Who Will Save Us From Our Dying World?

By James Donahue

Say what you wish about the existence of a God, an intelligent superior force, or the genetic manipulation of primates to create human life, scientists are beginning to admit that everything linked to our existence on a spinning ball in the middle of a solar system within a galaxy within a universe just smacks of too-much intelligent design.

As scientists now grapple with the complexities of global warming and climate change, they are becoming increasingly aware of the intricate way in which the planet's environmental systems, general temperature, weather patterns, ocean tides and seasons are crucially dependent on one another to generate a perfect environment to support life.

Some are even going so far as to take a new look at James Lovelock's radical idea, first proposed in 1970, called the Gaia Hypothesis. This thought, in general, is that the Earth's atmosphere, biota and oceans interact and behave as if they were all part of a single organism, a living planet, which creates the most favorable environment for life.

In short, Lovelock is somewhat connecting with an ancient belief system, shared by aboriginal tribes around the world, that recognizes the planet as a "Mother Earth" from which all life springs and is nourished. Rather than use the phrase Mother Earth, however, the scientists have elected to call it Earth System Science, a description of their study of the way in which all earth systems work in concert and keep the planet stabilized.

But the harmony that exists on our planet gets much more complicated when you add the science of astronomy to the picture. Simple examination of the Moon, and the way in which it operates in a strange perfect pattern that affects the tides and seasons, and helps keep everything in balance, gives the concept of intelligent design even more credibility.

Enter British physicist Edward Harrison, formerly of the University of Massachusetts, who has published a theory that the laws of physics throughout the entire Solar System and our Universe are too fine-tuned to have happened by accident. Thus Harrison believes the entire system was designed and created by an alien intelligence . . . what we might call the angels . . . apparently for the purpose of spawning life on this and possibly a few other planets.

What Harrison is saying is that "our universe could easily be the outcome of an experiment carried out by a superior intelligence in another universe."

And those who have studied the way the suns, moons and planets operate in relationship to one another know all too well that even slight variations in the what they are doing would result in a universe totally devoid of stars and life.

Examples of this fine-tuning can be found in the way that the mere force of gravity is so critical, that just a slight variation one way or another would make it impossible for matter to trigger the nuclear reaction that fires up a new sun. Too much gravity might cause a new sun to burn too hot and consume the fuel too quickly, making it impossible for the evolution of life on one of the planets circling within the system.

Strangely, gravity also plays a role in keeping humans earthbound in our present form. It has been discovered that humans and animals cannot procreate when they leave the natural gravitational force of Planet Earth and merely travel weightless in space. It is believed that even variations in gravitational force on other planets might have the same effect.

Thus Harrison carries us into the abstract concept of the "anthropic principle," that suggests it is no accident we are in a universe fine-tuned for the presence of galaxies, stars and life. We had to be here or we would not be here. So perhaps our existence was never an accident of circumstances, but rather by direct intelligent design.

And this carries us right back to the concept of a god, or at least an intelligent force, or civilization that created our universe and put us here.

The next logical question is that if someone or some force went to all of this trouble, what was its purpose? For what reason were we created? And have we lived up to the expectations of the creator?

From all that is going on with this dying world of late, it is obvious that we have not.

And with this thought established, the next question is what should we be doing about our situation?

The religious masses, who appear to outnumber the rest of us, appear willing to sit back on their laurels and wait for the creator to repair the mess we made and get us started all over again.

That toxic idea is leading us all down a path of self destruction and it is time for folks to wake up. It stands to pure reason that the creator never intended us to sit back on our laurals and wait for an external power to rise up and save us when the solution was within ourselves all along.

By following that old religious path for too long, we have allowed the destruction of the planet we were commissioned to protect. Our forefathers made a covenant to be stewards of this fantastic garden, and we did not do our job. Consequently, our fate may already be sealed.

As the planet dies under our feet, we find ourselves at war with the living Earth from which we came. If we don't wake up our destruction could be slow and painful, with extinction looming as the final outcome.

So who or what might we expect to save us? We can be sure of this: It won't be a plastic Jesus dropping out of the clouds amid the blast of seven nuclear clouds shaped like mighty trumpets. Nor will it be the Mahdi depicting the return of Mohammad. Or the strange Buddha Boy who sits under a tree in Nepal, or a final Pope, Dahli Lama, Pahana or Quetzequatal.

No, it will be none of the above. The answer lies in ourselves, for that is where we find the true god.