From Dust and Breath: On Rocks, Life, and Why We Matter

My daughter is lying belly-down in the grass, her small hands parted just wide enough for a ladybug to crawl through. Her nose almost touches the blade of grass as the red-backed insect makes its slow ascent, pausing and then lifting its tiny legs again as if it’s walking with purpose. The sun is warm, the breeze slow. The patch of soil she’s watching is stubborn — rocky, dry, the kind of place you wouldn’t expect life to thrive. Yet here is this speck of life, balanced on the edge of a blade, catching my daughter’s breathless attention.

She loves ladybugs. Always has. She’ll spend an hour just watching one inch along the rim of a clay pot or climb her shirt sleeve like it’s Everest. To her, it’s not just an insect — it’s a friend. A story. A miracle.

And maybe she’s right.

I sit a few feet away, watching her wonder, and a thought rises that I’ve been carrying around quietly for years: How did we get from rock to ladybug? From dust to breath? From chemistry to consciousness? Can the material alone explain the mystery before me — not just the bug, but the girl who loves it?

Science tells us that life came from non-life — that somehow, through natural processes, matter became metabolism, molecules began to replicate, and the first living cell emerged from a lifeless world. This theory, called abiogenesis, seeks to close the gap between the inanimate and the alive. It tells us, in essence, that the granite beneath the grass and the ladybug climbing the grass blade are made of the same raw materials, only arranged differently.

And I understand the appeal. There’s beauty in the continuity, in the idea that life is a natural outgrowth of the universe’s deep logic. But if we take this too far — if we let the reductionist view become the whole story — then something essential gets lost. Because if life is just chemistry in motion, then my daughter is just a self-replicating system reacting to light and warmth and the chemical allure of a red shell on six legs.

And I know she’s more than that. So does she.

There’s a philosophical tension here — one that lives quietly in the background of modern thought. On one side, material science reduces us to physics, molecules, and probabilistic emergence. On the other, psychology — and indeed our own lived experience — insists that we are more: we long for meaning, purpose, love, and dignity. We do not merely function; we feel. We suffer when we believe we have no purpose. We ache for connection. We grieve, we hope, we tell stories. No rock does that.

So which is right? If abiogenesis explains the rise of life from lifeless matter, does that erase the meaning of being alive? And if we must cling to purpose, as psychology insists, are we ignoring the hard edge of material truth?

Here’s where I’ve landed, at least for now: the conflict is not necessary. It’s a false war, built on a misunderstanding of what each kind of science is for.

Material science is descriptive. It tells us how things happen — how energy moves, how molecules bond, how cells replicate. It’s about the machinery.

Psychological and spiritual science is interpretive. It tells us what things mean — how we make sense of being alive, what love does to a person, why stories shape identity. It’s about the experience.

We get in trouble when we ask chemistry to tell us why we love, or psychology to describe the Big Bang. They are not enemies; they are neighbors — each tending their own garden. And if we learn to listen to both, we get something fuller than either could offer alone.

This is why the ancient line from Genesis resonates with such staying power: “From dust you came.” It doesn’t deny the material. It honors it. But it goes further: “and God breathed into the man’s nostrils the breath of life.” We are not either dust or breath. We are dust with breath — matter with meaning.

Abiogenesis may describe how matter organizes, but it does not explain why my daughter’s heart leapt when the ladybug opened its wings. It cannot. That’s not its failure — it’s simply not its purpose.

And so, as she giggles and holds out her finger, letting the ladybug crawl onto her hand, I breathe a quiet prayer of thanks — not just for life, but for love. For story. For mystery. For the breathtaking truth that while we may have come from dust, we were never just dust.

The following are imagined responses to this article in the spirit of the envisioned authors.

Response: Dust, Breath, and the God Who Speaks

By Tim Keller (in the spirit of his thought)

The picture of a little girl marveling at a ladybug on a summer afternoon is more than charming — it's profoundly theological. In moments like that, we glimpse what C.S. Lewis called sehnsucht, a deep, unnameable longing for something beyond the physical. And it’s true: modern people, even in a scientific age, cannot live without meaning, love, and purpose.

The article you’ve just read points to a real tension: if we are only the sum of material processes, then what grounds our personhood? If all things, from granite to girl, are merely different arrangements of atoms, how do we defend justice, love, or even the uniqueness of human dignity?

