God Isn't

By way of introduction, I offer a slightly modified passage from Bernard Lewis, quoted in a new book by Kishore Mahbubani: "(Religion) has brought comfort and peace of mind to countless (billions) of men and women. It has given dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives. It has taught people of different races to live in brotherhood and people of different creeds to live side by side in reasonable tolerance. It inspired . . . great civilization(s) in which (people) lived creative and useful lives and which, by its achievement, enriched the whole world."
No, I can't disagree with that, hardly at all. Religion in general has been beneficial to many, on individual and aggregate levels, throughout the world, throughout the history of mankind. No argument with that.

But it's also been an incredibly divisive and ugly force, causing untold destruction, pain, and death. No arguing with that either.

It was Jesse "The Body" Ventura, as Governor of the great state of Minnesota who said it best, most clearly, and most directly yet unpolitically correctly when he offered, "Religion is for the weak and ignorant."

Ouch.

I agree with both. God, and religion, all of the deities and spirits and cosmology of greater and lesser heavenly creatures, and the alleged miracles and ridiculously complex doctrine and rules and rituals, all of it is a creation of man. God and all of the attendant hoo-hah is a feeble albeit massively complex and shrill scream of denial into the face of the undeniable microscopicness of our existence and the inevitability of our death. There is no God; he's just an invention to distract us from the crushing reality of death, and the next logical step to: what's the point of even living when I'm going to die soon enough anyway? There is no higher authority, higher power, divine presence, omnipotent and all-seeing entity anywhere down there, up there, or out there. There is no one, no thing, no entity watching over us, taking care of us, guiding us, and promising something else when we expire. There's nothing but this reality and our lives in it, and when you're dead, you're dead.

God isn't.

And why would Man think up something like Gawd? Simple, it's first a reaction to things not understood. How to explain the observed yet unexplainable other than to resort to something that could do it and would want to do it, an intelligence with forethought and power, and then attribute purpose to it. In short, it's anthropomorphization at its most basic level, ascribing human traits and characteristics to the non-human. How easy is it to attribute the truly chaotic and coincidental nature of all existence to the hand of an unseen and all-powerful deity?

Second, creating a god and a religion to go along with the god is a fear-based, denial-driven reaction to the rational and undeniable realization of our meekness, our fingernail-tenuous grip on life as a planet, and our mortality, a puny, futile way to attempt to defeat death and somehow establish human control and destiny over that which can not be altered. In short, it's all fear of death, the inevitable questions about purpose given such a short time to do anything about it, and about denial.

Imagine ancient man (creation is another ancillary myth, naturally), sitting around his sparking fire in the Great Rift Valley of Africa a few hundred thousand years ago, unable to communicate other than rudimentary grunts, grumbles and barks, basic word-noises, there at about 5:05 pm, prehistoric cocktail hour, at the very dawn of rational thought, the dawn of humanity as we more or less know it today. So many things to see and observe, so much time to do nothing but watch and observe. Years of nothing but day and night, the passage of the moon and stars, changing of seasons, and nothing but time (no school, no work, no fields to tend, no TV, no internet, no distractions of any sort other than the occasional wild animal eating the children) to sit and take it all in, and then--so human--to ascribe patterns and context, to catalog and discern similarities and differences, to construct context, and then to start to ask questions about it all. Even before there was spoken language let alone writing, the big questions would come: Why is there fire? What exactly is it anyway? Why do the seaons change? Why does the moon move in an apparent cycle? Why do the stars travel in oblong circles in the sky as the days move on? What is the darkening of the moon, even the darkening of the sun (eclipse)? And more than anything, leading up to the really big questions: why and how is there birth, and then death, and what happens then? Why am I here, and what am I supposed to be doing? What's it all about?

What better way for a barely communicative, illiterate proto-human to conceive of this other than to put it into terms he could understand: a being just like him, only bigger, smarter, more powerful, with a bigger club, a bigger spear, more fire, all-powerful. So there's your Great Spirit. All of the pre-Christian/Buddhist/Muslim cultures had their own remarkably similar concepts of the Great Spirit, tribute to the generic homogeneity of human physical and mental make-up. And whaddaya know, all of those great spirits tended to live in the most clearly observable seats of power and energy. For coastal peoples, the great spirit was in the Big Lake, or in the sea. He was in the local volcano, the thundering waterfall, or for those without these kinds of features, he was in the sky and the wind, from which the most cataclysmic (weather) events occurred in their hihgly bounded lives.

