There's Something There - Part 5

Now when religious folk start going on and on about revelations, the revelations always seem to come with rules.

And those rules seem to be weirdly focused on what women are supposed to wear.

Seriously. Don't wear this.

Plus, what we are or are not supposed to eat.

And a lot of other stuff that seems to be about what to do and when to do it, or what not to do and when not to do it.

And then we use these rules to make up other rules about who's in, and who's out.

Who belongs to our little group, and who does not.

And don't eat unicorns.

As though the God of the universe is sitting up there in his 5th dimensional whatever it is spending all of his time being really irritated about us not wearing the right clothing or not getting the right haircuts or not eating food that has been prepared in the exact and precise way that for some reason he made up for no reason at all (eat cows! and chickens! don't eat pigs! or goats! or lobsters! and what the heck is kale?!?! I didn't make that! It's not for eating! Where did that awful stuff come from?!?!) and playing Game of Thrones with us (OK, Protestants and Catholics - 1, 2, 3, kill each other!)(OK, Sunnis and Shiites - 1, 2, 3, kill each other! And when you finish that, kill all the Jews, even though I like them a lot! And

all the westerners. I'm not sure why, but what the heck!), and then sending down songs that all kinda sound alike, and then giving all

kinds of strange stage directions (You people, raise your hands and sway back and forth and close your eyes and make weird noises! And play with snakes! (Really? Snakes?) And you guys, pray the same prayer five times a day forever and smack your heads on the ground and NO WOMEN cause they can be distracting sorry about the all-caps. And you, over there, I never ever ever want to see the bottoms of your feet, because have you seen what's all over the ground? Gross! And you other guys never cut your hair, and you other other guys cut all your hair off. And

See. Distracting.

ladies, frankly, you are totally distracting all the time, what was I thinking? and you folks, if I catch you celebrating birthdays or anything else, for that matter, it’s all over for you, and you other folks, happy happy happy and no medicine or doctors or pain meds or stitches or nothing), and on and on and on ...

Seriously? That's what God does? No wonder science thinks religious folk are idiots. They kinda are.

But it's kinda science's fault. Because science told us that in order to be smart, we had to have rules. 

So we still think it's all about the rules.

OK, that's not really fair for science.

Humans seem to have this compulsion to come up with rules. Always have.

But it's really about the Interaction.

The rules come from the interaction.

Because the interaction is about relationships.

And good relationships need good rules.

Just like a working universe needs good rules.

Not to restrict the universe from doing things.

But to cause, to allow, to enable the universe to interact well.

So if there was going to be a real revelation from the real God, then that revelation was really going to be about relationships.

Because that's how we interact.

First, an interaction between God and humans.

And second, an interaction between humans and, uh, other humans.

Now watch this. It's going to get dangerous.

It's also going to be some math.

Interaction = relationship. That's first. That's from science.

Second. 

The highest form of relationship = love.

I just made that up, but I think it works.

Interaction, as I ponder it, has two forms.

Attractive and repulsive. 

Gravity is an attractive interaction, where by the warping of space-time, objects in a gravitational field (which has infinite reach, btw) seem to be attracted to the center of the field, the center of the massive object. Dark Energy seems to be repulsive - massive objects are repelled from each other. Dark Matter, like regular matter, is attractive via gravity. The Strong Force creates a field via the gluon that attracts quarks together, and protons and neutrons together. Electro-magnetism is both attractive and repulsive. The Weak Force binds subatomic particles together into more complex elements under tremendous heat and pressure (which sounds like love to me).

Quantum mechanics by its very nature is interaction between particles, communicating, changing each other in instantaneous and seemingly magical but ultimately entirely natural ways. But because it's Quantum and has to make life difficult, it's neither attractive nor repulsive. It is, however, purely interactive. Again, the poetry of QM is like a love song. 

That might be a stretch. But really, the quantum world needs us as observers, and we need it because we are made of it. It is as interactive as interactive gets in a seriously interactive sort of way.

Human relationships are attractive and repulsive. We like each other, we dislike each other. We are attracted to or repelled by each other.

There is love, and there is hate.

So I will arbitrarily and randomly assigned values to those. Hate is generally the worst.

Love is usually the best.

And love, at its purest, is sacrificial. Parent for child. Lover for beloved. Patriots for country. Superhero for humanity and the earth. Lassie for Timmy.

