People laugh. Have been forever. What's really funny, though, is what we laugh at. Everything from the king slipping on the proverbial banana peel, to the king of kings we call God...!
When we were still living in caves, God wasn't anything to laugh at. But as we grew smarter, well it became easier to have some fun with the big guy. Like kids do behind the teacher's back, it makes you feel kinda sassy.
If philosophers like Nietzsche announce, "God is dead," that's something I have to take seriously. But when the likes of Bill Maher and the late George Carlin do, I can't take that any more seriously than the rest of their jokes. That's because I can't help thinking of scared urchins acting out for a laugh while the teacher's not in the room.
But here's the thing, boys, if there is a God, then he's always in the room.
Still, even jesters should have their day in court. So I'm imagining what the world might be like were our sassy atheists in charge:
* all coins would read "In Frontal Cortex We Trust"
* all courts would now have people swear on "The God Gene" inspired by atheist-in-chief Richard Dawkins
* all football teams could no longer offer a victory prayer (starting with Notre Dame which, after allowing President Obama to speak there, instantly killed God right there on campus)
* all churches and temples would be removed from tax-exempt status and turned into abortion clinics
* all clergy would be sent to re-doctrination classes to become certified life coaches and/or television MCs
* all clerical vestments would be shipped to Taliban outposts where dressing silly still makes sense
* all crosses, statuary and stars-of-David would be melted down into wrist amulets to ward off any hints of divinity
* all high school graduates would have to read "The DaVinci Code," all marriages would be presided over by genetic-biologists, all births would be recorded by DNA documentation, and all funerals would be conducted in officially-approved nuclear-waste dumps
Oh, one more thing! From this point on, by the sheer logic of their newly atheized society, all comedians would be banned from telling God jokes. Because, you see, now they wouldn't be funny anymore.
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Your essay reads like an amorphous epistemological dichotomy, Jack. I'd need several pages just to OUTLINE my thoughts on this subject. Not wishing to tax anyone's resources let's just look at two entries from my outline:
ReplyDeleteClarence Darrow: “Fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom but the end.”
Jay Barrica: "Unassailable belief is the principal barrier to man's improvement."
Jay, you're not alone. If the stats are right, belief is continually giving way to disbelief in our culture. And while I admit to the faults and failings of institutional religions, I still hold to the conviction the world would be an uglier more dangerous place without their moral underpinnings. Having said that, I must add that religious beliefs should be given a healthy dose of epistemological skepticism. Just so, Mr Darrow's beliefs
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