Publisher's Synopsis
Since its first moments of consciousness, Humanity has asked many questions about its existence. In the earliest of days, our animalistic ancestors understood little and attributed their observations to unseen forces. It wasn't long before those unseen forces were ego-centrically anthropomorphized into supernatural powers and, eventually, supreme beings or gods. Our primitive ancestors arose during a time when fear ruled the night and the light of day was revered; therefore, we can't fault them for believing as they did. However, over time, our ancestors evolved into more complex beings capable of assessing the world around them and, given a trend of circumstances, they were able to make predictive assumptions of what may come to pass. While assumptions oftentimes lead to "false positives," our early ancestors' cognitive processes evolved a set of critical thinking tools and, many generations later, the greatest of all revolutions took place: the advent of science - the active pursuit of knowledge. To the laypersons in earlier times, science was likely indistinguishable from "magic." Taking on forms such as alchemy, science was guided more by beliefs than by knowledge. Anecdotal evidence and confirmation bias often led researchers astray. We can't fault those early pioneers for their lack of understanding or for substituting their beliefs for knowledge. After all, we should give credit where credit is due. Though their beliefs were built upon a foundation of fear and superstition, progress eventually came and science soon parted ways from its origins in religious contexts, splintered into many distinct disciplines and became one of the greatest definers of what it means to be Human: the deliberate acquisition of knowledge. Unfortunately, within the scientific community today beliefs persist. This short novelette will attempt to address some of the falsehoods that necessarily must follow when belief is put before knowledge. And by doing so it is my hope we can collectively achieve monumental and life-changing progress. This novelette is intended to be the opening statement in a new discussion about existence. To be sure, the concepts presented, herein, are not intended to be sophisticated scientific demonstrations of fact but rather an overview of known scientific principles, an expansion of those principles and, hopefully, all will be made easily accessible.