We are told that there is no greater love than for one human to give his or her life for another.

If you have ever truly loved, then you know the rich profundity of sacrificial love.

And thus, the interactional God who created the universe, who for some bizarre and inexplicable reason seeks an interaction with his creation, with his pathetic little otherwise pointless humans, and wants somehow to interact with us in a way that feels very much like love.

So third, highest form of love = sacrifice of life.

Now, go find a revelation that looks like that.

There's Something There - Part 4

So we think that science is all about the rules, and we think that religion is all about the rules, but

Science is turning out to be all about the interactions, and so

Religion might be all about the interactions, too.

Not the rules.

Here's what the rules do in science. Oddly enough, they inhibit understanding.

Well, for the most part, they help us understand, but there're those critical places where they don't help anymore.

The Quantum places. The places where folks like the eminent John Wheeler says, if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics. And the even eminenter Richard Feynman, who said that nobody understands quantum mechanics.

We can do the math and make the predictions and they always come out right and they're never wrong, but

We don't understand anything about it at all.

Frankly, even relativity doesn't lend itself to understanding, either. 

Here's a bit from Roger Penrose:

"Quantum reality is strange in many ways. Individual quantum particles can, at one time, be in two different places - or three, or four, or spread out throughout some region, perhaps wiggling around like a wave. 

"Indeed, the 'reality' that quantum theory seems to be telling us to

believe in is so far removed from what we are used to that many quantum theorists would tell us to abandon the very notion of reality when considering phenomena at the scale of particles, atoms or even molecules.

"This seems rather hard to take, especially when we are also told that quantum behaviour rules all phenomena, and that even large-scale objects, being built from quantum ingredients, are themselves subject to the same quantum rules.

"Where does quantum non-reality leave off and the physical reality that we actually seem to experience begin to take over?

"Present-day quantum theory has no satisfactory answer to this question.

"My own viewpoint concerning this - and there are many other viewpoints - is that present-day quantum theory is not quite right, and that as the objects under consideration get more massive then the principles of Einstein's general relativity begin to clash with those of quantum mechanics, and a notion of reality that is more in accordance with our experiences will begin to emerge.

"The reader should be warned, however: quantum mechanics as it stands has no accepted observational evidence against it, and all such modifications remain speculative.

"Moreover, even general relativity, involving as it does the idea of a curved space-time, itself diverges from the notions of reality we are used to.

"Whether we look at the universe at the quantum scale or across the vast distances over which the effects of general relativity become clear, then, the common-sense reality of chairs, tables and other material things would seem to dissolve away, to be replaced by a deeper reality inhabiting the world of mathematics."

Reality as science has discovered it is really nothing like the reality that we really think reality really is. Really.

And it gets worse, of course. From Quanta Magazine:


On the other side are quantum physicists, marveling at the strange fact that quantum systems don’t seem to be definite objects localized in space until we come along to observe them — whether we are conscious humans or inanimate measuring devices. 

Experiment after experiment has shown — defying common sense — that if we assume that the particles that make up ordinary objects have an objective, observer-independent existence, we get the wrong answers. 

The central lesson of quantum physics is clear: There are no public objects sitting out there in some preexisting space. As the physicist John Wheeler put it, “Useful as it is under ordinary circumstances to say that the world exists ‘out there’ independent of us, that view can no longer be upheld.”

And now you want to complain about God. That is, God the way that you think you understand God.

And you don't even understand chairs. 

Which aren't there, anyway, unless you are there to sit on them. Apparently, and not quite completely metaphorically.

So you might say, evidence for God has to look like the kind of evidence that you're used to seeing. You want real evidence, not quantum relativistic evidence.

Of course, the only real evidence is quantum relativistic evidence, and the "real" evidence that you want is, from your perspective, delusional. That is, Newtonian and "real" only as a tiny splinter bit of the illusion created by quantum relativistic evidence.

But, OK. Let's play that game.

If science is ultimately and finally and completely about the interactions (which is our theory at this point),

And if God exists (which is our theory at this point) ...

then God, who clearly put the whole science schtick together (that's just if a=b and b=c, then a=c) ...

might have a certain commitment to and/or interest in and/or a participatory role to play in ...

Interactions.