The human mind assigns patterns, assigns attributes and characteristics, even when there are none, in its effort to make sense of what is being observed. Information is nothing without context, so the human mind creates it, often incorrectly, in its struggle to identify, catalog, define, and comprehend. So for the unexplainable, the only possible explanation, given that sheer natural chaos was an unacceptable alternative (and carbon dating was a few dozen centuries away), was that there was an intelligent, all-powerful Great Spirit making things happen. How else to explain a solar eclipse, or an earthquake or flood or tsunami or volcanic eruption? Hell, the causes of these weren't known until less than a thousand years ago, more like less than one hundred years ago (and truthfully, we don't fully understand any of these), let alone the nature of fire as a chemical reaction producting heat, light, and residual matter. How else to explain lightning, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, red tides, locusts, anything that would occur in the realm of the primitive that was so far out of their bounds of comprehension that the only possible cause could be attribution to something bigger and more powerful than they? How do you think the Christians ended up with Noah's flood, and the drowning of the Egyptians in the vengeful sea?

So religion was born. And as man and his mental capacity grew, so did the complexity of religion, its depth, its origins, its roots, its ritual and dogma. That was the only way to stay ahead of man's growing ability to ask probing and religiously unsettling questions, and then create approaches and methods to finding the exact and undeniable answers (think about the mystery of the Shroud of Turin, debunked only in the last 20 years; think about Copernicus and Ptolemy, persecuted for [rightly] questioning the unalterable, religiously defined place of Earth in the cosmos). Ancient religions, like the people who practiced them, were simple and straightforward, angry God and happy God, sacrifice, ritual and dogma. As reason and science began to grow, as explanations began to be found for the things that were attributed to God for so many centuries, religion had to change, had to keep one or two steps ahead of the populace in order to remain relevant and coherent. And so it did. Ancient animinst religions were discredited and faded as their entire bases for existence went by the wayside, with the rise of the more complex world religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity coming about as belief structures which essentially could co-exist with modern knowledge and an increasingly successful inquisitive humanity.

And increasingly successful scientific inquiry is beginning to prove the main world religions as internally contradictory, inadequately structured and based to remain valid without a serious re-working of doctrinal foundations. Even a hundred years ago one could still more or less successfully argue for Christian creationism. But science, specifically highly accurate carbon dating has proven this to be patently false. A wonderfully idyllic myth, sure, but still completely physically impossible. (I mean, really, believing in Creation? That's a whole 'nother entry on the subject of denial right there. Not faith, no, not faith--denial.) So what is the origin of Man? Yeah, evolution is still a theory, but there's more than enough evidence to show that it's most likely the real thing, the true origin of human beings and every other living thing around us. Tough for many arrogant humans to stomach, and impossible for doctrinal believers to accept because of its fundamental threat to the very basis of their beliefs, but it's almost certainly the truth.

But enough of Creation. Let's get back to even bigger questions, like the nature of religion and God in the first place.

It all boils down to cheating death, ,or more precisely the clawing, screeching, futile attempt to cheat death. Really, what's the point of anythying, of even trying, if all you're going to get at the end of maybe 70-odd years on the planet is the totally empty void of absolute nothing, the complete cessation of all aspects of your existence save for a mouldering heap of organic glop in grotesquely modified Sunday-go-to-meetin' best, in an ridiculously overpriced and poorly sealed vessel in the fetid depths of the earth and the short-lived memory of it in those who cared for you? The only way, then, to have it all make sense, to keep people focused and productive and most importantly in control, was to promise them better than they've got now. The promise is eternal leisure, the most intense physical and emotional pleasure imaginable (on a celestial scale, you pervs--none of that allowed in heaven!), complete and total spiritual fulfillment, union with the Higher Power, total communion with the Great Spirit, reunion with those departed, communication with your dead hamster, Fluffy, etc.

