Joe the Unbeliever meets God

Imagine for just a few moments that the Christians are right, and that there IS a God, just like in the Bible, and there is a Heaven and there is a Hell. It’s not a pretty thought, but just use your imagination for a minute. We, as unbelievers, would be in a great deal of trouble, right? There’s no question that, IF it was all true, we’d be prime candidates for a reallllly bad time.

What would those first few moments be like, right before demons impaled you with pitchforks and tossed you screaming into the Lake O’ Fire? With any luck, God would give you a minute or two to state your case—not that it would do any good, but I have to think that a God who puts the stamp of approval on something as monstrously obscene as Hell would have just enough mean-spirited humor to hear you out.

Here’s how it would go:

God: “Anything to say for yourself before your eternal damnation commences?”

Joe the Unbeliever: “Yeah, if you don’t mind. This is totally bogus.”

God: “You had your chance, kid. I gave you every opportunity to worship me.”

Joe: (fighting panic) “Yeah, sure, God, but you never gave me a reason to!”

God: “What, burning for all eternity is not a good reason to worship me?”

Joe: “There’s so many things wrong with that statement, I hardly know where to start. I mean, even if I did believe in you when I was alive, the threat of eternal torment doesn’t exactly fill me with love for you! Fear, sure, but—“

God: “Fear, love, whatever. The choice was simple, and it was yours to make. You chose poorly.”

Joe: “But that’s not my fault! You’re the one who gave me the ability to choose! You set me up! I’m like… I’m like a metaphysical fall guy!”

God: “Metaphysical fall guy. Hah.”

Joe: “I’m glad you can laugh about it. My point is, there was absolutely NO indication that you were anything but a fairy tale. All the Christians had was their old book, and no one with any sense would take it seriously. It’s full of—“

God: “That’s your mistake, not taking it seriously.”

Joe: “Apparently so, but come on! I was saying, it’s full of crazy, nonsensical… well, nonsense! The world was created in seven days, the—“

God: “Six days. I rested on the seventh day.”

Joe: “Okay, six days, then. Man was made out of, what, clay or something and woman was made from his rib? I mean, we’re supposed to take that seriously??”

God: “I fail to see why not. It IS the divine Word of God, after all.”

Joe: “But you made the rules, God, you made the rules and then you used them against us. You gave us the intellect to examine things and think critically. You’d have to know that, doing that, we’d eventually dismantle the stories in the Bible and reveal them for the crap they are!”

God: “You’d better watch your tongue, kid. You could wind up in a lot of trouble.”

Joe: “How much worse could it be?? I’m in Hell, for Christ’s sake.”

God: “Don’t take the Lord’s name in… oh, never mind.”

Joe: “And then there’s making the sun stand still for an entire day. Come on, man, if you’re real, then that means you’re responsible for the laws of physics and all the other rules that govern the universe, right? So what’s with this ‘making the sun stand still’ thing?”

God: “The rules of physics don’t apply to me. I’m God, right?”

Joe: “Well, that’s just great, thanks for that terrific insight. Are you so powerful that you can make a stone so heavy that—“

God: “That even I can’t lift it? Get some new material, kid, I’ve heard that a thousand times.”

Joe: (nearly frantic now) “Look, here’s my point. You gave us the knowledge of right and wrong. You gave us free will, to choose whatever path seemed right to us. You set up the irrefutable laws of nature (although maybe not SO irrefutable, apparently), and you did all this knowing FULL WELL what would happen in the end.”

God: “I think I know where you’re going with this, but please do continue.”

Joe: “Of course you know where I’m going with this. You ALWAYS know where everyone is going with everything. You’re omnipotent. And that’s my point. If you knew that granting free will and knowledge of good and evil would lead to more people rejecting you than accepting you, why did you do it to begin with? Huh? Answer me that one!”

God: “Kid, do you really think that your ability to think critically is the most important thing about you? Faith, kid, that’s the key. Faith and love for me, your loving God.”