Since there doesn't seem to be anything at all but interactions in the universe.

When you're naked and running away from a lion,
catching up with the lion seems like a bad idea.
Unless you're running away from whatever the lion is running
away from. In which case ... run faster.

And thus, a revelation seems to be in order.

Because a revelation is an interaction, and interactions are all that there are.

So that would be ... evidence. If there was in fact an interaction that we might say could possibly be in some sense maybe perhaps a revelation.

But you don't want a quantum revelation, like, say, the need for an observer outside of space and time to make an observation and collapse the wave function of the Singularity into Big Bang and hence into the universe itself.

And you may want proof. I should write that as "proof". You are tempted to demand "proof".

If you'll review previous posts, you might find somewhere that you never ever in science (or religion or on TV crime shows) get "proof". 

You get "evidence". "Proof" does not exist. Anywhere at any time. Ever. The only way you can actually use the word "proof" in a sentence is to say you never get any.

Everything that we think might be proven might be unproven when new evidence comes along.

As new evidence tends to do.

In fact, you can get something from nothing.
Sorry, Big Bang haters. It's a Quantum thing.

So there is no proof of Big Bang. There is only evidence. It's pretty impressive evidence, but you never know. Science didn't use to believe in Big Bang because how ridiculous is THAT! The universe had a starting point. That's absurd. Everybody knows it.

There you go. Everybody, which is to say, everybody in science, and I mean everybody, all the scientists were wrong.

And so there never will be any proof that God does or does not exist. Evidence, maybe. Proof? Never.

Unless he, like, shows up. That would do it.

But since he has not, then clearly 1) he does not exist at all or 2) he's got another idea.

And that plan might be all about evidence, and experience, and revelation, and finally, faith.

The plan might be all about faith.

Maybe. If there is a God. And a plan.

There's Something There - Part 3

Interaction.

That is, the only way for you to find God is ...

For God to find you.

And how, do you suppose, would he do that?

By interacting with the universe.

Didn't see that coming, didja?

I just read this amaaaazing article on the brain on Aeon.com, so here's some bits of it:

"A few cognitive scientists – notably Anthony Chemero of the University of Cincinnati, the author of Radical Embodied Cognitive Science (2009) – now completely reject the view that the human brain works like a computer.

"The mainstream view is that we, like computers, make sense of the world by performing computations on mental representations of it, but Chemero and others describe another way of understanding intelligent behaviour – as a direct interaction between organisms and their world.

"... if we had the ability to take a snapshot of all of the brain’s 86 billion neurons and then to simulate the state of those neurons in a computer, that vast pattern would mean nothing outside the body of the brain that produced it ... Whereas computers do store exact copies of data – copies that can persist unchanged for long periods of time, even if the power has been turned off – the brain maintains our intellect only as long as it remains alive. There is no on-off switch. Either the brain keeps functioning, or we disappear.

"What’s more, as the neurobiologist Steven Rose pointed out in The Future of the Brain (2005), a snapshot of the brain’s current state might also be meaningless unless we knew the entire life history of that brain’s owner – perhaps even about the social context in which he or she was raised."

Which is to say (I'm back, btw. This is me now.) that each of our brains exists as a direct interaction with the life we have each lived, each brain unique as each life is unique.

Pardon me for a second. I'm going to make that really really large so that you don't miss it.

Direct interaction

Here's what humans do that is so cute. We look for the rules and regulations that make everything happen, and say to ourselves, wow, that's why everything happens.

Rules. Regulations. Laws of physics.

Here's what's curious about that.

Science has decided that religion is ridiculous.

But both science and religion make the same mistake.

Religion ... looks for rules for behavior. Human behavior.

Science ... looks for rules of behavior. Human behavior, ultimately, along with the behavior of everything else in the universe.

Neural circuits in the brain. Looks very much like a fractal.

Science finds its rules in the patterns of mathematics, and then in the patterns of everything. Or vice versa. Sometimes the math tells us what is happening (the Special and General Theories, Quantum Mechanics), sometimes we figure out the math so we can describe what is happening (Newton's Calculus).

But once we had the rules figured out, well, dang it, they stopped making sense about 116 years ago, in 1900, when Quantum Mechanics came on the scene, and then again in 1905 and 1915 when Special and General Relativity arrived, and then in 1961 Chaos Theory didn't help at all, and when Complexity Theory started to mess with Evolution later in the 1960s, well, that was not a happy moment.

