Ever take a course on paleontology? No?


Well, you’ve heard about the dinosaurs and how they came to an abrupt end some 66 million years ago. Their extinction is the stuff of paleontology. Ditto the trilobites. And maybe billions—yes, you read that correctly—of individual species over the course of 3.8 billion years. The chance of extinction for any organism—including you—is 100%. Otherwise, you could just ask your ancestors about their place of origin instead of searching through a genealogy website for your genetic background.


That every member of every species will die is the uncomfortable information conscious organisms are forced to accept by the realities of life on Earth. That is, every conscious organism except for socialists.


The Persistence of a Political Phylum


Off and on since the ancient Greeks, the West has toyed with the idea of a risk-free society in which everyone is equal in wealth and property. And in each instance of such socialist thinking and implementation, human nature, its greed and corruptibility, its concupiscence, yes, all the vices of self-centeredness, have quashed the ideal with the weight of the real. Like all organisms, members of socialistic phyla have lived with the belief their ideal equity can cast light in the shadow of inevitable extinction and inequality. True, the phylum persists, but the classes, orders, families, genera, species, and varieties come and go, have come and gone, will come and go. That the future will produce more species of socialists is an easy prediction to make. They’ll be more Mollusca, Arthropoda, and Vertebrates, and there will be more socialists. The present is the likely predictor. Senator Bernie Sanders and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro provide the evidence. And New York 2025 mayoral candidate Mamdani punctuates the prediction. Socialists die; Socialist movements die, but as long as the phylum doesn’t on the whole go extinct, there will be more Socialists.


Survival Isn’t Just Tenuous, It Is Doomed


Why are so many young people—and a few older ones like 83-year-old Sanders—enamored of the promises of a risk-free world?


I assume they lack historical knowledge. And yes, I know Bernie Sanders studied political science in college, joined in his youth Socialist movements that no longer exist, but still sees some form of Socialism as the best alternative to Capitalism. Sanders is obviously aware of Socialism’s many failures, but seems comfortable in wanting more of them. “Down with the American oligarchs! Make them pay, but if you can’t, well, just make everyone else pay for…you name it.”


I think of biological experiments gone wrong: The Irish elk, two species of the Middle Devonian brachiopod Mucrospirifer, the Paleozoic therapsid Moschops (Gorgon)—all gone, all extinct. Nature has been a blind creator, its species creations only infrequently exceeding a four-million-year average lifespan, exceptions being critters like the horseshoe crab. Heck, our own species, the one that includes a subspecies called Homo socialensis, is less than 300,000 years-old. One could argue that the unconscious creations had built-in weaknesses and vulnerabilities like adherence to a limited environment—with that horseshoe crab exception. Given the vicissitudes of tectonics, climate, disease, volcanic eruptions, and bolide impacts (like the one that killed off the dinosaurs), one could easily argue that the deck is stacked against long term survival.


Reviving the Dead


Now consider the creations of conscious minds, Socialism in particular. Species of the phylum come and go or undergo modification: Brooke Farm, the Franciscans, the Soviet Union…. But the phylum persists by occupying the social niches the fossilized versions abandoned. Modern Socialists want to bring back the mammoth, so to speak, but in their efforts to fuse their current DNA into extinct versions, they will produce hybrids with as many vulnerabilities as their ancestral lineage had, weaknesses that led to their alteration or extinction.


Socialism is vulnerable from within and without as the fall of the Soviet Union revealed. Written into the DNA of any species of Socialism is an innate economic failure and dissatisfaction of its members tired of the bureaucratic overreach and corruption. The destruction of the Berlin Wall is a marker of an “extinction event” as much as are the fossilized remains of the Moschops that succumbed to the Permian Great Dying Event.


Paleontology teaches a valuable lesson, one that Bernie Sanders and other Socialists should learn: No infusion of current DNA in a failed system will make a difference. Inevitably the human world into which Socialists wish to insert risk-free living will stamp out the new species or the revitalized one. If you don’t believe me and think that Socialism works, demonstrate your conviction by giving away all you have by throwing it into a common treasure overseen by some individual or group you trust. Put everything into a pervasive government bureaucracy under the control of bureaucrats.


What could go wrong? What could go extinct?

I: Can you draw a perfect geometric figure?


You: Depends on what you mean by perfect. I know I can draw one in my mind.


I: And that’s the key: In the mind. I would hazard that no physical drawing mechanism and no actual drawer could produce a perfect geometric figure because geometry assumes lines have no thickness. And any angle you might draw has only a degree of approximation since physical lines drawn by a person or even by a machine would vary in thickness, no matter how fine the pen point or sharp the pencil. But we’re used to such approximations of what we hold mentally as perfect. In that regard, we’re Platonists, accepting a “reality” for ideal geometric figures.”


You: Okay, if not geometric figures, how about mathematical precision and perfection?


I: For example, Planck’s length?


You: Yes.


I: It’s really small, supposedly so small there’s nothing smaller than 1.616255(18)×10−35 m. But in my limited understanding, I believe that measure depends on the length of a meter. Sixty some years ago a meter was 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of orange-red light, in a vacuum, produced by burning the element krypton (Kr-86).  In 1984, the Geneva Conference on Weights and Measures defined the meter as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 seconds with time measured by a cesium-133 atomic clock. Seems pretty accurate, right?


You: Good enough for me.


I: I agree. Good enough, but it makes my point here and one I have made elsewhere. What’s the level of resolution, what’s the pixel count of refinement we accept as an ultimate guide? Does your TV give you what your eyes give you during your walk through a flower garden? My TV screen seems to give a very clear image, but it’s five years old. When I installed it, I was astounded by its clarity and color intensity that surpassed the 2005 model I watched for 15 years. Walking past a TV store, I saw a more recent model that surpassed the clarity of my newer TV. The difference reminded me of my recent cataract surgery after which everything I saw was brighter and edges more defined, and all the colors more intense. I see a world more accurately than I saw it for years. Put me in front of an eye chart and ask me to read the smallest letters, and I’ll say, “Printed in USA.”
     But I'm overstating my point. 


