The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.—Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Before I get down to the usual business, I want to respond to this idea because I’ve heard it several times in various places. I feel and express gratitude all the time. Since losing my belief in God, I haven’t been at a loss for people to thank.

I’m thankful to my parents for giving me life (and to their parents who gave them life, and so on).

I’m grateful for my wife who threw her lot in with me and risked her life to bear and raise children with me.

I’m grateful for all the innovators in science, technology, and the arts who have made my modern life of relative health, comfort, and ease possible.

I’m grateful for the groundskeepers who provide the uplifting environs where I work.

Even when I can’t find a person to thank for something (e.g. the warming light of the sun or the naked fact of our existence), I don’t miss being able to thank someone. I feel grateful—and incredibly fortunate—just the same.

This sense of gratitude without someone to thank may represent an improvement: I no longer suffer the temptation to imagine that I deserve the good things I enjoy by being faithful to God. And if I don’t deserve what I have, then all the more reason to share it with those who deserve it just as much as I.

With all due respect to Mr. Rossetti, he should have avoided offering witticisms about something that he apparently lacks experience of.

Oh, and by my count, that’s five things plus one.

Am I a bad parent?

Instead of giving bland, meaningless praise, I prefer to say things like “That really looks like an elephant!” or “You’ve learned the alphabet!” so that we can celebrate their successes together. They learn to take satisfaction in what they do for its own sake rather than as a means to earn my praise. Being labeled smart as a child wasn’t an unqualified good in my life. It would have done me more good to learn to enjoy the fruits of achievement.

The New York Times has an interesting article about the current debate about whether rewarding children helps modify behavior in the long run. Rewards often work in the short term, but children seem to revert (or digress) once rewards are no longer forthcoming.

You can tell what I believe about rewards. We’ll see what the science has to say.

In its beginning, everything was a single point. This cosmic womb nurtured everything before it came to be. Every star; every planet; every flower; every lion, tiger, or bear; every Mozart, Einstein, or Madonna; every banana split, parfait, or brownie à la mode; every Illiad, I-Ching, or Bible; every hatred, joy, or love; every thing lay dormant within this primordial point. This is the story of how that point became our world, became us. This is our story.

According to current theory, all of what currently makes up the universe was packed into a space no larger than an atom. It doesn’t make sense to ask what was outside that point because even space was curled up inside this cosmic egg. It’s kind of like asking what’s north of the North Pole. Nor does it make sense to ask what happened before the point began to expand billions of years ago because time began its flow with the expansion. Our universe began in the in what is known as the Big Bang.

There was neither non-existence nor existence then. There was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond. What stirred? Where? In whose protection? Was there water, bottlemlessly deep?

There was neither death nor immortality then. There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day. That One breathed, windless, by its own impulse. Other than that there was nothing beyond.

Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning, with no distinguishing sign, all this was water. The life force that was covered with emptiness, that One arose through the power of heat.

Desire came upon that One in the beginning, that was the first seed of mind. Poets seeking in their heart with wisdom found the bond of existence and non-existence.

Their cord was extended across. Was there below? Was there above? There were seed-placers, there were powers. There was impulse beneath, there was giving forth above.

Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it? Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation? The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe. Who then knows whence it has arisen?

Whence this creation has arisen—perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not – the One who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only He knows or perhaps He does not know. (Nāsadīya Sukta, Rigveda)

Planck Epoch: We really don’t know what was happening in the first instant of the Big Bang 13,700 million years ago (Mya). The laws of physics as we know them break down during the Planck Epoch, the first 10^-43 seconds after the Big Bang.¹ This notation means one tenth multiplied by itself 43 times, or put another way, 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 1, an extremely, extremely small number. According to one theory, the universe was about 10^-35 meters across.² Because all of the matter and energy of the universe were packed into such a small space, it was also ludicrously hot: 10³² degrees Celsius. This notation means 10 multiplied by itself 32 times, or 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000.³

It is impossible to fully comprehend how extremely small the universe was. To try, imagine a young child about one meter tall who holds in their cupped hand a sphere that is 10^-35 meters across. Actually, the sphere is so small that the child’s hand would appear empty. Now, stretch the child and the sphere until the child is as tall as the diameter of the universe that we can currently see. Light travels very fast—186,000 miles per second—but it would take 93 billion years for light to travel from the child’s head to its foot. The sphere has stretched too, but if we were cradled in the child’s gigantic hand, the expanded sphere would still be too small for us to see. It would still only be a few atoms wide. This is unimaginably small.

