dan it's lovely to see you looking so
fit and obviously pull through so
marvelously from your your operation but
there's come up there's gonna come a
time when we don't what about that do we
get consolation from science from Darwin
from what well I guess we do a dear
professor of mine just died just a few
days ago
and I've been thinking quite a bit about
it and the idea that he lives for
eternity in heaven doesn't give me any
consolation at all the idea that his
memory lives on with his children his
friends and his colleagues and of course
he has his work that he had his work
which which will live on not everybody
gets that kind of legacy and I think
that for those that we love that the die
young without that sort of issue the
best consolation is just that they had a
chance they they got to be on this
stupendous planet and live for a while
and they may have suffered and I think
seeing our suffering in the guise of the
the whole cosmos can make it seem not
quite so earth-shatteringly special yeah
we suffer further your writings
it is a consolation to have a few folks
behind blown all musical compositions or
whatever or I suppose a great family
life and there are plenty of things of
that sort I I'm rather moved by the
astounding improbability of my own
existence they when you think about the
odds against that are coming into it
into existence it is a huge privilege to
be here and I sort of feel that you want
to say that when people say they're born
you you know business to be bored you
you you you exist
there are gazillions of people who could
have a
existed in your place and many of them
would have been a lot better than you
so stop whinging and the same thing when
when people Ramon their lives or indeed
bemoaning the fact that life is going to
come to an end you're lucky to have had
anything at all is what I feel like like
saved them stop moaning exactly and
we're not filled with fear and trembling
at the thought that there were all those
years before we were alive so what
should mothers be all those years old
we're not a lot I I was dead for
billions and billions of years before I
was born and never suffered the
slightest inconvenience right sure given
that there's nobody to thank being able
to reflect upon the process that gave
rise to you is the nearest we can come
to thanking and it's actually rather
better than thanking because it's a
thoughtful thing to do
it's an understanding a comprehending
thing to do so you're not just kind of
thanking your sky daddy
you're you're marveling in the fact that
you are here and the process that gave
rise to you is the same process that
gave rise to all these trees under and
the end and the earth it's no accident
that we are surrounded by by an entire
ecosystem we couldn't exist without it
thanking something it can be sublimated
into understanding how it all happened
and I think you get the same sort of
comfort from that not not just comfort I
think oh I think hallelujah it's just
spectacular it's so wonderful and that
that sense of exaltation is if anything
I think stronger in me because of my
atheism then it would be if I if I were
a believer I see the universe itself as
a thing which is not quite what Anselm
said God was our being greater than
which nothing
be conceived but certainly I can't think
of anything greater than the universe
it's it's it's fantastic yes hallelujah
for the universe and for the fact that
we can understand it of course it's hard
dealing with grief and dealing with loss
there is some consolation to be had in
the reflection of how privileged we are
to be here at all statistically were so
unlikely to exist it's astonishingly
unlikely that you and I exist and yet
yet we do that's a privilege but also
we're privileged to belong to the human
species because the human species is
unique in all sorts of ways it's unique
in knowing that our life is going to end
but we're also unique in knowing why it
was worth coming into existence in the
first place here we are we find
ourselves on this planet it's like
coming awake after a an anaesthetic you
open your eyes and you say where am I in
you and you you gradually learn where
you are and you understand it because
we're human and because we're scientists
we we not only see where we are we
understand why we're here and we owe it
to our human history the history of
ideas the history of philosophers the
history of scientists perhaps in my case
above all Darwin we now understand what
it is that has brought us here and that
is a wonderful thought
that is goes a long way to removing the
grief and the fear that as humans we
inevitably also experience we can get
outside the universe I mean in the sense
of putting a model of the universe
inside our skulls not a superstitious
small-minded parochial model filled with
spirits and hobgoblins astrology and
magic glittering with fake crocks of
gold whether rainbow ends a big model
worthy of the reality that regulates
updates and tempers it a model of stars
and great distances where Einstein's
noble space-time curve up stages the
curve of Yahweh's covenantal bow and
cuts it down to size a powerful model
incorporating the past
staring us through the present capable
of running far ahead
to offer detailed constructions of
alternative futures and allow us to
choose Peter and Jean Medawar in one of
their books said only human beings guide
their behavior by a knowledge of what
happened before they were born and a
preconception of what may happen after
they are dead thus only humans find
their way by a light that illuminates
more than the patch of ground they stand
on the spot light passes but
exhilaratingly before doing so it gives
us time to comprehend something of this
place in which we fleetingly find
ourselves and the reason that we do so
we are alone among animals in foreseeing
our end we are also alone among animals
in being able to say before we die yes
this is why it was worth coming to life
in the first place now more than ever
seems it rich to die to cease upon the
midnight with no pain while thou art
pouring forth thy soul abroad in such an
ecstasy John Keats Keats and a Newton
listening to each other might hear the
galaxy sing
hallelujah