You: Which is?


I: It’s that point underlain by my statement on perfect geometric figures, the length of a meter, and a TV screen’s resolution: Much in our lives is approximation. Much is a matter of interpretation, application, and appropriateness. I’ll stick with math for one more example: Why do we have decimal points? Accuracy, correct? But look at the Planck length. What if I were to stop at 1.6.


“I’d say, “Not good enough.”


I: And I would agree. For mathematical, that is, quantitive, accuracy, we want lots of places to the right of the decimal point. And short of running those places to infinity, we settle on a limit like hundredths, or hundred millionths, or trillionths, and so on. We say, “Accurate enough” according to our purposes and goals and go on with our lives in the security that we have an understanding. People in a lab need more accuracy than people in a kitchen. People in a lab can’t use a measurement like “a pinch of salt” because it lacks precision.”


You: Sure.


I: The language of math provides accuracy through decimal points and fractions. In contrast, language doesn’t because words have various meanings, often dependent on their delivery and context. I remember a college English professor defining poetry as ‘efficient language.’ Yet, if you read literary critics’ interpretation of the words ‘Here buckle’ in one of the recognized great poems, ‘The Windhover’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins, you’ll see various interpretations. So, how accurate is poetry? How precise? Pretty much every scientist would say the Planck length is the ultimate measurement, the ultimate level of accuracy, especially if coupled with the Planck time—really short, the time it takes for a photon to travel the Planck length. So, we interpret language, but we usually exclude interpretation from our most precise measurement systems as long as their quantities are useful, such as using International Units, milligrams, and micrograms for dosages of substances like vitamins and pain killers.


You: This all adds to…?


I: The need for accurate interpretation. Take sign language as an example. Elon Musk’s raising his arm to acknowledge a political crowd was for Democrats a chance to accuse him of being a Nazi. Hakim Jeffries did the same gesture, but the same group saw no parallel to the Nazi salute. And that’s where we are with words. No matter what you mean, today someone will interpret it differently or twist your meaning for ideological or political reasons, too often to fuel hate for whatever you support and by extension, for you.


You: I know that. That’s why I’m careful not to say something offensive.


I: But there’s no agreed upon measure of what is offensive.


You: I see…


I: And then there’s the interpretation of implications. Obviously, the Iranian leaders did not interpret or infer well with regard to Trump’s statement that they should negotiate. Somehow they didn’t accept that in regard to threats against Americans and the ramifications of those threats, the President says what he means. They didn’t get either the implied message or the direct one that they would not get an atomic bomb. Now, some of those leaders are still misinterpreting the President, as they say they will close the Strait of Hormuz.


You: I saw that. Dumb. How will they sell their own oil to the Chinese?


I: Thus the importance of accurate language. There is, however a lesson in precision they could have learned in a single night.


You: What’s that.


I: The US can put 14 30,000-lb bombs in a very precise zone, not as small as the Planck length, but definitely as small as an air vent for an underground nuclear facility. So, whereas what one says should be as accurate as one can make it, what one hears should be interpreted as accurately as possible.          

Whatever your stance is on sentencing in the American justice system, I’m betting that you hold one principle: People who commit violent crimes against other people or who destroy or take the property of others should be punished in some form.


And Now A Reference to a Cartoon by Gary Larson.


In one Gary Larson’s single-panel cartoons, a dog has its paws on a steering wheel. In the panel a policeman is leaning over the passenger side of a car, where the passenger, holding something that looks like a leash, says, “Hey, I’m not crazy… Sure, I let him drive once in a while, but he’s never, never off this leash for even a second.”


That’s Oregon. Alissa Azar, found guilty of riot and second-degree disorderly conduct related to a 2021 clash with Proud Boys in Oregon, received two weeks (cut to a week, I believe) in jail and three years of probation with specific restrictions regarding body armor and complying with law enforcement orders to disperse. Yep. She’s on a leash. Hey, Alissa,  I thought we told you to disperse. Alissa, please move along. Alissa, I’m not going to say this again. Alissa, I said break it up. Move.


That’s New York. “The Tompkins County Sheriff’s Office in Ithaca, NY, a self-described sanctuary city, appears to have failed to honor a valid federal arrest warrant for Jesus Romero-Hernandez, 27, a criminal alien with an assault conviction,” said Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove. “Yesterday, despite the warrant, a defendant with no legal status and a history of violence was released into the community.” Yep. Leash…er…Jesus! Jesus! Come back here, Jesus. Here, Jesus, here! Jesus. Back here, Jesus.  Now! Oh! Thanks, ICE-ERO for apprehending Jesus Romero-Hernandez. Thanks also, U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

​Having a dog drive while on a leash is still having a dog drive the car.

Bear with me on this if you think I’m just repeating what I wrote on 6/29/2019 in an essay called “The Presence of the Present vs. the Presence of the Past.” * In that essay centered on examples drawn from weather events, I noted that for those lost in nostalgic revery, wrathful grudges, and pining regret, their personal past is, if not more important, equally important as the present. In the essay I ask, “Which is worse? A present discomfort that is temporary or a past discomfort that is permanent?” The context for the statement lies in how we think of discomfort caused by weather.  But the question is also relevant in the context of political history and media-driven sensationalism, seemingly an unrelated phenomenon, but bear with me, as I pleaded above.


