Dr. Milford Fletcher was the Chief Scientist of the Southwest Region of the Natural Resources for the National Park Service for 15 years. He was invited to Jordan and India to manage the cultural resources in Petra and the Buddhist caves of Ajanta and Ellora. He is considered an expert on rock art in Europe and America, and has lectured in India, Petra, and America.
Lindsay Ahl: How did you move from being a Baptist as a kid, to being an atheist?
Dr. Milford Fletcher: Well, I went to a Christian college. (laughter)
Lindsay: That would do it, huh?
Dr. Milford Fletcher: Yeah. I went to Rocky Mountain College in Billings Montana. And it was a Christian College. Every Tuesday, we had a religious service, and sometimes it was Baptist, sometimes Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Muslim – they’d bring in every possible religion that they could, and show us the essence of each religion. And then on Thursdays, we’d have a general assembly, and have a speaker from one of the various religious groups of Billings. So the idea was to expose us to a variety of religions. We even had black Christians from Ethiopia, places that the missionaries had done a lot of work. I went in as a very conservative Southern Baptist. I went to college, the first year, on a scholarship from the Church in Three Forks, Montana. It was required that we take a course called English Bible, two semesters a year, four years. So we had eight semesters of English Bible. And we studied the Bible in English. The whole thing, all the way though. And then we would go deeper. We studied the Apocrypha, the lost books of the Bible that didn’t quite meet orthodox thought at the time, that didn’t make it into the standard Bible. We read the Koran, and Buddhist literature as well. I even had a class called The Life and Teachings of Paul. And all through this, there was a guy named Dr. Pennypacker. He was Jewish, and an ordained Methodist Minister, (laughter) who taught philosophy, and part of this English Bible. So I’m taking this class as a freshman, The Life and Teachings of Paul, and we get to where Paul was struck by a revelation on his way to Damascus, to persecute Jesus, and Dr. Pennypacker leaned back and said, “You know, that sounds like a sunstroke to me.” And I thought, He’s going to get hit by lightning! And Dr. Pennypacker said, “What do you think?” And everybody said, “Well, no.” And he opens a book and reads, “Symptoms of Sunstroke,” and reads the list. And Paul had all of them. So he got us thinking. And you know, I believed in the Virgin Birth. He looked me in the eye and he said, “That’s silly.” I said, “How can you say that?” He said, “Well, think about it.” I said, “Okay.” So, he just destroyed me. And there would be times, when I’d stand up in class, and say, “No, that cannot be.” and he’d say to the rest of the class, “Please excuse us while Mr. Fletcher and I go on about this.” And they all loved, it, of course. They’d sit there, watching this kid get his ears chewed off. He’d tear me down in the daytime, and every now and then, there’d be a knock on the door at night, he’d come to my dorm, and take me for a walk, patch me together, so he could take me apart on Wednesday. And it finally began to dawn on me, all of this stuff was legend – there was some historical truth in it, but many of the stories were simply legends. I’d been taught the Bible was the literal “word of God”. Then I found the Bible had been translated about 15 times, from 12 different languages and now I see all these books that were close but didn’t quite make it, and where they came from, and the inconsistencies of the whole thing. And then it just dawned on me. I don’t think this is going to follow logically, but it was late, it was 1957, and a bunch of us were drinking beer, arguing about whether those two guys, Watson and Crick, had anything going on, talking about this DNA stuff, and we finally decided they did. From that enlightened moment, in 1957, I put all this religious stuff in one basket, and what I’d learned in science in another. So the bottom line is biology follows the laws of chemistry and physics. We know that to be a fact. And evolution follows the laws of chemistry and physics exactly the same way biology does. That’s about all you really need to know. Evolution is so obvious, and yet, about once a week, I get one of those eureka, epiphany moments that shows me one more way how two or three things have evolved together, over millions of years, and it’s just … it’s … magical, even spiritual, to see how that happens. Evolution is probably the greatest idea that man has ever had, because it explains so much. And it isn’t a matter of believing it or not. I can take you to a dog and show you how they have evolved under our guidance and tutelage. So, it’s