Blasphemy (52 page)

More, tell us more.

Trace the lineaments of my face with your scientific instruments. Search for me in the cosmos and in the electron. For I am the God of deep time and space, the God of superclusters and voids, the God of the Big Bang and the inflation, the God of dark matter and dark energy. Science and faith cannot coexist. One will destroy the other. You must make sure science is the surviving party, or your little blue speck will be lost . .
..

What should we do?

With my words you will prevail. Tell the world what happened here. Tell the world that God has spoken to the human race—for the first time. Yes, for the first time!

But how can we explain you if you can’t tell us what you are?

Do not repeat the mistake of the historical religions and involve yourselves in disputation about who I am or what I think. I surpass all understanding. I am the God of a universe so vast, only the God numbers can describe it, of which I have given you the first . . . . You are the prophets leading your world into the future. What future will you choose? You hold the key . .
..

I say to you, this is your destiny: to find truth. This is why you exist. This is your purpose. Science is merely how you do it. This is what you must worship: the search for truth itself. If you do this with all your heart, then some great day in the distant future you will stand before Me. This is my covenant with the human race
.

You will know the truth. And the truth shall make you free
.

I WOULD LIKE TO THANK MANY people for their generous help. First and foremost are Selene Preston, Eric Simonoff, Susan Hazen-Hammond, Bobby Rotenberg, Hywel White, and Roland Ottewell. I am indebted to John Javna for loaning me his library on the Christian Right. I extend my gratitude to Claudia Rülke for creating our new Web site, and I am grateful to Tobias Daniel Wabbel for first encouraging me to develop some of my thoughts in an essay for
Im Anfang war (k)ein Gott: Naturwissenschaftliche und theologische Perspektiven
. I would like to express my deep appreciation to my writing partner, Lincoln Child, who read the manuscript and offered his usual superlative advice. And I would like to thank my editor, Bob Gleason, for his invaluable and creative guidance, and Eric Raab, for his help.

I am much indebted to my Navajo friends who, over many years, taught me about Navajo religion and life on the Rez, especially Norman Tulley, Edsel Brown, Frank Fatt, Ed Black, Victor Begay, Neswood Begay, Nada Currier, and Cheppie Natan. The opening lines of the Navajo creation chant quoted in the novel were modified from a version collected by Father Berard Haile from a medicine man on the Navajo Reservation in the early part of the twentieth century.

As always, I extend my great appreciation to Christine, Aletheia, and Isaac, for their love, support, and patience in putting up with a cranky author.

Some of the philosophical, evolutionary, and mathematical ideas presented in this novel were suggested by or developed from the writings of Gregory Chaitin, Rudy Rucker, Brian Greene, Stephen Wolfram, Edward Fredkin, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Frank J. Tipler. The God number is expressed using Knuth’s up-arrow mathematical notation.

The author welcomes visitors to his and Lincoln Child’s Web site, www.prestonchild.com.