God Does Not Speak to You

There has been a great deal of debate recently about God’s political preferences. I find these all very amusing. The Captain is here to set the record straight. God does not speak directly to you, or your priest or minister or imam, or your dog or hamster, and he certainly doesn’t speak to me; heck, even my mother doesn’t speak directly to me (and it took years for me to accomplish that one!). Since God doesn’t speak to me, how, you might ask, could I possibly make such a confident assertion? Fair question. The answer is elementary – deduction, that is. Here’s what I have deduced.

· Christine O’Donnell has become the poster child for politicians who claim that the almighty, like some down-on-his-luck street puppeteer who fell off the wagon, pulls the strings of her campaign for one of the most powerful political positions in the world – US Senator. You may assume that I am mocking this wiccan exile, and you’d be correct, but I love Christine O’Donnell. She is the perfect cure for writer’s block. So even though her conviction that God speaks to her seems genuine enough, how can I be so sure she’s deluded? Well, would a divine being deign to take time out of her busy day to try and explain the subtleties of healthcare, foreign policy, or the US tax code to such a ditzy, unemployed, pagan goddess who fibs on her resume? Based on her public statements, it’s obvious that these discussions have never taken place and that the divine voice she claims to hear is but a phantom of her un-medicated mind.

· The Scandal of Boredom. You’ll love this one because I just made it up. It is utterly scandalous to even imagine a divine being with first hand knowledge of the mysteries of the universe having the slightest interest in having a chat with such a lying, thieving,violent creation. Yeah, maybe God made us, but when a human produces a pile of crap that ends up in a swimming pool, what does he do? He runs away as fast as he can and denies he had anything to do with it; or at the very least, sticks around to watch from a safe distance the mayhem he created. There’s just no way an omnipotent, omniscient being wants to shoot the breeze with us. She’d be bored out of her mind – she already knows what we’re going to say to her and her surpassing knowledge means her musings have no relation to even the most brilliant human thoughts. There really is nothing analogous in the world. The closest thing I can think of is Albert Einstein trying to explain his Special Theory of Relativity to Sarah Palin…which gives me an idea. I think I’ll contact Palin’s press secretary to set up a national debate on science versus religion; I’ll hire an Einstein impersonator to come out on stage at the last second to take up the cause for science– it will be fun to see how long Mama Dizzy debates the imposter before figuring out that the real Einstein’s been dead since 1955. 2-1 she debates the full hour. But I digress…

· Finally, I think that when all is said and done, I must believe that God doesn’t speak directly to the world. Simply take a look at some of the notable examples from recent history of individuals with whom God has purportedly chosen to converse: Joseph Smith,Jr., who forbade his followers from consuming liquor (no benevolent deity would think of doing such a thing), the “reverend” Jim Jones, who single-handedly transformed Kool Aid from a popular kids drink into a national punch line (pun intended), or David Berkowitz aka Son of Sam, who randomly killed innocent people on orders from God via his neighbor's demon dog. The only conclusion one can reach is that God is one fucked up individual, and I’m not willing to accept that. Why God created a world that includes Christine O’Donnell is beyond my spiritual and intellectual scope. But I am quite sure that she gave me the capacity to laugh at silly people and the world is full of them, present company included. To that I say “Thank God!”

Believe The Captain when he asks: What if God was a mime?

Yours doing the moonwalk,

The Captain