“Your gods have done better?”
“Good heavens, yes, Jared. Immeasurably better—infinitely better! Just look out there!” She waved her hand at the world in front of us. “What do you see?”
“I see the universe.”
“That’s it, Jared. That’s where the real gods of the universe write what they write. Your God writes in words. The gods I’m talking about write in galaxies and star systems and planets and oceans and forests and whales and birds and gnats.”
“And what do they write?”
“Well, they write physics and chemistry and biology and astronomy and aerodynamics and meteorology and geology—all that, of course, but that isn’t what you’re after, is it?”
“No.”
“What are you after?”
“I’m after … what the gods have to write about us.”
B grabbed my pen and held it up. “This is what you’re after. This is the Law of Life.”
She picked up the ammonite fossil and slipped the pen under the thread that held the film canister in place. “What’s this?” she asked, pointing to the fossil.
“The community of life on this planet.”
“And this?”—pointing to the canister.
“Animism.”
“And you see that the Law of Life is nestled in between the two, touching both the community of life and animism.”
“What is the Law of Life?” I asked her.
“We’ll get to that. That’s our main subject tonight.”
Science vs. religion
“Religions like yours, revealed religions, are all perceived to be at odds with scientific knowledge—at odds with or irrelevant to. I wonder if you see why.”
“I think it’s come to be seen that religion and science are just inherently incompatible.”
B nodded. “Following the usual Taker pattern: ‘We are humanity, so if our religions are inherently incompatible with scientific knowledge, then religion itself must be inherently incompatible with scientific knowledge.’”
“That’s right.”
“But as you’ll see, animism is perfectly at home with scientific knowledge. It’s much more at home with your sciences than with your religions.”
“Why is that?”
“What’s that out there?” she asked, making her usual sweeping gesture.
“That’s the world, the universe.”
“That’s where the real gods of the universe write what they write, Jared. The gods of your revealed religions write in books.”
“What does that have to do with animism?”
“Animism looks for truth in the universe, not in books, revelations, and authorities. Science is the same. Though animism and science read the universe in different ways, both have complete confidence in its truthfulness.”
She poked around among her building blocks, picked out the cartridge fuse, and held it up for my inspection. “This is science,” she said. “Religions like yours, Jared, are skeptical about it, are afraid to use it. They say, ‘Suppose we use it and it blows up in our face! Better not trust it.’ But animism isn’t worried about anything that can be revealed about the universe, so science belongs right here beside it.” She slid the fuse under the thread holding the film canister to the fossil. Then she asked me to describe what I saw.