St.Sartre
  I don't believe in god. Not because the existence of god is irrational, or because I have no sense of universal wonder. I have a reasonable amount of training in science and math, and if anything, science lends itself to the possibility of a god more than not. It is a truly sublime beauty of the universe that math works, that numbers fall into place in their equations and never squirm around or vanish. A godless universe would be much more likely to lack rationality. A feeling of divinity can also be glimpsed in the laws of physics. What makes up the weak electric force, gravity, and all those other things for which the gauge-boson was hypothesized? Science describes them, but it does not explain their invention. That invention could be left to a creator without disrupting any of the hard logic of human inquiry.
   Yet I still don't believe in god. I can't imagine a universe in which mankind is so important that it merits any more than the passing sparks of a neutrino or the dignity of a single sheep. To insist that there is a god is a combination of willful egoism and fear. The fear is that this thing we call consciousness and self-awareness is no more than the unintended side-effect of having to many neurons crammed into our brain. Biologically, we have all of this extra computing power floating around in our heads, and it has produced these phantoms of sentience. So we ask why? And the very question why in the feeble mind requires that there be a god. It would be terrifying to most people if they suddenly discovered that all of their probing and intellectual curiosity was just a biologic accident, and that there was no-where to go but here.
   I don't believe in god, but I still believe I know what god would want. It's all there in most of the textbooks of the major religions, though completely contradicted by all of their subtexts. God would want peace and justice, intellectual curiosity and genuine empathy. God would play the long term struggle over the short term gain. God would laugh at all things, especially his non-existence. Instead, god is marked in neon signs on freeways, in commercials for the plundering of the earth, and in the bomb craters and legless children of Afghanistan. God is never mentioned in public without being the leverage for greed, guilt or aggression. Just because he doesn't exist is no reason that we should treat him badly, or do the things that he wouldn't want in his name.
   There is no excuse, without god or sucker for god, for the way we act. There is no logic in not acting well. Doing good, caring for humanity, the whole Mother Teresa bit, that is what is mandated by the extra gears in our brains, the ones that are mostly paralyzed by the fear of hunting for a god. Denying the essential gracefulness of kindness, understanding and genuine curiosity is denying your humanity. Wasting your time looking for god to approve your desire for an 'other' to finish your dialectic is wasting all of our time. Do something nice for a change instead.

Happy St. Sartré day.
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