Devolution

Serving in Vietnam, I shrank my world to about eight feet in diameter. Other than doctoring, I was concerned mostly about what might happen within or near that circle. Rockets landing, for example. One did. Getting shot at. That, too.

My wife sent me a book that brought my thoughts beyond myself again, Carl Sagan’s “Intelligent Life in the Universe.” Given the overtaking of our country by people wrapped in the Flag (don’t burn it) and carrying a Cross (wear it prominently), it’s relevant today.

Boiled down, Sagan’s message was that no matter how improbable the existence of life is, how unlikely for it to have arisen spontaneously, it was a statistical certainty. One in a million? A billion? How about one in a trillion? Or a trillion-trillion? That’s approximately how many stars and planets there are in the Universe, all made of the same atoms and molecules, bumping into each other. Forming compounds. Random, Brownian. It’s chemistry. In this universe, anyway.

How many bumps to form self-replicating molecules? Who knows? But there’s worlds enough and time. Of the trillions of places where it didn’t, the one (or more) where it did would seem, to sentient life-forms that appeared, miraculous. Special. The chosen ones. Impossible to have happened without intent, the odds too long. Like one in a trillion-trillion. Viewing from beyond the Milky Way, happening on a tiny grain of sand in an unbounded desert containing uncountable grains whose chemistry, though similar, happened not to generate life, as opposed to the view from the grain itself, it’s no miracle at all. Just one of the monkeys with a typewriter.

Though we can’t grok it, something very complicated exists without creation. Either it’s the universe or a creator. The late Pope Francis, a scientist, was able to accept the obviousness of evolution without finding it antithetical to his religious beliefs. It is, after all, undeniable. We see it and have confirmed it on a macro level; microscopic, too; in DNA, and more. To deny evolution would be as mind-blind as, oh, denying anthropogenic climate change or the results of fair elections.

We humans can barely analogize that much time, such large numbers, much less internalize them. It’s hard to imagine Earth 500,000 years ago, let alone several billion. But we see evolution happening in real time, before our eyes, the evolution of which has been explained quite nicely too. Still, it’s all but impossible to conceive of what could happen over hundreds of millions of years.

In the process of replication, DNA is prone to copying errors: mutations. Some amount to nothing. Some are dilatory, some fatal. Some, though, cause useful, incremental changes in its product. That’s what “natural selection” is all about. Organisms that have mutated a change, however tiny, that enhances survival, even only a bit, have an advantage, however small, over those that didn’t. And so it goes, time over time: existence favors the better versions. Sahelanthropus tchadensis over Ardipithecus ramibus. Australopithecus giving way to Homo sapiens, to leap over a million intervening years.

For a while, in medical school, I came to question all of this. How could something as complicated as the nephron, for example, the microscopic essence of the kidney, simply have evolved? What cascade of steps would it have taken? It’s so elegant, so intricately complex, so perfectly structured to do its many jobs. And then I thought, well, yes, but it’s also hard to imagine the cumulative effects of little mutations occurring over billions of years. Earth, it’s calculated, formed around 4.5 billion years ago, and life, as defined by organisms having the ability to replicate themselves, began about a billion years later, 3.5 billion years past. Fathom that! For reference, I’ve gone from a single, fertilized cell to 6’ 4” and, now, back to 6’2” in only eighty years.

I don’t know if there’s a capital-C Creator or not, but I have doubts. And because, in addition to those perfect little nephrons, we also have renal cell carcinoma and glomerulonephritis, childhood bone cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, if there is, he/she/it must either be more careless or less pleasant than is commonly believed.

I can, however, imagine our universe being a terrarium in some cosmic space-kid’s science experiment. The terrarium I made got overgrown with mold within days.

So, what’s my point? Only that there’s logic and science behind religious skepticism. And that, among the thousand or so Earthly religions, there’s no reason to consider one more veracious than another; nor, among those that have them, their Good Books, each claiming singular, divine origin. Which means no religion, especially the unchristian perversion flaunted so publicly by Holy Mike Johnson and White House denizens, belongs anywhere near our government. And that, among believers, humility is warranted.

Many of my friends and family are religious: Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist (I think). None approves the Trump-loving, power-craving, cruel strain infecting today’s Republican Party.

Of course not: They’re my friends and family.

Glimmer

Well, here's a small amount of good news. In California, a cadré of four lawyers ran against four sitting judges, with the claim that they'd bring Jesus to the bench. Making not even the pretense of judicial impartiality, they wanted the job on the basis of their pledge to rulings based on the Bible.

They lost, resoundingly.

On the other hand, it was California, not exactly the reddest of the red. Were the races in Texas, or Georgia, I'd bet on the thumpers. And, heck, even in CA thirty-five or forty percent of voters were willing to turn the judiciary over to theocrats. Toss the Constitution overboard. Pretty shocking, when you look at it like that. People like clergy and homophobes, according to the article. Neighbors.

Still, it means that there are still clots of people here and there who understand the value to all of us -- even the religious -- of separation of church and state; Sarah and Michelle (the other one) notwithstanding.

Earth Orbits Sun

In what ought to be received with a resounding and unanimous "DUH," but most surely won't, a Federal Court has ruled unconstitutional the Congressionally declared "national day of prayer." In her ruling, the Judge stated the obvious:

U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb wrote that the government can no more enact laws supporting a day of prayer than it can encourage citizens to fast during Ramadan, attend a synagogue or practice magic.