Remembering without Feeling vs. with Feeling


Surely, you have experienced the discomfort of some kind of foul weather: Heat waves, cold spells, driving winds carrying dust or rain, high humidity, or heavy snow. And surely, you can’t feel what you felt during those weather events. Their past actuality has, I would guess, no effect on your present emotions or comfort. Weather phenomena come and go daily, but you do hold some events in memory, that is, in memory dissociated from what you felt “back then.” Of course, there could be exceptions in which memory and feeling intertwine, such as a snowstorm during which you suffered a wreck or lost someone in an accident on slippery roads or a tornado that wreaked havoc on your community. But generally, old weather is unfelt weather. You remember it, but you don’t “feel” in the memory.


The Persistence of What Didn’t Happen: False Memories or Feeling without Remembering


Like many, I have a few personal pet peeves. One is the saying, “We were almost in that accident.” It’s bothersome to me because the speaker wasn’t in the accident. Nothing happened. But some make much of what wasn’t. Keep that in mind.


I ended that 2019 essay on memory, weather, grudges, nostalgia, and regret with this sentence: “For many, the presence of the past can be worse than the presence of the present.” And here I would like to add a corollary in the context of the recent No Kings Day protests and in particular a video of a 74-year-old woman crying because of her fears, undefined fears, unsupported fears, that something bad will happen to her, again something undefined… ** In light of the protests and her trembling, which you can see on YouTube, I thought to repost a blog I wrote in 2019 on weather, not because of my comments on weather, but rather because of my concluding sentence.


The Past When Trump Personally Exiled Old Women


How’s that heading grab you?


Of course, if you have any sense or historical knowledge, you’d say, “That’s not true. Trump never exiled old American women, never threw innocent Americans in jail. In fact, it was the Left that drummed up false claims of Russian Collusion, arrested Trump, crashed Mar a Lago with armed agents with permission to shoot to kill in a raid on the house guarded by Secret Service, and prosecuted Trump in a show trial for non-crimes all based on sheer hatred of Trump. And in his four-year first term, he did nothing that could be logically shown to have subverted the Constitution.


But the Press just can’t let their TDS go. And they have politicians on their side to pervert the truth about “peaceful protestors” only reacting to violent government agents.


I’m reminded of Miami in 1980. While doing research during a sabbatical, I had moved my family to Miami, where I woke each morning to the Miami Herald. After reading issues over a period of months, I told my family, the editors seem to want to sow discord in the community. And then in late spring, that discord manifested itself in riots. It seems that reporters love discord, and that love is especially endemic in today’s liberal media, as reporters report live with fires raging in the background as they say “peaceful protest, peaceful protestors.” Or they echo “No one would be violent if the Feds weren’t here.”


Back to that tearful woman. I’m not sure how one goes 74 years without running into the truth that refutes the liberal narratives. But this woman appears to have escaped reality and has allowed the hysteric TDSers to plague her hippocampus with false memories. She cries in the interview that she is just so scared and that she doesn’t know how people could have voted for “that man.” Ah! The bubble of liberal California envelopes many, and the paid protestors have easily convinced others to join in destruction, looting, and attacking police and just as easily convinced that woman that she’s in imminent danger. Such is the power of the Press and false memories.


Actually, I don’t feel sorry for the woman whose crying went viral, and I have—sorry for the inhumanity here—no empathy for those who cry, “I was almost in that accident.” Nor do I have any empathy for a liberal relative of mine who said twenty years ago she was very worried about global warming. Twenty years on, what has changed in the atmosphere that cannot be attributed to natural phenomena, cycles, manipulated data, and urbanization tied to deforestation? Twenty years on, she still lives as she lived before she became concerned about climate. No changes in affluent lifestyle! I suppose she will wait for climatologist Greta Thunberg to save the planet after she is done saving Palestinians.   


You know The Eagles song, “Get over it”? What didn’t happen, didn’t happen. Four previous years of a Trump term didn’t jeopardize the Constitution as four years of a Biden term did with violations of the Fourteenth Amendment, refusals to enforce laws as in the case of those who tried to intimidate and threaten Supreme Court Justices, armed arrests of Pro-lifers, the government sponsored shutdown of the free speech of conservatives, or FBI agents asked to spy on Catholics who attended Latin Masses. Where was the 74-yr-old when parents were called domestic terrorists because they questioned school boards? Where was she when teenage girls were forced to change clothes with teenage boys or to share bathrooms with them? Come on, 74-year-old lady, tell me you would feel more threatened by whatever caused your public crying than by having a man next to you in the women’s restroom.


The presence of false and selective memories is a plague on the mind. The past that didn’t happen is not a threat to the present. Get over it, lady; and while you are out there crying about Trump, turn around to see the people throwing rocks and fireworks at police, National Guardsmen, and Marines. Start living in the present, the actual present, not a false past projected into the present.


*https://thisisnotyourpracticelife.com/blog/the-presence-of-the-present-vs-the-presence-of-the-past

**See YouTube under the title “74-Year-Old Woman Breaks Down in Tears at “No Kings” Protest #NoKingsDay”

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have noted the extreme forms of Trump Derangement Syndrome, antisemitism, and public inflammatory statements by Democrat politicians—except for PA Sen. John Fetterman. You’ll also have noted the videoed destruction of public and private property that for whatever reason the Democrat leaders seem to either ignore, minimize, or encourage.


Anarchy’s Babies


America’s battle with anarchists goes back more than a century to people like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman who advocated for no laws, no state, no… Basically, just plain no societal order. The lasting offspring of their efforts is an adamant stance on free speech that many Americans uphold—with exceptions, of course.


