“Maybe not.”
She closed her eyes and slumped against the door, supporting her weight on her right side. Sweat beaded her brow, but her voice was strong. “Two years ago, Loren Pollack used a billion dollars of his money to form a charitable trust. Named it Infiniface. He believes many of the sciences, through research facilitated by new generations of super-fast computers, are approaching discoveries that will bring us face to face with the reality of a Creator.”
“Sounds like a cult to me.”
“Oh, plenty of people think Pollack is a flake. But he’s got a singular ability to grasp complex research from a wide variety of sciences—and he has vision. You know, there’s a whole movement of modern physics that sees evidence of a created universe.”
Frowning, Joe said, “What about chaos theory? I thought that was the big thing.”
“Chaos theory doesn’t say the universe is random and chaotic. It’s an extremely broad theory that among many other things notes strangely complex relationships in apparently chaotic systems—like the weather. Look deeply enough in any chaos, and you find hidden regularities.”
“Actually,” he admitted, “I don’t know a damn thing about it—just the way they use the term in the movies.”
“Most movies are stupidity machines—like politicians. So… if Pollack was here, he’d tell you that just eighty years ago, science mocked religion’s assertion that the universe was created ex nihilo, out of nothing. Everyone knew something couldn’t be created from nothing—a violation of all the laws of physics. Now we understand more about molecular structure—and particle physicists create matter cx nihilo all the time.” Inhaling with a hiss through clenched teeth, she leaned forward, popped open the glove box, and rummaged through its contents. “I was hoping for aspirin or Excedrin. I’d chew them dry.”
“We could stop somewhere—”
“No. Drive. Just drive. Big Bear’s so far…” She closed the glove box but remained sitting forward, as though that position gave her relief. “Anyway, physics and biology are the disciplines that most fascinate Pollack—especially molecular biology.”
“Why molecular biology?”
“Because the more we understand living things on a molecular level, the clearer it becomes that everything is intelligently designed. You, me, mammals, fish, insects, plants, everything.”
“Wait a second. Are you tossing away evolution here?”
“Not entirely. Wherever molecular biology takes us, there might still be a place for Darwin’s theory of evolution—in some form.”
“You’re not one of those strict fundamentalists who believes we were created exactly five thousand years ago in the Garden of Eden.”
“Hardly. But Darwin’s theory was put forth in eighteen fifty-nine, before we had any knowledge of atomic structure. He thought the smallest unit of a living creature was the cell—which he saw as just a lump of adaptable albumen.”
“Albumen? You’re losing me.”
“The origin of this basic living matter, he thought, was most likely an accident of chemistry—and the origin of all species was explained through evolution. But we now know cells are enormously complex structures of such clockwork design that it’s impossible to believe they are accidental in nature.”
“We do? I guess I’ve been out of school a long time.”
“Even in the matter of the species… Well, the two axioms of Darwinian theory—the continuity of nature and adaptable design—have never been validated by a single empirical discovery in nearly a hundred and fifty years.”
“Now you have lost me.”
“Let me put it another way.” She still leaned forward, staring out at the dark hills and the steadily rising glow of the sprawling suburbs beyond. “Do you know who Francis Crick is?”
“No.”
“He’s a molecular biologist. In 1962, he shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine with Maurice Wilkins and James Watson for discovering the three-dimensional molecular structure of DNA—the double helix. Every advancement in genetics since then—and the countless revolutionary cures for diseases we’re going to see over the next twenty years—spring directly from the work of Francis Crick and his colleagues. Crick is a scientist’s scientist, Joe, to no degree a spiritualist or mystic. But do you know what he suggested a few years ago? That life on earth may well have been designed by an extraterrestrial intelligence.”
“Even highbrows read the National Enquirer, huh?”