only occur between objects on a closely related levels of existence. The Great Chain is a continuium encompassing everything.  Atoms, Molecules, People, Planets, Stars, Galaxies, Superclusters of Galaxies all exist on completely distinct levels of existence, and generally speaking, objects can only meaningfully relate with objects on closely related levels of existence.

Humans occupy and are only capable of interacting with a tiny portion of this continuium.  We as humans are only really capable of meaningful interactions with those levels of existence that fall within the range our our experiential existence.  Our associational range extends only a few levels above and below our own level of existence.  While we may be dimly aware of interactions on the levels above and below our own levels of experiential existence, we are incapable of meaningful interactions, because the existential association is simply too attenuated.

Imagine a single hydrogen atom. A hydrogen atom has one proton and one electron. When an atom of hydrogen encounters an atom of oxygen and another hydrogen atom, the three atoms will bond, forming a molecule of water. The hydrogen atom can meaningfully associate with the other atoms because the three atoms exist on the same associational level. By the same token, those three atoms forming that molecule of water can meaningfully associate with another atom or another molecule of water because the physical interactions at play (the strong and weak nuclear forces) still dominate their associations. All of these interactions are meaningful because they all take place within closely related associational levels.

Place that same hydrogen atom at the level of a human being. The period at the end of this sentence could contain 20,000,000,000,000 of those same hydrogen atoms that were able to meaningfully associate with other atoms.  Yet even 20,000,000,000,000 of them put together are scarcely noticeable on our level of existence. Even that molecule of water formed from the meaningful association of hydrogen and oxygen simply does not register on our level of existence. Indeed, 602,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of those same water molecules constitute less than a teaspoon of water.

Going further, place that same atom of hydrogen on the level of a star. Our sun converts approximately 3,700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 hydrogen atoms into helium via nuclear fusion every single second. On this scale a single hydrogen atom is completely and utterly meaningless because the unimaginable gulf between the levels of association is simply to vast. Even on this level of existence the cosmic and numerical insignificance of an atom of hydrogen is simply incomprehensible.

As the Atheist begins to understand the true scope and scale of the Universe, it becomes inescapably clear that even if our Universe was created as an intentional act of authorship, that there is an incomprehensibly gargantuan gulf between our level of existence and that of the Creator of the Great All.  Indeed, the associational gulf is so vast that it borders on lunacy to believe that such a being, even assuming that it exists, has any interest whatsoever in anything as mundane, transitory and unimportant as our entire galaxy, let alone our humble planet and its collection of clever primates.

We are utterly irrelevant in a cosmic sense.

To illustrate just how irrelevant, it is useful to analyze the levels of existence comprising the Great Chain.  To understand our place on it and view the gulf between the level on which Creator of the Great All dwells and our own level of existence.

Assume for a moment that there is a God. Assume further, that God created this Universe just as it is written in the great Abrahamaic Texts, that He (always He) spoke and existence sprang into being. The Big Bang itself was an act of cosmic creation, the ultimate act of conscious authorship. From that single act, the Universe in all of its magnificent size, scale and beauty was born. It is utterly impossible to know whether God created only this Universe, or a vast Multiverse containing an unknowable number of other Universes. For purposes of clarity, however, let us simply assume that this is the only Universe.

Obviously, no mere human can possibly hope to understand with any precision why God would create the Universe.  The idea that God would create the cosmos solely for our benefit is laughably arrogant and narcissistic, akin to assuming that I am writing this for the benefit of a bacterial cell in Hoboken, New Jersey.  Logically, however, if the Big Bang was an act of conscious authorship, God must have had some purpose in causing it.  So why did God create the Universe?  To what purpose?  What end?

Level 1 - Dark Energy and Everything Else

The first meaningful distinction that can be made within the Universe is the distinction between Dark Energy and everything else in the Universe.  According to the most recent calculations, our Universe is composed of approximately 70% Dark Energy, 25% Dark Matter, 4% Free Hydrogen and Helium, .05% Stars, .02% Neutrinos and .02% Heavy Elements. What this essentially means is that the stuff that we and everything else we consider to exist in the Universe, everything that has ATOMS, make up less than 5% of the Universe.

In other words, 95% of the Universe is not even made up of the same stuff that we are.

