Think About It

Life the movie, promises to be one of next summer’s box-office sensations. It’s about the six-member crew of an International Space Station that discovers the first proof of life beyond earth. The astronauts find a single-cell biological organism on Mars. However, as they begin experimenting with it, their methods have unintended consequences, and the life proves to be more intelligent and sinister than anyone expected.

Putting the science-fiction and computer-generated imagery aside, finding a single-cell biological organism on Mars would completely alter our understanding of life in the universe. Currently, there is no definitive, scientifically verifiable theory that can explain how life emerged in the universe. Of course, there are numerous theories. One theory says life emerged on earth more than 3 billion years ago when lightning struck a bubbling caldron of methane, ammonia and hydrogen, and created the amino acids that would eventually evolve into the first building blocks of life. Other theories say that life may have been organized in the clay, or grown on the backs of crystals. Regardless, there is no scientific theory that can adequately explain the origin of life in the universe. It remains a mystery.

So, if we don’t know how life emerged in the universe, what do we know?

Well, we know that the universe sprang into existence 13.7 billion years ago from nothing, and when we say “nothing,” we don’t mean an empty space or the absence of some thing. We mean the non-existence of everything; no space, no time, nothing. Now, that’s impossible to comprehend because there must be something, in order for the human mind to comprehend it. However, the universally accepted theory is that our universe sprang into existence from nothing with a big-bang. What came before the big-bang, and what caused the big-bang, is a matter of speculation? The religious say that the first cause, the only thing that always was, and always will be, is God. Others believe that our universe is part of a larger mega-universe that has always existed in some other dimension beyond our ability to see or know. However, even though science is unable to tell us what happened before the big-bang, it does have a good idea of what happened after the first instant of creation.

The big-bang was the sudden release of energy, a flash of light that emerged from a singularity of nothingness to create, and continues to create, the time and space that is the ever-expanding universe. Initially, there was only energy, but as time passed and the universe began to cool; the energy congealed to create the subatomic particles that would eventually combine to form the matter that makes up the stars, planets, and everything else that comprises the physical universe.

So, from nothing came light, from light came matter, and from matter came life. Somewhere along the way, what we call life, the biological organic matter that is alive, somehow emerged from the non-biological inorganic matter that was not alive. Life apparently, emerged from the dirt or space dust of the early universe, in a manner that is remarkably consistent with the creation story in the book of Genesis. Whether that story is a product of divine revelation, or simply the insight of common sense, is debatable. Although life is the rarest phenomenon in the universe, it is for us, unfortunately all too familiar.

Think about it. From the simplicity of single-celled organisms like bacteria, to the complexity and magnificence of the human being, life on earth is everywhere. It’s so abundant and diverse that we’ve become callous of its existence. We take it for granted simply because it’s here. What we fail to understand is that life doesn’t have to be here. In fact, life shouldn’t be here because the calculated probability that life should have emerged in the universe, the chances that inorganic matter should have spontaneously become organic and alive, is less than zero. Life should not exist, but somehow it does. Was it the result of some cosmic accident, or the byproduct of some intelligent-design? Again, that’s something for you to decide.

Imagine for a moment what would happen if we did find life on mars? The world would come to a literal halt. The attention of every human being on the planet would be focused on a single-cell organism growing in a petri-dish, floating in a spaceship, millions of miles away, simply because it was alive and wasn’t found on earth.

Yet, somehow when we find an even more advanced organism containing human DNA, taking in nourishment, converting it to energy, and growing; we don’t consider it a life. If we found it on Mars it would be the confirmation of life beyond earth, and the greatest discovery in human history. However, when we find it in a womb, it’s not a life? It’s an inconvenience, just some type of inorganic matter. In our modern secular society, how we define life, what we are willing to say actually constitutes a life, is more dependent  upon where you find it, than what it actually is?

America, has just endured the worst presidential race in history. It was a mean spirited, mud-slinging fist fight where policies and vision gave way to insults, accusations and smears. The debates were so embarrassing that I ended up turning off the television saying to myself, “I can’t watch any more of this.” It was a national disgrace capped-off by angry mobs taking to the streets, vandalizing private property and assaulting innocent bystanders. Civil discourse and the right to disagree are dead in America. Today, we look more like the Argentina of Juan and Eva Peron than we do the America of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas.

Never before has America been forced to choose between two such loathsome candidates. Donald Trump is a narcissistic buffoon, a self-promoting blowhard whose foul mouth and vulgarity regularly offends millions. Hillary Clinton is a corrupt liar, who deliberately circumvented the law, compromised national security, and abused her public office.

If Hillary Clinton had been elected; the United States may have found itself embroiled in a Constitutional crisis. The wiki-leaks emails indicate that Mrs. Clinton may have abused her position as Secretary of State and sold political favors for contributions to the Clinton Foundation. We won’t know the truth until the FBI fully investigates the foundation, but we could have found ourselves with a sitting President indicted for corruption. Additionally, National-Security experts know with absolute certainty that foreign governments hacked Mrs. Clinton’s email server. Meaning, if it exists, the enemies of the United States possess the incriminating evidence of Mrs. Clinton’s “pay-for-play” politics. The release of such information would throw the United States into a Constitutional crisis that would paralyze us, leaving us unable to respond to any further aggression by Russia into the Ukraine or Syria.

The election of Donald Trump means uncertainty and worry. Is the man taking the oath of office in January going to be the bigoted vulgarian we saw during the campaign, or the surprisingly humble and gracious man that gave his election night acceptance speech? If he chooses to be the obnoxious reality TV host, the American people will tell him in 2020, “Donald, you’re fired!” However, he is now the President-elect and only time will tell.

Should Americans be angry, should Americans be out in the streets protesting? Absolutely, but not because Donald Trump won the election and Hillary Clinton lost. We should be protesting because Clinton and Trump were the candidates, and because Clinton-Trump was the only choice, we had.

Think about it. Is this the best our country can do? How on earth did the most broken and corrupt candidates in US history secure the nominations of their parties? What happened?

What happened is that our political system is now so corrupt and broken that the only thing it can give us is broken and corrupt candidates. In ninety-eight percent of the elections, the candidate who spends the most on their campaign wins the election. And where do the politicians get the money to out-spend their opponents? It doesn’t come from the American people. The big money comes from the special-interests; the corporations, lobbyist, and other entities seeking political favoritism in return for financial support. Today, we have a political system in which politicians buy their office, and special-interests buy their politicians.

For more than three decades, people have been talking about reforming the system; implementing term limits, having publicly funded elections, and eliminating the PAC and special-interest money. But strangely, not a single candidate running for local, state or federal office made this an issue during the last election. Why? Because they don’t want to make it an issue, they don’t want to reform the system, they benefit from a broken and corrupt system. That’s why we get such broken and corrupt candidates.

People should be angry and out in the streets protesting a political system that no longer works for the benefit of the American people.  However, nothing is going to change until we put our ideologies aside, learn to engage in civil discourse without trying to destroy each other, and start working together to restore the integrity and impartiality of a self-governed Republic.