Joe: “I led a good life, God. I was kind and decent to other people. I always tried to do the right thing.”

God: “The right thing? You mean, like, that time you stole from your mother?”

Joe: “Oh.”

God: “Or when you lied to your girlfriend about what you did that time when you visited Los Angeles? Sure, what a good guy you were.”

Joe: “Okay, so I wasn’t perfect. But I always tried. I always did the best I could, and I never deliberately hurt anyone.”

God: “Well, good for you, kid. What do you want, a medal? Here’s the irony of that: if you’d accepted my boy Jesus into your heart, you could have lied and cheated and stole until the day you died, but guess what? You’d be in Heaven right now.”

Joe: (silent for a long moment, stunned. And then--) “Wow. You… you’re kind of a big bastard, aren’t you? You set us all up to fail. Are you psychotic?”

God: “Keeping talking, kid.”

Joe: “Never mind that question, I know the answer. You ARE psychotic. Anyone who’s even GLANCED through the Old Testament can see that. You’re jealous and petty and… evil, even. You know what, God? Even if there WAS proof of your existence when I was alive, I think… I think I STILL would have rejected you.”

God: (chuckles) “So. No regrets, then?”

Joe: (stoically, even though he’s shaking in his boots) “No. No regrets. I rejected you then, God, and I reject you now.”

God: (shrugs) “That’s too bad. I was ready to give you another chance, up in Heaven, but if you have your mind made up—“

Joe: “What? Wait a sec—“

But God pushes the shiny button, and off Joe plummets, to eternal damnation.

'bout Goddamn time!

Hellooooo, temporary lay-off!

Time to kick the writing into high gear, finally. Between doing work for Real Detroit Weekly, finishing up two novels, and various short stories and essays, I should stay pretty busy, right? There's a new bit I put up over there in the "Novels" section, even.

So happy! Whoo! Let the productivity begin!

If a man would follow...

If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane...

Boring update...

Hello, friends.

Still here, still writing.

The day job's a drag, yep, but that's just the way it goes. Closing in on finishing two novels before the year is out-- City of Heretics and The Scarab-- and just in the last couple of weeks I've started writing articles for Real Detroit Weekly.

Lay-off will happen eventually, and that means more productivity from me as far as writing goes. I've been looking at the blogs of a couple of writers I've met through Facebook, and am reconsidering my approach to this whole blogging thing-- more on that later.

Tired all the damn time. Irritating. Not depressed or anything like that, just bogged down with all the stuff the world throws at you, and wishing I had some means of escaping it. Like Brian Wilson said, I'm just not made for this world...

blank

industrial park & the acrid chemical tang

so diseased it infects the ground around it & turns it

to broken concrete & faded yellow lines

& oil stains

warehouse where long faces on sad frames

move slowly from stack to stack

& the hi-lo beeps pleasantly like an idiot at an infirmary

would smile at the rows of dead & dying

(is there anything else I can help you with today?)

soulless fluorescent casts no shadow on the pallid blue office

drop ceiling but pipes above it rust & whine even after the lights are out

& (my name is BLANK. thank you for calling) even here

the chemical intoxicates and warps around your skull &

you can be sure that the voice on the line when the phone chirps

is a ghost long since dead that only has a voice

in some other ethereal place where a phone line is

all there is

what mythology was wrought from our souls when we came here?

what past life-future life-present life was bartered when

we signed & what place in our guts is kin to a gray industrial park?

have a great day. goodbye. goodbye.

Story sold.

Sold "Emancipation, With Teeth". Cool. I probably shouldn't name the magazine yet, but it's print for a change instead of a webzine. Slated to be published in January. More about that later...

Non- belief

My journey to non-belief is typical; I spent many weekends with religious folks, and therefore went to many Sunday morning services, and had my "eyes opened" to the horrors that awaited me in Hell. All the grown-ups were telling me it was true; I believed them. I was a credulous kid.