Just as the universe was incomprehensibly small, the temperature was incomprehensibly large. For comparison, the core of our sun is only 10⁷ degrees Celsius (i.e. 10,000,000 degrees). Multiply the heat of the sun by ten million. Hellish, we might be tempted to call it. Now multiply that hellish temperature by another million. And do it again. And again. And again. That is wicked hot!

All of the fundamental forces which govern our universe—gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces—were equally strong and acted as one during the Planck Epoch. Today, gravity attracts all matter together and is the force that keeps the Earth circling the Sun and our feet firmly planted on the ground. The electromagnetic force governs light and magnetism. It makes radio, television, and cell phones possible and it holds our atoms together. The nuclear forces govern interactions within the nucleus of atoms. In the beginning, they were a single force.

Grand Unification Epoch: At the end of the Planck Epoch, an unimaginably small moment in time, this symmetry broke and gravity became weaker, separating itself from the other forces. (Please refer to the time line.)

As the universe expanded, it cooled down. But at this early stage immediately after the symmetry of universal forces was broken, the universe was still incredibly hot: 10²⁷ degrees Celsius.

The Grand Unification Epoch is so named because the nuclear forces and the electromagnetic force were still unified in a single force called the electronuclear force. This epoch ended 10^-36 seconds after the Big Bang when the strong force broke away from the others.

Electroweak Epoch: When the strong force separated from the others, the universe had cooled to about 10¹⁵ degrees Celsius and began a period of incredible expansion known as cosmic inflation. Its diameter increased in size by a factor of about 10²⁶ in a small fraction of a second: by the end of this epoch something that had been the size of a millimeter grew to dwarf the Milky Way galaxy. Elementary particles were stretched to cosmic sizes, all within 10^-32 seconds. Big Bang indeed.

Quark Epoch: This period began 10^-12 seconds after the Big Bang when the electromagnetic and weak forces separated themselves and the four fundamental forces took their present form. The universe had cooled enough that subatomic quarks and gluons—the basic building blocks of matter—could condense out of its roiling energy. The universe was still too hot, however, for quarks to bind to each other to form neutrons and protons.

Hadron Epoch: One microsecond after the Big Bang, the universe had cooled enough to allow quarks to form hadrons such as protons and neutrons, the building blocks of the nuclei of all atoms. A nearly equal number of particles and anti-particles were forged from quarks in the primordial furnace. Particles and anti-particles have an explosive relationship. When they collide, both are annihilated in an explosion that releases tremendous energy. At this point, any hadrons that were destroyed in this way were replaced by others that were created in the heat of the early universe.

The universe continued to cool, reaching the point where hadrons were no longer being created. Most of the particles and anti-particles soon destroyed each other. When the figurative smoke cleared, all of the anti-hadrons were destroyed, but a small number of hadrons were left over. You and I and everything we see are partly made of those leftover hadrons. We exist because of an imbalance in particle/anti-particle destruction.

Lepton Epoch: One second after the Big Bang when most of the hadrons and anti-hadrons had destroyed each other, leptons (such as the familiar electrons) dominated the mass of the universe. The universe was still creating pairs of leptons and anti-leptons until three seconds after the Big Bang. In a now familiar story, most of the leptons and anti-leptons destroyed each other, but a small residue of leptons survived (to later create atoms later in the story).

Photon Epoch: After most of the pairs of leptons and anti-leptons had destroyed each other, photons—particles of light—made up most of the energy in the universe. Photons were still being scattered by electrons. The universe was therefore opaque: light couldn’t shine through the thick soup of scattering particles. Protons and neutrons began to form small atomic nuclei (e.g. helium, lithium, and beryllium).

Matter Domination—1 January, 12:03 AM

70,000 years after the Big Bang (3 minutes at the scale of the Cosmic Calendar), the amount of what we would call matter had grown to become equal to the amount of radiation (e.g. light) in the universe.

Recombination and Dark Ages—1 January 12:16 AM

Up to about 379,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe was filled with a plasma. In other words, the electrons were racing around unattached to atomic nuclei (contrary to our normal experience). It was just too hot for electrons to settle down. Lightning and the sun are two common examples of plasmas. Light is scattered by plasma, so light couldn’t travel very far in a straight line in the early universe. You could say that visibility was practically zero. If you were alive then (and could manage to stay alive), you wouldn’t be able to see the end of your nose.