This is not a new problem. It’s the ancient philosophical challenge of reductionism — the idea that all of reality can be explained by its lowest level of function. And the consequences of that belief have always been existentially devastating. When people truly internalize the idea that they are nothing but cosmic accidents — no different in essence from dirt or insects — they begin to suffer. Not just spiritually, but emotionally and even physically.

But here’s where I might offer a slight re-framing of the article’s helpful insights.

Rather than simply observing the conflict between material science and psychological meaning, the Christian worldview proposes a deeper diagnosis: that both science and our longing for purpose point to the same Author.

The Bible doesn’t just say we are “dust and breath.” It says we are dust that was spoken to, formed by, loved into being. It asserts not only that we are made, but that we are made in the image of God. And this is crucial. The image of God is not simply a poetic idea — it’s the source of our value, our reason, our relational nature, and our moral intuitions.

So the question is not merely: How do we reconcile science and meaning? The question is: Which worldview best explains why both exist?

Here’s what Christianity offers:

• A world created by a rational God, which makes scientific discovery not only possible but expected.
• Human beings endowed with dignity, which grounds the psychological need for purpose.
• A world marred by sin, which explains why we experience alienation — both from nature and from ourselves.
• A redeeming God who enters into our dust through Christ — who not only heals but transforms, who doesn’t just explain life but gives eternal life.

In other words, Christianity does not reject material reality — it dignifies it. But it refuses to make matter the whole story. And it doesn’t merely add meaning on top as an emotional comfort — it grounds meaning in a personal, knowable Creator.

Finally, let me say this: the longing to see our children flourish, to find wonder in a ladybug, to believe we are more than chemicals in motion — these are not random neurological glitches. They are signposts. As Lewis once wrote, "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

So yes — from dust we came. But not as an accident. We are dust, called by name.

And that changes everything.

Response: The Universe Is Alive Enough

By Neil deGrasse Tyson (in the spirit of his thought)

The image is a lovely one — a girl lying in the grass, mesmerized by a ladybug crawling up a blade, sunlight filtering through a summer afternoon. It’s a universal moment, and one that rightly invites reflection on life, meaning, and our place in the cosmos. I read the piece From Dust and Breath with real appreciation — not only for the tenderness of its vision, but for its desire to reconcile what we feel with what we know.

That said, I want to offer a different take. Not to refute, but to extend. To suggest that meaning — the kind that leads a child to marvel at a bug or a parent to write about it — does not require an external source or metaphysical breath. It arises naturally from the incredible, self-organizing complexity of the universe itself.

Let’s start with the dust.

Yes, we are made of it — but that dust is stardust. The calcium in your bones, the iron in your blood, the carbon in that ladybug’s chitin — all forged in the cores of ancient stars that lived, burned, collapsed, and exploded billions of years before Earth was born. When you realize this, it doesn’t reduce us to matter; it elevates matter to something sublime.

The universe didn’t have to create life. Yet it did. Not by miracle or magic, but by the slow, stubborn laws of chemistry and physics operating under the conditions of time and energy. Given enough complexity, certain arrangements of atoms became capable of metabolism. Replication followed. Then sensation. Then thought. Then, eventually, awe.

Awe is not outside of science. It’s built into it. And when we say that a rock and a person are made of the same atoms, we are not dismissing personhood — we are celebrating the fact that the universe has become conscious of itself. What greater poetry is there than that?

The article suggests that science alone cannot offer meaning. I understand the sentiment — science doesn’t prescribe morality, and it doesn’t tell us why we love our children or feel a sense of purpose watching a sunset. But science does give us the tools to understand how those things arise — in our evolution, our neurology, our psychology. It shows us that our sense of meaning is not an illusion, but a feature of who we are: social, pattern-seeking, self-aware beings who flourish when we feel connected to something larger than ourselves.

Religion, for many, provides that connection. I don’t begrudge that. But I’d suggest that science itself is one of the grandest sources of wonder available. When I look up at the night sky and know that photons have traveled across millions of light-years to reach my retina — that in the dark, quiet vastness, the laws of physics remain elegant and unbroken — I feel something that looks very much like reverence.

So when your daughter looks at that ladybug, what’s happening? Is she seeing something that transcends the material? Perhaps. But what if the material itself is transcendent? What if, in her delight, she is simply echoing the same universe that learned, over billions of years, to assemble atoms into cells into people into poets?

What if we don’t need to add meaning from outside the cosmos — because the cosmos, through us, already means something?

