If you look through the Huffington Post, you’ve probably seen stuff by “Robert Lanza, MD” from time to time. He’s apparently a smart guy, but his posts, well, they never seem very impressive to me. He likes to ask questions and then use the questions (not the answers, mind you) as “evidence” to prove whatever his point is. His most recent – “Why You’re Alive and Can Never Die: The Larger Scientific Picture” – is no different.

Is it just a one-in-gazillion chance that you happen to be alive, now, on top of all time? Or is there a more rational scientific reason? Grade-school math tells us the probability of being on top of infinity is zero. If space and time are tools of the mind, then how can there be a time without consciousness?

OK, not being a “scientist and theoretician,” I guess I’m not smart enough to understand what “being on top of infinity” is supposed to mean (or what it has to do with the three questions he’s asking in that paragraph), but if it means there isn’t a number greater than infinity, then I reckon I did, indeed, learn that in grade school (of course, infinity isn’t really a number – it’s more of a theory that can never be proven). But Lanza’s first poser, which I suppose is meant to imply that there’s such a tiny chance of you happening to be here as the person you are at exactly this time and place that, golly, it just can’t be an accident, reminds me of the “intelligent design” people.

Gee, in order for you to be you, everything had to happen exactly the way it did, or you wouldn’t be here. So it had to happen for a reason. I guess it doesn’t occur to these people that it works the other way around. Thing didn’t happen the way they did in order for you (or the universe) to exist the way you (and it) do. You exist they way you do because things happened the way they did. If things had happened differently, then everything would be different. But they didn’t so they’re not.

Now, if choose to believe that an unseen hand (either God’s or Adam Smith’s) guided everything to happen a certain way, well, OK. Personally, if there is some sort of creator, I suspect they were just f*cking around to see what would happen. Mix this, that, and that other shit up, heat it for a while, and see what grows on it. I kinda doubt there was some sort of master plan designed to create me.

And if it all was a bug plan, then I’m pissed my plan didn’t include having enough money to keep me from having to go to work today.