Is there a God?

If there is a God, who made all this, why is he bothering getting involved with such an insignificant bunch of self obsessed, self destructive, ignorant beings.

I realised, a long time ago, that religions were devised as a guide to life by people who didn't really know anything. It was better than nothing but we know a little bit more now.

I tried to find a way of describing now insignificant we were in easily understandable terms and came up with this:- I`ve tried to keep it a simple as posible.

When I was a student in the late sixties, I attended a lecture on the 'Big Bang Theory' at Durham University. There are still things we don`t understand but it gives a good account of how all things are made. Either way, the things we can see with our own eyes by looking up in the sky easily show us that we are tiny. Very, very, very tiny.

With the naked eye, there are 5,800 to 8,000 visible stars. Some are stars, some are whole galaxies. Have a look at `Google Sky` on your mobile and it will tell you which is which. Get a photomultiplier and have another look. Get a good telescope and a photomultiplier and have another look. It boggles the mind!

Take a look at a little bit of the sky and count what you can see. All you have to do then is multiply the number you can see by the size of the whole sky. Easy! Not `I read in a book...`, or `Someone told me that...`. Do it yourself.

Our galaxy, 'The Milky Way' is estimated to have 200 billion to 400 billion stars. It is estimated there are 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies in the universe.

Let`s look at the numbers...

A billion is 1,000,000,000 using the smaller, modern, US and British system. It is 1,000 times smaller than the older numbering system. It doesn't matter. The numbers are so large anyway.

Lets take the lower estimates too...

100 billion galaxies of 200 billion stars each, gives 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. If each star has a few planets and moons like ours has... Again it doesn't matter. We're not going to see them, get there, meet the residents, send them e-mails...

Our nearest star, Alpha Centuri, is 4.5 light years away. It would take 9 years to get a reply!

Light takes 4.5 years to get from Alpha Centuri to here. Light travels a 186,000 miles a second. So 186,000 * 60 (seconds) * 60 (minutes) * 24 (hours) * 365 (days) * 4.5 (years)= 26,395,632,000,000 miles.

If our spaceship accelerates at 1G (32ft/sec/sec) which is the G force we live at on Earth, which would be comfortable for us humans to accelerate. To travel to Alpha Centuri at that acceleration and decelerate at the same rate half way, would take 9,953 years.

Aliens would have the same problems travelling from there to here.

There are over 7,000,000,000 (7 billion) people on our world. If we shared all the stars out equally, we would have 3,000,000,000,000, that`s 3,000 billion, each. Makes 'God told me that bit of land is ours.' sound a bit silly.

OK. If that`s not enough to persuade you, let`s look at the time scale.

Bit of a guess now. Old Testament stuff. 'Creation' 6,000 years ago... Somebody quoted 3950 BC. The same person quoted 6 BC for the birth of Christ. 6 BC? 6 Years 'Before Christ'. Doesn't tally in my calculations, (Did he lie about his age?) but, never mind. All a bit recent.

The Grand Canyon. A rather long river, the Colorado, cuts through a bit of land and erodes it. Slowly, slowly washes away a bit of the earth as it wends its way. You can see, and understand the mechanics. Nothing magic, just slow, deliberate, erosion. 277 miles long, 1.1 miles deep and up to 18 miles wide. Again, an estimate... 5-6 million years in its formation. Some estimates put it at 17 million years. Whatever... A tadge more than the date of the 'Creation Of Everything'. More than a tadge, a thousand times longer! And, of course, the land it erodes has been there a lot longer than that. (4.5 billion years?) Somebody is lying... or has no idea about reality.

What arrogance to think that if we sing a couple of songs or whisper a few words that, somehow, some magical, mystical person, who runs this show, will make any difference to us. Dream on!

I've a copy of most of the major religious works and I've worked through them. Some are impressive, some are trivial and trite. They all lack a wider vision. We are nothing, seriously nothing, of no consequence in the greater scheme of things. If we all dissappeared tomorrow, there would be no significant change in anything. (If some lunatics in the world have their way, it will be soon!) One planet next to one sun in 20x10^21 other suns... No effect whatsoever.

So, eat drink and be merry...

Be nice to each other.

You are on your own, matey.

Get used to it.