After 379,000 years, the universe had cooled enough to allow atomic nuclei to capture electrons and form true atoms such as hydrogen and helium. The fancy name for this is recombination. This freed the light that had been held captive by the universal plasma. The universe became transparent; visibility was no longer zero. The consequent burst of light as the universe became transparent is known as the cosmic microwave background.

After the release of photons, the universe was plunged into darkness. No new light was being generated. This was the beginning of the Dark Ages.

Observance Ideas

• Watch a fireworks show at the stroke of midnight and think about cosmology.
• Make your own big bang (wink wink) at midnight… while thinking about cosmology.

Further Study

A Brief History of Time by Stephen W. Hawking

The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen W. Hawking

Born With a Bang by Jennifer Morgan

Character of Physical Law by Richard Feynman

QED by RichardFeynman

1. This unit period of time is known as a Planck time after Max Planck, the founder of quantum theory.
2. A unit of length known as the Planck length.
3. A unit of temperature known as the Planck temperature. Note that I use the Celsius scale because it is more familiar than the Kelvin scale to most readers. Even though the Kelvin scale is technically more correct, at these temperatures the difference is negligible anyway.

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.—Steven Weinberg

In recent centuries, we have teased out fragments of our origin story, a tale strange and vast. It is inextricably bound to the story of the origin of the universe, for the universe gave birth to us. If its story had been different, we would be different—if we existed at all. The story occurs on a timescale that is almost beyond human comprehension. We have become accustomed to think of history as a few thousand years after we learned to write, or perhaps a few million years beyond that. Perhaps the dinosaurs seem like deep history. This utterly pales in comparison to the real story. Human history is only the smallest part of the story. Even dinosaurs or callow newcomers on the universal stage. Words fail (as they often do) to convey understanding. I want to experience this story for myself, to get a small taste of the true proportions of history.

One way we have experienced our stories in the past is through rituals and festivals marked out on a calendar. Early calendars made sense of the yearly rhyme of season and flood. Within the yearly cycle, we placed holy days commemorating important events, important gods, rites of initiation, and the world’s mythic creation. The yearly repetition increased our connection to our world and imparted a sense of continuity to our lives.

Someone’s genius guided them to combine the great story of science with the calendar. The premise of the remix is simple: take the history of the universe from its beginning to the present day and condense it to the span of a single year. Mark milestones in the history of the universe on the calendar as they happen at that reduced scale.

I first saw Carl Sagan present the Cosmic Calendar as part of his wonderful Cosmos series.¹ I loved flying with him as a child in his ship of the imagination. He introduced me to the beautiful and fascinating world around me as seen through the curious, playful, shrewd eyes of scientific inquiry. His Cosmic Calendar is an excellent example of how thought provoking he was as a educator. He is missed.

He presents the Cosmic Calendar masterfully and humanely, and it still inspires me. Scientific understanding has progressed since he recorded that program. For example, scientific consensus tells us that the universe is most likely to be about 13.7 billion years old rather than 15 billion, and the Milky Way is thought to have formed much earlier than Sagan stated.

I have decided to update and extend the original Cosmic Calendar and to to follow the Cosmic Calendar for a year. Rather than just reading about our history, I wanted to experience it in a modern ritual. It’s one thing to read about something or see it illustrated in a diagram; it’s another thing entirely to experience the long year and watch as milestones pass by. When something happens on the Cosmic Calendar, I’ll post about it and give some background, maybe suggesting some places to investigate further or ways to observe the holiday.

At the time scale of a revised Cosmic Calendar:

1 year = 13.7 billion years
1 month ≈ 1.1 billion years
1 day = 37.5 million years
1 hour = 1.5 million years
1 minute = 26,000 years
1 second = 434 years
0.16 seconds ≈ 1 modern human lifetime

I can’t get over the fact that my life is literally less than a blink of the eye on the Cosmic Calendar. How ephemeral am I! While I am saddened by the relatively short duration of my life, I am awestruck by the vastness of time.

If you would like to follow along, it may help to subscribe to my version of the Cosmic Calendar (XML or iCal).²

Caveat lector

I am not an expert on any of the materials included in the calendar, only an interested layman. It is highly likely that I will make mistakes in compiling the calendar. I will cite my sources—too many from Wikipedia I suspect—and endeavor to improve the calendar as time goes on.

Also note that science operates on consensus. The corollary to that is there will always be disagreement at the limits of science. I have tried to harmonize any conflicting information that I have found, but in the hands of a hobbyist, the nuances of the scientific debate is sure to get mangled.