Somewhat ironically, academia’s liberals have over the past decade imposed a ban on free speech applicable to conservative speakers only, making some notable schools “safe zones” for politically correct speech, that is, for Leftist thought, and unsafe zones for conservative thought. I’m not alone in saying this. According to a survey by the CATO Institute, “Two-thirds (66%) of Americans say colleges and universities aren’t doing enough to teach young Americans today about the value of free speech.” * In this regard, “Two-thirds (65%) say colleges need to discipline students who disrupt invited speakers and prevent them from speaking.” Probably, such a stance is more likely a Rightest view, but then the kerfuffles over speakers has been largely driven by speaking appearances of conservatives.


Banning free speech by conservatives has engendered a reaction and intensified a dichotomy in America driven by stereotyping of both sides by the other. The siblings opposed to one another have resulted in name-calling. One notable stereotype is that Liberals appear to frame modern conservatives as Nazis, an ironic designation since a demonstrable set of policies and actions aimed to quash the free speech of conservatives has been the modus operandi of the Left. Think of social media shutdowns of conservatives over COVID, ProLife, and Hunter’s laptop, for examples.


Another offspring of Goldman and Berkman is a reckless abandonment of reasoned argument and its sibling of fecklessness in elected officials mostly in Blue states like California, Washington, Oregon, and New York. Such weakness has allowed the reign of anarchists in cities like Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles, where long-standing businesses have been looted and shut down, their innocent business owners suffering losses because of liberal policies and inaction. That historic fact is the context for the recent viral press conference of Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey, who said his officers would respond to molotov cocktails and other dangers by killing the perpetrators “graveyard dead.” Again, anarchy seems to have produced twins with radically different views on free speech and its forms of expression. It seems to me to be reasonable that the forces of societal order have a right to defend themselves against fire bombs, but the ACLU released a statement that the sheriff’s remarks about violent protesters were an attack on all free speech even though the sheriff had prefaced his remarks with their context, that is, the violence in LA and other places.


The Liberal Press appears to have no commonsense in covering anarchists’ actions as long as it is aimed at capitalists, Trump, and Apple stores, calling the vandalism and violent protests “mostly peaceful.” Recall the Occupy Wall Street” movement that saw some 700 serious crimes, including rape, with favorable coverage whereas the Tea Party protests with seven misdemeanors had unfavorable coverage.


No Kings Day


Interviews with “no kings” protestors reveal what other interviews during large Leftist-driven protests have revealed: Inarticulate protestors that cannot detail their motives. “Trump thinks he’s a king” appears to have its supporters in the liberal media, its pundits apparently angry because the president has promised to eliminate waste, abuse, and fraud. The liberals and anarchists apparently would support the fraudulent use of their taxes as occurred recently. The Dept. of Justice’s recent press release bears this title: “USAID Official and Three Corporate Executives Plead Guilty to Decade-Long Bribery Scheme Involving Over $550 Million in Contracts; Two Companies Admit Criminal Liability for Bribery Scheme and Securities Fraud.” USAID. Isn’t that the charitable agency that feeds the hungry and tends to the sick in other countries?


Definitely worth protesting, right? Definitely the work of a “king.” Definitely a motive to destroy someone else’s property and to attack police.


The offspring of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman would tear down civilization in favor of…hmnnn, in favor of what?


In defense of those business owners who have lost their businesses or suffered damage to their properties, I’m calling for a No Anarchists Day.






*https://www.cato.org/survey-reports/state-free-speech-tolerance-america#overview The State of Free Speech and Tolerance in America.

A Nun (F, for “Faith”) and an atheist (A, Ivy League physicist) Continue Their 6/5/25 Discussion on “the Unexplained.”

