	Bob Hostetler > Writing

Ya Gotta Believe!

by Bob Hostetler

In 1973, a New York Mets team that barely managed a winning record in the regular season, made it all the way to the seventh of the World Series on little more than faith. That faith was epitomized by relief pitcher Tug McGraw, whose phrase "Ya Gotta Believe!" became the rallying cry for the amazing Mets' season.

That phrase seems more apt than ever as we enter 2003.

Ted Williams, who first made news by playing the game of baseball about as well as anyone in history, made news this past year when he died…and again when his only son, John Henry Williams, initiated efforts to have his father's head cryogenically frozen in the hope of a revival-and a new lease on life-sometime in the future when technology solves the irksome problem of mortality.

More recently, of course, the news broke that the first cloned human baby had been born to an American woman as the result of efforts by a previously little-known group called Raelians. These folks claim that "life on Earth is not the result of random evolution, nor the work of a supernatural 'God'. It is a deliberate creation, using DNA, by a scientifically advanced people who made human beings literally in their image" (quoted from the group's website, www.rael.org). The reason Raelians claim to have gone to the trouble and expense of successfully cloning a human being (a claim not yet verified) is that they believe cloning is the key to eternal life.

Ya gotta believe…in something.

We just can't help it. Part of the human condition, it seems, is a drive to understand where we came from, why we're here, and where we're going. Despite protestations to the contrary-whether scientific, philosophical, or political-we can't seem to escape our native tendency to believe in something bigger than ourselves…and to hope for something after this life. Even those who claim to believe in nothing frequently betray their true beliefs (or at the very least, hedge their bets) in times of trouble, particularly as death approaches.

As far as we know, the human animal is unique among all other life on earth in that respect. Dolphins, smart and adorable as they are, probably don't spend a lot of time wondering where they came from. Despite animators' and poets' depictions, lions and tigers are not often seen prostrating themselves to worship higher beings. Even monkeys-which Darwin supposed to be our progenitors-don't seem to long for the transcendent or the eternal.

The most casual look at bookstores, movie theaters, and television schedules will betray a hopeful suspicion that there is- something beyond this life. Some argue, of course, that such hope is simply the residue of primitive superstitions and myths. Others claim our ancestors simply mistook aliens for gods (which far from solves the problem of origins; after all, where did the aliens come from?) and we are only now learning their ancient secrets of genetic engineering. On the other hand, it may just be that our stubborn belief in an afterlife lingers because it is what scientists call a "highly convenient hypothesis"-it fits the facts. Very few-if any-of us seem content (or even able) to live in a state of pure agnosticism, a vacuum of belief.

As Thornton Wilder wrote in Our Town, "Everybody knows that something is eternal. And it ain't houses, and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people who have ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being."

So there's at least one thing I have in common with Ted Williams or the Raelians. Like the vast majority of humans on the planet, I am convinced that there's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being. But I don't think it's our DNA. And I don't think you can freeze it. But it's no less real for that.

Ya gotta believe, it seems. That's apparently the easy part. But the more pertinent question for each of us-the question on which our eternity hinges-is not whether we believe, but what.

This article appeared in the January 3, 2003 edition of the Hamilton Journal-News.

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