Nearly 70% of the Universe is composed of Vacuum or Dark Energy.  This appears to be the single most dominant force in the Universe. Dark Energy is so pervasive, and in the aggregate, so powerful, that it is literally expanding the entire Universe. Not only is it expanding the Universe, but every single second, the speed of that expansion increases slightly. Working against Dark Energy is the gravitational attraction of matter, which causes matter to clump together.  While Dark Energy is powerful enough in the aggregate to drive two galaxies apart, it does not appear to be able to tear gravitationally bound structures like galaxies or clusters of galaxies apart. At least not yet.

By now, those of you who aren't terribly scientifically minded are probably bored to tears and wondering how any of this is relevant. This is only relevant because those who argue that God is interested in our species and presumably intervenes in our affairs, presume that this God is interested in matter.  That conclusion is hardly obvious.

It is equally plausible that God created the Universe in order to harvest the Dark Energy of the Vacuum that comprises the vast, vast, vast bulk of the Universe's energy. That God is actually interested in the expansive power of Dark Energy for some inconceivable purpose. Simply assuming that God is interested in matter because WE are, or because we are made of matter is highly suspect. And this assumption is merely the first in a long line of dubiously self-centered assumptions and inferences leading to the wholly narcissistic and arrogant conclusion that God cares about us.  The Atheist makes no such assumption.  Recognizing the possibility that even if there is a God, such a being operates on a level so far above our own that it may not even be interested in the material of which we are made.  Just as a sculptor is not interested helium gas because it does not further his work, God may not even be interested in the material of which we are made because it does not further its work.

Why I Don't Believe - The Great Chain Part 1

Even if the Atheist assumes for the sake of argument that God exists, the simple reality is that God's existence is completely and utterly meaningless.

God is irrelevant to us.  Not because God is irrelevant, but because we are.

I said earlier that the question of what caused or created the Great Singularity that started our Universe is irrelevant. I don’t mean that to be dismissive or coy, it is quite simply that such a question, even if answered most definitely in the affirmative is ultimately meaningless.

Assume for a moment, that the Great Singularity was in fact an act of conscious authorship. Assume that it was a deliberate act of creation, and that at some point some 13.7 billion years ago, some profoundly advanced civilization or being created this Great Singularity and rigged it to explode. If that is the case, that being or civilization would be, for all intents and purposes, God.  The Atheist should certainly recognize that such a being or civilization, as the Creator of our Universe, would be worthy of the title of God.

Even assuming that some incredibly advanced being, that God, created our Universe, so what?  Such a being, assuming it exists, is certainly worthy of praise.  Indeed, we would owe our entire existence to it, but understand that the being that could create the Great Singularity operates on a scale of existence that dwarfs any and all human understanding.

The observable Universe, by which I mean the region of space where light has had time to reach us and that we can actually see contains between 200 to 400 billion galaxies.  Indeed, we can only see a small portion of the Universe.  The Universe is so vast that it is quite literally impossible to tell whether the Universe is flat or whether it is such a large sphere that it only appears flat, or whether it is in fact infinite.  Of those innumerable billions of galaxies, an average galaxy contains anywhere from a few hundred million to tens of trillions of stars. Our own galaxy is a moderately sized spiral galaxy containing between 200 billion and 400 billion stars. While the science is still relatively new, we now have the technology to detect planets orbiting distant stars and it is now clear that the vast majority of those stars have planets. Many of them contain entire solar systems roughly analogous to our own.  Quite simply, the sheer number of stars and planets in the Universe can only be grasped using math. Even quaint analogies like grains of sand on the beach fail to capture the true scale of the Universe.

