Does Dark Matter? by Richard Seltzer

(an excerpt from Lenses, a book-length collection of short essays, in search of a publisher)

We're told that dark matter and dark energy account for 95.1% of all there is in the universe. Ordinary matter amounts to just 4.9%. The exact numbers change with new scientific advances, but the overwhelming dominance of the dark over the ordinary remains constant.

You can't see dark matter. You can't feel it or smell it or interact with it in any way. In aggregate, dark matter and dark energy account for the gravitational force that is necessary for equations that are fundamental to our understanding of the physical world. Basically, dark matter and dark energy are a fudge factor. If we want to believe that we understand the physical world, if we want to believe that the physical laws which hold true in our solar system and our galaxy also hold true billions of light years way, if we want to believe we can look back 14 billion years and ahead billions of years and understand what was happening and what will happen, then we have to believe in dark matter and dark energy.

But concepts like spirit, soul, and self are non-
scientific, beyond the pale, mere mystical speculation.