The Pessimist

I have been coming to the conclusion that god is in the brain.

In ancient times, gods lived on Mount Olympus and looked down on us and meddled in our lives. Mostly they liked to get laid and cause trouble thwarting our puny plans. There were also gods in the forest, under the sea, in the storm clouds hurtling lightning bolts, etc.

Then some desert based deep thinkers decided that there was only one true god, and that we were made in his image, and that he lived in heaven. Presumably they had been to the mountain tops and didn’t find heaven there, so they moved it into the sky. Heaven is obviously “up there” because that is where all the artists painted it. And Mohammed flew there on a winged horse and Jesus went there floating on a cloud. At least, a few people told us that’s what they saw, and therefore, that must be the way it happened. Why else would they say that and why wouldn’t we believe them?

Trouble is, we have been above the sky now. We’ve been everywhere on the planet: to the poles, under the sea, deep into the earths crust and into every remote place. No heaven was found. We’ve been to the moon, we’ve sent observation platforms to the very edge of the solar system. No heaven was found.
We’ve made devices that can look at molecules. We’ve broken atoms into their component bits. No god, no heaven. We’ve created optical and radio telescopes to look to the very beginning of time and to the farthest reaches of the universe. No god, no heaven.

Where is that little bugger hiding?

Oh, maybe he is in an alternate universe, or in a different time slightly out of phase with ours. But this seems to fall victim to Occam’s razor. As we increase our experience and capabilities, the only “gaps” left to look in become more and more improbable. Do we really need the explanation that there is a big bearded man who created everything and knows everything and is all powerful. who lives in an alternate universe and really cares about us, individually and personally?

We were made in his image: two hands, two feet, two eyes, air breathing, food eating, testicle swinging bearded know it all/nothing. He’s like us in every way (sorry about that testicle and beard thing women), except that he is invisible and lives somewhere we can not see or go to until we die and then can never come back. Maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t actually exist. That would be the simplest explanation.

The only alternative explanation is he lives in our brain. He is the best possible me. I am made in his image because he is me. But that also means that he is you for you, and she is she for her. That truly does make god infinite. But unfortunately, it doesn’t do much for society as there is nothing that compels us to be or want to be like our inner good.

I obviously don’t see the whole picture because my view is filtered through the media. I get most of my US news from the Daily Show and the CBC.
But the dying days of the campaign have revolved around the Republicans trying to paint Obama as the second-coming of Karl Marx.

Calling Obama a “socialist” is the equivalent of calling

• the Pope an atheist
• Mother Teresa a terrorist
• Sadam Hussein a populist
• Joseph Stalin a humanitarian

Do people actually believe this, or is this just campaign desperation?
Interviews at US rallies (John Oliver of the Daily Show talked to Palin and Obama supporters) invariably show followers of one stripe convinced and terrified that if the other guy gets elected, then the first thing to happen will be the total destruction of the United States.
Come on people … really?

Is this just clever editing? Or is this what people really believe? When Jay Leno does “Jay Walking", he invariably shows people who don’t know:

• who is the current vice president
• what country is on their northern border
• who were US allies in WWII
• who “we” fought in the Civil War
• who is the president of Russia

These segments leave the impression that Americans are morons. Jay hints that some editing goes into the process, but how many average Joes does he talk to before he finds the 5 dolts featured? I hope 95 people got the answers right, but I fear that these really may have been the first 5 people he approached.

Back to the campaign … is it really a choice between my candidate and total annihilation? Isn’t the choice really between two candidates who are both upstanding citizens, patriots, heavily vetted, proven, intelligent, honourable individuals. You may prefer one over the other because of certain policy minutiae, or just personal attributes, but the other candidate should also be perfectly acceptable. Why must the campaigns pretend that one is the only hope and the other is Satan incarnate?

Are Americans so stupid that they are actually manipulated by this hyperbolic rhetoric? I guess tomorrow we’ll find out.