A: Sister, glad you had the time to meet. I’ve already ordered your coffee.
F: Why, thank you. But we’ll go “Dutch” on the bill.
A: I’ve been thinking about those questions you posed and your last statement about fine tuning as an argument for God. And I have some objections and answers. First off, you seem to assume there’s only one universe, the one we’re in.
F: Meaning?
A: Multiverse. If they number as much as the math says they do, then this is just by chance a universe fine tuned for life to exist.
F: You’re sure your multiverse hypothesis is valid?
A: Yes.
F: And your proof rests on…
A: The math, definitely the math.
F: So, your reality is a set of equations. You have proof of other universes? You have any way of actually experiencing them, experimentally or observationally?
A: Working on it. String theory…
F: I understand that on paper string theory makes sense, but I’m a believer in Feynman’s statement that however sound a theory is, if it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.
A: Well, okay, then let me address your fine tuned universe another way. You apply a selection bias that is circular. You say the universe is fine tuned because we are here to think about it and to observe it. That’s circular reasoning as I see it. You might find that conscious observers exist under radically different parameters in a universe with a different balance of forces and particles. So, your circular argument rests on an assumption that only under these circumstances, the conditions in which we find ourselves, can life, especially conscious life, exist. But when you look at life on Earth, you find there are many forms, many phyla, and life appears to have originated shortly after the bombardment of planetesimals ceased about 3.8 billion years ago.
F: Apparently, life has a long history, that is primitive, bacterial life has a long history. But it arose only because conditions were favorable. And as far as fine tuning goes, it’s a more fundamental argument. Not only would bacteria not have formed if the forces weren't balanced as they are, but  also the very substances from which bacteria and all life formed would not exist. With weaker gravity and electromagnetism, weaker strong nuclear force, everything falls apart. Stronger gravity does just the opposite.
A: Again, only in this universe.
F: So your chief argument against a fine tuned universe fine tuned by God is a mathematical construct called the multiverse and the argument that given an indefinite number of monkeys with an indefinite number of keyboards, those animals could peck out a sonnet by Shakespeare. But you also then argue for an indefinite amount of time. Now consider that life is a bit more complex than a sonnet, that Shakespeare the living being was more complex than any of his sonnets or plays. If the earliest life in the fossil record appeared 3.6 billion  or 3.7 years ago, it took three billion years to get multicellular life and another 600 million years to get primates that could reason, and within that group of primates, a few million years to get civilization and critters like us who could discuss our existence. And then, considering the tenuous hold we have on our existence, in fact, the tenuous hold all life has, then what do you do with the probability that Earth will be uninhabitable in less than a billion more years? If we are the universe conscious of itself and it took a delicate balance for us to exist, then there is some fine tuning…So, the random rise of conscious life would appear in other universes just by chance?
A: No, no, no. Life adapts. Yes, it takes time to adapt, I’ll admit, but life adapts. Consider the largely anoxic early Earth in which anaerobic life existed. During the Great Oxidation Event a couple of billion years ago, aerobic life evolved, leading to you. It adapts with imperfections, but nevertheless, adapts. Whatever the physical circumstances of this universe, life has adapted to it here on 
Earth. 
F: Again, in a universe that allows for adaptation.
A: Well, then consider that the universe is what it is because it manifests the only way a universe with life could exist. It’s a product of a logical or mathematically consistent system. This is the only way the universe could have arisen; there’s no need for God. Quantum effects produce virtual particles in a vacuum.
F: Virtual particles? And how do they become “real particles”?
A: Virtual particles can become real under conditions where energy is supplied to the quantum field. If enough energy is injected, it turns them into real particles that obey all conservation laws.
F: And you’ve seen this?
A: Well, no, not actually, but it makes perfect sense because virtual particles are anomalies, breakups, disturbances in quantum fields. They could turn into photons.
F: And how do the photons then turn into matter?
A: Uh…
F: Let me guess. There are still undiscovered reasons—call them Laws, if you want—that act as controls. Even the constants of the universe, in your mind, probably are what they are because of some underlying control you have yet top discover…
A: Not bad. But essentially, yes, that’s what I would argue. I might also say that the fine tuning you refer to could be an illusion, a product of wishful thinking. First you say there is a God, and then you support your foregone conclusion by finding anything that fits into the scenario of a Creator creating by fiat.
F: And yet, you accept the Big Bang and a universe the size of a subatomic particle arriving into existence from nothing and a time before time, a No-Time, to which I could not add any modifier, such as “eternal,” “previous.” So, from a time before time, sorry, from timelessness we “suddenly” got time. I use the air quotes because there could be no such designation in timelessness.
A: Look, sister, it seems to me that you want to insert God into our knowledge gaps. We’re still working on deterministic and natural explanations for the world as it is. We’ve made great progress over the last four or five centuries, so assume that now we are getting closer to understanding how everything works. We know about atoms and quantum effects, we know why it rains or snows, and we know why the Sun shines. Give us some time, and we’ll figure out the deeper laws. We’re gaining knowledge and understanding at a rate akin to computing power. Who would have thought when Arthur Clarke was writing 2001, that we would have an AI similar to HAL. And advances in quantum computing will help us get to those still hidden underlying Laws.
F: But look at what you are after.
A: What? I thought I just told you.
F: You are pursuing finer and finer tuning almost to the point of infinite regress. The macro world is dependent, you say, on the micro world that is dependent on the atto world, that is dependent on…See what I mean? You essentially say you want further levels of resolution, you want a television with trillions of pixels, maybe hundreds of trillions of pixels. But you’ll still not be satisfied. You could easily say, “I think I’ve seen enough to say there’s an unexplained order in the universe and a number of unexplained phenomena, but everything is working relatively well. All is pretty much fine tuned.” Why not admit that fine tuning is your target. It’s what you want to understand.
A: Hmnn. I hadn’t thought it that way.
F: I think your atheism is a cultural thing. If you said you believed in a Creator, your physicist colleagues would probably ostracize you.
A: No, I came to the conclusion there is no God long ago. The universe doesn’t need one. And its parameters are the product of necessity more than of design
F: Whoa. Necessity? A need? Aren’t you getting a bit anthropic when you say “need”? Isn’t that potentially more subjective when one throws consciousness into the mix. Sure, plants need carbon dioxide, sunlight, and water to thrive. But why would a universe need anything if it was random? Now I see your arguments against a fine tuning Designer boiling down to first, we observe the universe because we observe it; second, there are so many universes that at least one of them, ours, is just right for life; third, life has thrived in there universe because it adapted to the universe as it is; fourth, fine tuning is an illusion; there are deeper explanations that are naturalistic, and those explanations will fill in the gaps in our knowledge.
A: That about sums it up.
F: And yet, those persistent mysteries seem to endlessly evade understanding and explanation. Plus, we know that on a practical level, no matter what chemicals and energy we put into a system, we can’t make life. Certainly can’t make intelligent, self aware life. I think I’m more comfortable with my beliefs than with yours. And yes, let me not have to explain that mush of what you hold as objective is really reliant on assumption. You assume a universe without a Creator; I assume one with a Creator. Could I be wrong? Maybe. But mystery kept me intrigued. The ability of intelligence to do little more than Douglas Adams’ Deep Thought Computer in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when it proclaims that “42” is the answer to everything, Everything with a capital E, makes me think that reliance on purely mathematical explanations or even logic can fall short of meaning.
A: As usual, sister, you’ve given me a few things to think through. Will acknowledge that science is fit neither to prove nor disprove God’s existence. Faith is the antithesis of science.
F: No, surety is the antithesis science.
A: Aren’t you sure in your faith?
F: Yes. Aren’t you sure in your science?
A: But you have other problems. Does a timeless God interfere with his universe?
F: Do you mean Divine Intervention? Yes.
A: But if the Creator is eternal and the world is temporal, how does that happen?
F: What did I just say about mystery? Hey, I’m sorry. I have to go to Vespers.
A: Until next time then… Wait! I just thought of something.
F: What?
A: The Mandelbrot set, you know, fractals. Roger Penrose argues that the Mandelbrot set is not a subjective invention. It exists in a Platonic sense, in a world not manufactured by the human mind. Just a minute. I have his book in my backpack. Let me see…Here it is. Penrose says that there can be objectivity and that the Mandelbrot set demonstrates it. “The set has an extraordinary elaborate structure, but it is not of any human design…The set is just objectively there in the mathematics itself. If it has meaning to assign an actual existence to the Mandelbrot set, then that existence is not within our minds, for no one can fully comprehend the set’s endless variety and unlimited complication.” He got on to say that not even computers can do more than capture mere approximations to the set. The set’s existence, he argues, lies within the Platonic world of mathematical forms. From what you once said about following Augustine of Hippo’s Neoplatonic argument that God created the potential for forms to exist, justifying evolution, I’d guess you would accept the objectivity of the Mandelbrot set. * So, maybe the universe has an objective underlying order that doesn’t require a deity of any kind.
F: Or, maybe mathematical order is one of the designs. I’m not going to argue that there is no objective realty. I think a designed Cosmos would have objective existence, things for us to know, touch, analyze, and that would include the physical constants like Planck’s.
A: We definitely haven’t exhausted this topic.
F: I’ll pray for understanding.
A: I’ll experiment and observe for understanding.