So, for those in grinding poverty, hobbled by disability, cursed with bad luck, famine, pestilence and every other bad thing life habitually and unflinchingly throws at you, what better way to stay focused, and most importantly, stay in your social and economic place than to keep your focus on the delightful, wonderful, enticing embrace of death and all that it promises? What better way to keep Russian serfs at bay than have the Orthodox clergy tell them every Sunday that their inevitable death is so much better than toiling for the fat, rich, well-fed, preening, abusive, murderous, cruel landed aristocracy, if they just keep their place and wait for that sweet release? What better way to keep a billion Indian peasants placid than to have them repeat the mantra that all life is suffering, and that only by behaving oneself can you get anything better next time around? What better way to keep a zillion Catholics in line and procreating unceasingly just like they ought to make it a crime against the Great Spirit to have sex without making a baby, or even to get a divorce from someone you hate? What better way to get a peer-pressured teenage Muslim to blow himself and his future to smithereens than tell him about 40-'leven virgins waiting to pleasure him in every way imaginable in the Great Beyond?

Not too far to go to see how a powerful social and economic elite would actively encourage, support, and strengthen Great Spirit belief systems in order to preserve their class, social, economic, and elite status. I think of royalty, clergy, the wealthy, the powerful, the power-hungry and power-mad, and what they've done and will keep on doing to get what they want and then to get more, and then keep it all. Why do you think ancient rulers were determined by God? Why do you think the President of the United States swears on a bible? Why do you think the coronation of an English monarch takes place in Westminster Cathedral? To make them infallible and unquestioned, naturally. Who are you to question the will of the Great Spirit? You take a shot, literal or figurative, at the Big Leader, and you're taking an indirect shot at The Big Man himself, and that's a good, fast way to earn a bad rep.

This begs the question of those who are in power and all set in the earthly life. Here are a few I wonder about? Do you think Bill Gates longs for death and the divine reward it will bring? Why would the richest man in the world wish for the rewards of death? Why would George W. Bush wish for the promised rewards of death, and the afterlife he tells us he believes in? Does Rupert Murdoch look forward to Judgment Day, and spending the rest of his life with the common folk that he's floated above for his entire life? Warren Buffet? The royal family of England? Any monarch anywhere. More power? More wealth? More notoriety? Nope, not for these guys, in fact they'll be just like everyone else, up there with their white wings and little golden harp. The rich and the powerful, they stand to lose the most in the Great Beyond. Their riches will mean nothing, their power absolutely vanished in the face of the Kingdom of God where there is only one source of ultimate power, control, and order yadda yadda. Why would such a person long for eternity, when the things that make their lives so enjoyable and rewarding right now will not be available?

On the flip side: Would Hitler long for death? Saddam, Pol Pot, Stalin? Given the religious structures, probably not, since they were most definitely headed south. But the (more or less) righteous, how will they enjoy the realm beyond life when nothing they have now will be with them? They'll be reduced to anonymity in the countless billions of human history, a soul-speck in the endless firmament. No moeny, no power, no stature or status, no notoriety, no fame, nothing to make them any more special than the spirit of that quadruple amputee Peruvian street beggar who died at 13. Yeah, I can see Billy Graham and Karl Rove and Madonna signing up for that trip. Give me a break.

And of course, there's that divine punishment for those who step out of line. What better way to mandate an earthly code of conduct and impose rigid moral structure than to promise the exact opposite of paradise to those who step out of line? Again, elites are the ones who benefit from the structure, although truthfully a well-followed moral code of conduct benefits all. Elites benefit from a structured society, predictable and stable, and one in which the downtrodden stay that way because that is their sad and sorry lot, looking forward to the sweet sleep of death and all of the fun that follows.

