Origin

Edmond yelled over the clamor. “The sound of someone banging randomly on a piano is unbearable! And yet, if we take those same notes and arrange them in a better order …”

The haphazard din immediately halted, supplanted by the soothing melody of Debussy’s “Clair de lune.”

Langdon felt his muscles relax, and the tension in the room seemed to evaporate.

“Our brains rejoice,” Edmond said. “Same notes. Same instrument. But Debussy creates order. And it is this same rejoicing in the creation of order that prompts humans to assemble jigsaw puzzles or straighten paintings on a wall. Our predisposition to organization is written into our DNA, and so it should come as no surprise to us that the greatest invention the human mind has created is the computer—a machine designed specifically to help us create order out of chaos. In fact, the word in Spanish for computer is ordenador—quite literally, ‘that which creates order.’”

The image of a massive supercomputer appeared, with a young man sitting at its lone terminal.

“Just imagine you have a powerful computer with access to all of the information in the world. You are permitted to ask this computer any questions you like. Probability suggests you would eventually ask one of two fundamental questions that have captivated humans since we first became self-aware.”

The man typed into the terminal, and text appeared.

Where do we come from?

Where are we going?

“In other words,” Edmond said, “you would ask about our origin and our destiny. And when you ask those questions, this would be the computer’s response.”

The terminal flashed:

INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR ACCURATE RESPONSE.

“Not very helpful,” Kirsch said, “but at least it’s honest.”

Now an image of a human brain appeared.

“However, if you ask this little biological computer—Where do we come from?—something else happens.”

From out of the brain flowed a stream of religious images—God reaching out to infuse Adam with life, Prometheus crafting a primordial human out of mud, Brahma creating humans from different parts of his own body, an African god parting the clouds and lowering two humans to earth, a Norse god fashioning a man and a woman out of driftwood.

“And now you ask,” Edmond said, “Where are we going?”

More images flowed from the brain—pristine heavens, fiery hells, hieroglyphs of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, stone carvings of astral projections, Greek renderings of the Elysian Fields, Kabbalistic descriptions of Gilgul neshamot, diagrams of reincarnation from Buddhism and Hinduism, the Theosophical circles of the Summerland.

“For the human brain,” Edmond explained, “any answer is better than no answer. We feel enormous discomfort when faced with ‘insufficient data,’ and so our brains invent the data—offering us, at the very least, the illusion of order—creating myriad philosophies, mythologies, and religions to reassure us that there is indeed an order and structure to the unseen world.”

As the religious images continued to flow, Edmond spoke with increasing intensity.

“Where do we come from? Where are we going? These fundamental questions of human existence have always obsessed me, and for years I’ve dreamed of finding the answers.” Edmond paused, his tone turning somber. “Tragically, on account of religious dogma, millions of people believe they already know the answers to these big questions. And because not every religion offers the same answers, entire cultures end up warring over whose answers are correct, and which version of God’s story is the One True Story.”

The screen overhead erupted with images of gunfire and exploding mortar shells—a violent montage of photos depicting religious wars, followed by images of sobbing refugees, displaced families, and civilian corpses.

“Since the beginning of religious history, our species has been caught in a never-ending cross fire—atheists, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, the faithful of all religions—and the only thing that unites us all is our deep longing for peace.”

The thundering images of war vanished and were replaced by the silent sky of glimmering stars.

“Just imagine what would happen if we miraculously learned the answers to life’s big questions … if we all suddenly glimpsed the same unmistakable proof and realized we had no choice but to open our arms and accept it … together, as a species.”

The image of a priest appeared on the screen, his eyes closed in prayer.

“Spiritual inquiry has always been the realm of religion, which encourages us to have blind faith in its teachings, even when they make little logical sense.”

A collage of images depicting fervent believers now appeared, all with eyes closed, singing, bowing, chanting, praying.