*Taken from Penrose, Roger. 2004. The Road to Reality: A Complete guide to the Laws of the Universe. New York. Vintage Books. Pp.16, 17 and 83, 84. You can see images of the Mandelbrot set online at https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=mandelbrot+set&qpvt=mandelbrot+set&form=IGRE&first=1

“All Things are calm” in LA now
Says Karen Bass with furrowed brow.
The problem is that ICE is here.
It’s sowing hate and sowing fear,
Assaulting those we hold most dear.
The people that the Feds arrest
Reside in peace and do their best
To live among the rest of us.
Yet, ICE loads each upon a bus,
Deporting some now just because
They’re both illegal AND broke our laws.
Sure, some have done some frightful act
Like rape and murder; that’s a fact.
But politicians show their ire
And now blame ICE LA’s on fire,
As masked marauders toss their bricks
And break some windows with their sticks.
The Governor, too, now does protest,
And blames the Feds for the unrest.
The Guard has now been mobilized
As Trump, in charge, has authorized.
“I’ll sue the Feds,” the governor says.
“Trump is a Nazi and not the Pres.
“He thinks he simply can dictate
“And then determine LA’s fate.
“All Angelinos lived in peace
“Till Holman came, sent in police.
“The city will not be the same
“If Feds continue down this path
“As Angelinos rise in wrath.”
And Maxine Waters shows her ire
And blames the Feds for any fire.


This summer will now rank in fame
With 2020; they’re both the same.
Officials claim “It’s all just fun”
While business owners duck and run.
The anarchists will join the fray
To add more turmoil every day.
They’ll agitate and burn some cars
And soon be praised by movie stars
Who’ll say they stand against Don Trump,
“The guy’s a Fascist and a rump.”
They’d rather LA harbored gangs.
And as for Trump, “We hope he hangs.
“He surely is the crim’nal here
“The Don’s the one we all should fear
“With all his talk of right and wrong
“Deporting Joe’s illegal throng.”


So, California turns to ash
As Feds with anarchists now clash
And politicians play their game
To deflect from any fault or blame.
Their policies they still defend
“No Fed will ever apprehend
“Illegals that we hold in jail,
“We’d rather see Tom Holman fail.”

Two immediate takeaways: There are both people intent on doing you harm and people who accidentally do you harm.


Irish Potato Famine of 1846-
  
In 1840s Ireland, the oomycete (a fungus-like eukaryote) called Phytophthora infestans spread as a potato blight that caused a countrywide famine. * A million people died as the famine was exacerbated by laws requiring other foods that might have mitigated mass starvation to be sent to England. As the famine deaths mounted, Irish emigrated, and in rough numbers Ireland lost about a quarter of its population. Could such a famine occur in the US?


“No,” you say. “The government will protect us. The world’s food supply is interlocked. We will have Chilean bass and Mexican avocados, tomatoes, and strawberries, Guatemalan bananas and melons, Thai rice, Canadian wheat, potatoes, ham, and maple syrup, faraway New Zealand’s dairy products, and other foods we import. There would have to be a collapse of many agricultural systems for famine to occur.”
  
But what if we humans are intent on self destruction? Why otherwise would we have had a Chinese lab releasing a dangerous pathogen?


“An error,” you say. “Not an intentional release. You are a conspiracy theorist. Why would a lab under control of the Chinese military purposefully release the pathogen?”


Suspicions Aside, Nevertheless…


Maybe so, but the intent to study the pathogen under less than the most secure facility and under the watch of an adversarial military regime makes me, if not you, suspect that evil was afoot. But if you say, “No, it was an accidental release,” I’ll counter with, “Destructive stupidity gone wild. Is your memory too short to relive those days of imposed in-home captivity and economic shutdowns? You realize that there are still masked paranoid people walking around in stores, people still too frightened to breathe in public?”


What’s Next?


And now another potential release of a serious threat to life. The NY Post’s headline reads “Chinese researcher in alleged plot to smuggle crop-killing fungus into US will remain in custody while seeking private counsel.” ** Crop-killing fungus! Obviously, this plant pathogen could threaten the lives of millions.


A Chinese plot? Was COVID a Chinese plot? What is the motive of Yunqing Jian, 33, a researcher at the University of Michigan, and her boyfriend 34-year-old Zunyong Liu who was caught trying to enter the country with samples of Fusarium graminearum, the fungus? Was she trying to save mankind or destroy it through famine? What might have happened intentionally or accidentally had the smuggling operation not been stopped?