Assume that God created the Great Singularity, that some epochal being with literally unimaginable technology at its disposal created all of this. Is it in any way credible to believe that such a being would be interested in us in any way shape or form? Such a being would traffic in the birth and destruction of entire Universes. If such a being were really slumming, it might deign to lower itself to consider the birth and death of superclusters of galaxies containing hundreds of quadrillions of stars. The idea that such a being would be interested in one single galaxy out of hundreds of billions of others is the height of egocenticity and narcissism. Moreover, the idea that such a being would be interested not only in one particular galaxy, but one particular star out of the hundreds of billions within that galaxy is patently ridiculous. That such a being would lend even the slightest thought to a single planet, within a single galaxy, within a host of galaxies borders on megalomania. The idea that such a being, that the Creator of the Great All, who traffics in the birth and death of entire UNIVERSES, would take an interest in our species, let alone make distinctions and mete out ‘justice’ amongst our species based on meaningless liturgical or genetic differences is perhaps the most arrogant, self-centered and narcissistic concept possible.  The idea that the Sovereign over the entire Universe who has reigned for tens of billions of years is actively interested in and intervening in the lives of homo sapiens who have existed for a few million years on a tiny isolated world in the infinitude of the Great All is so silly that it borders on madness.

The God that is presented in human religions is at best a planetary God or God of our solar system. At that point, humans might as well worship those gray skinned, black eyed aliens that populate science fiction as they are infinitely more likely to have actually taken an interest in or seeded this planet than the Creator of the Great All. The God presented in human religions is quite simply too small, too parochial and too quaint to encompass the magnificent grandeur of the cosmos. The God that reigns in Earthly Religions who makes distinctions based on creed or color, who rewards and punishes based on archaic criteria scribbled down on papyrus thousands of years ago is quite simply too small to be the Creator of the Great All.

The Creator of the Great All, the author of the Great Singularity, is simply not a being that would have any interest in us or our planet or our galaxy whatsoever.

Ask yourself honestly whether you care deeply about the bacteria growing in the dark amongst the mold spores behind the cabinet in a garage 3000 miles away.  Those bacteria exist.  How often does their existence impinge on your conscious mind? How often do you consider their well being? If those bacteria praised you with all of their might, would you even be aware of it? The answer is clearly no.  We simply dwell on a different plane of existence than bacteria. Bacteria cannot possibly understand the mechanics of our lives, cannot possibly recognize the scale and scope of our individual actions, let alone our civilization. With a simple swipe of a cloth we can destroy an entire bacterial civilization and we give it no more thought than scratching our skin, which also destroys tens of millions of living things.

Understand that compared to the being who could create the Great Singularity, we are far less than that.  The difference between the plane of existence on which such a being dwells and our plane of existence is infinitely larger than the difference between our plane of existence and that of a bacteria half a world away.

Even if we are to make the assumption that some great sentient being created our Universe, so what? The thought that such a being is in any way interested in interacting with, or even concerned with our quiet little corner of the Universe is maddeningly self-centered and egocentric.

An honest Atheist will admit that we cannot know whether the Big Bang was an act of conscious Authorship or simply a natural occurrence.  We quite simply cannot know.  The Atheist cannot honestly hold any strong opinion whatsoever about what caused the Big Bang. The simple truth is that no one , no scientist, no theologian, no mystic, no human being can possibly know anything about what caused such an occurrence. Any and all evidence of what caused such a massive cataclysmic moment of creation was utterly annihilated by the act itself.  While we can understand and describe the evolution of what came after, we cannot possibly know what came before that single point at which our Universe was born.

Is it within the realm of possibility that such an event was caused by an intentional act of some incredibly vast and technologically proficient super-deity? Certainly. While such an explanation is indeed possible, mere possibility is in no way equivalent to plausibility or probability. Personally, I happen to believe that there is no God whatsoever and that the Great Singularity and Big Bang were the result of natural processes, however, I am readily willing to concede the possibility that the Big Bang itself was an act of some impossibly advanced being or civilization.

Even conceding that point makes no difference, however, because ultimately the question of whether 'God' caused the Universe to spring into existence or not is completely irrelevant to our existence. Such a being is irrelevant to our existence.  Not because such a being is irrelevant, but because WE are.  Because we are so small and insignificant in a cosmic sense as to be utterly beneath it's notice.

Why I Don't Believe Part 5 - Biological Evolution

Life is literally everywhere on this planet. It covers the land. It seethes in the oceans. It suffuses the air. The entire surface of our planet is quite literally alive. A carpet of living, breathing, replicating things that have colored oceans blue, the land green and changed the composition of the sky. Even environments that look utterly barren are coated with life. When you look in the mirror, you are seeing not only yourself, but you and hundreds of billions of other living things crawling all over your skin and seething in your gut. Indeed, every square centimeter of your skin contains some 100,000 microbes, all working, synthesizing energy, reproducing in complete anonymity, completely beneath our level of awareness.

