Eh,
Men?
"Spiritual maturity is a lifelong process
of replacing lies with truth." - Kurt Bruner
 Long
Story Short: My electric flying teapot, it comforts me.
I
was raised in Fort Worth, Texas, steeped in the prickly marinade
of that good, old Baptist pressure cooker. Which means that
by the time I was twelve I was a devout atheist as no one,
I felt, but an imbecile could fail to penetrate the flimsy
facade of faith these guys doled out to the assembled laity.
But ninnies there are aplenty, which is precisely what the
church
counts
on. Preferably ninnies with lots of money in the bank and
lots of skeletons in the closet.
Because I wear my sanity on my sleeve like an Aldiss Lamp
I'm constantly confronted my those anxious to save my soul.
And I always tell each and every one of them the same thing
--
that I'll gladly accept
the sanctity of their particular
belief if they'll tell me, in perfect detail, where their
god came from. And by "god" I mean the Big Cosmic Kahuna,
be he of Christian or Moslem or whatever faith. None of their
minor
henchmen,
we're talking the franchise
owner, not the ball boys.
The answers are unsurprisingly consistent: "He's always
been here, darlin'",
delivered with the same sweet smile people generally reserve
for the profoundly retarded when they accidentally do something
right.
That's
when I return the favor by patting them as patronizingly
as possible on the head
and say "Prove it". It's at this point that things usually
go downhill, when even the sweetest maiden aunt comes a little
unglued
because deep down inside they know they've been had.
It's exactly at that point that they realize that nowhere in
their arcane lore does it hypothesize something so miraculously
astonishing as the possible
progenitor of the
One True
God,
or his antedent,
or his dear old grandad, et cetera, et
cetera.
To a one they all share this primitive belief
that a being powerful enough to create everything, and I
mean everything, simply appreared out
of thin
air and set up shop. By comparison the Tooth Fairy and the
Easter Bunny make more sense because, at least for a few
years, they deliver.
Keep this in mind the next time you get that dreaded knock
on the door at seven in the evening. Give 'em a pat on the
head for me.
=mike=
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