To be alive is to be a way the universe knows itself. To love is to feel that knowledge deepened and extended across time. To marvel is to participate in something older and grander than our short lifespans could ever contain.

From dust we came. But the dust was never ordinary.

Response: No Magic Required

By Richard Dawkins (in the spirit of his thought)

The author of From Dust and Breath asks a beautifully human question: How can something like a ladybug — or more importantly, the conscious mind that marvels at one — arise from inanimate matter? I appreciate the sincerity of the question. But I must object to the insinuation that a material explanation of life somehow diminishes the value or richness of that life. It does not. In fact, the opposite is true.

The idea that something is less meaningful because it is understood is a pernicious myth. The author worries that, if a ladybug is "just chemistry," the wonder is lost. But this is an error born of intuition, not reason. To understand that the intricate structure of a ladybug’s wings, the precision of its flight, the evolutionary pressures that shaped its color and behavior — all of this is the product of natural selection acting over millions of years — is not to strip away wonder. It is to multiply it.

Evolution, by natural selection, is the only known mechanism capable of producing the illusion of design without the necessity of a designer. It explains how complexity, purpose, and even the human mind could arise from simpler beginnings. No supernatural breath required.

The author’s appeal to meaning, psychology, and spiritual longing is understandable. We humans are storytelling animals. We want purpose, and we often invent it when it is not given. But the absence of an externally imposed meaning does not equate to an absence of meaning altogether. It liberates us. We are the authors of our meaning. We do not need to be the characters in someone else's divine novel.

Let us not retreat to mystery or metaphysics when reality offers such a grand tale. We are risen apes, not fallen angels — and to me, that is far more inspiring. We are the universe experiencing itself, yes, but not because we were destined to — but because, by the blind, unconscious chisel of evolution, we stumbled into the light.

Response: Of Dust, Logos, and the Infinite Responsibility of Being

By Jordan B. Peterson (in the spirit of his thought)

The author of From Dust and Breath offers a reflection both tender and true. Watching a child marvel at a ladybug is not a trivial thing. It is, in fact, a profound gesture toward what I have often called the sacred embedded in the mundane. In that moment, something archetypal is at play — the recognition of life, order, and meaning emerging from chaos.

Now, the author raises the essential modern question: Can we reconcile the cold machinery of science with the warm interiority of meaning? My answer — and my work over the years — has insisted: we must.

Science, particularly reductionist materialism, has done its job with extraordinary success. It has mapped the genome, split the atom, put rovers on Mars. But it is catastrophically incompetent at telling you why you should get out of bed in the morning, or why the ladybug matters to your daughter, or why you should be good rather than evil. For that, we turn to stories — deep, ancient stories encoded in religion, myth, and tradition. The Book of Genesis, for instance, speaks of dust and breath — yes — but also of responsibility, hierarchy, sin, and sacrifice. These are not scientific concepts. They are existential realities.

Our culture is unraveling precisely because it has tried to discard these stories as outdated superstition. But you cannot rip out the narrative structure of meaning and expect the psyche — or society — to survive.

So when we ask whether psychology or material science is “correct,” we are asking the wrong question. The answer is: we must aim higher than mere correctness. We must integrate. We must tell the truth. And the truth is: meaning is real. Suffering is real. Responsibility is the antidote. And the pathway forward is through voluntary confrontation with the chaos of being, guided by the logos — the Word — that brings order.

Dust, yes. But also breath. And it is the breath that calls us upward.

Imagined Roundtable: From Dust, Five Voices

Peter Robinson (Moderator):
Gentlemen, welcome.

We begin today not with a headline or a controversy, but with a simple and evocative scene: a little girl, lying in the grass on a warm summer day, watching a ladybug make its slow, deliberate journey up a blade of grass. A moment filled with beauty, curiosity, and — perhaps — meaning.

Now, here’s the question: Is that moment fully explained by material science alone? Or does it point us to something deeper — something beyond chemistry and physics — something, perhaps, transcendent?

Joining me to discuss this today: evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, theologian and pastor Tim Keller, astrophysicist and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson, and psychologist and cultural commentator Jordan Peterson.

Each brings a distinct lens — scientific, philosophical, theological — and each has, in his own way, shaped the conversation we’re about to have. We’ll begin by allowing each of you to respond and, as the conversation unfolds, I invite you to engage not only with the question, but with one another.

Let’s begin.

Mr. Dawkins, I'd like to begin with you. Beyond your essay what would you say to this young girl and her father?