Simply because life is not readily apparent to us, however, does not mean that it is not there. Every movement we make through the apparently empty air is a movement through a sea of life. We are quite literally surrounded by life every moment of every day. Indeed, life is SO prolific, and SO adaptable, that in even the most inhospitable, even the most unimaginably challenging environments, life somehow scratches out existence, no matter how meager.

Life persists in the perfect darkness, sub-freezing temperatures and absolutely crushing pressures of the cold seeps located at the ocean floor. It thrives in boiling water and pitch blackness clinging to the edge of a undersea volcanoes. Even when trapped under a mile of ice, or confined to pools of sulfuric acid deep inside the blackest caves, even in the cold, pressureless depths of the void of space, life persists. The fact that living things are capable of adaptation and existence in such extreme environments, that life is capable of survival even in the most inhospitable environments is a testament to the power and persistence of matter. Once matter becomes organized, once it obtains purpose, it is virtually impossible to dislodge. And this persistence of life, the power of matter to organize itself and maintain its existence even in the most impossible conditions strongly suggests that the formation of life is a natural consequence of the evolution of matter.
 
Our understanding of life is, for obvious reasons, limited to our experience here on Earth.  What that experience makes abundantly clear is that at least on this planet, water is absolutely fundamental to life. In our terrestrial experience all life is based on energetic carbon chemistry in water. Where water flows life follows.
It is unclear exactly where life on this planet began. Whether it began in deep sea vents, in the superheated, chemical rich water welling up from near the Earth's molten mantle. Or in coastal shallows heated by the sun. Regardless of where life first arose, it is clear that even in the earliest days, Earth possessed all of the raw materials necessary to facilitate life.

Earth possesses an abundance of Carbon, the fundamental element for all organic chemistry. Carbon's unique bonding capabilities allow it to form long, complex molecules with all kinds of other atoms. With minor amounts of energy, carbon has been shown to easily forms the basic organic buildings blocks necessary to form life, amino acids, lipids, sugars, hydrocarbons. More importantly, due to the unique bonding capabilities of carbon, organic molecules tend to combine and recombine into ever more complex organic structures. And at some point, some 900 million years after its formation, this frothing mass of organic molecules in our great global ocean did something extraordinary, something that would forever alter our planet.

It began to organize. It began to extract energy from its environment and use that energy to replicate itself.

The exact mechanism that caused the first living thing to spring into existence is unknown, it is unclear whether primitive forms of RNA began replicating externally or whether these complex chain of amino acids somehow ended up inside of a lipid bubble and were activated by the presence of electricity or heat or some unknown chemical reaction, but at some point, some humble collection of organic molecules began to do something this planet had never seen before. It began to live.

That first humble organism, was likely an incredibly simple thing, likely capable of nothing more than extracting energy to self-replicate, but it is from these humble origins that everything we are is derived.

Over innumerable generations, these humble organisms replicated. Occasional mutations and variations gave rise to slightly different organisms and slightly different species.

For the first few billion years, these single celled organisms ruled our planet. They were likely confined to the deep oceans, or the shallow coastal seas surrounding the granite continents that were gradually forming due to the Earth's volcanism. At some point, however, yet another in a countless string of mutations gave rise to a multicellular juggernaut and once multicellular organisms began to multiply, evolution was poised to take a massive leap forward. Specialized cells enabled these new creatures to adapt in heretofore unimaginable ways, enabled organisms not only to extract energy from the sun or chemicals, but from other living things, the first predators. Multicellular organisms also have more constituent parts that are each capable of individual mutation, further hastening evolution.

Approximately 1,200,000,000 years ago, the first organisms began to reproduce sexually, purposefully recombining their genetic code in unpredictable ways and rapidly increasing the rate of evolution. Indeed, sexual reproduction is probably the single most significant evolutionary step this planet had witnessed since the rise of multicellular organisms. Asexual reproduction is specifically designed to create a carbon copy of the original and evolutionary advances can occur only through errors or mutations in the copying process itself. Sexual reproduction, on the other hand, creates organisms that are similar, but slightly genetically different from the parent cells.