And in all of this, when does God show up and set the record straight? When does he step in and reward the righteous and just and innocent? When does he reach on down from Valhalla and snatch up a genocidal African dictator and make a global example of him to the entire world, live on satellite feed on American prime time? When does God come down and put his arm around the Greatest Person Alive, give him or her a big hug, look them right in the eye and tell them that because they're so kind and gentle and selfless and pure that he's going to forego the waiting period and beam them right on up to heaven right this second? If he's up there taking care of us, why is there war and famine, pestilence, disease, disability, hunger, poverty, the death of the innocent and beloved? If he's up there taking care of us, why isn't he up there taking care of us? If he's up there and doesn't intervene, and make things better? Why is that? One could get the impression that he doesn't really care, or that he's not really up there. Are we some kind of perverse experiment, little humans in an acrylic ant far through which God peers and chuckles?

At the very least, why doesn't he manifest himself from time to time, maybe every fifty years or so, even every hundred, or a thousand, just to keep him fresh in the species memory banks, for us to be absolutely sure he's up there/out there, looking down and monitoring our progress?

But he doesn't, not ever. There's nothing to clearly, unequivocally show that he's around. There's only faith, another cynical human creation to justify the lack of any kind of proof.

So, the only conclusion I've come to is that God isn't. He isn't up there, or out there. He isn't anywhere. He is not even He; there is nothing. Life is life, a multi-billion-year organic miracle in our isolated little corner of space-time. The universe will end it all one day, sooner or later, and all we can hope is that we've figured out how to move on before then. We are the result of both simple and complex natural forces and factors, acting over periods of time we can't comprehend. Life, that is, the entire sphere of all existence that we can detect and comprehend, is so massive in scale that we don't even know where it begins and ends. We are so small as to be absolutely insignificant, meaningless to anything other than ourselves. That's all we've got, and yet we still fight over patches of land, the color of skin, who has what resources, who wins what soccer game, all matter of childish, ridiculous horse shit. Life is coarse and random and absolutely unflinching in its swiftness and finality. Witness the December 2004 tsunami--that's life, baby. More correctly, that's existence. You wink into consciousness with a miniscule chemical-electric spark in a tiny, yowling ball of wrinkled flesh, and somehow miraculously it manages to glow and run for a few decades, and eventually that charge, more correctly the vessel that holds it, runs down and gives out, and the spark goes out. And that's all there is.

All religion is simply a way to escape this reality. All religion, all that have ever existed is the most massive and detailed act of human denial that's ever been manifested. Religion is a crouching, cowering scream of denial and rejection against the unalterable reality of eventual death, of the return to nothingness from which we all emerged. There is nothing out there to float away to. There is no soul, no unique personal vessel of identity that will find a home anywhere. That vessel is your mind, housed and shackled unfortunately to your body, and when the body gives out, that's just all there is.

If God is out there, up there, around us, watching out and taking care of us, then why are there so many religions? Why have there been so many that have withered and failed? Which is the One True Religion, and why hasn't it been made clear to us which path is the right one? Why would God tease us with so many false choices, and hide the correct one from us? Why would God allow the creation of the Jim Jones death cult, the Aum Shinrikyo cult, the David Koresh cult, and any other foolish and ultimately deadly false religions? That seems to me to be a meticulously cruel thing to do. They can't all be right, and in fact it is a central tenet of all religions to declare their unique claim to total righteousness and the utter corruptness, even ultimate evil of all of the others. How does the One True Religion get this designation, who decides? And what of the others, the outsiders? How do they get the message that they're wrong? Is it a child's fault to be brought up in the wrong church? If all children are born innocent, then what is the process through which they find the One True Religion? And why isn't it made clear?

Given my extreme doubt of the entire enterprise, why isn't God reaching down to help me out? Believe me, I've asked for assistance. I've asked for inspiration. I've asked for direction and an indication of which one is the Right One, which religion is the one that will save me from death. But I've never been given the slightest glimmer of enlightenment. I've studied the religions, and each has beautiful, inspired, lyrical and mysterious enticements, wonderful aspects and practices. And they each have histories of unspeakable cruelty and violence, of ridiculous rituals and practices, of arbitrary restrictions and proscriptions, and equally inane requirements. They eventually cancel themselves out for consideration, so full of contradiction and hypocrisy, the too swift refrain of "Have faith" being the most standard answer in their book.