But you can avoid Hell, they said, by believing everything they say in this old book, right, and doing exactly what the preacher tells you. I was scared shitless, because they kept saying that being good wasn't enough-- that you had to believe Jesus died for you, I mean REALLY believe it, and nagging little doubts kept creeping into my head. Especially when they'd say crazy things like the earth was made in seven days or God made the sun stand still (I think in Joshua?) but then I'd watch Cosmos or something and this Sagan guy is telling me something completely different...
So, fairly typical so far, yeah?
When I was twelve, my stepdad (a very cold and remote man) confessed to me that he didn't believe in God. I was mortified. I mean, I didn't even know that was an option! But he never took any sort of active role in shaping my beliefs. Later, as an adult, I would realize that he was quite a remarkable (if not seriously flawed) individual, but at the time he was pretty hands-off. That's a different story, though...
Discovered punk rock at sixteen, and suddenly none of that claptrap seemed to matter. I went from being a scared, quiet kid to being an obnoxious something-or-other, and stopped thinking about religion.
Until my twenties. I'd pretty much given up on Christianity, but I kept thinking for some reason that it had to be REPLACED with something, you know what I mean? I tried LSD and was convinced for awhile that I'd stumbled across something significant, some doorway to a higher realm of consciousness. I dabbled in Buddhism until the smell of incense started bugging me. I read Robert Anton Wilson and began embracing the half-serious "religion" of Discordianism (which is still rather appealing, if you strip away all the guru-isms). I made a brief return to the world of Christianity and actually read the Bible; reading it was all it took for me to realize that my suspicions had been right all along. Only a complete lunatic could take that book for the truth; only a complete lunatic would WANT to.
It all came to a head a few years ago, after my divorce. I was monstrously depressed, and was on a serious downward spiral. I pulled out all the cards in my pack, and none of them did the trick. There was no Jesus to help me out of a jam; there was no loving God or cosmic vibrations or universal energies. There was only me. Getting my shit back together required letting go of all the ugly superstition that had clung to me like heavy clothes on a drowning man...
So I did. I let it all go.
I'd like to say it was clear sailing from there, but I was angry about being duped for so many years. And I STILL didn't have a replacement for faith. Until quite by accident I came across Sam Harris's book Letter to a Christian Nation.
Well, that was the sea-change. That book turned me on my ear. I followed it with The End of Faith, Dawkins book The God Delusion, Hitchins god is Not Great, Ruth Brown's Skeptic's Guide to the Bible, Russell's Why I am Not a Christian... etc etc. All the standards.
And nothing's been the same since. The study of atheism gradually led to me to explore other realms of philosophy as well, and helped me get over my "angry stage" and well onto the secular appreciation of the beauty and mystery and weirdness of the universe... all things I think we can only truly appreciate once we've removed the shackles of faith.

And the truth hasn't set me free yet because I haven't FOUND the truth. But the thing is, it doesn't really matter; it's the SEARCH for the truth that I find so engaging, dig? I've managed to find some small peace of mind in philosophy.
Regarding atheism, well... that's not really the goal so much as it is a stop along the path. Once you've let go of dread and fear and superstition, it sort of... I dunno... lights a lantern that helps you see the path ahead of you more clearly. Belief without evidence has held our species back for millienia, and we can't get anywhere unless we re-claim our ability to think critically. So many people WANT to believe; they want it so desperately that they are willing to do it no matter what our shared reality tells them. They separate "truth" from "facts", and to me that's a horrible cop-out and counter-productive. If we're gonna survive, now more than ever, we need to reconcile our beliefs with reality.
And it's not as if that takes something away from us; on the contrary, it opens up whole new worlds of thought and new ways of looking at things.
Any philosophy that isn't positive in some way is probably illegitimate, because it is useless. I keep reading philosophy because it keeps a part of my mind constantly occupied with bigger, more important questions... and the day-to-day frustrations and disappointments seem to have much less consequence...