With the advent of sexual reproduction, the Earth’s creatures grew steadily larger, more advanced, more specialized and more adaptable. Eventually, organisms even began to take tentative steps onto the land. As plants and animals relentlessly fought for greater access to the sun, to prey, to territory, to mates, they became ever more advanced. And once life gained its initial foothold, its march forward was unstoppable.

Throughout its 4.5 billion year life, our Planet has seen four mass extinctions where upwards of 95% of the planet's life was extinguished. Yet each time, after a few million years, life springs back with renewed vigor, marching relentlessly forward with ever more advanced and adaptable species. Finally, after approximately 3.8 billion years of evolution and after four great evolutionary setbacks, one particular species of ape came down out of the trees, taking the first tentative steps down the path of human evolution.

Christians are raised to believe in stories where God created man by breathing life into a pile of dust. Raised to believe that God created the first woman by taking a rib out of that same man and imbuing that bone with life. Does that story make any sense?  Seriously ask yourself if the creation stories made up by ancient farmers and shepherds with absolutely no knowledge of biology, genetics, phsyics or chemistry make any sense in the modern world?  Ask yourself how such a story, written by people with absolutely no actual knowledge can possibly compare to what we can actually see and test with the full arsenal of technological and scientific tools at our disposal.

Even more importantly, how does evolution not make sense? The proof of it is quite literally all around us.

Those who conflate Atheism with nihilism claim that Atheists do not see meaning in life because they reject the idea of God.  This could not be further from my experience.  I see no authorship when I see life. None. And I appreciate life all the more because I do NOT see any kind of authorship behind its existence. The fact that life was not created, that it was not grown in some celestial lab and placed here, the fact that it was not spoken into existence by an invisible space being in no way robs life of its grace and majesty. Life is precious precisely because the odds of its existence are so long. Life is made even more precious by the fact that it is so highly unlikely in any given reaction. The very fact that life exists at all is like winning the lottery five or six times in a row. In no way does that cheapen the power and majesty of existence. It merely reinforces how incredibly precious and indescribably awesome the gift of life really is.

That some require authorship to find meaning in life fills me with sadness because they have completely missed out on what an incredibly mind-blowing miracle life really is. Can they not see the grace and beauty in the fact that the atomic remnants of a long dead star, pulled together by great organizing force of gravity, and gradually organized based on the laws of chemistry formed something truly extraordinary.  That over the course of billions of years these amazing structures replicated and evolved and replicated again to form a planet whose surface is literally alive? That is truly the greatest, most profound, most awesome miracle imaginable.

For countless generations, humans have asked the great question. “How did we get here?” For countless generations, we really had no idea.  We lacked the tools and sophistication and methodologies to even properly approach such a question.  So we made up stories, just like later peoples made up stories about Zeus hurling lightning bolts or how Apollo's Golden Chariot causes the sun to rise each day. We invented stories wherein beings, not unlike ourselves, simply placed life here, in much the same way ancient peoples herded cattle from place to place or raise crops. For countless generations, we invented stories out of whole cloth to explain the great mystery of how our beautiful green and blue world came into being.

What is staggering to me is that now, we really know. We know to within a few microseconds how our Universe came to be. We can quite literally see and know the process of how our Universe evolved. We know how our planet was formed, what is was formed of and how long ago it happened. Even more amazing, we know what happened after its formation, we can see through the genetic record how species split and evolved and split again into a vast, interconnected biosphere. We quite literally know where we came from.

And the reality, the reality of where we came from, of what we are and how we came to be is far greater, grander, more magnificent and profound and meaningful than any story could ever be. We require no authorship to make our lives meaningful. We require no outside intervention to make existence astounding. Our simple existence is the greatest and most profoundly miraculous fact of all. It fills me with a profound sense of joy to know just how cosmically unlikely it is that I exist. It makes me smile simply knowing that the laws of physics and the interaction of time, space and matter can produce something as beautiful and graceful as life. It fills me with a sense of awe and wonder that no Creation myth could ever match. There was a time in my life where I really believed that the parochial God of our solar system created the Heavens and the Earth.

