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This book does lack originality for those who have read in this area before. I have previously read most if not all the authors this author cites, and that made for some redundancy in the story telling for me. Also, he didn’t cite Stephen Pinker by name, but he probably had 10 or more stories or concepts that went straight back to Pinker’s book The Better Angels of our Natures, a book that I would no longer recommend, but at the time I first read it I loved it.

The familiarity in this story doesn’t necessarily make this a bad book and it can still be worth reading. There are worldviews that automatically think something to the effect that an immaterial being listens to my thoughts because I am special, ‘everything happens for a reason�, and sin is not an imaginary construct and is a real thing and we can be judged for our behavior by a mind reader for out thought crimes and for our actions. Those worldviews are implicitly challenged by this book.

If you so much as hint that we live in a deterministic universe and our behavior is determined by our circumstances that preceded us, you will be angering MAGA religious people because they think everyone is worthy of judgement by an overlord of some kind and deserve what they get and that the great immaterial being that knows all won’t adjust for the set of genes, parents, environment, and other items that formed and shaped us and it’s always our own fault that makes us who we are.

Origen 2000 years ago has this non-deterministic ‘free will� take and preempts the Calvinist in the process. Aristotle after his ‘On the Soul� writes a short book after that to give humans freewill and responsibility and thus allowing for an immaterial entity to judge us for the imaginary concept of sin. Also, as this book mentions, the Epicureans give us an ‘atomic swerve� at the last moment to give use ‘free will.� An imaginary being that judges needs to give us ‘free will� since otherwise the judgement would contradict his mercy and Augustine will reserve 'free will' for humans giving his necessary God the right to judge us through His freely created universe.

I have no problem accepting that the universe is deterministic and that effect always follows cause and that my meaning for being is for me to determine within this world as circumstances allow for. The moment I take away a great judge-in-the-sky, I end up owning my own meaning and will not outsource it to imaginary beings with imaginary problems and imaginary solutions.

This book drills home the concept that everyone’s existence is special and that we owe it to the unearned favor of the universe. Pride is a fool’s possession and our circumstances that made us are often out of our own control. The bombing of the specific city of Nagasaki happened by happenstance with many odd variables going into its destruction.

The author says that 2 billion years ago a prokaryotic swallowed another prokaryotic thus becoming a eukaryotic with a mitochondrion allowing for us to have complex cell structures and that only happened once in all of earth's history. Yes, we are special because we exist at all. One explanation is that an immaterial being planned it all so that you can exist and think about this and worship it, or another explanation no imaginary being planned it. BTW, as a side note, I’ll bet you didn’t know who first hypothesized the endosymbiotic origin of complex life. It was Lynn Margulis, the first Mrs. Carl Sagan, and she also had hypothesized that the World Trade Center attack of 9/11 was an inside job. It’s amazing to me that someone could be brilliant and at the same time believe nonsense.

The author said, when a King and Queen die that’s a fact. When they die of grief that gives feeling, and when the Queen was found with a knife in her throat then it becomes a story with a narrative. Humans love a story and we latch on to that and create them even where no story exist. Lynn Margulis does just that with her 9/11 nonsense.

I like the subtle destruction that the author gives to people who believe in worldviews that an immaterial being that sees all and knows all and then they derive from that they are special, worthy of pride, and part of a greater special plan not of this universe. I’ve read all the other authors this author cites including all the philosophers and that made this book a little bit unoriginal for me.