Richard Dawkins:
Thank you. I would begin by reiterating: there's no need to invoke mystery where we have understanding. Life emerged through natural processes. The ladybug does not lose value by being understood as a product of evolution. Quite the opposite.

Tim Keller:
But Richard, you're framing understanding and meaning as if they are synonymous. They are not. You can know how a melody is composed and still miss the music. The Christian story offers not just a mechanism for life, but a purpose — a love that calls us into being.

Neil deGrasse Tyson:
I respect both perspectives, but I’d urge caution in declaring that science is meaningless just because it doesn’t dictate values. The awe of understanding — of knowing we are stardust organized by the laws of physics — that itself is poetic. Why reach outside the universe for wonder when the universe already overflows with it?

Jordan Peterson:
But Neil, you can’t live on poetry alone. People aren’t suffering from a lack of wonder. They’re suffering from a lack of direction. The great danger of modernity is that it gives us the stars but takes away the story. And without the story, we drown in chaos. We need responsibility, not just revelation.

Dawkins:
But the story must be true. We should not retreat into myth for comfort.

Keller:
And yet the story may be true — not in the sense of lab experiments, but in the deepest sense: morally, spiritually, personally. What if the universe not only produces persons but was created by one?

Peter Robinson (Moderator):
Perhaps, then, the real question isn’t which of these voices emerges triumphant, but whether — and how — they might speak to one another. Dust and breath. Understanding and meaning. Reason and story.

After all, this man's daughter — the one watching the ladybug on that warm summer day — she wasn’t asking for a theory of cognition or a metaphysical framework. She simply watched. And she delighted.

And so, gentlemen, this is not the end of our inquiry — but precisely where it begins.

Who would like to comment next?

Tyson:
Peter, if I may extend this point — I don’t disagree with Jordan that people suffer when they lack a story. But I think the story doesn’t need to be handed down from the heavens to be powerful. We make stories. Human beings have always done that. Our myths, our art, even our science — these are all expressions of the same creative impulse. And the fact that our brains evolved to find meaning doesn't make meaning fake. It just makes it natural.

Peterson:
But Neil, you're saying we make stories, and I’m saying stories make us. There’s a difference. A story is not just a decoration we drape over biology. It’s the scaffolding of perception and behavior. You take the Judeo-Christian narrative — with its emphasis on sacrifice, responsibility, logos — remove that from the foundation of a society, and the structure doesn't hold. We see that all around us. Depression, nihilism, chaos. You don’t fix that with awe at quantum fields.

Dawkins:
But Jordan, must we really claim that meaning and morality collapse without religion? I’ve written extensively on the evolutionary roots of altruism. Cooperation, empathy, even sacrificial behavior — these have natural explanations. To say they require divine authorship is simply unnecessary.

Keller:
But Richard, you’re assuming that just because you can describe the mechanism of altruism, you’ve captured its ought. Why should we act sacrificially if we’re only the result of blind evolution? Yes, evolution can produce behaviors that look moral. But it cannot compel us morally. Morality ceases to be binding when it is merely useful.

Dawkins:
You’re implying that morality must be rooted in divine command to be meaningful. I reject that premise. Morality is a product of reasoned consensus, shaped by empathy and informed by the consequences of our actions. That’s enough.

Tyson:
Perhaps we're circling around a common point. Maybe we’re not as far apart as we think. We all agree humans need meaning. Some of us say it’s discovered, others say it’s created, and still others say it’s revealed. Maybe the disagreement is not whether meaning exists, but what its source is — external or internal.

Peterson:
I’d go further. Meaning, properly understood, is not something we invent arbitrarily. It’s something we encounter — through conscience, suffering, narrative. The structure of meaning appears to preexist us. And to orient your life within that structure is what religion has always been about.

Keller:
Yes. And that’s why Christianity doesn’t just offer meaning in the abstract — it offers a person. The logos became flesh. Meaning entered the story. That, to me, is the answer to the very problem this conversation began with: the leap from matter to mind, from dust to love, from blade of grass to human heart.

Dawkins:
Or perhaps that’s a beautiful myth for those who need it. I prefer to keep my feet on empirical ground.

Peter Robinson (Moderator):
But Richard, let me be the voice of this girl's father for a moment, if I may. In his article, if I understand it properly, and correct me if I do not, he is asking what of the feeling  — that this child, this moment, this love — that it matters? Science gives us insight. But can it give us significance? Do I have that right?

