WMail ezine "The No-God Universe" Essay

The Universe exists. Orbiting 93 million miles from a yellow star we named Sol, planet Earth exists as a blue ball, spinning on its axis once each day, which event occurs 365 times during one circuit around Sol, which we call a year.
But beyond that, what can we all agree on? The Flat Earth Society even works to convince the rest of us that the first paragraph cannot be true. We can only examine existence from various viewpoints and hope to arrive at some useful attitude or viewpoint that allows us to lead our lives with some sort of integrity in our relationship to Reality, which is that our viewpoint is close enough to the Truth that it empowers us in our daily living.

The COSMOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT
The Universe was created some billions of years ago – with no actual witnesses, all figures used by scientists are estimates – and that event is called the 'Big Bang'. Before the Big Bang, this entire Universe did not exist, then suddenly it did exist, and can be measured to be expanding.
Hawking and other cosmologists predict that the expansion will eventually stop, and the Universe will begin contracting, which is rather scary. But what can we do about it anyway? And you and I won't be around, so the problem is moot.

The Religionists are certain that an entity called God made the Universe in six days, maybe on the back of a giant turtle, all sorts of stories about how and when and why. They say that the Universe could not have created itself, thus 'proving' that a Creator existed before the Universe.
But their logic fails, because if this Creator could exist before the Big Bang, then the Universe (in some unknown form) also could have existed before the Big Bang.

The existence of the Universe, then or now, does not in any way prove or even support – nor even disprove – the existence of a Creator. The No-God Universe is consistent with Science, with all observable and theoretical phenomena.

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The LEGAL VIEWPOINT
        If the existence of God were tested in an objective court, the case would be thrown out for lack of empirical evidence. The matter is hearsay only. If you want me to believe in unicorns, for example, then you will have to bring me one. If you want me to believe in angels or hobgoblins, you will have to capture one and show it to the world. (And those silly angel-ridden TV drama programs do not count.)
        The myth of God/Supreme Being is so much a part of the Culture-Structure, in every part of the world, that the question is never examined, for to examine it would be to run the risk of exposure, of proponents being shown as charlatans, as purveyors of fantasy.

        The Daubert Rule is used in law to decide the validity of evidence presented in court. The two first Daubert factors are whether the evidence is generally accepted and whether the evidence has been tested by peer review. The fourth is error rate.
        The third factor, which we will visit here, is 'testability', wherein a claim or theory is testable if it can be falsified; that is, if it can be measured and thus proven false, in which case the theory is probably true.
        But no such 'falsification' opposite can be constructed for the existence of God. Lots of people say that God, by whichever name, does exist, but there is no measure for or against. Quasars and gamma rays can be measured, God cannot. So there is no way to make a legalistic decision for the existence of God.
        The reverse premise, the No-God Universe, is however, falsifiable a la Daubert: if evidence for a God/Supreme being were presented, then the No-God Universe theory would be deemed false – which is NOT the case, therefore the No-God Universe theory is probably true.

The 1947 movie "Miracle on 34th Street" was cute, and I have always thought Edmund Gwenn to be a superior character actor. But the silly courtroom scenes 'proving' the existence of Santa Claus are exactly parallel to the specious reasoning of the Religionists. In the movie, some postal workers cleverly realized they could get rid of the annual tonnage of letters to Santa at the North Pole by delivering them to the Kris Kringle guy on trial. The lawyers for Santa then concluded that if the esteemed U.S. Post Office considered the old guy to be Santa Claus, then it must be so – giving everyone on the prosecution side and the judge an honorable escape from the political dilemma of attempting to prove that Santa Claus could not exist, and Kris Kringle was therefore crazy.

The U.S. of A. added the phrase 'under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, and the phrase 'In God We Trust' to money beginning in the 1970's. This does not prove a thing.
The U.S. government says many things that are soon proven to be lies. How is the matter of the existence of God 'proven' because the U.S. and other governments, and-or the vested interests of religion support the superstition?

* * * *
The EXISTENTIAL VIEWPOINT
Bring me a unicorn or an angel, and I will re-examine my position. Bring me some evidence of God, and I will do likewise. Hearsay does not count, so don't even write the angry pro-God email to me. I still expect that a few zealous readers – now or upon finding this issue of WMail posted on the WM website – will waste their time and mine, and a few will demonstrate their erudition by calling me an idiot. These zealots cannot respond with Reason, and their False Mind is terrified of Reality, they can only react.

