unscriptured

Quick, think of a number. Now what did you just do? Did you pick a favorite number? A lucky number? Or did you pick one at random? And if you picked one at random, was it really random, or was it the result of your subconscious mind picking a favorite number or a lucky number?

And is that what it’s like in the universe? Is it all really God’s plan or is a lot of it just her flipping a mental coin, rolling a mental die?

She tells me that a lot of people have thought that, over the years. In fact, that’s really the reason why so many religions emphasize prayer. The idea is that if we reach a crossroads and we decide which way to go by flipping a mental coin, that maybe God does something similar. And if we don’t always go with a true random number but many times go with a number that we favor or that we’ve just heard a lot recently, well maybe God will do the same thing. So if you can get your prayer into God’s head just before she decides if today is your day, maybe she’ll unconsciously decide things your way.

I asked her. She says it’s an interesting theory, but don’t count on it.

What does it take to get into Heaven? That’s one of the big questions for the Christians. As a matter of fact, if you look at it a little more expansively it’s their biggest question. The more expansive look would be to assume that what it takes to get into Heaven is to please God, and therefore, asking what it takes to get into Heaven is asking what it takes to please God. What question could be bigger to one of the faithful?

I was thinking about that, but somehow I got my thinking all turned around and started wondering instead, what is Heaven? See, I was wondering what made it worth it. If someone is not naturally inclined to do those things that would get them into Heaven, what would make it worth going against their nature? And, conversely, might there be aspects of Heaven that would make someone that does, by their innate nature, do the right things, prefer not to get in?

Take Hitler’s mother. What if she had been a really good person and wasn’t at all at fault for the way her son turned out? Say she had lived a good life and was a cinch to get into Heaven, but didn’t want to spend eternity without her son. Could God really allow her to go to Hell just to be with her son? Surely it would be cheating to put an imitation of her son into Heaven to be with her, but wouldn’t it be even worse to let him into Heaven just because she needed to be with him? So aren’t these mutually exclusive choices both wrong? And what if you extend that out? Say Hitler’s mother was just a little bit responsible for the way he came out, but her mother (Adolph’s grandmother) needed her in Heaven to feel at home there? Would that make enough difference to get Hitler’s mom in, but not enough to get Hitler in? And then what would the cutoff be? And would grandma be allowed to leave after she got in when it turned out that her daughter was enough to blame for how Hitler turned out that she wasn’t going to get in no matter what?

I tried explaining this all to God, but he just told me that the mortal mind really wasn’t capable of understanding what Heaven really was, let alone where the line was for what would just barely get you in.

I think that boils down something like when Hitler’s mom would say to him, “because I’m the mom and I say so.”

One of the most celebrated documents in United States history is the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps it’s most celebrated sentence is: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Now a lot of Americans think that those rights are the law of the land, but that’s not the way it is. What the Declaration says is that those rights are so innate that we don’t even need laws to protect them; they are are so much a part of us that any law that did not respect them could not itself be given any respect. It’s that whole “unalienable” part.

As to the “endowed by their Creator” part? God points out to me that everything we have is ultimately, in some sense, endowed by her, so that phrase doesn’t really add anything. What it really is, is just a flowery way of talking and a bit of slight of hand, where they appeal to a higher authority as the source of something as sort of a way of saying, “Hey, it’s out of my hands. If you have an issue with it you’ll have to take it up with God, not me.”

So how does she feel about it? Well, she seems to think of being credited with giving us life, liberty and the right to pursue our own happiness as a lot better than most of the things people like to attribute to her.

George Carlin died this week. I could say “passed on,” or any number of other euphemisms, but for him, that would be the ultimate in disrespect. George was perhaps the best I’ve ever known for telling the truth without pulling any punches. And he did it while making you laugh.

I didn’t talk to God about George’s death. To George, God was an invisible man in the sky who was the ultimate oxymoron, an all-powerful, perfect being whose every work was fundamentally flawed and destined to fall apart. So I honor his memory by living this week in a universe that exists without a God, a universe that is controlled only by the fundamental constants of physics.