Dawkins:
Yes, I believe you do.

Significance is a human construct — yes, of course it is. But let’s not make the mistake of assuming that “constructed” means “imaginary” or “worthless.” Music is a human construct. So is language. So is mathematics, depending on how you define it. These are things we created — or perhaps discovered — and yet they shape our world, bind our societies, and give our lives richness, direction, and texture. They’re not less powerful because they’re ours. In fact, they’re powerful because they’re ours.

You see, there’s a subtle but important category error that often creeps into this discussion. People assume that because meaning and morality are not embedded in the physical fabric of the cosmos — like gravity or electromagnetism — that they must be illusory or contingent in some demeaning way. I reject that premise entirely. The fact that morality arises from evolved social instincts, cultural norms, and rational reflection does not make it less real — it makes it human.

And that’s no insult. It’s an achievement.

When I look at that little girl watching a ladybug, I don’t need to invoke a transcendent Logos or divine breath to be moved. I see a child — the product of eons of natural selection, of inherited traits and cumulative learning — finding joy and wonder in the natural world. That capacity for wonder isn’t diminished by its evolutionary origins. If anything, it makes it more astonishing. That the blind processes of nature have produced a mind capable of love, curiosity, and poetry — that is awe-inspiring.

So no — I don’t believe meaning has to come from outside us to be real. It emerges from consciousness. And consciousness emerges from brains. And brains emerge from the universe. So in a very real way, meaning is the universe knowing itself. Not by design. But by chance — and by the relentless beauty of natural laws unfolding over deep time.

Is that cold? Perhaps. But I find it liberating. We are not passive recipients of meaning. We are its authors.

And I’d argue there’s no higher dignity than that.

Tyson:
I tend to agree with that. We don’t need an outside source to feel that the universe matters. It matters because we are the ones who can contemplate it. Isn’t it profound that atoms, arranged in a certain way, become capable of love, inquiry, and wonder?

Peterson:
But doesn’t that very capacity imply we’re more than atoms? That there’s something about the configuration — a vertical axis — that transcends matter?

Keller:
Let me pose a thought experiment. Suppose you’re right, Richard — that we arose by chance, that meaning is constructed. Then every human story is ultimately a delusion. And yet we live as though they are real. Could it be that our deepest intuitions point not to illusion, but to truth?

Dawkins:
Or they point to evolutionary adaptations — useful fictions. Nature doesn’t care if our beliefs are true. Only if they help us survive.

Peterson:
But if that’s so, then your own reasoning collapses. Because you’re using logic to assert that logic isn’t aimed at truth, just survival. That’s a dangerous contradiction.

Tim Keller:
Richard, if I may, let me try to expound my thought experiment.

Let’s grant, for the sake of discussion, that you're entirely correct: that we are here by undirected processes, that our moral impulses, our longing for meaning, even our love — are the result of evolutionary adaptations and neurological responses. That meaning is, as you say, something we construct.

Now pause and think about what that implies. It means every great human story — the dignity of the individual, the triumph of justice, the sacrificial love of a parent, the idea that human beings have worth regardless of power or usefulness — all of it, under that view, is a useful fiction. A noble illusion, perhaps, but an illusion nonetheless.

And yet — and this is the key — we do not live as if that’s true. Not even the most hardened skeptic does. We recoil at injustice not simply as a failure of evolutionary cooperation, but as a violation of something real. We mourn the loss of a loved one not merely because of the disruption of a social bond, but because we believe — we know — that that person mattered. Not as a data point. But as a soul.

In other words, we live as if human beings possess value, as if goodness and beauty and love are not just chemically convenient, but intrinsically meaningful. And that ought to make us pause.

C.S. Lewis once said, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” Now that can be pressed too far — but the principle is sound: If we find in ourselves these deep, persistent intuitions — that justice is real, that love is more than instinct, that truth matters even when it costs us — then perhaps those intuitions aren’t evolutionary leftovers. Perhaps they’re signposts.

You see, the Christian faith does not deny the role of biology, or culture, or the marvels of science. It simply says: those things are not the whole story. Behind them, and within them, is a deeper logic — a personal Logos — that made us not by accident, but by intention. And that explains why our hearts hunger for more than survival. Why we are stirred by the sight of a child, or a ladybug, or a dying hero. Why we reach for something beyond what nature alone can give.

Because we were made for more.

