Warpaint of the Gods

Excerpted from Warpaint Of The Gods: Essential Thinking for the New Millennium, by Nila Sagadevan:

In 1961, a group of preeminent astronomers and physicists convened at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. Their objective was to determine the probability of extraterrestrial life in our galaxy, the “Milky Way”.

The resulting “Green Bank Equation” yields the probable number of technically advanced civilizations in our galaxy as a function of other astronomical, biological, and psychological factors. The Green Bank Equation suggests there could be as many as fifty million different civilizations in our galaxy alone.

So, approximately how many other galaxies might there be in the known universe? Sir James Jeans, the distinguished British astrophysicist, estimated the universe to be about as one trillion times as big as the volume of space visible through our most powerful telescopes of the time.

Jeans compared the total number of galaxies in our universe to the total number of grains of sand on all the beaches of planet Earth combined.

This mind-boggling analogy deserves repetition: Jeans referred not to planets; nor even solar systems. He was referring to galaxies, each of which contains hundreds of billions of solar systems similar to ours.

Now, if one were were to apply the aforementioned Green Bank Formula to this incomprehensibly huge number of galaxies — i.e., to the sum total of all the grains of sand found on all of the beaches of this planet — just how many “technically advanced civilizations” might there be?

And what if we were to include all civilizations, instead of just the “technically advanced” ones...

A friend of mine, after contemplating the above, wrote the following comment:

Viewed in this context, to even contemplate whether God -- the Creator of the entire Universe — would single out this infinitesimally trivial galaxy of ours (“grain of sand”) for a bit of “divine favoritism” would be ludicrous.

To claim He would then -- equally arbitrarily — consider singling out a speck of cosmic dust called Earth, floating in a microscopic solar system (one of several hundred billion) at the edge of this obscure, utterly nondescript galaxy -- and then choose to shower His boundless blessings upon this corpuscular little speck is a notion that leaps beyond the absurd.

But it seems God hadn’t quite narrowed down his bizarre sense of partiality quite yet: We’re told He then singled out a trifling, characterless sliver of dirt located in some some obscure corner of this spectacularly indistinct planet; named it “Israel”; deeded it -- for eternity! -- to a favored group of homo sapiens... And... And then anointed these folk His “Chosen Ones”! Yes, in the entire universe!

Bloody hell.

While we’re at it, let’s not forget to look in the mirror ourselves. Take, for instance, that favorite little self-righteous incantation of ours: “God bless America.”

So, I suppose the Big Guy not only decided to give us His divine thumbs-up for being such wonderful warmongers, He, in His infinite wisdom, also elected to dump on the other 191 countries in the United Nations for being such a pathetic bunch of worthless sods.

Beam me up, Scotty.