I could have renamed this the Human Advent Calendar because this is the story of our coming into the world. It begins to answer the questions “Who am I?” and “Where did I come from?” from a human perspective. It may be self-centered, but as I said, I like stories about me. However, this shouldn’t be taken as an endorsement of the idea that homo sapiens is the culmination of creation. It seems perfectly clear that we are just another wayfarer in the epic tale of this universe. The rest of the universe has just as much claim as we to the title of center of the universe.

As a last warning, science moves on. This calendar, even where it fairly represents current scientific understanding, should not be taken as dogma. If new data come in that conflict with the calendar, out with the old, in with the new; no regrets.

Further Study

Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History by David Christian

The Structure of Big History: From the Big Bang until Today by Fred Spier

Big History: From the Big Bang to the Present by Cynthia Stokes Brown

Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity (lectures) by David Christian

1. It was also published in his book The Dragons of Eden.
2. Anyone who wants to verify my dates can check the source code for the script I wrote just for this purpose. I sometimes used a calculator and a day-of-year table as a sanity check.

It turns out I’m not the only one who worries about stuff like this.

The element gallium is in very short supply and the world may well run out of it in just a few years. Indium is threatened too, says Armin Reller, a materials chemist at Germany’s University of Augsburg. He estimates that our planet’s stock of indium will last no more than another decade. All the hafnium will be gone by 2017 also, and another twenty years will see the extinction of zinc. Even copper is an endangered item, since worldwide demand for it is likely to exceed available supplies by the end of the present century.

Perhaps our landfills will someday be literal gold mines.

(via kottke.org)

His talk was about what it means when a Mormon says they “know” that various claims are true. I’ve covered that ground before, but I can’t resist responding in detail to Oaks’ talk.

A testimony of the Gospel is a personal witness, borne to our souls by the Holy Ghost that certain facts of eternal significance are true and that we know them to be true. Such facts include the nature of the Godhead and our relationship to its three members, the effectiveness of the Atonement, and the reality of the resurrection.

Knowledge is defined in many ways. I believe that Oaks is using it similarly to the classic philosophical definition of knowledge: believing a true proposition and having a good justification for believing it.

Various questions arise as we hear others bear testimony or as we consider bearing testimony ourselves. In a testimony meeting, a member says, “I know that the Father and the Son appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith.” A visitor wonders, “What does he mean he when he says he ‘knows’ that?” … What do we mean when we testify and say we know the Gospel is true?

Contrast that kind of knowledge with “I know it is cold outside” or “I know I love my wife.” These are three different kinds of knowledge, each learned in a different way. Knowledge of outside temperature can be verified by scientific proof. Knowledge that we love our spouse is personal and subjective. While not capable of scientific proof, it is still important. The idea that all important knowledge is based on scientific evidence is simply untrue.

I agree that not all forms of knowledge come from the scientific method. Some forms of knowledge are personal and not yet completely subject to scrutiny by the instruments of science, like knowing that you love you wife. If the statement is rephrased as “I know that I feel loving emotions in connection with my spouse”, it states more precisely what we usually mean when we say that we love our spouse.

The assertion that “I know the Gospel is true” can also be stated more clearly by saying “I feel certain that the Gospel is true.” This feeling of certainty is the part of the statement that can’t be subjected to scientific scrutiny. The truth claims of the Gospel can, however, be examined and evaluated through the scientific method or other knowledge-gathering techniques. Someone can’t refute that a person feels certain that the Gospel is true. That feeling of certainty doesn’t imply that the Gospel is true.

While there are some evidences of gospel truths, scientific methods will not yield spiritual knowledge.…

It is true that science does not deal with metaphysical ideas. Oaks seems to make two assumptions. The first is that the search for knowledge is confined to two players: science and religion. There are other ways to evaluate metaphysics which involve neither the scientific method nor religious faith. Logic and human reason are not bound by the constraints of scientific empiricism nor of religious faith. Reason has something to say about metaphysics. We can use our reasoning faculties to judge Mormonism’s claims.

The second assumption is that all Gospel claims are spiritual claims. There are many physical claims made by Mormonism that can be evaluated scientifically. For example, the historicity of the Book of Mormon can be evaluated through archaeological research, DNA evidence, and other means because it makes claims about the physical world.

When we know spiritual truths through spiritual means, we can be just as sure of that knowledge as a scholar or scientist is of the different kinds of knowledge they have acquired by different methods.…

If knowledge of spiritual truths is “just as sure” as scientific or scholarly truth, then Oaks is admitting that Mormon testimonies are not justifiably certain. Any good scientist will tell you the probability that their results are false. Every good scientist admits the possibility that their theories may be disproved or refined by future evidence. Putting a testimony on par with scientific truth is to admit the possibility that testimonies are false.

