Devout Infidel

I used to ask my mom about god when I was little.  She had a cookie-cutter answer every time: “We are too tiny to question god’s existence; he is god almighty and acts in our best interest. There are things we just do not understand as mere human beings……so we must not question them”. I would ask my friends with the same curiosity and they too reported the same type of answers from their elders. How convenient, I don’t know why I am here, I don’t know what the purpose of [human] life is on earth – if there is a purpose, but I should accept the lame answers that religion gives me.

It is rather universal how all religions basically have the same answer to my childhood questions. Just accept god they say, there is evidence of his existence all around you. Oh really, what might that be? The bees and the birds, the oceans, perhaps it’s the sun. Did he put the sun in the sky to keep me warm and enable me to grow food? How did he protect his hands when he handled that big burning ball of nuclear fusion? How did he make it work ‘cause I’d really like to duplicate that on earth to make clean energy now to reduce my dependence on foreign oil……Is life a test? Is this just a big huge laboratory and are we humans just a test specimen?

Ahh all these questions. They are good questions though: If there is a god and he is benevolent and kind and all that as we are told every time we ask, why is it that “His” children have been at each other’s throat for as long as they can remember or have kept written history? Here’s another: As far as we can tell, at least in the range we can “see”, the earth is the only marble that can harbor life. Why then, this God doesn’t make this earth the best place for life to enable itself to flourish without wars, hunger, famine, tyranny, murder, incest, disease, injustice and poverty? Yet another: What would god do when the population on earth reaches a critical mass taxing its resources to sustain the human race?

It is no coincident that the three so called major religions – the Abrahamitic Religions – are all based on the same principals; those of governance and the perception of what is supposed to be the “rules” to guide one’s life. Great, I have no issues with that, but humans have gone a lot farther in their utilization of religion than a mere “How To” cookbook on life. The concept of religion is fascinating in that theoretically if there is a need for religion (and I am not saying there is not) only one religion should suffice. Yet, throughout history, different ideologies have been the basis for spawning a myriad of religions and depending on the local environment and culture, each religion has had a different interpretation of what this god is supposed to want from us. What’s even more interesting is that most of these religions do not even recognize one another as the legitimate local representative of god – one god. In response to the question of why all these religions and why all the injustice and mayhem in the world, those with seminary education, and those without, say that we are created by god, but left alone on our own accord.  Aha..…told you, we are but little microbes in the great laboratory of god. He is just practicing to create the perfect species – earth is nothing but an experiment of what can go wrong and how you can fix it. Only he hasn’t figure out how to fix it by eliminating the flaws. I wish he’d hurry though, don’t you?

I insist that this has got to be the answer. Why else would the creator create us only to put us through what our species have been through? Wait, there’s more. If you have not had enough during life, after you die, there’s hell to pay, literally. You are judged on your actions when you were alive and depending on how good or bad you were heaven or hell awaits you. Oh give me a fucking break. It’s a lot more fun to do the things that will send you straight to hell, no? Am I being tested here? How are we doing so far? I’m telling you, this is yet another hint to the experimental nature of being human – of being created.
No one knows how many other civilizations are out there. No one knows how many civilizations have come and gone in the span of the reported age of Universe at about 15 billion years. No one knows what was before that and no one knows what will become of us. Is god still watching his creation? It looks like the experiment was soon abandoned after “creation” and left to fend for itself. We’re on our own; there’s no one looking after us, protecting us, watching us learn, and encouraging us to be better. Could it be why we don’t do near enough to better ourselves? Could it be why we are so good at hating each other, killing each other and dominating each other? I don’t know, but I do know that we’ve been doing just that ever since “creation”.

So…….if there’s a god up there, I wish he’d get back to the lab fast. If/when he does, I bet he’ll be rethinking his recipe for creating humans. “This one doesn’t look too good, I shouldn’t have taken that long cigarette break”, he’ll be thinking to himself. Perhaps the “design” wasn’t so “intelligent” after all!