The Rules, the Laws of Physics, sort of stopped helping us understand the way things worked. Instead, they didn't help at all.

Religion kinda has the same problem.

But it's kinda the same problem because it's kinda the same source.

Humans.

We want things to make sense.

So. Let's say some guy comes along. Let's call him Isa. Or Joshua. Or Yeshua. Pick your language base.

And he says, alright, jerks, stop being jerks. Start being nice.

And the whole God thing? You really should pay attention.

So what do religious people do?

Instead of just, you know, being nice, they ask, what does it really mean to be nice? I mean, do we have to be nice to everybody? Or can we pick and choose?

And what does being nice really mean?

So then they made up some rules.

And before long, the religions all became to be about following the rules instead of, you know, being nice.

Buddhism does this. So does Hinduism. Judaism. Shintoism. Jainism. Islam. Paganism. Satanism. Witchcraft. Animism. All the -isms do it.

Christianity, too.

Not an -ism grammatically, but still an -ism. And it does it, too.

Somehow they all start with the interaction between God (or gods)(or no gods)(depending) and humans, and then, somehow, along the way,

They all become about the rules.

And here is what science is telling religion.

It's not about the rules.

It's about the interaction.

If the universe is all about interaction,

Then reality is all about interaction,

And the rules of nature come from interaction between particles and forces, and energy and mass and space-time, and observation and reality,

Then, well, religion ...

Is all about interaction. The interaction between us, and God.

So now we gotta figure out what the heck that means.

There's Something There - Part 2

It apparently happened in Korea and became a boy band.
Nothing right and good about that.

I read the other day that the Big Bang didn't happen in space.

Which makes sense, since there was no space yet for it to happen in.

Still. That's hard to get.

So there was no Where that it happened in.

But there was a When.

Big Bang happened in a When, but not a Where.

It happened in time, but not in space.

OK, it's on Mondays at 9. See. It happens in time.
Even if you count syndication.

So if you were to ask, sweetly, naively, where did Big Bang happen, thinking, sweetly, naively, that there had to be a point where it all started, the answer is ...

There is a point where it all started. But it's a point in time, not in space.

So the evidence in science has taken us to a place in nature where our brains cannot go.

Big Bang happened in time. Not in space.

Do you want a list of all the other places that the evidence has taken us that our brains cannot go? Just go back and read some of the earlier posts. Any of them.

So now, let's talk about God.

Pay attention. This is the subtle and clever part.

1) I understand God as well as I understand him because the theologians have gone out of their way to explain him to me, and 2) I understand that my understanding of God will change with further information, and 3) it might change quite radically in quite unexpected sorts of ways, but 4) I have personal experience with God. That is, 5) evidence has been presented to me, and 6) I have personal evidence as well.

This would be the Ironic God. Ha. So funny.

God exists for me because I have some experience with him.

It is not the same experience that anyone else has had, though there is a lot of overlap, so it is both unique and universal at the same time.

Unique and universal. How...

Intriguing.

Now, I could go through the evidence for God that might exist in nature, but I've kinda already done that for like almost an infinite number of earlier posts (OK, 24, but still. It was a lot.), and here's what's happened. I predict. 

Yes, it's a chaotic, unpredictable universe, but only mostly, so I'm gonna live on the edge and make a prediction.

Those who already believe in God were like, YES!, and, AWESOME!, except for those who don't like Big Bang, but you probably stopped reading a long long time ago, which was foolish. No offense. OK, maybe a little. But you're probably not reading anymore anyway. No offense.

And those who don't believe in God were like, oh, seriously, all of this crapload of pseudo-scientific religio-babble AGAIN?!?! When are you religious morons gonna catch a clue that there is NO EVIDENCE for God to be found in nature?!?!

You should maybe dial it down a little. Fewer all caps. By everyone.

Anyway. Here's the thing.

We're all looking at the same evidence. But we are each reaching a different conclusion.

Same evidence. Different beliefs.

So it's not really about the evidence. I mean, it helps. But when one group looks at Big Bang and says, whoa, looks like God to me, and another group looks at the same Big Bang and says, wow, looks like a pretty cool accident of nature to me (and a third group looks at the same Big Bang and says, don't even THINK of trying to tell me that the God that I believe in would have used Big Bang to create the universe.)(Sorry about the all-caps.), then ...

