Over many years, I have developed my own philosophy of life. It has been a great journey, and again and again I have found that I have been wrong. I do not find my failures to be a weakness, but, rather, my greatest strengths, for they show that I am in a process of growing, and “becoming” – that I wasn't _always_ wise, but made the conscious choice to become more wise.

I am not sure how to format this document, so I will just start writing about the important parts and let everything flow from it.

If you have a Christian background, you may know of Pascal's Wager. If not, here is the gist of it: Pascal argued that there were two options: either God exists, or God doesn't exist. If God does not exist, it doesn't matter if he follows God or doesn't follow God, since the outcome is the same – nothing. If, however, God _does_ exist, the man who follows God gains infinitely (in Heaven), and the man who does not follow God loses infinitely (in Hell). Thus, it is the safer “wager” to follow God.

It doesn't take a genius to realize that there are some serious problems with Pascal's Wager. Indeed, even in Pascal's time, people realized that there were problems with it. (Well, technically, _after_ Pascal's time – the manuscript including the wager was published after his death). It may, however, surprise you that I actually do believe that there is some value in Pascal's Wager… but I think that the conclusion of the argument is flawed.

Many people don't know that Pascal's point was that it was equally likely that God does exist as it was that God doesn't exist. To Pascal, it was a 50/50 chance, a coin flip. On this, I agree with Pascal, and I will tell you why.

The most vexxing problem for all learned men is how the world came to be. I contend, like Pascal, that there are two ways the world might have come to be – either the world came from nothing, or God made it. The problem is that neither option seems likely. Indeed, both options seem so incredibly unlikely that they border on the absurd.

Briefly, of course, there is the absurdity of belief that God made the world, which I assume is obvious to all those that approach the problem in good faith. Even Christians recognize the absurdity, as they rely on faith, not sight, as the foundation of their belief. The greatest problem is this: Where is God? Why did the “magic” of creation happen once in the past, and never again? Where did God go after the creation of the world, and after all the stories were written? Where are the miracles? Where is the creation _ex nihilo_ in our modern times? Why is God silent when we speak to him?

There is, on the other hand, the absurdity of the belief that God _did not_ make the world. This is absurd for three reasons:

1. How is it that something can come from nothing? If everything in the universe is the consequence of something else, then what was the original movement? If there was no God, there was no original movement.
2. How is it that the Earth came to be? In the last several decades we have advanced in our ability to peer into the cosmos. We placed telescopes like Hubble and James Webb into space, far away from the light pollution on the ground. We sent probes millions of miles away from earth to photograph distant worlds. And, despite all of it, we have never, ever found anything except boring, barren, inhospitable wastelands. This leads us to the remarkable conclusion - life, in *any* form, cannot exist except on Earth. Earth is *special*. It is, as some have jokingly remarked, “God's favorite planet”.
3. How is it that organic matter can be conscious? No one knows what consciousness is. It is furthermore absurd that the ability to think and perceive is a result of evolution, because of the great complexity of our minds. Consider that there are more connections between neurons in the mind than there are are stars in the observable universe.

This is what I believe: If this question does not seriously confuse you, if you are absolutely confident in your understanding of how the universe came to be, you simply don't understand the problem well enough. I contend that if you do think you know, I can show how you are a fool, if we have a debate about it. (Not really – the greatest of fools is the fool that doesn't know he is a fool. I am a fool that knows he is a fool)