Within the 96% of the universe that scientists claim is “missing,” unknown and perhaps even unknowable, there is room for much speculation such as my own concerning the first chapters of Genesis. As poetry and allegory I don’t take the story of Creation literally, but one with a wealth of meaning commanding intense study and speculation about many possibilities including those of the supernatural, some quite beyond understanding while we are bound in these mortal bodies. Consider the fact scientists can only account for 4% of the universe being “physical” as we know it including that of energy in various forms defined as “vigor or power in action.” That other 96%, as I pointed out, leaves a lot of room for speculation:

Where is the rest of the universe? Scientists have only found 4 percent of matter and energy in cosmos. By Dave Mosher, LiveScience August 20, 2007: Scientists trying to create a detailed inventory of all the matter and energy in the cosmos run into a curious problem — the vast majority of it is missing. “I call it the dark side of the universe,” said Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, referring to the great mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. In fact, only 4 percent of the matter and energy in the universe has been found. The other 96 percent remains elusive, but scientists are looking in the farthest reaches of space and deepest depths of Earth to solve the two dark riddles. Missing matter: Einstein’s famous equation “E=mc^2” describes energy and matter (or mass) as one and the same — maps of the cosmos refer to the energy-matter combination as energy density, for short. The problem with detecting dark matter, thought to make up 22 percent of the universe’s mass/energy pie, is that light doesn’t interact with it. But it does exhibit the tug of gravity. Initial evidence for the mysterious matter was discovered 75 years ago when astrophysicists noticed an anomaly in a jumble of galaxies: The galactic cluster had hundreds of times more gravitational pull than it should have, far outweighing its visible mass of stars. “We can predict the motions of the sun and planets very accurately, but when we measure distant things we see anomalies,” said Scott Dodelson, an astrophysicist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. “Dark matter is currently the best possible solution, even though we’ve never seen any of it...”

The fault I find with Einstein’s famous equation is that it does not account for life, and this search for that missing 96% of the universe lends credibility to my own speculation that the Bible may have it right when it comes to things of the supernatural in many instances, including life itself being in that category, and the “tree of life” in Genesis the gods were protecting from a fallen Adam may have a basis in fact. That the Adam may have been supernatural and spiritual in their origin and condemned to bodies of flesh subject to death and decay because of disobedience of whatever nature is a legitimate speculation. Even science teaches all physical entities including the galaxies of the universe are empty space between atoms, that if this space was removed the entire universe might be a relatively infinitesimal body of physical mass as in the theory of the Big Bang.

To me, one of the most unfortunate aspects of religion is the attempts to make the words of men the words of God. Rather than reading the Bible as poetry and literature, much of it written as poetry and allegory, religionists have resorted to many subterfuges in order to support their own prejudices. While the Bible as literature remains unsurpassed among all the books ever written, while more books have been written about the Bible than any other subject in history, to abuse it to support a religious prejudice is quite unforgivable and has done great harm to earnest attempts to get to the truth behind the poetry and allegory of the Bible.

While discussing this the other day with my friend Byron, an Episcopal priest, I asked him how he would put his own dreams and visions into written expression? It is enormously difficult to communicate our deepest thoughts in a comprehensible fashion that others can understand. Many such attempts make about as much sense as the Jabberwocky without any of the fun with words. For example, the prophets of the Bible could only work within their own spheres of understanding, and the prophetic books of the Bible are limited accordingly. Consider how someone living two thousand years ago or more would describe their visions of the wonders of our modern age, including rockets and nuclear weapons. The visions of Daniel, Ezekiel, those of John on the Isle of Patmos may have been real enough but would make little sense to them, and their descriptions of those visions suffer accordingly.

No matter how those dedicated to dismissing all forms of the supernatural may try, they have their own demons and must deal with “things that go bump in the night.” But even as scientists continue attempting to replicate life in the laboratories, they must begin all such attempts with material already in existence. And because of this restriction, a restriction hidden in that 96% of the universe unknown and perhaps unknowable there is little possibility of any original “creation” of life let alone understanding what exactly life is, that “something” that animates at birth and departs at death, but there remains much unexplained that accounts for the “Monsters of the Id” and the monsters in human guise preying on women and children. And not a one of us escapes what may be the “primitive” of primeval memory following The Fall that haunts the dreams of even the best of people, the representations of these demons as well as those of kinder gods and angels being found in the oldest of cultures.

“We all have our ghosts” is a well known expression. But the fact lost to those that would dismiss such ghosts is that of their own irrational dismissal of the truth of the matter. We do not know what demons the ancients dealt with, what gave rise to the belief in such demons. But I’m more than willing to credit a “demon-haunted world,” one in which evil seems to consistently triumph over good. And the reason for this cannot be found in a strictly defined science that discounts the supernatural that may dwell in that 96% of the universe unknown and perhaps unknowable.

The appeal of SciFi is thinking outside the box of a strictly defined science that precludes imagination; that precludes the truth of the statement “There are not only stranger things in our universe than we imagine, but stranger things than we can possibly imagine!” That not only covers a lot of territory for speculation for what may be “out there,” but what may be operating within our own world as well. So when I read in the Bible that God is a spirit, that we are spiritual beings inhabiting mortal bodies, that the earth is Satan’s domain accounting for evil, that good people are battling an enemy unseen but represented by the monsters in human guise among us, represented by the wars of men and greed and avarice, the lust for power and wealth I’m inclined to believe the Bible is correct about this and Jesus had it right regardless of the abuse of both the Bible and Jesus on the part of professional religionists.

But it does make sense of what would otherwise appear to be sheer lunacy; that those like Bush and other tyrants could possibly attain to such positions of power that make so many millions suffer as a consequence. I continue to maintain the Bush administration will be recorded as the worst America has ever suffered. But I also maintain that were it not for Satan placing his own in positions of such power, including those in Congress, those like Bush would not only never achieve such power, but would be assassinated at the outset of their abuse of such power. However, apart from the explanation contained in the Bible no one can offer a better explanation for the continued triumph of evil over good throughout human history any more than our science can explain that 96% of our universe unknown and perhaps unknowable. In the end, we are left with only the spiritual by way of any explanation or understanding.

Given the many theories of the universe the spiritual may in the end prove to be the only reality and the only real power of the universe. Certainly my own thoughts on this subject as well as my thoughts concerning good and evil in conflict, my beliefs concerning demons, demon influence, demon possession, my beliefs concerning angels and like things can easily be dismissed as silly, even lunatic. But what cannot be dismissed is the fact that evil predominates throughout human history, and continues to predominate today. And there has to be a reason for this. Books and theories by the thousands multiply in attempts to explain this condition of humankind, but for me the Bible remains the primary text by way of explanation and understanding.