Elf Sternberg

I have a belief and it is a singular one: the universe does not lie to me. It's secrets may be hidden from me, but there is no intelligence at work actively intent on keeping me from understanding. Consequentially, I believe that if I subject the working reality which I have before my eyes to ever stringent ordeals it will eventually bleed truth. That truth can only be confirmed by making the experiment repeatable and demonstrable to any observer or instrument.

No god of any kind is needed for this belief to be true, and in all of the centuries since man became a rational, thinking being, the dark gaps where we once believed a god to be necessary we have instead found unthinking, unfeeling processes. The believer and the unbeliever alike suffer cancer, flat tires, lice, liver damage, HIV, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, lost car keys, heart disease and the heartbreak of psoriasis in the same proportions. I can only determine that in the world outside one's fanciful imagination, the universe is proceeding as it always has and no amount of wishful thinking changes that at all.