(Thoughts on Omnipotence and Its Affect on Our Existence)
I’m pretty atheistic. I understand, and dig, a lot of the lessons and stories from different religions about why we are here, what the goals of the game are. But I prefer the meditations of Marcus Aurelius because he philosophizes on what the most beneficial course of action could be, while acknowledging Nature’s strange power over existence. But he doesn’t draw many conclusions about what God is or what it wants.
And I acknowledge that, clearly, looking around, I am very small in the scheme of things. There is almost certainly some kind of higher power. There are obviously many, many things that are more powerful than me. Like Oprah, or Ryan Reynolds. Or Denny’s. Or blue whales. Lots of things more powerful than me.
And God is supposed to be supremely powerful. Until this God makes itself known, though, there’s not much point in claiming to know what’s going on for sure. If a god wants us to know that they’re a god, they can bloody well tell us all directly, otherwise how would we know that it’s god? How many charlatans has humanity endured and supported?
If a God is truly powerful, then it should be demonstrable. Like the jokes says:
Person A: “Through Christ, all things are possible.”
Person B: “Sweet. Do a kick flip.”
Person A: “What?”
Person B: “Do a kick flip right now.”
Or as George Carlin has quipped: “God is all knowing, all seeing, all powerful. But he needs money.”
I’m not saying that I don’t believe in the unseen. I’m just saying that there are a lot of normal, mortal humans spinning lies and profiting from the stories they tell about God. The easiest lie is one that can never be tested.
I find more evidence of God within science. The frozen state of water, for example, seems miraculous to me. Water is the only substance we know about that gets less dense when it freezes. Everything else just becomes denser and denser as it gets colder and colder. If water did this, the oceans would simply compress themselves into frozen blocks and life on our planet would likely be impossible.
This strange exception to the “Laws of Nature” is arguably the reason that we humans are able to exist. That suggests that there is some power somewhere that is able to tamper with the tapestry of time and space, to manipulate the rules of the universe. And if there is something that powerful, then maybe, just maybe, if it really wanted us to do things on certain days of the week, or kill each other with rocks because of the shape of our clothing (Ol’ Deuteronomy, anyone?), well then maybe it would just tell us directly.
I mean, imagine sitting around, eating chips, watching the Sopranomos when suddenly there’s a flash, a bang and then there’s a Giant, Golden, Glowing being, floating in the corner. And, in a voice like James Earl Jones through a amphitheater sound system, it says:
“Hi, Sam, I’m your God.”
“Holy shit!”
“Yeah, every time. But hey, on this plane, I prefer to be called ‘Grave Digger.’”
“Like the Bigfoot truck?”
“No, Bigfoot was just a regular truck.”
“What?”
“Bigfoot was the name of a popular blue truck. Bigfoot. It was a lifted Ford on giant wheels, but it wasn’t a ‘Monster Truck.’ Grave Digger is a Monster Truck.”
“Ok, so… like Grave Digger the Monster Truck? You named yourself after a monster truck?
“Fuck yeah I did. Grave Digger is my favorite in this dimension, so I named myself Grave Digger. Also: do you know how many graves I dig? All of ’em! Ha, ha! Cause I’m God, and everything is me. Anyway. Yeah. ‘Monster Truck.’”
“Whoah. Yeah, I can kinda see your tires, now that my eyes are adjusting to the glare.”
“Yeah, bitchin’, right? Well, anyway, I really just came back to tell you not to worry about things. See, we had made a bigass fire out of a few celestial bodies, you know, gaseous galaxies –”
“We?”
“Yeah, you know, the royal we. Anyway, we had made a fire out of a few gaseous galaxies, then scraped those against some mineral-heavy nebulas. (“And performing next! Grave Digger and the Heavy Nebulas, playing Heavy Metal and… uh… reggae.”) You guys formed in the post cataclysm for, well, no real reason. You’re one of the neatest accidents I’ve caused. Not, uh, not the best, but in the upper half. So, yah know, maybe stop screaming at each other. Or keep fighting. Whatever. I don’t really care. Honestly, we only noticed that you exist because of a monoxide alarmed.”
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