It's not really about the evidence.

I had a guy tell me once over and over for weeks that there could be no evidence for God in nature. Not that there could be but we haven't found it yet. Whatever we found, was not gonna be evidence. No matter what it was. Like, God's t-shirt. His driver's license. His bowling league medals. Even his reserved parking spot.

When I mentioned that there were a host of notable scientists who believed that there was some evidence for God, this guy just said, well, they're all wrong.

When I told him that all of the scientists were a lot smarter than he was, he said, no, they're not.

Gotta admire his commitment to his beliefs. Takes some backbone to say that evidence is not evidence and is never going to be

evidence and that on the basis of this assumption, and this alone, that he is smarter than all the scientists except for the ones that agree with him.

Faith. That's what it takes. Faith.

Of course, what he believes about God or science or evidence or nature or the universe is, as we've said, irrelevant.

God exists, or he does not.

Even if there is no evidence, God still might exist. Even with lots and lots of evidence, he might not.

So how in God's name are we supposed to figure it out? So to speak.

Here's a proposal. Here's what it takes. Here's how to start. 

It's like, an equation.

It's evidence plus experience plus faith.

Plus one more entirely interesting, controversial, subjective thing that depends entirely on one's interpretation. Kinda like quantum mechanics. Lots of interpretations. Only one is right. We just don't know which one.

Anyway. One more thing.

It's evidence plus experience plus faith plus revelation.

Oh, yeah. It's an equation. It's gotta "equals" something.

No, not a revolution. A revelation.
Same thing, maybe.

Evidence plus experience plus faith plus revelation equals maybe there is a God.

We might start with that. Revelation.

If God created time and space, then God is outside of time and space.

And therefore we can't find him unless he wants to be found.

That is, you can't go on a search to find God. Well, you can, but good luck with that.

It's like the Ultimate Hide-&-Seek game. Ha ha, you'll never find me because I'm outside the universe.

Here's what Big Bang cosmology says: Space and time ... came into existence in a tiny tiny tiny fraction of a second, everything coming from nothing, out of nothing, caused by nothing.

And God. Has to be in the nothing.

And we can't go there.

He. Has to come here.

Ah, shoot. I went and gave it all away. Spoiler alert. I HATE it when that happens.

Fewer all caps. Gotta work on that.

And here's the really devious part. Let's just assume for fun that God is in the fifth dimension. No, not the old rock group, though God could clearly be black and groovy. Or hip. Or whatever.

We live in 4 dimensions, 3 of space, 1 of time.

So let's go with God lives in a 4th spatial dimension. I don't know if he does, but I don't know that he doesn't, so it'll work.

Now. Consider that there might be a world that exists in 3 dimensions, 2 of space and 1 of time.

Flatland. Like a table top. The people are flat people and they only know of 2 dimensions. This way, and that way, but not up or down.

And you live in 3 spatial dimensions, just like you actually do right now anyway.

Now. How close can you get to the Flatlanders without them seeing you? Because you are in the 3rd dimension, and they are only in the first two.

Take a flat surface right now and see how close you can move your hand without it touching.

Very very very close.

So if God lives in a 4th spatial dimension, how close can he get to you without you knowing about it?

Very very very close.

And you would never know that he was there. Unless he wanted you to know. And that would only happen if he ...

... touched your version of Flatland.

Now I got goosebumps.

There's Something There - Part 1?

It's Part 1 because there might be other parts, but I don't really know yet. We'll just have to see.

Anyway. Since we're being provocative ...

What you believe about _______ (go ahead, fill in the blank) is irrelevant.

OK, I'll fill in the blank for you.

What you believe about God is irrelevant.

And ...

What you believe about the Universe is irrelevant.

Why, you may ask, am I making such obnoxious statements? Why, you may ask, am I being such a jerk?

Here, let me add some emphasis, see if that helps.

What you believe about God is irrelevant.

What you believe about the Universe is irrelevant.

Let me explain. We'll start with the Universe.

Here's the Thing. The Universe is the way that it is regardless of what you believe about it. It doesn't care what you believe. As we already said that Neal deGrasse Tyson said, the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. Or to anybody.