And to borrow a phrase from Richard himself — if that turns out to be false, I still think it's the most beautiful delusion ever told. But I am not convinced it is false. I am increasingly convinced that it is the only framework wide enough to hold both the dust and the glory of being human.

Dawkins:
Tim, I appreciate the care in your response, and I can see how that framework provides comfort — even coherence — to those who believe it. But I still think you’re asking more of our intuitions than they’re capable of bearing.

You say we live as if love, justice, and meaning are real in some absolute sense — and I agree. But it doesn’t follow that they are absolute in any transcendent way. That’s a leap, and not a justified one. It’s entirely plausible — and, I would argue, far more economical — to explain those intuitions as evolutionary adaptations, cultural refinements, and psychological needs that happen to enhance cooperation and group survival.

When we grieve, when we love, when we risk our lives for another — these behaviors can all be traced to evolutionary advantages. A parent’s self-sacrifice increases the likelihood of a child’s survival. Empathy facilitates social bonds. Moral outrage protects group cohesion. These aren’t “illusions” in the sense of being fake — they’re functional. And just because something feels deep or sacred doesn’t mean it points to a metaphysical reality. Our brains were not shaped for truth; they were shaped for fitness.

You quoted C.S. Lewis. I’ll offer a counterexample: our brains also perceive agency in thunder, faces in clouds, and patterns where none exist. We overdetect meaning. That’s not divine signaling. That’s evolutionary caution. Better to mistake a shadow for a lion than a lion for a shadow.

So when you ask why we hunger for more than nature provides — my answer is simple: because we are the products of a species that survives by hungering. We construct meaning because it serves us. It binds tribes. It inspires sacrifice. It gives structure to a fragile consciousness. But that doesn’t make it ultimate. It makes it human.

And I don't find that belittling. I find it honest. And, in its own way, beautiful.

Tyson:
Perhaps the takeaway here is clarity — and, yes, a measure of humility. Science is extraordinarily powerful at uncovering the what and the how of the universe. That’s not a limitation — that’s its strength. But when it comes to the why — the internal narratives we live by, the values we choose, the emotions we feel watching a ladybug or holding a child — those emerge from a different layer of human experience.

That doesn’t make them irrational or false. It simply means they aren’t scientific questions in the traditional sense. So the tension between science and the humanities — or religion, or philosophy — may not be a problem to resolve, but a dialogue to sustain. Each domain has its own kind of truth to offer, and we do best when we keep the channels open between them.

Peter Robinson (Moderator):
Dr. Peterson, if I might press you on a comment you made a moment ago. You said that if our cognitive faculties evolved solely for survival rather than for truth, then, quote, “your own reasoning collapses.” Could you explain that to a novice — someone watching this program who hasn’t read Thomas Nagel or Alvin Plantinga — why is that a dangerous contradiction?

Jordan Peterson:
Certainly, Peter.

If evolution shaped our brains solely for survival, not truth, then there is no guarantee that our rational faculties track reality. They simply track what kept us alive — social cohesion, pattern detection, predator avoidance. Now here's the problem: Richard here is using reason to argue for a worldview in which reason itself is not trustworthy beyond utility. That is a self-defeating loop. If logic is merely an evolutionary byproduct, then using it to reach truth is like using a compass you know is broken to navigate open sea. You might survive, but you’ll never know where you are.

In philosophical terms, you can’t stand outside of your evolutionary framework and justify the framework itself. You must take something as given — and the logos, the rational principle, is what Western civilization took as given: that we can reason, that we can discover, that truth exists. If you collapse that into utility, you've sawed off the very branch you're standing on.

Peter Robinson (Moderator):
Professor Dawkins, would you care to respond?

Richard Dawkins:
With pleasure.

Jordan’s point is clever — rhetorically — but it misunderstands both evolution and science. Evolution doesn’t need to produce perfectly reliable truth-tracking minds; it needs to produce minds reliable enough to survive and flourish. And remarkably, those minds developed reason, language, and science — which has proven itself through its predictive power and explanatory reach.

When we split the atom, when we map the genome, when we land probes on other planets — those are not "useful illusions." Those are real outcomes grounded in accurate models of reality. Evolution got us to the point where we can self-correct our biases, test our assumptions, and refine our understanding through empirical observation.

There is no contradiction here. Natural selection gave us the brain; we used that brain to invent science. And science, in turn, validates its own reliability through its results. We don’t need metaphysical scaffolding. The method works. The rest is storytelling.