        Mankind inhabits one blue and watery globe. The purpose of the God-myth is to enslave the populace, to bind them to Anti-Reason, so that they are ineffective in all that they do. Ayn Rand said repeatedly that Reason is Mankind's only tool for survival, and that in order to survive, Mankind must use Reason – something that the species has not yet begun to learn. Rand described the Priests of Religion – the 'witch doctors' – as groups within all cultures who have one thing in common: they propose a terrible fate will occur – eternal damnation in a fiery hell, or reincarnation as a cockroach – which can only be prevented by subservience, by complete obedience to their God and no other.
        Hasn't worked, though. Same as Chicago Cubs or [substitute the team of your choice here] fans that believe that their allegiance will somehow support their team into a World Series win.
        Belief in none of the Gods promoted by the Religionists has produced any empirical evidence – none! Mankind is here. God does not exist.
        [And don't offer to send any purported evidence to me. If you have what you consider to be empirical 'evidence', contact the CSICOP Center For Inquiry West, who will give any proposal the rigorous scientific attention that it deserves. The web page is http://www.CFIwest.org/million.htm – prove it if you can, and be awarded a million dollars.]

* * * *
WELL, THEN WHAT?
Well, if God does not exist, then Mankind is all alone in the Universe, or at any rate, our teeny corner of the Universe. This does not bother me, for there are certain assertions that naturally follow, using Reason.

**** We are all in this together. Religion, since false, cannot be used as justification to separate factions of the species Homo sapiens, nor can race, nor ethnicity, nor imaginary geographical boundary lines.

**** Mankind is responsible. We are probably the only sentient species on planet Earth, so there is no other entity that we can absolve responsibility to. Not thru prayer, not thru political or other allegiance, not thru any form of 'passing the buck'. There is no 'higher power' who will rescue Mankind from our determined cultural madness, from the mounting consequences of collective and individual ir-responsibility.

**** You are responsible. That saying from the Sixties has never been truer: You are either part of the solution, or you are part of the problem. The antidote to every problem of Mankind – at the level of individual or society or species – is the exercise of Reason, which very few practice. [How do I know? Look at the results!]

**** If Mankind used Reason to solve and correct any problem, that problem would be solved.

But some of you are already asking 'What about spirituality?'. That is easily answered: The entire planet is holy. The Holy Biosphere is your home, the only one you can expect, so Reason cannot abide destruction and waste and unconsciousness and violence based on an expectation of Eternal Life somewhere else. Mankind must get its collective act together here and now, or the Holy Biosphere will die, and all of Mankind with it. Present circumstances are so ominous that it is likely Mankind will be extinct in two generations unless serious and drastic remedies are put into practice around the globe.

* * * *
The CONSEQUENCES
Philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82] wrote the 1957 novel "Atlas Shrugged" to illustrate the predictable scenario of a society committed to Anti-Reason. That fictional prediction is very close to coming true in the United States and elsewhere. The looters – how are the stock markets doing lately? – continue to take from producers as a matter of assumed right and the Culture-Structure has now taken so much from Mother Earth that the survival of the planet's biosphere is in doubt.

        On 25 June 2002, the Los Angeles Times printed an article with the title "Humans Consume More Than Earth Can Replace", about a report being published in the 'Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'. The article contained the following lines:
**    "Economic expansion has boosted demand for resources and overshot the planet's ability
        to regenerate them by 20%."
**    "Human demand has been outstripping nature's ability to resupply since the early 1980s."
**    "Since 1961, human demand on resources has nearly doubled."

{{ Full text of the short article is at http://www.working-minds.com/energy.htm#overshot. Full text of the report is at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/99/14/9266 – membership required. Press release from Redefining Progress is at http://www.rprogress.org/media/releases/020625_pnas.html. }

The topic will be further addressed in the October issue of WMail under the title
"Waste Not, Want Not". Issue #28 essay: click here

"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction [that] you give it."
— Ayn Rand (in the 'John Galt Speech')

For the full contents of this issue of the free 'WMail' exine, click here.

The WMail Newsletter EssaysVolume III - Issue #26: August 2002

"The No-God Universe"

The WMail Newsletter Essays
Volume III - Issue #26: August 2002