Santa Claus doesn’t exist but he’s a multi-billion dollar economy, and damn-tootin if people don’t think about him a helluva lot at least one month of the year. Or, to take a more “adult” and “serious” example, what about a coming ice age? Not in 100,000 years, but in 100 years! Leading scientists have shown this to be not only possible, but probable! The media is filled with scare-stories and testimonials, and politicians and local leaders are urging citizens to change their activities that contribute to ths coming horror, and make their plans accordingly, including moving away from colder areas, storing food, and investing in the power generation industry so we have more, newer, better power plants to heat our homes and prevent mass casualities, especially among the economically marginalized.

“But wait,” you say, “I’ve heard no such thing. The opposite is true! We’re headed for global warming and melting ice and higher sea levels and more hurricanes! All the talk you hear today says that!” True enough. And the ice age scare was all the range in the media and intellectual circles some 60-80 years ago. And prior to that, it was global warming. And, as a graduate student in integrative biology, I have a fair view of both recent ecological and climatological studies, as well as the “long haul” view from paleoclimatology and paleoecology. Facts are one thing; inference, conclusion, hype and scare are a totally different matter. If we assume that mean global temperature has increased in the last 100 years (which I am wary of; what I understand of the data collection on that point is HIGHLY sketchy, not well done) - so what? (gasp! yes! I just said that!) The chain of causal events stemming from increased temperature are conjecture at best. I cannot begin to tell you *how little* we understand about the long-term, global effects of more temperature - on physical systems (like weather) and on biological systems. Sure, tinker with X, get Y effect. But do X and Y have any significant impact on the longevity or health of a species? An ecosystem? How resilient are such systems? Given that prior to humans, *nothing on earth remains static* - plus ca change, my friends - is an insistence on *as little change as possible* 1) realistic 2) a good idea, in terms of biological health? There are time scales of cause and effect that are critically important, and are not even on the radar of most conservationists. But that’s another rant. Back to point:

Human interest, credulity, or discussion is no criterion for existence or even probability of existence. For God, for aliens, for poltergeists, for government conspiracies, for Nessie, or for the contents of Billy Graham and George Bush’s minds. Whatever scraps of facts standing at the base of that tripe are legitimately considered by more competent minds, which integrate those facts with the whole of known reality, and rationally conclude otherwise. Please. Polls don’t determine the existence of anything except public opinion.

The notion that because something exists it requires a thing to create it is a stolen concept. In fact, humans are the only things capable of “creating” anything (all else is blind physical process), and in fact that creation is just a rearrangement of stuff that already exists physically. In the absence of human creation - reality still exists, the universe still exists. To think that the universe requires something to create it is to switch the metaphysically-given with the man-made. Just because some things did not have to be (i.e. all the things resulting from human choice and action) doesn’t mean that we wield creative power, OR that all non-man-made things require “someone” or “something” to create them. They simply are. You’re anthropomorphizing a universe that frankly doesn’t give a rat’s ass about humans. We need IT, it doens’t need us.

As for the Big Bang - “What came before the Big Bang? Clearly that must be the work of God!” - let’s clarify that concept and conclusion:

1. The facts on which the Big Bang hypothesis is based simply are what they are. So the universe is expanding. Rewind the tape, does that make the Big Bang? Let’s just say that it’s as simple as that, and the universe started out much smaller than it is now. *Even if* the idea that “all this” exploded out of nothing, or virtually nothing, was a legitimate concept (which it’s not) - that in itself doesn’t have anything to say about God. Maybe the universe is, at the 100-billion year time scale, like a fire cracker, and just goes pop-pop-pop with repeated Bangs and collapses (string theory has a Big Bounce hypothesis). No reason to invoke God. It could just be a property of the universe/matter/all the stuff that is. Matter can do some really strange stuff. But that’s not God. Pin god to matter, or energy, and he becomes experimentally tractable and subject to the laws of physics. D’oh!

2. But - hold the phone. What about the recent observations that the universe is not just expanding, but the universe’s expansion is actually *accelerating*? That suggests that *even if* there was a Bang, things are way more complicated than that - because if it was just a Bang, then the fastest velocities occur closest to the site of explosion, and then slow down as things travel away and spread out. Physicists (cosmologists, more specifically) are taking this acceleration as evidence for other matter or energy-types or forces (I think they’re calling it dark matter, since we can’t observe it directly), thinking its force acts opposite of gravity - it shoves stuff apart.

3. If this is correct, not only is the Big Bang more complicated than we thought - but it makes the Big Bang an unwarranted conclusion at all. The simplest explanation for the expansion of the universe is that this dark matter anti-gravity force is pushing things apart in the areas we can observe. Clearly gravity still works (we wouldn’t have a solar system without it), so maybe the structure of the universe is a big tug of war between these opposing forces.

Still no God.

“God” is a broken concept (in terms of reality) that has a boatload of cultural currency. Human fallibility doesn’t decrease in fact or potency when lots of people are wrong. If anything, it’s one of the best examples of it, and increases in potency because guileless crowd-followers like yourself look at “public opinion” and jump on the bandwagon without evaluating the concept or what it could possible refer to in reality. Human fallibility is (presently) not just a fact, but a density-dependent, self-reinforcing exponential phenomenon. Unless people take the helm of their minds (which means evaluating concepts and rationally choosing the ones they retain), the phenomenon of mass error and detatchment from reality will change direction (fads, anyone?) but never alter the process producing that error. Things will reach a head, scads of people will die while two tribes duke it out over whose opinion is right. [Aryans vs Jews, blacks vs whites, aristocracy vs socialism, theocracy vs fascism, Christianity vs Islam, West vs East, altruism vs exploitation, whim vs faith, humans vs the environment, shall I go on? These are all false alternatives, meaning no one has identified the real causes of the problems, and therefore no one has identified any tractable solution to those problems]. Onlookers to the slaughter will experience massive disillusionment and nihilism until someone comes around to fill in their spiritual and moral void, people start jumping on that bandwagon and it all starts again.

What are the real alternatives? Fundamentally: to think, or not. To make reality your reference point, or not. To make reason (thinking about reality) the standard, or not. Reason vs un-reason (which includes faith, whim, inconsistent rationality, and purposeful, systematic irrationality). Choice vs force (by theives, the mob, or the taxman). Capitalism vs political collectivism (which subsumes fascism, totalitarianism, communism, socialism (including the National Socialist Worker’s Party, i.e. the Nazi party), theocracy, dictatorships, democracy (which is just unlimited majority rule, no constitution), and aristocracy). Individuals vs. groups (i.e. racism, sexism, classes, tribalism, nationalism). Human life vs non-human life. Human life vs non-human life. Life vs non-life.

I have something to say here, but I need to gather my thoughts.

I’ll get back with you.

I’ll get back to you.