Stick with me here. I'm going somewhere.

In college, I took a course called "Life in the Universe." We covered a lot of stuff very quickly--star formation, planetary formation, origins and evolution of life--in an effort to define how and why this particular hunk of rock orbiting this particular ball of gas came to host something so amazing as life. We spent some time discussing the specifics of our situation here, the exact combinations of stuff that we've got and how important this particular mix may be. Was a breathable gas strictly necessary? If so, does it have to be oxygen? What if the oxygen-nitrogen ratio is tinkered with? What about a liquid? And does it have to be water? Tides were important on Earth, but what about other moon-planet effects? If we move our moon around, or dispense with it completely, what effect does that have? After coming to a consensus that yes, breathable gas and some kind of liquid are vital, we spent some time discussing the cases for oxygen and water. I remember that the professor had said that in light of what was known, he felt that water, H20, was necessary, but that gasses other than oxygen may work as a breathable. I had come to the exact opposite conclusion--that oxygen was a must as the gas, but that other liquids could serve as well. Anyway, we debated the point around in class to no conclusion.

I mention all of this now because the Huygen lander pictures are starting to come in from Titan (for the record, my second-favorite of Saturn’s moons, after Enceladus) and they are showing lakes and rivers of methane flowing over a water-ice terrain. Maybe someday soon I'll be able to call Dr. Laird up and tell him I was right all along.

Interesting side note regarding Dr. Laird and religion: he's an evangelical Christian. Along with catching my math skills up from "can't do long division" to "understanding the Einstein field equations" and indulging my tendency to use silly props in my presentations, he also hosted some very intelligent conversations about religion and faith. In popular definition, "evangelical" tends to get conflated with "fundamentalist" and this isn't always the case. Dr. Laird was the former but emphatically not the latter.

I've often said that what I know of evolution, of biological and cosmological development makes me believe even more certainly in an organizing mind, a controlling and defining force in the universe. A first cause. The physical world is governed by rules, rules that remain constant throughout time and space. Gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between two objects. It is here on earth, out there on Mars, somewhere in the Duck Nebula, and at the furthest reaches of the universe. It was yesterday, will be tomorrow, and has been and will be in ten million billion years in either direction. That gravity attracted wisps of gas and more wisps of gas and some chucks of stuff with greater speed and intensity until it all started to spin and ignite into an inferno of burning hydrogen, and after it settled down a little, its leftover chucks and bits spun and collided and attracted more until a couple of decently sized rocks formed and one of those rocks held onto its water and its funny oxygen and nitrogen atmosphere until little bits of molecules bumped into one another and started to stick together and then something—lightening hit a tidal pool, maybe—made them come alive. And from there, they grew and changed and changed some more, and died and were born but we can see how they changed—fins to flippers to feet—and we can see that it was orderly and predictable. It all makes sense, and it’s all so organized and so sensible, that there has to be, has to have always been, someone, something, some mind or presence or power that set up the structure and defined the rules and set it all in motion.

If you study cosmology even to the shallow degree that I have, you soon realize that there is a point at which we know nothing. Nothing at all. The Big Bang theory, the prevailing idea about how this party got started, states that in the beginning was a tiny spot of everything that suddenly went POW in all directions. All the bits of all the stuff went flying outward, spreading out at a mind-blowing rate of speed and making the universe that we know. Bill Bryson has a great description of this in the first ten pages or so of A Brief History of Nearly Everything. Go to Border’s and pull it off the shelf. Before the POW, there was nothing. Don’t picture an empty space waiting to be filled, because all the space is crammed into that one dot—and, incidentally, so is all the time, too, so no waiting. Through observation of distant galaxies and through mathematical canoodling, scientists can trace the Bang back to tighter and tighter points. They can follow the rules, trace the steps, and conclude what must have happened. But there’s a limit. At about one second post-POW (if you will), the rules we know break down. Things were too close together, too hot, and moving far too quickly for our rules to apply. In that sense, many argue, that the instants surrounding the exact moment of the Big Bang are not just unknown, but unknowable. The rules don’t work any more, or, remembering that this is the start of time and space—they hadn’t been set yet. Inside that second, it’s all the Mind of God.

I don’t understand people who disagree with that. I don’t understand the people who can look at it all say, “Hah! Here’s proof that there is no God!” Um, no. Rather quite the opposite, really. I don’t understand people who think that this somehow threatens their belief in God, either. Since it confirms mine and all. I mean, if you want to stick with some kind of strange mytho-shamanistic thing that tries to deny what is patently so, it’s your right and more power to you, but I’m going with logic here. I like things that make sense. I like things that fit in the world I live in, and I live in a world with stars and galaxies and fossils and cave paintings.

This all brings me, strangely enough, to SpongeBob Squarepants.

Because there’s this mind, this organizing force that set rules for gravitation that apply to planets and galaxies and gnats equally, that tipped in motion a process that started with bits of stuff in a handful of combinations and ripped through stellar and planetary and organic development to get to here, today. People. Cartoons. Arrogance.

I know things. I know lots of things. I know how black holes are formed. I know how to make a carrot cake. I know how to knit, sort of. I can read, and I can write, and I can cuss in two languages. I know all the Kings of England from William the Conqueror through Queen Elizabeth. I know, that if I really set my mind to the task, there isn’t any area of study I couldn’t learn if I worked hard enough. And I know that that’s a kind of arrogance, me saying that. I can’t really prove it, and anyone who’s seen me try to figure out how much to leave for a tip will doubt it, but I know it’s true and I don’t care if it’s arrogant to say so. But even I, who am convinced that there is nothing I can’t learn, I know that I cannot know the mind of God. I don’t even presume to try.

I have thoughts. I have ideas. I have hopes. I have a list of things that I believe about the mind of God. But I will never, in this life, know any of it for sure. I take the clues that I can find, the words and actions of people that I think have gotten closer than I ever will, and I do what I can with them. I follow certain paths that I feel more comfortable with and that make me feel more connected to that organizing and creating force and hope that I’m getting it mostly right. I try to keep up with the progress scientists are making in shaving the edges off of that Mind-Of-God second. I read Augustine and Commonweal and say the Prayer of St. Francis.

The SpongeBob thing is different than the “Gay Teletubby” fiasco a few years back. In that case, the particular asinine complaint was that the character in question was, allegedly, “gay.” Whatever that means when you are a purple, antennae-ed, pre-vocal bouncy thing. But James Dobson and Focus on the Family aren’t claiming that SpongeBob is gay. Their problem is that SpongeBob appears in a music video supporting an organization that promotes tolerance for those who have different appearances, abilities, beliefs, cultures, religions, or sexual identities.

“Their inclusion of the reference to 'sexual identity" within their 'tolerance pledge' is not only unnecessary, but it crosses a moral line," James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, said in a statement released Thursday.

SpongeBob promotes tolerance. Not, mind you, approval, but tolerance. And that, of course, must be stopped. Nothing is more dangerous to the youth of American than the idea that it’s okay to be different.

Like I said, I don’t know the mind of God, but I look for clues. And there was this guy, a long time ago, who spent a lot time with prostitutes and criminals and lepers. Point of fact, he avoided the priestly class of his time, the ones who spoke loudly about what they knew of the mind of God. He said things about judging, and whose job it was to judge—and whose job it wasn’t. He said that all the other commandments that came before were good and all, but there was only one that we needed to remember: to love one another.

Not tolerate. Love.

I can fathom the distance to Alpha Centauri and I can imagine matter collapsing at faster than the speed of light. But I cannot comprehend the arrogance of saying that you know the mind of God and that—surprise!—conforms exactly to your prejudices.