Science and Freedom

I remember actually looking forward to dying when I was in high school. When I die, I thought, I’ll finally have the answers to all of my questions.

Because I attended private, Catholic schools, K-12, and studied liberal arts in college, I was 32-years-old, a regular churchgoer, and tenor in the choir, when I picked up my first science book and began to read. It was Carl Sagan’s masterwork Cosmos. By the end of the first chapter I was hooked.

What I realized reading Cosmos was that most of my questions were being answered by really smart humans working in their laboratories. I found their answers both exciting and very comforting. It all made sense to me [except maybe some of the math], and it made me realize what an excellent thing a human being is. We have come so far: We have so much further to go.

As I read Cosmos, my Bachelor’s Degree in History—that hodgepodge of names, and dates, and places, and stories—finally became meaningful. Context joined my thinking, and I was on my way to defining my world view. Those first three days cosseted in my otherwise empty apartment, were three of the best days of my life. I was truly born again.

I laughed at myself often...”My God! I’ve lived on this planet for 32 years, and today I learned why the sky is blue!” I ridiculed myself for my stupidity. I nearly cursed my parents for sending me to parochial schools, where for thousands of dollars per year I was made metaphysically dishonest and epistemologically disabled. For the first time in my life I was learning about the nature of the planet that gave birth to the human race. This Earth, this Heaven...There is no better place in all existence for humans.

Over the next several months I read every book Sagan had written, and then I read Asimov, and Darwin, Green, Feynman, and Drexler. I stopped reading fiction entirely. Science was wonderful. Church was becoming less and less meaningful. I began to wonder if my priests had ever read any science? I thought if they had they wouldn’t be standing there spouting hearsay about ancient miracles. I was 34-years-old when I stopped going to church entirely.

While I was sure Jesus wasn’t a God, or God’s son, or God’s spirit, or any of that, I remained faithful to the moral teachings of Jesus. I didn’t know any other way to live. I didn’t know there was another moral code. I knew Christianity, like all faiths, is metaphysically and epistemologically irrational, and that I had purged those inconsistencies from my thinking learning science. There is no supernatural. The creation of the supernatural was a pre-science short-cut, invented “truths” dedicated to the pacification of man, dishonest. But, I didn’t know the Christian ethic, altruism, is also irrational. I didn’t know that Christian moral teachings are actually anti-man, that Jesus’ example was self-destruction, that the guilt I had always carried around with me [for not being able to be like Jesus] was actually harming me. Did one have to fall on swords in order to live a moral life on Earth?

I was 39-years-old, flipping through the channels one evening, when I stumbled on the answer to my moral dilemma. C-Span was airing an interview with Ayn Rand recorded at the University of Michigan in 1950. I had read The Fountainhead twenty years ago, but I was so stupid then, I thought it was a book about an architect. Rand’s reasons for writing the book had completely escaped me. Now I listened. As she spoke I heard myself saying, repeatedly, “yes...exactly...that’s precisely what I think!” Rand defined the pursuit of happiness: “...man’s right to set his own goals, to choose his values, and to achieve them...happiness is that state of consciousness which comes from the achievement of your values...happiness is a profound, guiltless, rational feeling of self-esteem and of pride in ones own achievements...it is the enjoyment of life...” She explained to me what I had always known but had been made to feel guilty about: The purpose of life is to live it! Life isn’t about suffering, or the avoidance of suffering, or even the relief of suffering. Rather, life is about the pursuit of your own self-esteem, your own happiness.

Next day I began reading Atlas Shrugged and discovered the truth. I discovered the truly heroic nature of man. I found a truly moral moral code. Science and reason had freed my captive soul.

Six years later, I am guiltless. I am fearless. I’m sure.