by Warner Rogers

Created on: August 15, 2007

How the heck did we get here, by big bang or by big man? Well, we all began by the gleam in our father's eye and had no idea at all of what we were getting into while developing in mom's womb. Now that we've developed into semi-literate human beings, we begin pondering on how this whole thing got started.

Humans probably take more pride in their intellect than it deserves on a macro-cosmic scale, so we use imagination and faith to support our ignorance...both religiously and scientifically. Fairy tales always began with, "Once Upon a Time," and we are still playing with that idea when explaining things we don't truly understand.

One of the biggest problems of the Western mind is the concept of personifying or anthropomorphizing God; or, as I like to call God, Universal Intelligence. How can you give intelligence form? Intelligence is what creates and transcends form, and it has to be in everything that exists. So God necessarily has to be in everything. Birth and death, light and darkness,good and evil, are all part of this marvelous scenario. We live in a universe of opposites. A good story that begins with "Once Upon a Time" needs both a protagonist and antagonist to make an interesting tale.

Using that same logic on a macro-cosmic scale, you need space in order to have "things" orbiting around like stars and planets. You also need darkness before you can have light. Which is more important, things or space and darkness? Einstein, by the way, was fascinated by space and darkness. We are now receiving news about another scientific discovery, black matter.

As these cosmic mysteries unfold, we are discovering more and more of our lack of understanding the world. While science uncovers more and more of nature's secrets, we must realize that these facts have existed since the beginning of time and we are nowhere close to understanding whether or not the universe and life began with a big bang or even a whimper.

Let's not get too proud of our technological advances and understand that many things that are going on in the world happens beyond our control, and whether they make sense to our human minds counts for nothing. After all, the human mind is at the mercy of mere words with taught images, feelings, and emotions. We think within the confines of symbols, so when we start to explain very abstract things like intelligence, or things of God, we have to resort to imagination, belief, and disbelief. In either case, the material world needs the polarities for existence: the brash optimist as well as the fawning skeptic.

Did the universe suddenly pop into existence with a big bang or did some wise old man, with a white beard, wave his scepter across space and create all of the stars and planets in the universe?

Well, once upon a time, my father had this gleam in his eye. What he didn't know was it was me.

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