all around us, in every way, and we, too, are a product of evolution. People don’t like the idea that we descended from an ape ancestor and that they may have an uncle who’s a monkey. Well, I don’t imagine the monkey is that enthused by the comparison either, you know. But you look at … we think we’re so civilized, that we’re so above the evolutionary behaviors, and that sort of thing, it’s ridiculous. The layer to civilization that we carry is so thin. You put people in stress, and it breaks down, and all of a sudden, you didn’t know that person nearly as well as you thought you did. There was an article in Scientific American in 1988 about what body type of women attract men. And this was written by a woman. It says, if a woman doesn’t have between 20 and 23% body fat, she can’t carry a fetus to term. And if a woman has less than 17% body fat, she may not be having menstrual cycles. Highly trained lean women athletics, for example, often don’t have menstrual periods. So when a man looks at a woman, and he can do it in a thousandth of a second, he knows if she has the body characteristics, enough subcutaneous fat disposition, breasts, etc. to be able to carry a child nine months, and his mind says, I desire her. It’s an instant sort of thing. That’s genetic. It’s been there for thousands of years. We subdue all of these things, but they’re still there. Our civilization veneer is very thin in a lot of different ways. We see it in war particularly. The recent scandals in Iraq about murder and torture illustrate this point.
Louis Leray: That’s all interesting. It’s just what Darwin said, It’s a grand view of life. And it’s grand the way you talk about it and it’s beautiful. But can you comment on what you feel when you commit yourself to science, to cause and effect in a closed system, nothing back beyond the cause and effect of evolution? If you eliminate that whole invisible realm, does that create a conflict for you?
Dr. Milford Fletcher: Yeah, early on, it did. But you and I have both used the word spiritual, and you might have to look a little deeper to see what that really is. Simply because I don’t believe in God, doesn’t mean that man doesn’t have something, some intangible something, that other animals don’t have, or have in degrees much less than ours. The ability to reason, for example. So, we’re above other animals in that we do things differently than they do, for some reason. I think in a way that leaves us with the responsibility to do what we can to help each other. There’s a school of thought, called Scientific Humanism, and I like that. A humanist is one who uses science as a basis for decision making, in the most part. But still having the characteristics of being human, having passion, compassion, an indomitable spirit, etc. So there are pitfalls, but there’s ways of looking at man other than just as a highly developed ape. I’ll grant you, he’s a little better, and I don’t know why. We pretty well have unraveled the DNA and it’s just a matter of putting the bricks together until we know as much as we need to know. We’re already working on the different genomes, the different plants, animals, apes, humans, etc. The next step, what we need to understand is, you remember things, I remember things, my dog remembers things…. how? What is memory? How does the human mind work? Where do emotions come from? Recent research indicates there is a gene for fear. That’s the next great frontier that we’re going to look at. And that I think will help us to understand spirituality even better. When we understand the mind, and why we have certain emotions and how they work, what brings them on – they’re going to be, trust me – they’re going to be chemical and biological.
Louis: Looking at the world from a purely chemical and biological point of view is a world determined completely by cause and effect. How do you then integrate that in to the idea that it was created purely by accident? As opposed to the Christian idea, which allows for the idea of a design. Do you know what I’m saying?
Dr. Milford Fletcher: I know exactly what you’re saying, and you’re absolutely right. The whole of evolution was a roll of the dice, and if the dice were rolled again things would come out differently. Little bitty changes at one time can manifest themselves as huge changes later. And if you didn’t throw in an asteroid now and then, to knock off the dinosaurs, things would be vastly different. Evolution, the universe, and all animal and plant life was a roll of the dice. And as far as an afterlife, there isn’t any. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever for any of that stuff, an afterlife … it’s just opiate for the masses. People don’t want to face the fact that you’re here, and in a poof, you’re gone. So get over it.
