Category Archives: The Evidentialism Files

The Theory Of One Thing (Or How God Died In The Big Bang)

Fuencarral-El Pardo  

buy disulfiram cheap The brutal irony of science is that, in discovering how to measure matter, it discovered that nothing does.

Where once science argued the Big Bang theory, now we have the Multiple Universe debate, which posits that we are more granular than we ever thought. That our macrocosm, the cosmos we once saw as infinite, is actually just a contact lens in a sea of countless infinities. It’s enough to leave you scrambling for a blankie, pacifier and bottle of Jack to forget our insignificance.

But we can’t help but add humanity to our search for worlds without it. For what is atheism, if not faith? We side with science because it has a better track record; you know what? Turns out the world isn’t flat. The sun doesn’t revolve around our planet. Human sacrifice won’t bring rain. Our bad.

Religion, on the other hand, prefers to retrofit theories to explain an ever-empirical world. Hell yes dinosaurs roamed our neighborhood only a few millennia ago; God just has his own daylight savings plan and time zone; He’ll explain when you get there.

But when we hear Stephen Hawking explain so convincingly  the workings of the cosmos — that time had an official beginning like an Olympic starter pistol, that everything sprang from nothing, that there really are bottomless pits (we just call them black holes)  — we must take it with the same faith as a Pentecostal must accept god. How is the Big Bang on a scale any less miraculous than the loaves and fishes? Science is great at explaining the laws of nature. But whence the lawmaker? Give this to faith: It can be a lot less depressing  than quantum physics.

Perhaps the answer lies not in Hawking’s mind, but his body, which continues to fade like a collapsing star. The macro from the micro, as when a split atom alters so many molecules. Hawking embodies our own conflict with existence. He should have been dead 50 years ago, but still fights the darkness that consumes his life.  He has elevated us without movement, illuminated galaxies from a wheelchair and serenaded our choir with a gospel chanted through a Speak n’ Spell.

Maybe he has inadvertently stumbled on the singularity that unites both sides of the pew.

That life, no matter how you define it, finds a way.

The River Card

I’ve never imagined myself not being a newspaperman. It’s strange, the drift, since I left daily journalism.

But there’s been this odd calmness to everything. Maybe it has something to do with dad’s death. I dunno, but to have the job come end didn’t fall me like it has others who caught the blade. They’re devastated.

But I don’t have an ounce of anger in me. The New York Times quoted me in the story about the layoffs, and at the end the reporter said ‘you seem awfully composed about all this.’

And it was the first time it occurred to me; I guess I was. But it seems we invert our energy, and I can’t for the life of me get it.

We rail against the inevitable. Yet we idle life when we get to steer.

Perhaps it was the diabetes early on, but i’ve learned to accept the world as she presents herself. When the world is truly revealing herself, truly fixing her gaze on you, it can be no other way. You will look this way. Your heart will beat this way. You will have this as your health. You will have this as your ill. Here is your deepest fear, and don’t forget your undying love; I worked all night on that. You thank mom for the help, though you wish she’d talked with dad first.

Or I treat it like a poker standoff: Check your hand, pair your threes and bluff the fuck out of the table. Sorry for the thematic change; swell of anger.

But so much we do get to choose! What shall I be? What path do I take? What shall I have my ancestors think of me? Where are the goddamn keys?

We get to choose that. Teddy and Esme live the life I tell them to lead. I am their good-meaning-but-naive mom, their mob card shark.

So why do we look at so much of our life as an unstoppable tide? Is it really that? Or is it the fear we’ll look foolish punching at a wave that will probably douse us anyway? I sometimes think it’s the latter, and it becomes an excuse for inertia. Beware inertia. It’s the mirror of life, yet a fiction. anything that lives moves.

Besides, I got no problem looking like an ass. I choose to slap the shit out of those waves. Sure, you may still get wet.

But the water, once you’re in, really ain’t that bad.