What’s to be gained? COVID killed an unknown number of Chinese plus seven million worldwide. Even if Jian’s intention was to counter the fungus by developing a species specific fungicide, she and her boyfriend tried to bring it into the country in a suitcase. Sure! No suitcase has ever been lost or stolen in an airport. Can anyone say, “Sam Brinton”? *** And, of course, no vehicle has ever been in an accident that has released toxins into the environment just as you never spilled a drink. Can anyone say, “East Palestine, Ohio train wreck”?


Crop failures beget famine as history has shown. So, what’s the purpose of smuggling a crop-killing fungus into the United States? But let’s give Jian some breathing room. Maybe she was legitimately interested in developing counter measures to the fungus. (Or maybe she is an agent of an adversarial government, the same government that has allegedly provided cartels with fentanyl)


Whatever her intention, Jian was willing to jeopardize the food supply of millions, and since many US agricultural products are shipped overseas, those millions could be Asians, even Chinese. As we learned with COVID, bird flu, and other epidemics, once a pathogen gets into the environment, it is difficult to stop its spread.  It’s a lesson that should be learned: if COVID was an intentional release, it backfired on the researchers. If it was an accidental release…


*https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/scientists-finally-pinpoint-the-pathogen-that-caused-the-irish-potato-famine-71084770/


**https://nypost.com/2025/06/05/us-news/chinese-researcher-in-alleged-plot-to-smuggle-crop-killing-fungus-into-us-will-remain-in-custody-while-seeking-private-counsel/


***https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Brinton  Brinton stole luggage more than once according to Wikipedia.

Surely, you have experienced some mystery, an encounter, an event, even possibly an object that you have never fully explained. I think most humans have.


I think of a fish, peering just above the water line while keeping gills submerged. Not that the act is a conscious one, a planned movement driven by curiosity about what exists in a forbidden world, but rather is an accidental brief encounter across a forbidden boundary with whatever the fish observes being unintelligible, akin to a phantasm yet very much tangible as any fished fish knows as the fisherman removes the hook and tosses it onto the ice that also keeps the beer cold.


I’ve seen fish jump out of water to escape predators like dolphins swimming up tidal creeks in South Carolina, herding the fish landward during high tide before those same dolphins retreat to the sea as the water ebbs. The brief visit to the world of air gives the fish a possible escape from the harsh reality of the persistent world of predation populated by dolphins and larger fish. Pelagic flying fish also escape predators by visiting the atmosphere and gliding with rigid pectoral fins, their view of our world limited to the length of their glide that some say can last more then ten seconds.


Out of Our Element


We are in some ways like fish that have rarely peeked above the water when we have an occasional inexplicable experience. In spite of intellectual capabilities that separate us from fish, we are similar to them in our inability to convey strange experiences to others. I envision a fish returning to its watery world where other fish scoff at the tale of a different dimension the way polygon characters in Edwin Abbott Abbott’s novel Flatland scoff at one of their kindred two-dimensional beings who experiences a third dimension and attempts to explain that strange extra dimension.


Enter the Haughty


Have you ever discussed God with an atheist, maybe an Ivy League theoretical physicist who holds that design in the universe is not an indication of nor proof of a Designer? You might be one of those fish who has seen the world above the ocean or a Flatland Square who has seen a Sphere, but your intellectual opponent, intractable in his stance, is not only skeptical, but also derisive.


Let’s dream up a friendly conversation between a person of faith (F) and an atheist (A). Make the latter an Ivy League theoretical physicist and the former an erudite nun.


A: Humpf. Faith. Can’t account for it scientifically unless you want me to go neurological and say that as the brain seeks meaning, it finds it in a hypothetical orderliness. Chaos underlies insecurity. Finding order, finding design is the job of brains. We have an innate desire to find patterns. Patterns, I say, give meaning to the world. Life is all about finding and living in patterns. We have discovered the Standard Model of the universe by identifying all the quantum particles that fit into the pattern of the model. The world as we know it derives from the interactions of the basic constituents like quarks and other subatomic entities all constrained by the fundamental forces like electromagnetism. There’s no need to ascribe the world to the work of a Creator. There’s no science of God, only science of the world from its tiniest components to its largest, from neutrinos to galaxies, and maybe eventually to Dark Matter. There’s no need to go back to the world run by a Prime Mover. We can discover, observe, and quantify patterns in our daily lives.


F: There’s no reason to think a person of faith needs a scientific explanation of God though the argument from design is more difficult to refute than you probably think. I think believers and unbelievers continuously argue at cross purposes and from incompatible premises. You want to argue for a logic of the scientific view because it fits into your model. But that’s a bit circular because it’s the model that supports itself. You’re in a Kurt Gödel trap; you have underlying axioms that are incapable of self-proof. You have a Standard Model of the universe that you use to explain the Standard Model, but you theorists admit that even though gravity is one of the fundamental forces, it doesn’t fit into the model.


A: Not yet, but we’re working on it. I think we will have a quantum gravity explanation soon, and then the model will be complete, and it will reveal an order that derives from purely natural causes. The universe is merely the product of random fluctuations of quantum stuff writ large. There is no scientific or testable way to prove there is a God. All patterns can be explained as responses to the fundamental forces of Nature or as machinations of brains. Brains seek patterns as I said. We know that from both experiment and daily experience. Given a partial picture of someone you know, your brain fills in the rest to complete your identification. Similarly, your brain through your senses gives you a big picture; your eyes, for example, have a blind spot that obscures a part of any scene. Your brain fills in the gaps. You are a pattern maker even when no pattern exists. Responses to optical illusions demonstrate that. Mirages demonstrate that.


