Here late in life, approaching a possible ninth decade, the Big Bang has become central to my life. I love the big bang, it explains so much. But you really must spend time thinking about the why of it to reap the full benefit on offer.  Science’s contention that the big bang “just happened—no reason at all, it just did,” they say—makes absolutely no sense at all to me. From birth, we every last one of us live out our entire lives completely immersed in cause and effect. Given that unchallengeable fact, I find it logically ludicrous that any serious scientist can advocate for any effect lacking a cause. Especially a universe-sized lacuna—a creation-of-everything big bang EFFECT lacking some yet more primal CAUSE.

Yet there’s a whole tribe of them doing exactly that. Their determination to eliminate any need for causation by [God, a god, any god] leads otherwise respectable Noel Laureates and their mentees to seriously advocate, even write whole books about, contorted nonsense such as multiverses, oscillating universes, big crunches and—my favorite bad example—Stephen Hawking’s silly “no-boundary” proposal. Dozens of such “models” exist wholly (and only) in the form of mathematical equations—that alone and nothing more. All this wasted angst arises out of so many scientists’ great inner need to X out any possibility of a magical Godly big bang because they don’t believe in God. They know God cannot possibly exist. Their professed reasonings are indistinguishable from the biases of faith-based religions.

Discounting such loosey-goosey scientific bias as arcane math models express, however, still leaves us with nothing explained, that insatiable curiosity itch unscratched. Where, our minds insist, did the big bang come from? Let’s be logical:  here we are—thinking, therefore we are—so therefore something had to have happened way back at some kind of beginning. An emergent hot big bang instantly followed by universal inflation happens to be one of science’s most well-proven theories based on real, replicable observations—that’s observations, as in telescopic, not just incomprehensible, unreal paper equations.

So if not God, then what? Religion of course is satisfied with infantile myth. But science is worse—not only lacking an answer, science actively seeks to avoid having to face the question. Notwithstanding all their lot, I nowadays have an answer that satisfies me. I hint at it here as my little gift to your thoughtful consideration, with the thought that perhaps your own personal version of it might one day come to satisfy you too. But whether anything changes or not is your business. Here’s how it happened for me.

After twenty growing-up years of inescapable, stultifying, Christian Protestant fundamentalism, followed by freshman discovery of European/Christian history, followed by a suicide and two years of atheism, followed by fifty satisfying long years of fully openminded agnosticism, including discovery of the large community of people who have had a near-death experience (NDE), followed by new decades of in-depth study of science and “spirituality”—altogether encompassing cosmology, biology, classical and quantum physics, hundreds of NDE reports, all religions, many indigenous origin legends, and miles of Earth sciences not to mention metaphysics, macro-economics and a great deal more—I concluded that science and spirituality are one and the same thing. Two aspects of a unity. I do not “believe” this, for I “believe” nothing. I conclude it, based on evidence. I didn’t start life this way, but that’s how I turned out.

I absolutely subscribe to Carl Sagan’s popularization of the old adage that “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” I too require evidence, on which I can base rational conclusions. Not “opinions,” not “beliefs,” but evidence-based conclusions. And mine is a pretty fine-meshed filter on what gets let in and identified as evidence, with the default biased to exclusion. Real evidence must earn its way in. Since 1975 it has done so in the form of accumulating thousands of reports by those near-death experiencers. Qualitatively, the reports span every conceivable demographic, every station in life, all thousands of them utterly consistent to the nines. Such remarkable statistical consistency is the basis for many of science’s best certainties abut quantum dynamics. The goose and the gander have equality, as they say.

Thus it was that some eighteen years ago, at just about age seventy, based on a long-accumulated ton of evidence, I concluded that science and spirituality are one and the same thing. And I know where the big bang came from. The many and significant implications of this conclusion, not one of which has escaped my notice I assure you, are far-reaching indeed. I also understand that said implications reach out and surround all of us, everybody on Earth including, in this moment, you and me. You’ll probably never notice these things for yourself unless you care enough to really dig in, but that’s your choice friend.

In any case, nowadays no longer the least concerned about what anybody else may think about what I think, I can with clear conscience and simple enjoyment write things such as follow below.

Have a nice day.

Don

                                                                                                                 August, 2025

 

There’s Only Us, The Best of Friends

 

Simplicity

 

We are the best of friends, God and I;

We walk together through green pastures

And, sometimes on quiet mornings, beside the tinkling still waters

Of Mink Run Creek, where God restores my soul.

