Day 563 – God, Democracy, and Aliens

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

I often wonder about people’s motivation to believe in god. I think it comes down to people want an answer to what they don’t understand. This is the same motivation to say aliens did something. If faced with some truth, such as – Why did my child die? or How could they have moved such a heavy stone?

When one can’t figure out what, how, or why then it is easy to say god or aliens. Not that it ends the discussion but it is an answer. One could say it is intellectually lazy, but if you don’t think beyond the simplistic it satisfies in some way.

I think about the huge stones in Tiwanaku in Bolivia. Here they sit on the ground. There is no way they could have gotten here say some. They must have been moved by forces we don’t know about. It had to be aliens, etc. No, Lake Titicaca was at a higher level years ago. They were floated to this point and then they’ll couldn’t figure out how to  move them further so here they sat.

Just because you can’t figure something out you don’t have to go looking for extraordinary explanations. But that isn’t as satisfying as having a handy god or alien to lift the weight.

Moving on – democracy. Remember when we had a two party system and both parties believed in democracy? They also believed in facts and science? Now only one party does. Will we recover? Will we get back to our roots of democracy and truth? It’s a toss up right now.

Speaking of toss up – France versus Spain, World Cup. I was surprised by how many times France just missed the goal, and how many times they tried and didn’t come close. For all the time and effort, this game of futbol comes down to inches, to concentration at the last moment. France was down by two goals but you could feel it. If they scored one with even a minute left there was the possibility that they could score another. We saw England do it. So it was possible. But it was not to be.