LUDIC LOG

I just finished reading "Captured By Aliens: The Search for Life and Truth in a Very Large Universe", by Joel Achenbach. It was extremely engaging; Achenbach has a breezy, clever style, is an able popularizer who nonetheless has a gift at expressing the hard (and hard-to-understand) science beneath the cosmic concepts, and is refreshingly skeptical while still gaining the trust of his fringier subjects. There's a lot of stuff about Carl Sagan in the book (a towering figure who, it is clear, Achenbach both idolized and could never quite figure out); he nicely covers all the bases in the hunt for life beyond the earth, from the concrete (the latest developments on ALH84001) to the speculative (the Drake Equation and its theoretical brethren like the Diamond Paradox and the Mystery Constraint) to the outright deranged (Art Bell, the Urantia Book devotees, the Face on Mars crowd, and the like). A book very worth reading.

One thing that I enjoyed was that, at the end of Achenbach's journey, he is unapolagetically -- if sheepishly -- a skeptic; he even echoes language I myself have used in describing his seemingly pathological incapacity to put himself in the mindset of a true believer. A genetic flaw? A social maladjustment? What the cause is of his inability to pay too much heed to the Starseed people (or any of the other nut groups he kindly refuses to label as nut groups) that he pals around with, he can only speculate, but he shows a Saganesque politeness and restraint while at the same time plainly manifesting a Randic skepticism. And, as it will, this skepticism gets him in trouble; and, as he must, he bites his tongue an awful lot in order to not rock the leaky, sinking boat he happens to be traveling on at the time.

Now, I am more than familiar with this need for smoothing over. I know that even token skeptical questions about the various pseudoscientific beliefs held by my friends (who, by all accounts, are hardly a stupid or credulous lot) will provoke a lot more hostility and defensiveness that was contained in the provocation. I know that it's safe as kittens to talk shit about politics or aesthetics with people who would turn right around and bite my head off if I questioned psychology, astrology, or chiropractic. And I know that the God Question (or, as it's been reframed for the 21st century, the Spirituality Question) is a thorny patch that it's proven not worth my time to wade through with the blunt machete of inquiry. But I have to admit I'm a little tired of hedging my bets. Sagan (unlike his evil doppelganger, Randi) could never come right out and say he was an atheist; even at the end, he threw down the safety net of agnosticism -- something that Randi, free of the constraints of credentials and their concomitant high expectations, has never felt the need to do.

Well, I say it's divine, mystical spinach, and I say the hell with it. People who will not hesitate to toss smack about any number of other unquantifiable beliefs are all too hesitant to hide under the skirts of unknowing when it comes to God. "We can't PROVE there's not a God," say the agnostics, "so surely it's better to say we just don't KNOW." Better, and humbler, too. But that cuts no ice with God; it doesn't please the true believers; and it contains a somewhat cowardly plausible deniability that carries the stink of social lubrication. You never run into someone who's agnostic about the Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus, or trolls; it's pure denial with these imaginary beings. But Gee-dash-dee always seems to bring out the diplomat in people. Not me, though; I don't have the patience or the ideological coin to bet on red AND black. If there is a God, I'm damned either way; and my friends already think I'm an asshole. Sorry, folks: God isn't real. If you want qualifications, go to medical school.