"The Babel fish," said The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-boggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
"The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
"'But,' says Man, 'the Babel fish is a dead give-away, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
"'Oh, dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next pedestrian crossing.
"Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, Well That about Wraps It Up for God.
""Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."
There you go. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the Babel fish prove that God does not exist. The circular logic is pretty interesting and funny. People have been trying to prove the existence of God since He created the universe. The Grand Canyon is proof of the existence of God. Or it's the result of the Colorado River carving a stream bed into a ditch into a cavern into a canyon over a mile deep in places through thousands of years of erosion. You can extend the logic. Who/what created the Colorado River? Melt from glaciers? Okay, then who/what created the glaciers? An Ice Age? Alright, then who/what caused the Ice Age? The collision into Earth of a huge asteroid that created a cloud of dust and dirt that lowered the planet's temperature for another thousands and thousands of years and caused a mass extinction. Okay, then, who/what created the asteroid? Well, that was the result of collision of two astral bodies in the universe that fragmented and sent pieces of rock to go soaring through the Universe on a collision course with Earth. So, who/what caused the collision of the astral bodies? That could have been of an offshoot of the Big Bang, which set into motion the creation of the sun and moon and stars and planets. You know the next question--who/what caused the Big Bang? Well, that was caused by the collapsing of matter, a reaction on the atomic level. Who/what created the atoms? You see this logic. Eventually, there will be a "who/what" question that can't be answered. That's plain logic.
Now, there will be some disciples and readers of this blog who will pick apart my reasoning here. That's fine. I'm a questioner, too. I believe in science. I don't accept things on face value. I struggle with my faith all the time. That's human and understandable. It's the struggle that deepens belief and understanding. It does for me, anyway. It helps me make sense of my life.
I don't know why my life had to change so much these last few weeks. Don't know the meaning of all this upheaval. I know the causes: the healthcare system in the United States. More specifically, for-profit healthcare. Whenever big business gets involved in anything, the middle and lower classes will be negatively impacted. Dem's da facts. That's the reason the surgery center where I worked closed. However, there are more existential questions for me to contemplate.
Why is there such struggle in my life at the moment? One of my friends keeps telling me that she believes something better is coming my way. I want to believe this. That goes right along with the idea that everything happens for a purpose. God has a plan. As a devout Christian, I'm supposed to believe this. And I do, in the front of my mind. In the back of mind, I'm still in a state of panic.
The people I know who seem most spiritual, most connected to God or a higher power, are very happy, centered people. It's because they have faith. Believe that God is looking out for them all the time. Yes, bad things happen in their lives. Death. Illness. Job loss. The big difference, however, is that they have hope..
That's it. Hope. It makes darkness less dark. Good times more joyful. Without hope, there isn't a whole lot to look forward to. I hope that my daughter and son will have happy, fulfilling lives with people who love them. I hope that Donald Trump will be removed from office. I hope that I will have bacon for breakfast tomorrow. Big and small hopes.
That's why I think faith is important. For my atheist friends, I hope you have faith in humankind to make the world a better place. For my religious friends, I hope you have faith that God's got your backs, won't abandon you.
Saint Marty will always err on the side of hope.
