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"My dog is center of the universe, everyone knows that"

Woof!

Nietzsche lamented finally after that codex of Teutonic claptrap he'd scribbled, that all of life's mysteries could be explained if we'd only look to our dogs. Mine isn't talking much, but I figure that's probably one of the things he was referring to. People who shut up and listen are usually a lot wiser than me. Think how wise a dog must be.

Dogs don't care about conservative values. They don't care about creationism nor the scientific method either. They don't care about anything but you. I think they care about astronomy at least a little bit though, because mine smiles up at the stars at night, and of course the very first starship captain was a dog as well, the first living creature ever to escape the bounds of earth and rocket into space.

Why did they call it the USS Enterprise? Why didn't they call it the Starship Laika? One says nothing so much as "conquer", while the other suggests Ensign Rover sticking her head out the passenger side window at Warp 3, and if she smells any poop down there on that planet, well then it's time to beam down and check out the life forms.

She died up there, and probably didn't want to go into space in the first place, but if someone had loved her and she'd understood she was going to journey so far on their behalf, even if she did have to die in the process, she'd probably have done it anyway. Dogs will die for the people they love. Nietzsche knew that, and he knew it was worth more than all the religious and existential arguments ever dreamed up.

The night sky is beautiful where I live, right on the farthest northwest corner of California. I'm a long way from the light pollution of any big city, so the Milky Way can be seen the way it ought to see it here. On a good night one can see the Andromeda Galaxy with the naked eye. The recent meteor shower was beautiful, one about every four minutes.

She spent three months up there, though she'd died in less than a week. When the Russian public was apprised of the fact that no recovery plan was part of the mission, a national indignation erupted like nothing seen since before the revolution. Twenty-eight million had died in the war, and forty million more at the hands of a butcher whom only Mao would surpass in his evil. Yet the Russian people had drawn a line in the sand where inhumanity would not transcend.

It set the Russian space program back several months and costs millions of extra rubles, but a recovery program was instituted for every canine cosmonaut after Laika, and nearly all the dogs that went into space thereafter were recovered safely.

Somebody must have seen what they thought was a meteorite streaking the eastern horizon. A tiny three-second cascade of blue light and dust. It wasn't a meteorite though, it was a dog in her starship who like so many of her species lost thousands of miles away, had through some myterious capability finally found her way home.

Give your bible a rest. Read God and the Astronomers by Carl Jastrow if you have to use theological and scientiful collusion to find God in the cosmos. Its the most beautifully written epistle for the existence of God I've ever read. But I don't need things like that anymore. I know where to look for God. Zack Nguyen is right. All I need to do is look to the center the universe to see God in his handiwork every day. God is easy to spot. She usually has a tennis ball in her mouth.