ABSTRACT
There is a natural human hunger to understand the universe and to find meaning. Billions of years ago, the primeval seas would have contained an assortment of naturally occurring chemicals, whose interactions and recombinations were catalyzed by lightning, heat, pressure, and other natural forces. This inevitably produced a wide variety of molecules, some more complex than others. Among them, "pre-biotic" molecules, such as amino acids, the basic building blocks of life, should have been fairly common. Their principal element, carbon, happens to be not only one of the most abundant in the universe, but also, in hooking up with other atoms, very promiscuous. The Bible's Ecclesiastes says essentially the same thing: there is no cosmic meaning to human existence and death ends it. Our perishability means that every day we are making a choice to embrace life, staying in the world and taking on its challenges. This choice, too, is human freedom.