"In fact, it is because the nature of prayer is so personal and can have such a powerful effect on a community that the government may not use its authority to try to influence an individual's decision whether and when to pray," Crabb wrote.

Nothing is more fundamental to the Constitution. The ruling not only does nothing to limit the freedom of people to pray, it protects it. Like the fact that, despite the weeping and gnashing of the teabaggers, tax rates are near historic lows, you'd think this would be self-evident, even to the logic-impaired followers of Fox "news" and the rest of the RWS™.

Let the screaming begin.

God Help Us

As appalling as this is, I'll ignore the idiocy (milk???) and the lies and the imminent, probably inevitable, prospects of theocracy for this country. I'll not comment on the implications of such people actually gaining (re-gaining, really: although Bush was more of a player than a user) control of what's left of our country. I'll refrain from reiterating the argument that separation of church and state does more to protect religion (at least the religion of everyone but these guys) than any other option. Not that they care. Nor will I point out, while they decry the godlessness of the US, that numbers of people who claim belief has risen over the years, and that the US has a higher percentage of believers, more houses of worship per populous than any Western nation. All that, I'll disregard. Rather, let's talk about what kind of trouble we're in if we're indeed ruled by a god who answers prayer.

In brief: if god answers prayer, then by definition and by looking around, we are at the mercy of a capricious, nasty and/or incompetent deity. It should scare the bejesus out of us (of course, living in mortal fear is exactly what many religions, particularly the evangelical forms of Christianity, want.) Really, if one can step back and just think about it (the opposite of religious posture), there's no other conclusion.

First: the people most likely to resort to prayer are those that also believe god has a plan for us all. So how does prayer fit into that idea? If he has a plan (if, as some believe, god knows you and has it all worked out before you're even born), how can prayer be needed? Does their god change his mind? If so, was his plan flawed? Does it take your prayer to point out his error? What does that say about your imperfection, compared to his? Or is it just that he's willing to let bad things happen to you if you don't -- regardless of your means or knowledge -- stroke him first. On the other hand, didn't he know if you were going to pray or not? Omniscient is he.

Second: what good do "prayer circles" (or whatever you call what those leaders of ours were doing) do? If the likelihood of prayers being answered is dependent on the number of people praying, what about the poor soul praying like hell in the loneliness of a solitary life? Why should prayer need amplification? Is there some sort of divine punch-card? And what about the people starving around the world? Is their starvation part of a plan, or is it because they don't have enough people praying for them? Either way, it bespeaks a pretty heartless overlord, doesn't it? Sorry, man, a piddling number of prayers just don't cut it with me. And what is the magic number? Ten? Three? A hundred? If numbers matter, aren't we all potentially screwed if, in our hour of need, we can't grab a gang of grovelers? If you've fallen and you can't get up, and you don't have that little beeper thing, aren't you wasting your time? The guy likes groups.

Third: doesn't the idea of god answering prayer completely eliminate the possibility that we have free will? If god chooses to answer a certain prayer, it follows that he chooses NOT to answer the ones that, clearly, aren't being answered, by the millions, hourly. So, whether you pray or not, god is choosing the direction of every event, everywhere, at all times. Unless he's fallible, imperfect, unable to hear the prayers of everyone, or unable to control events. In which case, he falls way short of the perfection attributed to him by those doing the praying. Logically, god controls everything, or he controls nothing. There's can't be an in-between. Everything that happens is his will, or nothing is. If he CAN act, then, in all cases, he DID act. Unless he's either not there at all, or is completely hands off. In which case...

It helps to remember that George Bush told us god doesn't hear the prayers of Jews. (Wait, if he can't hear them, then he's not perfect. It must be that he hears them and says "screw you." That's better.) So I guess the correct thought is that god ignores the prayers of those that don't follow certain guidelines. (Careful, all you believers: when was the last time you stoned your son to death for insubordination? Or sacrificed a heifer, for that matter?) Which certainly explains the starving children, birth defects, school bus crashes. Bunch o' miscreants, deserved what they got. But if god knows us before we're born and has our lives mapped out, then aren't those starvations, and other miserable deaths and deformities part of his plan? In his perfection he must know each kid who's born, know their faith or lack of it, must have planned it all in advance. So their lack of proper faith was part of the plan. And that means, this god wants people to starve by the millions, die painful deaths, be born into crushing poverty, get acne and halitosis. Not to mention be Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, Muslims.

If god is perfect -- all powerful and all knowing -- then it simply can't be that prayer works. It would mean his plans are changeable or incomplete. It means you, the prayer, think you know more than the prayee. If prayer works, god is fallible. Anyone who changes his mind is, by definition, not perfect. It's only if prayer DOESN'T work that we can (sort of) maintain the concepts of perfection, omniscience, omnipotence, infallibility.

Well, it's said, god has his reasons. We can't question why the child dies of cancer, slowly, painfully. God knows all and it's all his will. We must trust in him. Okay, makes sense.

Then why the hell are we praying?

[Addendum, 1/13: Right on schedule, that despicable self-important sub-human, Pat Robertson, weighs in on Haiti. Turns out they made a pact with the devil, and that's why the earthquake happened. But he's gonna pray for them. What? A god who gets off killing 100,000 people who had nothing to do with the "pact," lots of babies and children among them -- that sort of god is going to be influenced by prayer? But you know damn well there are thousands of people -- right wing voters, all -- nodding in agreement with the (at best) illogical and (actually) evil message. Pact with the devil. Amazing. Wonder where it was, who attended, and what hors-d'-oeuvres were served.]

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