I’d like to say something funny about it all. I’d like to find the humor in his being gone, but it would probably take me years to write anything worthy. So let me just say, here’s to you, George. If you get an afterlife and you run into God, I know you’ll give him hell.

And I’m sure he’ll thank you for it.

Just as soon as he’s done laughing.

I was talking with God about the apparent ineffectiveness of prayer, and I wanted to know what he looks at when evaluating the worthiness of a prayer. The thing he brought up that I found interesting was that some people operate under a kind of golden rule of prayer. They pray for others because they would like others to pray for them.

The theory behind this seems to be that it would be greedy to pray for yourself but that by operating in a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,” sort of mode, they should get all the benefits of the greedy behavior without the downside. According to God some people have this goal without even being consciously aware of it. I pointed out that this was pretty much the same thing as one theory of how society works. The idea being that if we all just treat each other right then we’ll all be being treated right. No religion needed.

God then pointed out to me a few reasons not to discourage these people. First, while they’re praying, at the very least, they’re not causing any trouble. Second, the act of praying for other people reminds them to be good to other people. Third, the sheer repetition of it programs them and helps them to be good to other people merely out of habit.

Of course, most people have enough empathy to just be good to each other because it feels good, but for those that don’t, it’s not a bad idea to have another way to push that agenda. Just don’t go thinking that praying for people is the same thing as being good to people.

I was talking with a boy I know, the other day, and he mentioned that he’d seen a TV show with perverts in it. I asked him what made them perverts and he said that a guy had done “this” to a woman’s chest, indicating a circular rubbing motion with his hand. Now I don’t know about you, but in my book of perversions, rubbing breasts is barely even a footnote.

So I brought the subject up with God. The first thing she said, was that when it came to sex, leaving out the foreplay was far more perverse than including it. We talked a little bit about the difference between perversion and fetishism, but of course the two are somewhat orthogonal. Fetishism after all is about having a strong attraction to a particular type of thing; whereas perversion is about having an abnormal attraction to a type of thing or a type of act. So a man being fond of breasts is a normal and healthy thing. A man being really, really, really fond of breasts, has likely raised his fondness to the level of fetish. And a man who is so afraid of his fondness for breasts that he has the bare breast on a statue of Lady Liberty covered with a sheet when he gives a speech in front of it has definitely crossed the line into perversion.

Then God pointed out to me that the difference I should really be discussing is the distinction between perverse and kinky. Rather than make me work it out on my own she pretty much came right out and told me. She said that perversion is when somebody does something that you don’t approve of, and kinky is when they do something that you didn’t think of.

God admitted to me today, that almost all religions are based on stuff that somebody just made up. Now he doesn’t have a problem with that. The question, he says, isn’t whether or not they are based on lies but on whether or not they do good things.

Of course, when it comes to doing bad things, religions have produced some doozies. But today is not the time to discuss the Crusades, suicide bombers, or pedophiliac priests. I do wonder, though, whether those enormous bads are made up for by the countless and uncounted small goods. What complicates the equation is the unknown value of how many good deeds done in the name of God would still have been done if there were no religion or notion of gods.

Getting back to my original point, the reason we were discussing the fictive nature of the origin of religions was because I was doing some light reading about Mormonism. As you may or may not know Mormonism was founded on information revealed to Joseph Smith by the Angel Moroni. I asked God if it didn’t not only show that Smith was making things up but that he had contempt for his audience that he claimed to get his information from his “moron I.”

God told me that through the millennia he’s found religions vastly entertaining but has been very disappointed at how little most people apply their endowments of reason to determining the authenticity of their spiritual leaders and stories. I suggested that maybe he had built a blind spot into most people’s sense of reason when it came to religion because he was afraid that if we really thought about it he would disappear in a puff of logic. He just tousled my hair and smiled.