So what to do? Create my own religion? Call it the Greater Holy Church of the Really Short Divine Spark or something like that? I certainly wouldn't be the first. Look at that ridiculous Aum cult in Japan, the spaceship bunch in California, the Jim Jones suicide cult in Guyana. What is that stuff all about? If God is looking out for us, why would he allow you to first follow, and then murder your family and then yourself in the name of a false prophet? I can see where following a false prophet would be instructive to a certain extent, but to actually kill yourself in that person's name, to go to your just rewards and commit an explicitly stated sin against God for which eternal damnation is promised, how is that fair and equitable? How does God give the average human a sporting chance with that kind of experience? If he's looking out for us, why does he allow this to happen?

A few of my questions about all of this:
What kind of God would allow the Holocaust?
What kind of God would allow the Black Plague?
What kind of God would cause the murderous eruptions of Krakatoa, Tambora, Pinatubo, even Mt. St. Helens?
What kind of God would cause a tsunami that kills 180,000 people? Are all of them worthy of divine punishment? Every single one of them?
What kind of kind and loving God allows sadistic monsters like Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Saddam to come to and hold power?
What kind of loving God would cause the Spanish Inquisition? Or the French persecution of the Heugonots?
What kind of God revels in the ritual murder of its religion's enemies?
What kind of God would allow the Rape of Nanking, and the rest of Manchuria, and Korea, and the Philippines, and Southeast Asia?
What kind of loving God would cause the Rwandan genocide?
What kind of honest and thoughtful God would allow a national leader to invade another country without due cause, killing tens of thousands on both sides?
What kind of God allows September 11th to happen?
What kind of God allows terrorists to murder innocents in his name? And fails to punish them?
What kind of God allows parents to abuse and murder their own children?
What kind of God allows pedophilia to exist?
What kind of God allows Somalian famine to go on for years, or Sudanese Darfur genocide?
Why does God allow nuns to be raped and murdered?
What kind of God allows slavery in any form?
What kind of God creates cancer, and other consumptive, wasting, lingering diseases?
What kind of God allows pedophile priests--MEN OF GOD!--to prey on children for years, and allows their leadership--MORE MEN OF GOD!--to knowingly cover up the actions, for years, without punishment?
What kind of loving God demands blood sacrifice?
What kind of God would play the cruel trick on a parent to demand the sacrifice of a child, only to stop the twisted hoax at the very end?
What kind of loving omnipotent God would create pain, suffering, sadness, and death?
If paradise awaits us, why do we have to be here?
If Adam and Eve were the first and only, wouldn't all humanity be the product of father-daughter, mother-son, and brother-sister incest?
Why does a loving God allow criminals to fleece the old, feeble, and frail out of their savings?
Why does God allow his missionaries to be persecuted, tortured, killed, and in a number of instances, eaten?
In a world which is the Dominion of God, why is it the rich and powerful always do better than the poor and powerless?
How does God allow O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson, DeLorean, and countless other rich and powerful go free?
Why does a loving God allow expectant mothers to drink and smoke and take drugs? Why does God cripple the newborn with birth defects?
Why does God allow peace activists and peaceful protesters to be killed?
If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, why is there death?
Why does God not show himself, and offer incontrovertible proof of his existence? If he demands and expect our worship, why does he not make that necessity plain and clear?
If God is so righteous and benevolent and just, where is the justice.
If God is so just, why is there more injustice than justice? Why doesn't justice always prevail?
Why does God allow criminals to raise funds and steal church money in his name?
Why does God allow the innocent to be convicted of crimes?
Why does God allow church burnings?
Why does God allow any transgression against or any violation of children?
Why does God allow starvation? After all, we had the whole manna from heaven thing a few hundred years back, right? The whole loaves and fishes thing, right?
Why does God thwart democracy and representative government, and allow dictators to rise to power and remain there?
Why does God allow Marburg and Ebola and tuberculosis, AIDS, smallpox, anthrax, SARS, bird flue, influenza, and all of the others?
Why does God allow torture?
Why does God allow child soldiers?
Why would God create female circumcision and genital mutilation?
Why would God allow Muslim honor killings?
Why woul God allow a thing such as international sex tourism, the subjugation of trafficked persons, the vicious, horrific sexual exploitation of children for profit?
Why does God allow incest?
Why does God allow genocide and mass murder in his name?
Why does God allow a 12-year-old child to become pregnant, or a prostitute?
What kind of God allows a country to drop cluster bombs and napalm on noncombatants?
What kind of God allows a Bataan death march?
Why had God created depression, anxiety, neuroses, mental illness, schizophrenia, psychosis?
What kind of God allows the kind of wicked, foolish, ignorant, ugly, cruel, selfish, dysfunctional people you see on Jerry Springer and similar idiot-cultural vomit?
What kind of God causes plane crashes and ferry disasters?
What kind of God creates Green River Killers, BTK, Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy, and other serial murderers, and allows them to continue for so long?
What kind of loving God creates tornadoes and hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, and tidal waves?
What kind of all-powerful God allows Man to be so arrogant, so selfish, and so stupid to actually make species after species extinct?
Why does God cause people to grow massive 100-pound tumors?
Why does God cause people to burn others at the stake as heretics?
Why does God allow summary executions to take place?
Why doesn't God reward me for my peace and calm and the ridiculous abiding and unconditional love I have for my children?
Why doesn't God reward me for not losing my cool and striking out at all of the roadblocks, obstacles, morons, and frustrations I endure every single day?
Why does God reward a magnificent person such as Mother Teresa with death?
If God is all-powerful, why is there death, with its agonizing sorrow, loss, and separation?
Why doesn't God reward me for tolerating, even helping with my wife's neuroses?
Why doesn't God reward me with a promotion or a bonus, some kind of positive recognition for the work I do?
Why won't God show himself to me?