God led me to these pristine acres, you know,

To serve as temporary steward, for a while.

*          *          *

We go to the very same church, God and I;

I found out about that when I said to God, I asked:

“Which church do you go to?” And God laughed at me;

Abashed, I asked: “Well then,

which doctrines are the right doctrines?”

And God laughed even harder – and not with me, but at me;

After a while, finally, I got it – about our one real big church I mean.

 

Quest

 

We’re in the same image, God and I;

Back before I understood that – all misled, foolish and vain –

I asked God: “Should I let my beard grow longer?”

Then God laughed hardest of all, and God said to me:

“Can you think? Reason? Feel emotions? Place love above indifference?

“Did I not pre-arrange an evolutionary algorithm whereby a good

and discerning mind might randomly evolve in you, probably?”

Finally I got that too, the image-of-God thing I mean:

A : b :: b : A, presumably, within limits.

*          *          *

I whacked my ankle real bad as we walked, God and I,

On scrap iron some fool had abandoned,

right there where people would walk;

Thus did it come to pass:  I felt I must ask forgiveness

for taking God’s name in vain; but

“Do you presume to know what I want?” God asked,

and truthfully I answered “No”;

“Do you tell others what I want them to do?” God asked;

again in truth I answered “No”;

“Then forget it,” God told me,

“only free will choices and intentions matter.”

 

Growth

 

Then with my free will, in God’s image,

I reasoned, and pondered, and I thought –

For quite a long while, too – not as good as God, but

the best that I could do;

At long last I realized Who I am, Where I came from,

and – Purposefully – Why;

*          *          *

Then I/We Knew:  stardust evolved, integral host,

materially enabling Me/Us a temporal while.

Gratefully, I/We overflow:  Endless delight, Infinite Light,

Love Unconditional Is;

And now, Understanding – I/We Know:  There are no fools.

There’s only Us.

William D. Coffey, February 2017

 

Un-solipsizing

I Already Know You

In my time I have known the feeling of great joy and satisfaction,

    And knowing that you too have known the feeling of great joy

    and satisfaction,

        I know that part of you.

 

I have known the feeling of sadness and loss, and

    knowing that you too have felt sadness and loss,

       I know that part of you.

 

I have known the feeling of anger and frustration, and

    knowing that you too have felt anger and frustration,

       I know that part of you.

 

I have known compassion and empathy when a fellow human was needlessly harmed,

    and knowing that you too have felt compassion and empathy,

       I know that part of you.

 

All the rest is details. Of those places in your private mind which I have not yet met,

    those I respect with anticipation of friendship yet to be nurtured,

    grown and shared,

         as we sometimes walk a shared path together.

 

We learn much about each other from our shared feelings, you and I.

    Feelings cannot be measured by science,

but they are the true measure of us.

 

        I am so glad to know you, to love you as One Unity,

        sharing our common humanity.

If you’ll think about it, you already know me too.

William D. Coffey, July 2016

 

 

Grievous Closure of Scientific Mind

My fish net top to bottom engages ten feet of depth.

The river is obviously deeper, but precisely how deep no one knows.

Some think it’s a hundred feet or more, but they don’t – they cannot – know.

 

I sink my net into the river’s top ten feet where, I know, there are fish.

Satisfyingly, I catch a lot of fish.  I knew I would.

These are the facts – unassailable, empirical – replicable!

Certainly makes my mind up.

 

*******************************

 

My nemesis watches;

I know damn well she’s scheming trouble where there was no trouble.

Trouble making, she presently says: “Why don’t you sink your net deeper?”

I reply, with premeditated exasperation, “Because fish do not exist any deeper.”

She persists, as I knew she would: “How do you know fish don’t exist any deeper?”

“Because,” I reply, smug in certainty, “obviously, my net catches fish in the top ten feet.”

 

Most irritatingly, she yet persists: “Why don’t you sink your net deeper anyway,

and just see if you catch some fish?”

Decisively I reply, and with great finality: “What’s the point? My net catches fish in

the top ten feet, proving that’s where they are. My net is the best net money can buy –

it’s dependable, well proven. Besides, depths below ten feet are not my concern.”

Case closed. Me – I know the Fishnetic Method. I’m the expert here.

Nitwit. Dolt. How dare she question me.

 

In profound dedication to Richard Dawkins, method-ist

 

More (much more, actually, and on endless topics) may be seen on my blog at  fixypopulist.com