The God Thing
Religion, which gets a lot of disrespect these days, is bang-on about one thing; we are sinful creatures. Now I’m not a religious man-child, but I wish God would somehow make Him/Her/Itself known to me. Any sign besides the proselytizing of obnoxious religious people would be welcome; perhaps a quick conversation, or an obvious answer to an obscure but believable prayer like please make my penis 16 inches long for a couple of hours would do the trick. Finding out, after prayer, that my mole is not cancerous isn’t magical enough…I need some raz-a-ma-taz. Unfortunately, it appears that one needs faith, and faith, for me, has not resulted in anything spectacular. Perhaps God doesn’t answer what He/She deems as a silly prayer. Unsolicited opinion: He/She/It should consider doing so for public relations reasons.
It’s very easy to say that God doesn’t exist. I call myself an agnostic, which for me essentially means a pussy atheist. I’d like to be an atheist, but something deep within me won’t let me. I think part of it is the arrogance. How dare I declare that God doesn’t exist. And what if God does exist, and God is of the all knowing, all seeing variety that decides whether I go to Heaven or Hell, or some other such places? Too risky for me. The other issue is that I believe there is a tangible human need for meaning in life. I know this because I have felt it and acted upon it. It usually happens when life gets too scary, or the Buffalo Bills are in the Super Bowl. I have no problem admitting that at certain times in my life I have prayed…not on my knees though. Sometimes in life it seems there’s nothing else one can do. And I refuse to declare myself an atheist and then secretly pray. That would be like saying that you hate reality TV but secretly watch Sex Rehab. Speaking of which, God I hope Dr. Drew kicks out Kari Ann Peniche. She is an idiot and is getting in the way of the other patient’s progress.
I look at the miraculous aspects of nature and human ingenuity and wonder how this all came to be? I know we are technically animals, but come on. Why can humans vaguely understand the universe while animals behave like… animals? I love animals as much as the next person but let’s face it…humans are much smarter. Even if we end up destroying the planet, we are still smarter than animals. And I don’t want to hear that whales, dolphins and elephants are super-intelligent. Until I see a spacecraft built by an elephant, or read a poem written by a whale, or watch movie made by a dolphin, with few exceptions, humans are smarter.
Why specifically are humans cursed and blessed with self-awareness? I don’t know. But here’s what I do know. Many of us like to believe in God. Many of the stories/legends/myths surrounding God are similar in the different religions. It seems to me that some of us, perhaps most of us, need to feel that there is a reason for our existence. Fair enough. But consider the possibility that the myths that explain our existence only make sense to us. In other words, they follow a logic and language that are distinctly human. Consider that the explanations, including the big bang theory, are ideas that only we humans understand, and our beloved rationality is irrelevant beyond our own intellectual traditions. Now I’m no intellectual. I barely got out of high school. The fact that I have a post secondary degree is because there was such a thing as literature and film school. Luckily, my years of watching television somehow paid off. All I’m saying is that if God exists, maybe we, as humans, don’t have the mental capacity to understand the big truths. Or, maybe the concept of truth is a human affectation, and meaningless outside our world. One thing for sure is that I have no idea what’s really going on.
So, although I’m fairly certain that God is a human construct, every once and a while I see or feel something that makes me wonder. So, God, if you read this, if you could get Dr. Drew to kick Kari Ann Peniche out of rehab, that would go a long way in proving your existence to me.