Peter Robinson:
Dr. Keller?

Tim Keller:
Yes, and here is where I believe both of my colleagues miss something crucial.

Science does work — but it only works because the universe is rationally ordered and the human mind is capable of accessing that order. That assumption is not itself scientific; it is metaphysical, theological, even. The early scientists — Kepler, Galileo, Newton — were Christian believers precisely because they expected nature to be coherent, knowable, and ordered by a divine Logos.

If we are only here by chance, and if our moral and rational intuitions are evolved fictions, then every attempt to ground justice, dignity, or meaning collapses under its own weight. You may believe in human rights, but you cannot justify them. You may value reason, but you cannot explain why it should matter more than instinct. Christianity provides that foundation: we are made in the image of a rational, moral God. Our faculties are fallen, yes — but they are real.

That foundation holds when the world shakes. It has shaped our laws, our values, and our very idea of the person. Without it, you get what Nietzsche predicted: power, not truth, becomes the final arbiter.

Peter Robinson:
Dr. Tyson?

Neil deGrasse Tyson:
Let’s be clear here: I have no problem if someone finds personal meaning in a religious tradition. That’s their right. But when you say science “can’t explain” reason, or morality, or meaning — I disagree. It can. Maybe not in poetic terms, but in practical ones.

Cognition, emotion, morality — these are emergent properties of the brain, shaped by natural selection and culture. And meaning? Meaning is what humans generate when our pattern-seeking brains interact with a mysterious universe. We find purpose in love, in discovery, in connection. It’s not “fake” because it’s emergent. That’s like saying music is fake because it’s made of vibrations.

And this idea that science somehow borrows from Christianity — no. Science advances when it frees itself from theological assumptions. The church persecuted Galileo. It wasn’t scripture that landed on the Moon — it was Newtonian physics, calculus, and rocket engineering.

So let’s not pretend faith is the foundation of reason. Science stands on its own.

Peter Robinson:
Jordan, would you like to reply?

Jordan Peterson:
I would. And I’ll do so bluntly.

The modern world is parasitic on its religious foundations. The reason you believe in the individual, in conscience, in equality before the law — those are not scientific concepts. They are Judeo-Christian axioms, built into the structure of the West. Remove the transcendent, and the entire moral architecture begins to erode.

And meaning — real meaning — cannot simply be reduced to neurological pattern detection. Try telling someone who has lost a child that their grief is an emergent property. Or that the Holocaust was biologically maladaptive. You feel, rightly, that those things are evil — not just inconvenient. Why? Because there is a moral reality above us, not just inside us. That’s what the Logos means.

And you ignore that reality at your peril. We tried that in the 20th century. We got gulags and gas chambers.

Peter Robinson:
Professor Dawkins?

Dawkins:
I object to this line of reasoning — not emotionally, but logically.

To say that religion is necessary for morality is both historically and biologically naive. Morality exists across cultures — even pre-religious ones. Reciprocal altruism, empathy, kin selection — these are observable in primates. No divine command required.

And to invoke atrocities as an argument for religion is disingenuous. Religion has its own history of horrors: inquisitions, crusades, genocides. The idea that belief in God makes people good is easily falsified.

Let’s stop trading in moral posturing and face the reality: the universe is indifferent. Morality is human-made. And if you want a better world, you don’t pray for it — you build it.

Peter Robinson:
Dr. Keller, closing thoughts?

Keller:
I would just say this: if you want justice, beauty, love — you can’t just assert them. You must ground them. And that grounding, historically and logically, has been the divine. A personal, rational, loving Creator who is not a gap-filler, but the source of all that is good.

Without that, you can still be moral — of course. But your morality floats. You have no anchor. And in times of suffering, that will not hold.

Peter Robinson:
And the last word, to the young girl's father, the author of the original article.

Young Girl's Father:
Gentlemen, thank you.

This began with a simple moment: a child watching a ladybug. That moment, to me, felt true. Not in the empirical sense — not something I could test or measure — but true in the way that moves the soul.

And now, I have heard five brilliant minds attempt to explain, defend, and elevate their view of what makes that moment matter. I don’t know if we’ve reached consensus. Perhaps we never will. But I do know I am better for having been party to this conversation.

To conclude, I would say this: we cannot ignore the questions. We cannot flatten the mystery. Whether by science, by story, by scripture, or by reason — we must keep seeking. Because maybe the deepest truth is this:

That we are from dust. But we are not just dust.