Number 35 No Aliens.

This one still needs work and I shall revisit it as I do with all my rhymes to tweak and change it here and there.  However, perhaps it conveys some of my thinking: The idea that there is a God is difficult for many people to grasp, especially those who rely on scientific proof of everything,  and it is equally difficult to believe that all the matter in the universe exploded out of a singularity (a single sub atomic particle that was so densely packed that it contained everything).  Out of nothing either way, therefore. But with no God in the equation, the scientific argument requires us to believe that one day, for some reason that had not existed until then, this miniscule thing, presumably floating in an empty universe went bang in a very big way.  What was the reason, why the particular moment, and most of all, how?  And for there to be a reason for it happening there had to be something, some force, some difference between conditions leading up to the bang, and the moment that triggered it. What was that force and who or what exerted it? In order for it to happen there has to have been a pre-history to it as well. These things may well be provable scientifically, but right now they are asking a lot of any brain to comprehend; rather more, I would say than believing in a supernatural power, which many people call God.  Indeed, it is this that led Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century to make a very succinct and powerful statement to shake the scientists.  He said, 'The question is not how the universe is, but that it is'.

So scientists ask us to go along with the idea that life, soul, love, intuition, consciousness, conscience and many other intangibles were also contained in that singularity, merely to evolve and create the wonderful complex and beautiful world we see, for no reason at all.  But the only explanation for the singularity is that all matter was contained and compressed by gravity into something so dense that not even light could escape.  But in order to do so, why was it there in the first place?  Wittgenstein's question again. Not how, but that it is.

It requires a much greater degree of faith to believe that, than it does to believe that these things are God and the Holy Spirit.  So, my poem contends that if we are simply an accident, mathematical probability decrees that there will be other similar results in other places in the universe. But if we are, as the Bible says, created on Earth in the image of God, then we are alone.  Nowhere does it say that we are merely one experiment among many.  There is as much proof of the existence of God, to those willing to see it, and to those who are prepared to devote their intellect to the difficult subject, as there is scientific proof of the origins of everything around us. Of course, science can explain a great deal, just as historical records and the Bible can too. It is a subject well worth deep consideration with as open a mind and heart as possible.  Either God created us out of nothing, or nothing created us out of nothing. Take your pick.

No Aliens.

I’m going to stick my neck out here,

And boldly state there’s no-one near.

No-one at all, not even far

Beyond the very furthest star.

No aliens, no UFOs,

No-one else who vaguely knows

Their way about the universe,

As well as us, better, or worse.

We humans here are all alone,

The Earth the only place that’s home;

The universe completely void

Of any other humanoid.

I grant the possibility,

That somewhere else there may well be

Amoebic life, or creepy things,

But not that ever talks or sings.

Mathematically the odds are on,

That we cannot be alone,

But that is only if we be

The product of calamity.

An accident, a bang or crash,

Quite by chance a cosmic smash;

All out of nought, no reason why

The world appeared by and by.

All this came out of bits of stuff,

Heated up and moulded rough.

But this is asking quite a lot,

And probably a load of rot.

It is like asking us to say

That it could happen any day:

A bolt of lightening and some rain,

And dinosaurs appear again!

Where was the stuff of which we are,

Before the bang had flung this far?

The bits of rock, the grains of sand,

Supposedly that made this land.

We’re told it was a single bit,

Much too small to measure it.

So small it almost wasn’t there;

And suddenly it’s everywhere.

That culture, consciousness and love,

Instead of coming from above,

Crawled out of the primordial slime,

Evolving slowly over time.

Take a rock and study it;

Add some heat and smash a bit.

Do anything you care to do;

It will never make a you.

And though all things return to dust,

An accidental thing we must

Believe we are, as we are told,

By scientists both young and old.

Science might answer ‘what’ and ‘how,’
But that is not the question now;
‘That it is at all‘  does test
Not theologians, but the rest.

Wittgenstein it was who said
To ask this question now instead.
So what if we know DNA?
Why it exists no-one can say.

How much less likely could it be

That God created you and me?

From out of nothing we were hurled,

Or that God designed the world?

Both are difficult to grasp,

The latter though more kind to clasp,

More meaning and more comfort there,

Less an abyss in which to stare.

So rather why not be inclined,

To think that we have been designed;

Nowhere else to have our birth,

Nowhere else but planet Earth? 

The miracle of light and life,

The love between husband and wife,

The many aspects of the soul,

That make the world and make it whole.

These things are not the things of chance;

God is the reason that we dance,

God is the reason we exist,

But soulless souls will still resist.

And as you doubt whichever way,

There is something I should say;

It takes more faith to not believe

That God is with us when we leave.

© Stephen Saunders

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