If you think it doesn't make sense, that's not the Universe's fault or problem. It's your problem.

This picture is not the universe exploding. It's just your garden-variety
star exploding. Actually, not exploding. Collapsing and bouncing.
The nothing didn't explode either. It just expanded really really fast.

You can believe that it's infinitely large, or not.

You can believe that it had a starting point, or not.

You can believe that it's 6000 years old, or 13.8 billion. Or infinitely old.

All that you, and we, and everybody has to go on is the evidence that we have been able to uncover, and will presumably continue to uncover, and we interpret that evidence from our tiny perch in time and space as best we can.

And as we have seen, the evidence changes, and so our understanding of the Universe changes, and presumably it will continue to do so, whether we like it or not.

If Monte Vaughn had shown this much emotion
when I asked her out, well, a win.

The Universe is indifferent to your feelings about it. It's like that cheerleader that I asked out four times in college. Her name was Monte Vaughn. I still remember her name. She was ... indifferent. And remained indifferent. She did not go out with me. She does not remember my name. She may not have actually been a cheerleader, either. But it's a better story that way.

The Universe does not remember your name. It is the way that it is, and it will continue to be that way (that is, dynamic and constantly changing) regardless of your thoughts, opinions or beliefs about it. 

If it's helpful to rename the Universe "Monte Vaughn", go right ahead. It is unimaginably beautiful. And it is not interested in going out with you.

Now. God.

God is something like the Universe.

Either God exists, or he does not. What you believe about that is irrelevant.

That's harsh, but true. But you will not eliminate God with your lack of belief, if he exists. Nor will you cause him to exist via your beliefs, if he does not.

Either he does, or he does not.

(I'm using "he" because constantly having to say "he, she, it or they" is awkward and irritating and so I'm not really saying God is a man or male, but that he is surely more than an "it". "They" would work, but it will irritate the non-Trinity folks and yadda yadda yadda. Live with it.)

Either he does, or he does not.

Your opinion about that is immaterial.

Now isn't that a curious thing? It causes one to wonder, ok, NOW what am I supposed to do?

Well. We could talk about evidence for, let's say, the universe first. But we will quickly run into theories that say, as we have said in

other earlier blogs, 1) the universe is a hologram (and therefore not really here) or 2) the universe is a computer simulation (and therefore not really here.

Plus, since we don't know what either Dark Matter or Dark Energy are, 95% of the universe is a complete mystery to us.

Plus, the universe might be 10**26th times bigger than the part that we can see, and we'll never see any of the rest of it and will never know anything about it,

Or, it might be infinitely big, which is a lot bigger than just 10**26th times bigger, and so the part that we do know something about is infinitely smaller than the rest of it, and (just do the the math) is therefore not really here,

And that's THE OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE, of which you are not even a measurable part of, either. Well, measurable maybe. But very close to infinitely insignificant,

And the part of the universe that we can see, we will never ever be able to go to any parts of it, apart from the part that we are in. Like, even getting to Neptune seems like a stretch. Frankly, even Mars seems like a stretch. I think you could put all the people who've been to the moon in an egg carton. OK, a large egg carton. One that would fit people. Or a roller coaster that seats 12. Like that one. That many people have been on the moon.

And we will never ever know for sure where the universe came from, or whether it is unique and there are lots of other universes, or maybe just a couple or four, a dozen maybe, a gross of universes.

(OK, to be honest, you can't actually be "very close to infinitely insignificant", but if you could, we would be.)

So your personal evidence for the existence of the universe is anecdotal and highly suspect. I would not choose to believe in the universe based solely upon your personal experience. And I don't give a rat's patootie who you are, because even you, you universe scientists, you cosmologists and astronomers, even you have only seen or experienced a tiny tiny fraction that (if the universe is infinitely big) is infinitely smaller than the actual universe itself, and you don't even have much of a clue what it is, either. And you keep changing the story.

No offense. It's kinda hard. I get that. That's actually the point.

I should say, BTW, that I do in fact believe in the actual universe.

Pay attention. This is the subtle and clever part.

1) I understand the universe as well as I understand it because the cosmologists and astronomers have gone out of their way to explain it to me, and 2) I understand that my understanding of the universe will change with further information, and 3) it might change quite radically in quite unexpected sorts of ways, but 4) I have personal experience with the universe. That is, 5) evidence has been presented to me, and 6) I have personal evidence as well.

