“I thought you were going to argue that God is the simpler hypothesis,” Ellie said, “but this is a much better point. If it were only a matter of scientific discussion, I’d agree with you, Reverend Joss. Science is essentially concerned with examining and correcting hypotheses. If the laws of nature explain all the available facts without supernatural intervention, or even do only as well as the God hypothesis, then for the time being I’d call myself an atheist. Then, if a single piece of evidence was discovered that doesn’t fit, Id back off from atheism. We’re fully able to detect some breakdown in the laws of nature. The reason I don’t call myself an atheist is because this isn’t mainly a scientific issue. It’s a religious issue and a political issue. The tentative nature of scientific hypothesis doesn’t extend into these fields. You don’t talk about God as a hypothesis. You think you’ve cornered the truth, so I point out that you may have missed a thing or two. But if you ask, I’m happy to tell you: I can’t be sure I’m right.”
“I’ve always thought an agnostic is an atheist without the courage of his convictions.”
“You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility. When I say I’m an agnostic, I only mean that the evidence isn’t in. There isn’t compelling evidence that God exists–at least your kind of god–and there isn’t compelling evidence that he doesn’t. Since more than half the people on the Earth aren’t Jews or Christian or Muslims, I’d say that there aren’t any compelling arguments for your kind of god. Otherwise, everybody on Earth would have been converted. I say again, if you God wanted to convince us, he could have done a much better job.
“Look at how clearly authentic the Message is. It’s being picked up all over the world. Radio telescopes are humming away in countries with different histories, different languages, different politics, different religions. Everybody’s getting the same kind of data from the same place in the sky, at the same frequencies with the same polarization modulation. The Muslims, the Hindus, the Christians, and the atheists are all getting the same message. Any skeptic can hook up a radio telescope–it doesn’t have to be very big–and get the identical data.”
“You’re not suggesting that your radio message is from God,” Rankin offered.
“Not at all. Just that the civilization on Vega–with powers infinitely less than what you attribute to your God–was able to make things very clear. If your God wanted to talk to us through the unlikely means of word-of-mouth transmission and ancient writings over thousands of years, he could have done it so there was no room left for debate about its existence.”
She paused, but neither Joss nor Rankin spoke, so she tried again to steer the conversation to the data.
“Why don’t we just withhold judgment for a while until we make some more progress on decrypting the Message? Would you like to see some of the data?”
This time they assented, readily enough it seemed. But she could produce only reams of zeros and ones, neither edifying nor inspirational. she carefully explained about the presumed pagination of the Message and the hoped-for primer. By unspoken agreement, she and der Heer said nothing about the Soviet view that the Message was the blueprint for a machine. It was at best a guess, and had not yet been publicly discussed by the Soviets. As an afterthought, she described something about Vega itself–its mass, surface temperature, color, distance from the Earth, lifetime, and the ring of orbiting debris around it that had been discovered by the Infrared Astronomy Satellite in 1983.
“But beyond its being one of the brightest stars in the sky, is there anything special about it?” Joss wanted to know. “Or anything that connects it up with Earth?”
“Well, in terms of stellar properties, anything like that, I can’t think of a thing. But there is one incidental fact: Vega was the Pole Star about twelve thousand years ago, and it will be again about fourteen thousand years from now.”
“I though the polestar was the Pole Star.” Rankin, still doodling, said this to the pad of paper.
“It is, for a few thousand years. But not forever. The Earth is like a spinning top. Its axis is slowly precessing in a circle.” She demonstrated, using her pencil as the Earth’s axis. “It’s called the precession of the equinoxes.”
“Discovered by Hipparchus of Rhodes,” added Joss. “Second century B.C.” This seemed a surprising piece of information for him to have at his fingertips.
“Exactly. So right now,” she continued, “an arrow from the center of the Earth to the North Pole points to the star we call Polaris, in the constellation of the Little Dipper, or the Little Bear. I believe you were referring to this constellation just before lunch, Mr. Rankin. As the Earth’s axis slowly precesses, it points in some different direction in the sky, not toward Polaris, and over 26,000 years the place in the sky to which the North Pole points makes a complete circle. The North Pole points right now very near Polaris, close enough to be useful in navigation. Twelve thousand years ago, by accident, it pointed to Vega. But there’s no physical connection. How the stars are distributed in the Milky Way has nothing to do with the Earth’s axis of rotation being tipped twenty-three and a half degrees.”
“Now, twelve thousand years ago is 10,000 B.C., the time when civilization was just starting up. Isn’t that right?” Joss asked.
“Unless you believe that the Earth was created in 4004 B.C.”
“No, we don’t believe that, do we, Brother Rankin? We just don’t think the age of the Earth is known with the same precision that you scientists do. On the question of the age of the Earth, we’re what you might call agnostics.” He had a most attractive smile.
“So if folks were navigating ten thousand years ago, sailing the Mediterranean, say, or the Persian Gulf, Vega would have been their guide?”
That’s still in the last Ice Age. Probably a little early for navigation. But the hunters who crossed the Bering land bridge to North America were around then. I must have seemed an amazing gift– providential, if you like–that such a bright star was exactly to the north. I’ll bet a lot of people owed their lives to that coincidence.”
“Well now, that’s mighty interesting.”
“I don’t want you to think I used the word `providential’ as anything but a metaphor.”
“I’d never think that, my dear.”
Joss was by now giving signs that the afternoon was drawing to a close, and he did not seem displeased. But there were still a few items, it seemed, on Rankin’s agenda.
“It amazes me that you don’t think it was Divine Providence, Vega being the Pole Star. My faith is so strong I don’t need proofs, but every time a new fact comes along it simply confirms my faith.”
“Well then, I guess you weren’t listening very closely to what I was saying this morning. I resent the idea that we’re in some kind of faith contest, and you’re the hands-down winner. So far as I know you’ve never tested your faith? I’m willing to do it for mine. Here, take a look out that window. There’s a big Foucault pendulum out there. The bob must weight five hundred pounds. My faith says that the amplitude of a free pendulum–how far it’ll swing away from the vertical position–can never increase. It can only decrease. I’m willing to go out there, put the bob I front of my nose, let go, have it swing away and then back toward me. If my beliefs are in error, I’ll get a five-hundred-pound pendulum smack in the face. Come on. You want to test my faith?”
“Truly, it’s not necessary. I believe you,” replied Joss. Rankin, though, seemed interested. He was imagining, she guessed, what she would look like afterward.
“But would you be willing,” she went on, “to stand a foot closer to this same pendulum and pray to God to shorten the swing? What if it turns out that you’ve gotten it all wrong, that what you’re teaching isn’t God’s will at all? Maybe it’s the work of the Devil. Maybe it’s pure human invention. How can you be really sure?”
“Faith, inspiration, revelation, awe,” Rankin answered. “Don’t judge everyone else by your own limited experience. Just the fact that you’ve rejected the Lord doesn’t prevent other folks from acknowledging His glory.”
“Look, we all have a thirst for wonder. It’s a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it. What I’m saying is, you don’t have to make stories up, you don’t have to exaggerate. There’s wonder and awe enough in the real world. Nature’s a lot better at inventing wonders than we are.”