It’s not fair, however, to put various spiritual claims on par with scientific claims. Various kinds of knowledge are more or less justified. The knowledge that gravity attracts two objects with mass is vastly more justified than the belief that Jesus of Nazareth was resurrected. The first can be readily observed by everyone; the latter requires a lot more faith in the truth of things that can’t be observed.

How can we come to know and testify that what [Joseph Smith] said was true?… The first step in gaining any kind of knowledge is to really desire to know.…

This desire to know can be benign if it is objective. Someone who wants to find out whether or not Mormonism is true and will accept any good answer they find is on safer ground than the person who wants to learn that Mormonism is true and will be disappointed or fearful if it’s not.

Another way to seek a testimony seems astonishing when compared with the methods of obtaining other knowledge. We gain or strengthen a testimony by bearing it. Someone even suggested that some testimonies are better gained on the feet bearing them than on the knees praying for them.

This statement is more disquieting than astonishing to those who know about the “saying is believing” cognitive bias. When a person makes a statement that they believe to be false, they later have to subconsciously justify why they made a false statement. If they believe themselves to be an honest person, their unconscious mind has to reconcile that belief with the fact that they made a false statement. If there was very little reason to say it (e.g. they weren’t paid to say it) then their mind might subconsciously think that perhaps the statement wasn’t false after all.

For example, if a person isn’t sure that Mormonism is true but they make public statements that it is because they felt social pressure to do so, they might begin to believe their statements were the truth. They might subconsciously think “I’m not a dishonest person, but I made a statement that I’m not sure is true. I’m not the kind of person who is influenced by social pressure, so that must not be why I said it. I must have said it because somewhere deep down I know that what I said is true.” Instead of doubting their honesty or integrity in the face of pressure—a possibility that is painful to contemplate—the mind convinces itself that the statement was truth.

This is why repeatedly sharing a Mormon testimony is a good way to come to feel that Mormonism is true. In my experience as a Mormon missionary, this was called the “fake it till you make it” principle. If you’re not sure that Joseph Smith was a prophet, just pretend like you know it to be true, tell other people that you know he was a prophet, and before you realize it you’ll believe what you’re saying.

There has never been a greater need for us to profess our faith privately and publicly. Though some profess atheism, there are many who are open to additional truths about God.

This is interesting to me because it is the first mention of the concept of needing to witness to atheists that I can remember. Non-believers of all stripes are increasing in numbers. It will be interesting to see how the LDS church attempts to address it. I personally don’t know what Mormons can say to principled atheists. I think they would be more successful sticking to their strengths.

Our children should also hear us bear our testimonies frequently. We should also strengthen our children by encouraging them to define themselves by their growing testimonies,…

Does anyone else find this chilling? It’s a great recipe for groupthink and indoctrination. Take any given belief, for example the belief that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole, and form a child’s identity around that belief by telling them that’s what makes them special. They now proudly proclaim to the world that they are a believer in Santa Claus. What happens when someone tells them that Santa Claus is just a children’s story?

The question of Santa Claus’s existence is no longer just a question of facts. The child’s identity is now bound up in the question. Saying that Santa Claus doesn’t exist is an attack on their identity. If Santa doesn’t live at the North Pole, then that makes the child feel less special. Rather than accepting that they aren’t exceptional, the child will tend to protect their identity and ignore contrary evidence.

We live in a time when some misrepresent the beliefs of those they call Mormons and even revile us because of them. When we encounter such misrepresentations, we have a duty to speak out, to clarify our doctrine and what we believe. We should be the ones to state our beliefs rather than allowing others the final word in misrepresenting them.

Oaks doesn’t admit the possibility that someone could be critical of the undistorted doctrines of the LDS church. I try my best to avoid distorting Mormonism when I criticize it. I hope that I’m successful given that I probably know as much or more about Mormonism as the average Mormon. Yet I still find plenty to criticize.

Anyone can disagree with our personal testimony, but no one can refute it.

Something that can’t be refuted isn’t necessarily true. Russell’s Teapot is the classic example of this. I dare anyone to refute that there is a teapot and saucer orbiting the sun between the orbits of the Earth and Mars.

