Something to prove

Could there be a teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars? As goofy as it sounds, the idea was first mooted by Bertrand Russell. He said that if the crockery in question was too small to be detected even by the most powerful telescopes, then there's really no way to disprovethat it was not there doingits regular rounds along with all the other planets. In other words, just because one can't disprove something doesn't mean it's not there - right?

Yes, we know where Russell was coming from; the world famous philosopher was a hard-core atheist and he was basically talking about the existence of God as believed in by the faithful. For instance, can logic disprove there's a white-robed bearded old man in the sky controlling the fate of the universe and, simultaneously, still concerned about the fall of each sparrow? Or that a transcendent Buddha nature resides in each of us?

Yet, just beyond the orbit of Mars lies the great asteroid belt - a collection of protoplanetary debris ranging from small stones to bodies one-fourth the size of our moon that are also revolving around the sun. Do we believe that one of them of sufficient size could come crashingto our world and snuff outall traces of our existence? After all, about 250 million years ago, one such extinction-level asteroid did impact Earth and wiped out up to 95% of all biodiversity.

Now, there's something we can't disprove won't happen again, say, next year - but how many of us believe in it? Meaning, sometimes one doesn't necessarily haveto believe in something forit to be true. Till it's too late.