Intergalactic Summit

Some people have asked, if these posts of mine are leading towards any particular conclusion regarding...well anything. And honestly? No, not really. The purpose they serve is really to get my opinions, ideas, and perspectives out into the public domain. I've gotten rather tired of people putting words in my mouth regarding what I think, so this is me putting the words out myself.

The last three could have been considered one series, covering my philosophical thoughts on life, death, cloning, and humanity as large and abstract concepts. This next post could thus be considered the start of a new series. Also, if any of you have questions for me regarding anything, don't be afraid to send me questions on my public blog.

On Spirits.

I must confess, I do not in any way believe in a creator deity or overarching hierarchic view of the universe. I don't view this as a denial of all spirituality or even all religious thought, but likewise I don't rationally see the need for a ruling god specifically. At one time, the idea of a divine creator served a purpose, when we needed to explain the world we found ourselves in with few tools for doing so. Without the aid of science, our ancestors understood origins by extrapolating from their own experience. How else could they have done it? So the Universe was hatched from a cosmic egg, or conceived in the sexual congress of a mother god and a father god, or was a kind of product of the Creator’s workshop—perhaps the latest of many flawed attempts. And the Universe was not much bigger than we see, and not much older than our written or oral records, and nowhere very different from places that we know.

We've tended in our cosmologies to make things familiar. Despite all our best efforts, we've not been very inventive. In many stories, the spirit realms are governed by dominance hierarchies headed by gods or demons. Monotheists talked about the king of kings. In every culture we imagined something like our own political system running the Universe. Few found the similarity suspicious.

Then science came along and taught us that we are not the measure of all things, that there are wonders unimagined, that the Universe is not obliged to conform to what we consider comfortable or plausible. We have learned something about the idiosyncratic nature of our common sense. Science has carried human self-consciousness to a higher level. This is surely a rite of passage, a step towards maturity.

I don't however, see this as the end of spirituality or religion, simply the end of them as we know them. The universe is not made for us, if we truly encounter something of the 'supernatural' it is not required to conform to our expectations. It might not be the soul or our deceased loved ones. It might not be like anything we can possibly imagine.

One cannot ply the empty stars without developing some manner of spirituality. In that sky so big and black, there are things we can scarcely fathom. I believe there must be some things out there which we have yet to understand. Places science has not yet peeled away. I don't think these places are outside the reach of science, just that it has not yet made it there.

For a long time, I had a very skeptical view of such things, despite experienced spacers telling me they had witnessed them first hand. That changed in Pareidolia, the first system the Alexylva Paradox explored and occupied. There, I bore witness to things that I still cannot wrap my head around. I watched people vanish from secure rooms, I saw starbases rust into scrap piles in less then a year, their crews mysteriously vanishing. I've seen audiovisual logs of exploration teams where reality seems to bend nonsensically around them. I have glimpsed the things waiting in the hungry darkness between stargates, there is a reason I strongly prefer wormhole travel. For some, perhaps, these encounters will serve to reinforce their faith in whatever deity or spirits they entrust to their safety. I hold no such view, and I don't think faith is a shield we can use to protect us from things beyond our understanding. These strange stellar monsters and spirits are no more likely to abide our faith then gravity is.

I do not understand these things I encounter, but I understand that labelling them as anything from any culture is inaccurate. They are not like anything previously found in our human experience, so to label them as something from one of our human faiths would at best be a metaphor, and at worst a dangerous misnomer.

I admit these things, in an attempt to bring their true nature to light. I acknowledge their existence, and acknowledge the experiences of those who have witnessed them. But I am a scientist, I believe that behind the superstitions of interstellar mariners lie real entities, ones stranger then anything we've yet to encounter. We're off the edges of the map now, here there be monsters.

Ad Astra Per Aspera
Saede Riordan

Of course you did.

Let me boil it down for you. The spiritual aspect of a person is how many of us expand our sense of purpose and meaning in life.

This is known as "growth."


To Ms. Jin,

Like you, I enjoy the discovery of finding new things, especially when they challenge my preconceived notions of how the Universe is supposed to work. And I love how, after so many millenia, there are still things out there that we can't easily explain. Finding an explanation, getting another piece of the puzzle, inventing some new paradigm, that to me is my spiritualism. That keeps my "soul" happy.

Keep writing.

I insist in talking to my ships when I perform maintenance. Sure, we can't prove that spirits exist, but at the same time, we can't disprove it. Better err on the side of caution.

Besides, it's right and proper to treat those that allow us to earn our livelihood reverently.