Members who have a testimony and who act upon it under the direction of their church leaders are sometimes accused of blind obedience. Of course we have leaders, and of course we are subject to their decisions and directions in the operation of the church and in the performance of needed priesthood ordinances. But when it comes to learning and knowing the truth of the Gospel, our personal testimonies, we each have a direct relationship with God our Eternal Father and his Son Jesus Christ through the powerful witness of the Holy Ghost. This is what our critics fail to understand. It puzzles them that we can be united in following our leaders, and yet independent in knowing for ourselves.

Oaks uses a subtle ad hominem attack to say that critics simply don’t understand how the Gospel works, as if they just couldn’t get it through their thick skulls.

Perhaps the puzzles some feel can be explained by the reality that each of us has two different channels to God. We have a channel of governance through the prophet and other leaders. This channel—which has to do with doctrine, ordinances, and commandments—results in obedience. We also have a channel of personal testimony which is direct to God. This has to do with his existence, our relationship to him, and the truth of his restored Gospel. This channel results in knowledge. These two channels are mutually reinforcing. Knowledge encourages obedience, and obedience enhances knowledge.

From personal experience I know that it is common in the LDS church to follow the directions of church leaders even though the person disagrees with the counsel. The reasoning is usually along the lines of “I know that the Book of Mormon is a true book, therefore I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet, therefore I know that the church that he set up is God’s church, therefore my church leaders were put in their positions by God, therefore their counsel is God’s counsel, therefore I will obey.” If following whatever a leader tells you because they’re your leader even when you disagree with them doesn’t count as blind obedience, then I don’t know what does.

Also, the “[belief] encourages obedience and obedience enhances [belief]” formula could be stated for any religious hierarchy, including dangerous cults. This isn’t something to brag about.

We all act upon or give obedience to knowledge. Whether in science or religion, our obedience is not blind when we act upon knowledge suited to the subject of our action. A scientist receives and acts upon a trusted certification of the content or conditions of a particular experiment. In matters of religion, a believer’s source of knowledge is spiritual, but the principle is the same.

They are only the same if we don’t look too closely. Scientific knowledge has proven much more reliable over the years than religion at consensus forming. Science isn’t perfect. It has had many missteps over the years. However, a person investigating the laws of thermodynamics will reliably find them confirmed. There are very few people who doubt these laws (i.e. those trying to build perpetual motion machines). A person investigating religion can end up with any number of answers with no strong justification why one religion is better than another. This diversity of religious belief is a direct result of the ambiguous nature of religious evidence.

In all of our testifying, we should avoid arrogance and pride.…

One way that I wish Mormons would be more humble in their testifying is to realize that they, being fallible human beings, may hold false beliefs even though they feel certain about them. Saying that they know something is true and they can’t be wrong is tantamount to claiming that they are infallible. Not only is that arrogant, it’s downright blasphemous to put themselves on the same level as their God.

If I suffer from a fatal illness, for the love of me, please get me some medical treatment! Feel free to pray if that makes you feel better. Dab sacred oil on my head while invoking the aid of ancient, Sumerian, storm gods if you think it will help. Dance your mind away around the spilled guts of a sacrificial chicken for all I care. Just please pause in your superstitious mutterings and circumambulations long enough to get me safely into a competent doctor’s care. Then carry on.

If I get better, then please first thank the doctors whose application of godless medical science saved my life. I certainly will. Then you can go back to your storm gods and chicken innards if you like. I’ll thank you for your love and compassion and for caring enough to seek medical treatment. Don’t expect me to feel grateful for your application of superstition which has no power to heal me, or to save the life of an innocent child who deserved to live.

If you look at these swarms, all of the individuals are marching in the same direction, and it looks like cooperative behavior. Perhaps they have come to a collective decision to move from one place to another. We investigated this collective decision, and what really makes this system work in the case of the Mormon cricket is cannibalism.

You think of these as vegetarian insects—they’re crop pests—but each individual tries to eat the other individuals when they run short of protein or salt, and they’re very deprived of these in the natural environment. As soon as they become short of these essential nutrients, they start trying to bite the other individuals, and they have evolved to have really big aggressive jaws and armor plating over themselves, but the one area you can’t defend is the rear end of the individual—it has to defecate, there has to be a hole there—and so they tend to specifically bite the rear end of individuals. It is the sight of others approaching and this biting behavior that causes individuals to move away from those coming towards them. This need to eat other individuals means you are attracted to individuals moving away from you, and so this simple algorithm essentially means the whole swarm starts moving as a collective.

Interesting stuff. At this point, I’m tempted to try to draw a parallel between Mormon cricket behavior and the behavior of Mormons themselves, but I’ll leave that up to you. The analogy would probably apply to me equally well anyway.