The question of how life came to be is a legitimate one, indeed, we may say, the only true question worth investigating and answering. Beyond it we can go only one step further, when we ask: why does anything exist at all? We may say that eschatology, the study of the ultimate questions, is the supreme inquiry.
How does life arise? The origin of life was a chemical event or series of events by which the vital conditions indispensable for natural selection first came about. Once the vital life-force – a certain kind of genetic molecule – is in place, true Darwinian natural selection can follow, and complex life emerges as a possible consequence. But the spontaneous origin attributable to chance of the first molecule capable of heredity is thought by many to be exceedingly improbable… (Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion)
A chemical event or series of events seems a rather vague, inexact and, what is more, ex cathedra statement, one that our author would surely reject as an unscientific claim were it offered in a religious explanation. The expression vital conditions is suitably elusive, and can be applied to any state of affairs whatsoever, while natural selection appears as a kind of deus ex machina, like the god in Greek drama, conjured up suddenly by stage machinery, who resolves every complication without fail. As soon as the preconditions come about in some mysterious way – who knows how? – along comes that cure-all, natural selection – if only conditionally – and there at once is complex life, which, let us not forget, is only a possible consequence. The last sentence at least does the author credit, for he concedes that many consider this generous line of reasoning and hypothesis implausible. We should stop and consider how far a certain kind of genetic molecule, a possible consequence or a spontaneous origin attributable to chance looks like a precise, factual, provable scientific proposition…
Let us ask boldly: how much more justified, how much more acceptable does the reasoning above seem than, say, the six-day story of creation, understood symbolically, or the explanation that God glances upon matter and impregnates it with a multitude of souls, or simply dreams the world?
In the light of freedom of thought there is nothing wrong with this view at all, since everyone may trace their own existence back to whatever they please. Admittedly, in spiritual circles this is called fossil evolution, namely when matter is taken to be primary and one tries to derive life, thought, will and feeling from it. Idealist thought, by contrast, takes spirit to be primary, and it is held that this energy of the spirit is the bearer of life, and more, of existence, consciousness and bliss, an energy that can even condense into matter. So there is nothing wrong with fossil evolution as long as it does not claim to be the only possible explanation of the world. For in that case the quasi-scientific hypothesis – a theory, that is, a notion, and not a proven fact – is distorted into a fundamentalist ideology that demands exclusivity for itself. From here it is only one step to the use of crude logic or a scientific inquisition.
Compared with the chemical events, the view of the Cambridge astronomer Martin Rees seems far more exciting: ‘Why does anything exist at all – this is the supreme mystery. What breathes life into the equations, what turns them into the actual cosmos? These questions, however, lie beyond the bounds of science; they are the province of philosophers and theologians.’ We might say that science strives to find an answer to the question ‘how?’, and theology to the question ‘why?’.