The universe exists for me because I have some experience with it.

It is not the same experience that anyone else has had, though there is a lot of overlap, so it is both unique and universal at the same time.

Unique and universal. How...

Intriguing.

There's Nothing There - The End

Now I'm going to say something that will irritate some of you.

Here it comes.

Nobody is smart enough to be an atheist.

Go ahead. Write me nasty letters. Be a troll. Find your inner troll and let it out to stomp me into troll-stomping oblivion.

Wait, though.

I'm going to say something that will irritate the rest of you.

Here it comes.

Nobody is smart enough to be not an atheist.

Go ahead. Write me letters that pray for me and consign me to the darkest depths of hottest hell. Send the demons after me. Find your inner demon and let it out to stomp me into demon-stomping oblivion.

Wait, though.

Let's think about it for a minute.

'Cause what we're really saying is that belief is not really a matter of intelligence.

Now THAT will open up dozens of worm cans. Cans of worms. Whatever.

Belief is also not a matter of information. As in, the more you know, the less you believe.

There you go. More worms in more cans.

Let's do the easy part first.

As in. No matter how smart you are, there's somebody smarter who has different beliefs about The Old One (as Einstein called God).

Bingo. Einstein believed in The Old One, and he is officially smarter than nearly everybody except for maybe Isaac Newton (who believed) and maybe da Vinci (who believed, even though he painted naked people)(that is, he painted pictures of naked people, not, he painted

people who were naked. I mean, he did, but not on their actual nakedness.)( I think he may have opened a tattoo parlor in his later years.)(Some of that was not strictly speaking true.)

So. But. Einstein was not a practicing religious person. Not as a Jew. Not as a Christian. Not as anything.

So he's the metaphor. If you want to disbelieve, you can't point to Einstein as your example, and if you want to believe, you can't point to Einstein.

And you are not smarter than Einstein.

Of course, you're not smarter than Newton or da Vinci, either. Sorry. No offense.

For most of you, there's a lot of people that are smarter than you.

Some of them believe. Some of them don't.

So it's not really an intelligence thing.

How about information then?

Well. The problem with information is that it changes all the time.

And when information changes, evidence changes.

And when evidence changes, facts change. 

And when fact change, science changes.

'Cause science is about facts, facts come from evidence, and evidence changes all the time.

We used to think, for example, that the universe made sense. That it was predictable. That the laws of physics caused everything to happen. That we didn't need God to explain anything. That the universe was infinitely large and old and everything had always been here, including the laws of physics.

But we didn't know what the laws of physics were yet.

We thought there was just gravity. And as it turns out, we didn't even understand gravity.

And then when Einstein explained gravity to us, all of sudden, the universe wasn't infinite at all.

And the laws of physics hadn't always been here. Which means that something that wasn't the laws of physics caused the laws of physics.

And boy, were they weird.

So everything changed. All of science changed. All the evidence changed. All the information changed.

And it might change again.

No. That's wrong.

It will change again.

So you can't base your beliefs on information that can and will change.

Sometimes it'll make it seem like there is no God, no creator.

Sometimes it'll make it seem like there might be one. Or there must be one.

And then. It'll change again.

So even if you are Ed Witten. He's the smartest guy alive at the moment. Or Stephen Hawking. Or Marilyn Vos Savant (she has the highest IQ on the planet). Or my friend Chip Diggins (his IQ is scary high.) Or Richard Dawkins (he's only kinda smart.) Or Father Andrew Pinsent at Oxford (my very very smart friend Simon says Fr. Andrew is smarter than Simon is.)(Simon got his PhD in particle physics from Oxford and did his dissertation at CERN, so as we say in Texas, he's pretty dad-gummed smart.) Or Rev. John Polkinghorne. Or Paul Davies. Or Fred Hoyle. Or Neil deGrasse Tyson. Or Stephen Weinberg. Or, frankly, anybody. Even Sheldon Cooper.

It doesn't matter how smart you are, or how much you know. Because there's someone smarter who believes differently than you do, and what you know, will change. And then it will change again.

It's not about intelligence. It's not about information. It's about something else.

And what, you may ask, might that be?

Now that is a stellar question.