The answers to all of these questions are simple and singular: because there is no God. Any God, any all-powerful being formed of simplicity and wisdom and kindness and love would not allow the world to operate in the manner that it does. At the very least, the evil and bad would be punished, even if the good were not rewarded. Yet it doesn't happen; it never happens. That's because no one is looking down upon you from on high except the astronauts in the moldy space station. There is no one who cares about you and your situation other than your family and friends, and that's where it ends. Maybe a truly selfless, service-oriented elected official, but I find this pretty hard to swallow. Life is short, coarse, cruel, and random, and that's the only immutable law. There is no life after death; there is nothing after death. Your unique chemical-electric spark weakens and departs its organic housing, and that's that. Your energy is no more, your consciousness evaporatess into its constituent organic molecules, which then do what anything does, deteriorate and decompose. And that's that.

And intelligent design is not your answer. Does anyone really think this is a viable scientific line of inquiry, to ascribe the known and measured and quantifiable to some undefined, unseen, unmeasurable, unquantifiable force/entity? How is this science? It's not; it's a clever and viciously cynical way to manipulate the system of reason and debate to force a retreat of reason and fact. It's an underhanded and fundamentally dishonest way of shoving God and religion down our throats, specifically Christian religion, since intelligent design as stated by those pushing it in the USofA does not merge easily with Islam, Buddhism, Hiduism, Shinto, or any of the others. But then again, that's the way they want it, right? The exclusivity, the single claim to legitimacy and divine ordination? That's what it's about, right? Hey, we've come full circle.

The complexity and amazing variation of life comes from billions of years of movement, growth, adaptation, and catastrophe. Volanic eruptions, meteor impacts, are these all part of intelligent design, the Divine Hand raining down destruction in order to build?

How does intelligent design square with strict creationism? In fact, it does not. Intelligent design seeks to explain complexity and variation as the work of a creator. But if that is the case, then where do Adam and Eve and their incestuous offspring fit in? Was smallpox around in the Garden of Eden? HIV? If yes, then why didn't they get sick? If not, why not, and where did it come from, other than the benevolent Creator in his attempt to creat more diversity and variation in the world?

It's all ridiculous, the time people spend on religion, the ugly vehemence they use to defend it, the upspeakable violence many go to to "defend" their beliefs, when all of it is absolutely, utter bullshit.

I'd love to fall weeping at the feet of The Great Spirit. It would make so many things so much more simple, so clear. It would answer so many questions. But it just doesn't happen. I've been asking, and I keep asking, but the answer is just the hiss of background radiation and the cacophony of all of life all around me.