Such a belief seems so small to me now. It cheapens the whole experience of life. Even assuming our local, solar-system God alien indeed created life here, how would that possibly make our existence any more meaningful? How would that imbue life with a majesty it otherwise lacks?  How can such a belief possibly compare to the wondrous reality of our incredibly unlikely existence?
It is astounding that in the United States, the most technologically advanced nation on Earth, nearly half of the population does not believe in evolution. Most have no understanding of the Big Bang, no knowledge whatsoever of stellar nucleosynthesis (the process of how stars create heavier elements out of hydrogen) and no understanding of the mechanics of evolution. They completely fail to grasp the marvel of both cosmic and biological evolution.

This lack of understanding is truly sad because the reality of the processes that gave rise to our existence are so huge and so cosmically monumental that the Atheist cannot help but marvel at the very fact that we are here. In embracing a bronze-age fairy tale, the Religious have missed out on the true miracle of life. They have traded an incredible and profound understanding for a half-baked myth that not only bears no resemblance to the truth, but is also far less meaningful. The reality of our existence is far stranger, more wondrous, and more enlightening than the fiction of creationism. Understanding the size, scope and scale of the Universe, and understanding the way in which it has evolved enables the Atheist to view the world in a way that is impossible otherwise. It grants the Atheist perspective we would otherwise lack.

The most amazing thing, is that for the first time in human history, we are actually within spitting distance of a true understanding of the exact mechanics behind the one of the most ancient questions our minds have ever pondered. We have no more need for stories, no more need for gods or demons or coyotes or spirits. We really, truly know where we came from and the truth is absolutely incredible. That feeling of really knowing where we came from is both liberating and transcendent and it is my most fervent wish to share that knowledge and that feeling of really truly knowing the answer to one of the very first questions of our species with as many people as possible. The truth of where we came from is so much larger than we can comprehend that one cannot help but be humbled and stand in reverence of it.

Why I Don't Believe Part 4 - Cosmic Evolution

Few issues breed more tension between Atheism and Religion than evolution.  Religion is and has always been incredibly hostile to the idea that our world and life are the result of natural processes.  Afterall, if our world and all of the varied life on it could arise purely as a result of the physical properties and principles of matter and energy it dramatically undercuts our need for god as a means of understanding existence.  Religion is ultimately an attempt to provide answers to insoluble questions.  Religion's hostility to alternative answers that displace or replace millennia of Religious understanding is therefore completely understandable.

Hence Religion's hesitancy and inability to cope with the discovery that the Earth actually orbited the sun.  Its inability to cope with the discovery that the Earth was a sphere.  Its inability to cope with the geological and palentological evidence that the Earth was billions of years old.  Its inability to cope with evolution.  Religious understanding is incredibly fragile.  Prone to irrationality when presented with irrefutable evidence that its understanding was misguided.  Few issues typify this irrationality more than the ongoing hostility amongst the Religious community towards evolution.

To be sure, not all Religions are hostile towards evolution.  Indeed, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism and a host of others embrace the concept.  As a general rule, however, the Monotheistic Religions, specifically Christianity and Islam remain firmly opposed to evolution despite overwhelming physical evidence.

And the evidence is overwhelming.  The evidence for evolution is everywhere. Everything in our Universe evolves. Not even the dead are still.  Not even inorganic matter resists evolution. Religionists often argue that objects of greater complexity cannot arise out of lesser complexity.  Nothing could possibly be further from the truth.

Broadly speaking, there are two conceptually distinct forms of evolution, cosmic evolution and biological evolution.  Both speak to one of the most fundamental truths in the Universe.  Matter is organization.

Cosmic evolution is the process by which our Universe evolved from the random seething mass of quark-gluon plasma into the varied and marvelous structures we see spinning endlessly in the void.  The process by which galaxies form and merge.  The process by which stars are born.  The process by which stars die, enriching the space around them and giving rise to new generations of stars.  The process by which planets form out of the ashes of dead stars.  The process by which all of the heavenly orbs form, evolve and die.  This highly organized process does not require any divine intervention.  Cosmic evolultion proceeds effortlessly due to the physical properties and principles that govern the Universe - properties that lie within our understanding.
Even at the most basic, most elemental level, matter is highly organized. Subatomic and atomic particles exhibit levels of organization and regimentation that vastly exceed the most well designed human structures ever built. A single hydrogen atom, 1/200,000,000,000,000th the size of the period at the end of his sentence maintains a coherent form in which a proton holds an electron in a spherical orbit as the electron whips around the proton at 186,000 miles per second. This feat of organization is nothing less than mind blowing.

