by David Neil Bain

Created on: June 06, 2008

I believe in the keyboard I am typing on. I believe in the computer screen before my eyes. I believe in the television that competes for my attention. I believe in my wife sitting in the next room.

It was a friend of mine in college fifty years ago who taught me what I really believe. He said "I believe in that chair over there." His point was that we don't talk about what we truly believe-the evidence of our senses. We talk about what we want to believe, what we hope is true.

It was Descartes who taught me to question even the evidence of my senses. In his attempt to prove the existence of God he began by questioning even the obvious fact that he was sitting there writing that essay. A demon could be deceiving him into believing he was. Now I don't believe in demons and I don't think Descartes did either, but if demons did exist they could deceive us into believing they did not.

Besides, I could be insane. I could be strapped down on a couch hooked to a computer living a virtual reality. I could be the program itself. Preposterous, you say? But can you ABSOLUTELY rule out these possibilities?

I do believe the universe is real; I just don't believe I can prove it absolutely. I believe there are things that are true that cannot be proved, and I can't prove that either.

I do know (to the extent I can know) that the universe is very different from what we perceive. Three examples: (1) We perceive objects like my keyboard or my friend's chair as solid when in fact they are made up mostly of empty space with an occasional subatomic particle. (2) We think of the house we live in, the office we work in, the school our children attend as being in fixed places, yet the whole earth is sixty-thousand miles away today from where it was yesterday. (3) We think of our bodies as constant, but actually the cells of our body and the very atoms they are composed of are constantly being replaced.

"What," I can hear you ask, "does all this have to do with what you BELIEVE?"

Interesting that you should ask. Typical answers to this question, not my answers, are things like. "God has a purpose for our lives," "Everything happens for a reason," "What goes around comes around." Tedious philosophical discussions like the above don't cut it, but how about this?

I am in awe of the universe. I am amazed that anything exists when it would be so much simpler for nothing to exist. I am not troubled by the meaning of life. It just is. I have a deep sense of morality and I have the audacity to turn

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