Lindsay: It seems as though almost all people in all cultures have the desire for, or an idea of, a kind of God, or afterlife, or soul. Why do you think we have evolved that?
Dr. Milford Fletcher: It’s in the mind. There’s something there, yet to be discovered that is as old as mankind. There’s even a book out called “The God Gene.” This guy thinks some people have a gene that in some way manifests itself as a strong belief in the supernatural, or not. We’re just beginning to approach how that works. But it isn’t some mystical thing. We’ll be able to explain it. We’ve come so far. I have a genetics book over here, and it’s wonderful. I love it. I got it in 1956. It has the wrong number of human chromosomes in it, and they didn’t find DNA until 1957. Today, you can’t pick up a genetics book that isn’t 90% DNA. So look how far we’ve come. And that’s how far we’re going to go again when it comes to explaining these things. There’s going to be … it’s like mother love … there’s an explanation for mother love isn’t there? It’s hormonal. It’s a certain combination of hormones, after lactation, that makes a mother love her child. Otherwise, she’d abandon them and go away. It evolved in many animals and not just mammals. I remember once seeing a robin who had lost her young but the “mother love” was so strong she was feeding the goldfish in a tank nearby to her lost nest.
Lindsay: What about people who adopt?
Dr. Milford Fletcher: They love them just as much, and you can actually trigger those emotions just as much by being around children. Most women who see a baby show a dilation of the pupils of the eyes. She’s interested. It’s inherited. In men, those who have helped raise children show a pupil dilatation when they see a baby. Single men don’t. In women it’s inherited, in men it’s learned.
Louis: The scientific method is about the physical and biological and chemical world of cause and effect and there is no way, within that method, to discuss the idea that the world could have been created. The idea of an afterlife, or an idea of God when put in the realm of science, is silent. Do you agree?
Dr. Milford Fletcher: I see what you’re saying, sure. If you want to attribute what happened prior to the big bang to God, have at it. I have no evidence. Your thoughts on that are just as valid as mine, because I haven’t got one single bit of evidence to support anything other than just a hypothesis. And your hypothesis is probably just as good as mine. But after the big bang, it’s a matter of chemistry, physics, and probability.
Louis: But in your own consciousness, are you ever curious about what we call the Big Bang? How and why did that happen? Sartre would say, the fact that something exists, rather than nothing, is the main philosophical question. Then he steps back one step further and says, It’s not that things exist but that existence itself exists, rather than nothing, the fact that there is being rather than non-being. That’s the first and main question there is. Everything else follows from that. Do you think about those things?
Dr. Milford Fletcher: Absolutely. Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. It should be “cogito ergo cogito ergo sum.” I think that I think, therefore I think that I am. I got out of college and I had a major in biology and a major in philosophy of religion. I’ve read a number of Bibles, Buddhist literature and the Koran several times. All deal with the mystery of what our existence means. The guys that were in Jordan with me just looked slack-jawed at me while I argued with the cabdriver about what the Koran said. Then they thought it was really hilarious that an atheist was arguing with a Muslim about the Koran. Not arguing about whether it was true or not, but what it said and what it meant.
Louis: Is religion a bad gene? A glitch in humanity? Will it ultimately do us in? I have a lot of friends who hate religion for all the bad stuff it brings into the world.
Dr. Milford Fletcher: Well, yeah, there is that, but on the other hand it can do a lot of good too. You might have to say a prayer, but down here at the Good Missionary Soup Kitchen, you can get a bowl of soup and a place to sleep. It’s done by churches, done by Christians and other religions. That’s how Hamas and the Black Panthers made their friends – with public works and service. And when FEMA was messing around trying to find themselves during Katrina, the Christians, the churches, stepped in and fed these people and gave them a place to sleep. How can you say that’s bad? Certainly there are a lot of things done in the name of religion that’s just plain stupid, all this business about terrorism for example. In the Koran it says leave those Jews and those Christians alone, they are people of the Book. After all, Muslims have the same prophets – Adam, Abraham, Noah, and Jesus. They just add one that Christians don’t – Mohammad. The Koran says that if Muslims conquer Jews and Christians, they can tax the hell out of them, that’s alright, but the Koran says leave them alone. Don’t try to take their religion. What could be more fair than that? There’s dingbats on both sides of this. We have our own problems with radical fundamentalists, the KKK and White Supremacists. The problem is fanatics who say “Believe as I do or die.”