There is no intelligence behind the form of an atom. No act of authorship causes an atom to exist. It exists because of the physical properties of matter make it so.  These properties and principles are capable of understanding, capable of extrapolation, capable of testing and examination.  These properties and principles are literally within our understanding!  Hydrogen atoms exist because as the Universe slowly cooled from the incomprehensible tempest of the Big Bang, protons and electrons finally began to move slow enough to allow the fundamental forces to form a larger structure.  Under the influence of gravity, these hydrogen atoms gradually coalesced into vast clouds of hydrogen gas and helium.  These gas clouds in turn, began to collapse in on themselves under the influence of gravity, becoming ever tighter and denser forming vast galaxies.  Over millions of years, incredibly dense but relatively tiny balls of gas within these titanic galaxies became massive enough to ignite through nuclear fusion, becoming the first stars and filling the Universe with light.
 
We can actually understand the mechanics behind existence.  We can literally look through our telescopes and witness the evolution of the Universe.  We can see the radiological remnants of the Big Bang.  We can see the formation of the first galaxies.  We can watch as they ignite in Quasars and then settle into more stable cosmic features.  We can witness galaxies merging with one another.  We can witness any one 400,000,000,000 stars in our own Galaxy and can watch as they evolve.  We can demonstrate and predict how even the most basic building blocks of the Universe interact and function and our understanding of the fundamental forces of the Universe is actually borne out by what we see!  This is a testament to the ingenuity and intelligence of our species. Not a testament to divine Authorship.
 
Larger, heavier atoms are even more astonishing in their complexity and incredible organization. But their design, the way they function, the way they interact with one another, the way they organize themselves, is again, not the product of any intelligence, but the physical properties of matter.  These processes are discernible.  And we can not only describe and understand how they function, but how they came to be.  As those first stars formed in the first galaxies in the Universe, they produced heat and light and energy by fusing Hydrogen in their cores into Helium.  As those stars continued to burn, they grew hotter and hotter, fusing hydrogen and helim into progressively larger atoms, carbon, silicon, oxygen, iron.  Eventually, however, even the largest stars run out of fuel.  The tenuous balance between the unimagiable heat generated by the star and its enormous gravity becomes unbalanced and the star explodes as a supernova.
 
These explosions send shockwaves rippling through the galaxy and those shockwaves cause nearby clouds of gas to collapse in on themselves, forming new stars.  But unlike in the first generations of stars, the gas clouds are filled with the heavy elements from the heart of the exploding star and it is these elements that allow small rocky planets to form around stars, that allow complex atoms to combine and recombine, that enable the cosmos to continue its evolution.  And it is these atoms and their amazing capacity for organization that allow biological evolution to take place.
 
The evolution of the Cosmos does not require the hand of the divine.  It does not require any divine authorship or any guiding hand.  The evolution of the Cosmos is a natural result of the physical properties and principles that govern the interactions of time, space and matter.  We do not require the intervention of supernatural deities to explain the things that we do not understand, because we are finally privileged enough and technologically proficient enough to see and know and understand.  We have no need to guess.  We literally understand how it is that our Universe evolved and how it continues to evolve.  Is our understanding perfect?  Of course not.
 
Our understanding of the Cosmos will continue to evolve as new information, new discoveries, new patterns, and new data is gathered.  Our understanding will continue to grow as we peer deeper into space and further back in time.  But unlike Religious understanding, the Atheist has no need to force our understanding of the true size and scope and age of the Universe to conform to a bronze age fairy tale.  The Atheist has no chains binding their understanding into a methodological framework established by shepherds and farmers with no understanding of even the most rudimentary principles of mathematics and physics.  The Atheist has no need to accept the supernatural guesses of ancient peoples who wondered about the stars but lacked the technological means to understand them, because the Atheist is free to look at the data, look at the Universe and marvel not at what we guess, but at what we KNOW.  And what we know is far more marvelous than even the wildest guesses of our forebearers.  What we know enriches our understanding and enriches our appreciation for the indescribably amazing Cosmos that surrounds us.