Chances are that a lot more people in the world believe that God had some role in the creation of Humanity than the scientific version, which begins with the Big Bang.  As such, then, God is the most popular choice for First Contact, or interaction with an extraterrestrial.  Actually, he has no competition in this vote because no intelligent life form has yet ever made contact, as confirmed by any reliable source. This might well be my shortest posting, for what would be the point of confirming or refuting the title?  Well, this gives me another opportunity to compare religion with science. I start with  Global Religion 2023 , a 26-country Global Advisor survey by Ipsos. These countries were all reasonably developed, with 46% of the respondents believing in some form of Christianity.  Only 7% Buddhist, 6% Muslim, mostly Sunni, and 4% Hindu.  Interestingly enough, 29% with no religion or not religious. India, Turkey, Japan and Thailand were surveyed, but the...

All three wars are of course intertwined.  Many Republicans don't want more Ukraine support, exacerbating their civil war.  The conflicts in and around Israel could well bring order to Congress, which in the House will mean bipartisan cooperation. About that Middle East conflict : The numbers are in flux, with deaths rising past 1000 and hostages in the scores. Then again, there is little being said about two  Afghanistan earthquakes this weekend, killing more than 2000 . While there seems to be no immediate terroristic threat at this time to the continental USA, we are most definitely involved, and Congress will need to quickly add funding for Israel. The Navy's newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, with a task force of 5,000 personnel, has been deployed to this area.   Carrier cost $17.5 billion . The grave danger is expansion to other parts of the region.   However, this might not happen  because it is more and more appearing that the a...

On Friday I posted  part 3 of  The Story of My Life .  This is the fourth and concluding portion, delving into what will come after I die. I am 99+% certain that death will bring me eternal gloom, or peace, depending on how I will end up feeling.  But I could be wrong, and most of my acquaintances have the belief that they will see me in Heaven.  Yet, with my current attitude, will this be possible? Let's begin with Christianity, which for  two millennia has been convinced that no one who refuses to believe in God and  The Bible  can go to heaven .  But eight years ago  Pope Francis  wrote an open letter with an ambiguous passage leading to speculation about the requirement of faith. Do only Christians go to Heaven? Classical evangelical doctrine holds that salvation comes only through faith in Jesus Christ, and that those without such faith will be condemned to hell. A number of texts are typically cited in support of this position...

About those gasoline lines on the Eastern Seaboard, Elliptic has reported : That the Darkside ransonware group received $5 million from Colonial Pipeline through a Bitcoin wallet. Turns out a German chemical distribution company Brenntag on May 11 also sent $4.4 million, to the same cyberspace to prevent the leakage of stolen data. There were other incidents, as that wallet has received a total of $17.5 million since March, and $12.5 million were re-sent to other sites. Just today, though, there is uncertainty about what exactly has happened to the remaining $5 million, for that location ceased operations. One theory is that the U.S. government was able to do this.   Then again, nothing has been announced. Stephen Hawking might well have been the smartest person alive , then he passed away three years ago.  Perhaps Paul Allen, who with Bill Gates founded Microsoft, might well have then become the smartest.  Allen scored 10 points higher in the SAT than Gates, with a ...