Louis: Let’s get back to the realm of science which can seem a lot more sane … but what about this nanotechnology and hatching fetuses in big rooms and biotechnology … is there anything scary about that?
Dr. Milford Fletcher: You damn betcha. Science is neutral. Science is simply a method of approaching a problem. It doesn’t care if it’s going to blow you up or fix your refrigerator. It’s totally neutral. Where it falls down, is, society and politicians take it and implement the findings and the more you have a free market, the more you’re going to have the freedom to turn this stuff into anything you want. Ninety-nine percent of it, like satellite TV and global positioning units, are relativity harmless. But some of it has to be regulated. When man finally said, Gee, we can split the atom – that’s half the way to doing it. Once you know it can be done, then you can figure out a way to do it. The scientists at Los Alamos split the atom, but the politicians dropped the bomb. It’s things that we don’t know … for example, anti-gravity … it’s a lovely idea, just flip the switch and this thing would reverse the state of gravity and you’d float around, that we have no scientific facts to work with. I love the idea. But there ain’t anything there. There’s no kind of underpinning to it. It’s just a thought.
Louis: Are you going to get your DNA preserved?
Fletcher: I haven’t got anything in my DNA that’s worth preserving. Good grief. If they killed off every human being on the earth except the Indians down at Tierra del Fugeo, you’d still have 99.99 % of all the human genomes. There isn’t anything special about my genes, or anybody else’s. We’re just a part of this huge, random, roll of the dice. And it’s been going on for literally millions of years. And about half the genes I carry, that pinion tree out there carries too.
Lindsay: I love that’s it’s all made of the same stuff.
Dr. Milford Fletcher: Exactly, and it’s just when the genetic switch was turned on or off that made it a pomegranate or a peach tree. But it’s all due to the protein switches that the DNA directs that then turns things on and off at certain times.
Louis: What you’re saying makes me think it’s not my DNA but just the idea of DNA … because you’re saying there’s just a small little part of it that differentiates what makes a human being or a virus or flower.
Dr. Milford Fletcher: That’s right. And the thing is, without viruses to affect the cell and change the way the DNA does its business, none of us would be the way we are. The beginning of life was probably a virus or bacteria infecting a primitive cell to make the mitochondria. So we’re a hodgepodge of genes from vastly different sources.
Louis: What about that tiny part of matter that the DNA is made of … where does that come from in a big bang explosion? It’s like a different material all together.
Dr. Milford Fletcher: No, no, no, no. A guy named Uray, in the 1950’s showed, for his master’s thesis, that if he put a bunch of inert chemicals in a big bell jar, and shot lightning through it, and analyzed the stuff, he got the amino acid precursors that you need to make a protein, the building blocks of life. Just lightning itself, would turn inorganic compounds, which you find all over the place, into the precursors for these original amino acids – the precursors for life. So that was a real step forward in the thought – it can happen. Before Uray the question was just like Louis’, “Wait a minute, where’d this stuff come from?” Well, the answer is this, if I stand here and I hit a golf ball at a teacup 250 yards down the fairway, what are my changes of hitting it? Damn slim. What if I hit ten times? What if I hit one hundred million billion times? It’s inevitable that I’ll hit that teacup. You say it’s too rare to happen. I say it’s absolutely inevitable that it will happen, given billions of years of random trials. Creationists say the human eye is too complicated to have evolved. Anyone who has studied comparative anatomy knows that is just plain silly.