F: You argue that given enough time and numerous experiments, you will understand the universe, but there’s much that lies in darkness. For example, you haven’t figured out definitively whether math is invented or discovered. You haven’t tied pure math to the physical world. And to me it means that you recognize different kinds of worlds, and I’m not talking about dimensions. There’s a mental world, the one in which there are mathematical entities that seem to have no practical use: Number theory, for example. There’s a physical world that seems to have many practical uses but that lacks full explanations, such as the origin of life, the origin of RNA, and the origin and working of DNA. We know that seeds turn into plants, but do we know why this process occurred? In fact, that is the question for the mental and physical worlds: Why? Sure, you can say why a sun shines, but that’s a secondary answer. We can know the “what’s” and “hows” for much of our universe’s components, but we really don’t know the ultimate “whys.” That is, we don’t know unless we accept your randomness. But there’s more I’d add on this. The very method of understanding might be flawed. Morris Kline makes a point in this regard. I’d like to paraphrase from his Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty. Math which you would argue enables you to “objectively describe Nature” might be an effective “tool,” but we don’t know why it is effective.
    You atheistic types might learn something from Kline’s work because you regard math as…


A: Whoa, “atheistic types”? Sorry, Sister, but that seems uncharacteristic of you. That won’t move this conversation anywhere. What if I say, “You believer types”?


F: It’s I who should apologize for falling into a stereotype and ad hominem argument. I get your point. There are probably as many different kinds of atheism as there are kinds of faiths. Okay, I’ll not make any more assumptions about your “beliefs” and…


A: Beliefs?


F: Well, yes, “beliefs.” You believe there is no God, but you really can’t use your own methodologies and epistemology to “prove” there is no God.


A: Good point. I guess I do rely on “absence of evidence” as my proof.


F: Let me go back a bit to Kline’s work. Mathematical explanations underlie Relativity, quantum mechanics, string theory, the four fundamental forces, Newtonian physics, determinism, the Standard Model, and features associated with those systems like black holes. Kline says, and here’s a direct quotation, “The current predicament in mathematics is that there is not one but many mathematics and that for numerous reasons each fails to satisfy the members of the opposing schools. It is now apparent that the concept of a universally accepted, infallible  body of reasoning—the majestic mathematics of 1800 and the pride of man—is a grand illusion.” * Remember your high school geometry lesson: It all begins with axioms. And note that people are still arguing over Euclid’s parallel lines.
    I guess what I’m trying to say is that the “WAY” of knowing the world is up for debate. You assume, I believe, that knowing the world through faith is flawed, but I can show the so-called rational scientific and mathematical way of knowing the world is equally flawed. I have seen the inexplicable occur, acts I would call miracles and you would probably say are just temporary mysteries.


A: No, no, no. I’ll admit to some inexplicable phenomena and to problems in my approach to the Cosmos, but science backed by math works. We have chemistry obeying numbers, forces obeying numbers, processes obeying numbers. There’s no need for God in any of that.


F: Except to say you don’t know why they obey numbers. And “obey”? I’d probably say the numbers more or less describe; yes, the numbers describe. Galileo figured out the rate of fall for dropped objects, but he didn’t know why. And even with Einstein’s curvature of Space-Time, you can’t say we know why the universe has such curvature unless you simply argue like Mark Twain’s Eve, things drop because they are supposed to drop. Well, not exactly. Twain has Eve say in Eve’s Diary “I followed the other Experiment around, yesterday afternoon, at a distance, to see what it might be for, if I could. But I was not able to make [it] out. I think it is a man. I had never seen a man, but it looked like one, and I feel sure that that is what it is.” Ultimately, your reasoning seems similarly circular. But you reason that way with pride.


A: But you do exactly what you accuse me of doing. You say the world works the way it does because God said that’s the way it is supposed to work.


F: I’m not putting it that simply. I take an Augustinian stance—and before you say it, I know he was  Neoplatonist—anyway, Augustine of Hippo argued that God made the potential for the world, made forms possible. That is my position on Creation. I’m not a fundamentalist. I accept an evolving universe because that potential, the many possibilities were what was created, from muons to moons and everything in between and beyond. I accept our physical relationship to the other hominids and to all other species, millions of them. That’s why I can accept many aspects of evolution though Darwin’s theory has numerous problems. I see humans as one of those possibilities Augustine’s philosophy or theology permitted. On a larger scale lies the possibility for life in a universe with fine tuning. How is it that you, my physicist friend, accept the random balance of the four fundamental forces? The nuclear strong force is 100 times stronger than electromagnetism. Electromagnetism is 10,000 time stronger than the nuclear weak force. And the weak force is 10 thousand billion billion billion times stronger than gravity. And if you alter any one of those forces by just a tiny amount, the universe we know can’t exist, and therefore, we can’t exist. To me the fine tuning argument is difficult to refute.


A: But it’s an assumption that the fine tuning was the work of a fine tuner.


F: Yes, but an assumption that is difficult to refute. The balance of forces makes the possibilities we know, and I can’t accept that such a delicate balance is random, especially since it appears to have risen from nothing—well, I would say by fiat.


A: Look, I have to run to class. Let’s pick this up some other time.


F: Yes. We’re far from having exhausted this discussion. But I would have you ponder how sure you are of your explanations. I accept God not because I have scientific evidence, but rather because I have scientific questions. Why is so much of the universe inexplicable? Is there a limit to our ability to explain? How can I reconcile fine tuning with seeming randomness? If life proceeded from abiotic chemical reactions, why doesn't it recreate itself under similar chemical reactions today? Why did the origin of the universe result in the balance of forces we believe it produced? If life is organized elements, how did it come to think about its composition? 

A: Gotta run. That's much to think about. 




*1980. New York, Fall River Press. p. 5