Mythical Interview: God #4

GINX: Tonight, I’m talking to God, the God, YHWH.

GOD: Good to be back, my child.

GINX: So, I guess you’ve heard.

GOD: Heard what?

GINX: About my blog theme this week.

GOD: You have a theme?

GINX: Right. I don’t see why you’re being a dick about it.

GOD: You mess with religious people 51 weeks out of the year. This week, you should see what it’s like for people to mess with you just for the sake of messing with you.

GINX: Is it messing with me if I knew what you were doing?

GOD: Of course you knew, I am you. Who do you think you’re fooling?

GINX: Fair enough. So… I have to be honest, I did not prepare for this one at all.

GOD: Do you ever?

GINX: Of course I do. I’m usually not that clever off the cuff.

GOD: You just aren’t that clever in general.

GINX: Okay. So, what if we criticize atheists together?

GOD: You first.

GINX: Um… well I covered so much this week already. What about all these people on Facebook who have made their profile picture Christopher Hitchens? That’s kind of irritating.

GOD: The best thing that ever happened to that guy was dying. I wanted to let him live to 120 and slowly lose his mind in the public forum, but the bastard would not quit smoking.

GINX: Well, I criticize the man, but I’m not glad he’s dead. I don’t miss him, though.

GOD: No one asked your opinion. Really, a public figure of his kind doesn’t reach their full potential until they die. When a group admires a person, there’s something that happens when they die. It’s like the final punctuation mark in a great novel, or the last strike of the sculptor’s chisel, or the finishing brushstroke of a painter. At that point, it’s done, inalterable.

GINX: Yeah, but personal letters get published, secret partially finished works are found…

GOD: Silence, fool! The point is that at death, a person’s life’s work has come to an end. And what’s more, there will be a constancy to their legacy. Only a dead person cannot change their opinion.

GINX: They have history do it for them, as you would know.

GOD: You disgust me.

GINX: How about the misogyny debate in the atheist community?

GOD: I don’t really pay attention to what you people do.

GINX: Are we that harmless?

GOD: That isn’t… alright, I think the atheist community is a bunch of male chauvinist pigs.

GINX: I guess that makes them just a belief in you away from being good Christians, then?

GOD: How dare you! My religion lifted women from the status of property to equal human beings.

GINX: I don’t know about that.

GOD: I’ll let you in on a secret, I don’t hate women. I think they got a bum rap. I mean, for one thing, I’m pretty sure I forgot to tell her not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. I think I told Adam not to before I created Eve, and I guess I just assumed Adam would tell her.

GINX: Well, that’s kind of dickish. Why did you punish her with painful childbirth?

GOD: Yeah… about that. Actually, that was more of a design flaw. Apparently I forgot to carry a quantum digit when calculating gestation time and the cranial circumference of a human fetus.

GINX: That doesn’t even make logical sense the way you presented it.

GOD: It was a long time ago, and I hate math!

GINX: Quantum digit… that’s not even a real thing.

GOD: Shut up!

GINX: Well, why are there so many problems between men and women?

GOD: Oh please. There are problems between different kinds of men and women within their own gender.

GINX: You can’t dodge the question by just saying, “People don’t get along.” There has been and continues to be systematic gender bias, and it’s overwhelmingly in the direction of men exploiting or excluding women.

GOD: There are plenty of successful women.

GINX: You can’t point to the few exceptions as evidence against the overwhelming trends.

GOD: I don’t even see why you care, you’re a man.

GINX: Because if you live in a society that thinks it is okay to treat anyone unfairly, then one day anyone could be treated unfairly.

GOD: A very admirable platitude, but there are just certain realities to consider.

GINX: Like?

GOD: Women are weaker. They aren’t working in construction in the same numbers.

GINX: Yeah, I don’t think women are upset about not being hired as construction workers. I’m sure some are, but I don’t think that upper body strength is holding back women in the modern economy.

GOD: They take time off from work to have children, so that’s time spent having to hire and train a replacement at her vagina’s whim.

GINX: Wow… so you want to use the one thing society literally relies upon women to do to justify the cut-throat economic view that women are not as effective in the workplace as men because they cannot be worked to death as thoroughly as men?

GOD: You Americans are too soft.

GINX: Americans are soft? Everyone in Europe gets more vacation time than we do, and they get free health insurance. Most of the men get paternity leave.

GOD: You have all the vacation time in the world, you unemployed bum.

GINX: I’m not allowed to stand up for American workers, even though I will become one when I find a job? Is that like why I shouldn’t be fighting for the rights of women?

GOD: You’re all fat and lazy.

GINX: I am not lazy.

GOD: Right, just fat, then.

GINX: So, no opinion on misogyny in the atheist community?

GOD: I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s mostly men who want to fuck around who are atheists.

GINX: You have got to be kidding me.

GOD: No, I’m not kidding you. Why do you think so many more women find the idea of waiting until marriage to be appealing?

GINX: You’re boiling down your religion to the doctrine of waiting until marriage to have sex?

GOD: Come on… there’s very few things modern Christians actually care about. One is abstinence, the other is opposing abortion –

GINX: Sure, since that more readily turns women who do have sex into victims.

GOD: Bingo. And of course, the most important one is that when you die, you get to live forever. Even though no one follows the rules, even though no one even makes a serious effort to try, I forgive them and let them into heaven, so long as they picked me as their God.

GINX: Here’s what I don’t get… considering how horrible the people in your religion treat women, how is atheism the target of claims regarding misogyny? I mean, I know there must be incidents, but the sheer volume of Christian misogyny ought to drown it out.

GOD: Oh, my child… it’s quite simple. Men are pigs, and no matter what kind of men a woman is around, she will come to feel like a sexual object if she’s looking for the signs.

GINX: While I don’t necessarily agree with you, suppose what you’re saying is true, that men will always see women as sexual beings. I won’t say objects, because I don’t know about most guys, but I don’t have sex with objects, I have sex with human beings. I see plenty of women as sexual beings whose minds I also respect. It’s not like my brain only has room for one label per person. If I find someone attractive, I do not only focus on trying to undress her with my eyes.

GOD: But you do undress her with your eyes, because let’s be honest, she didn’t wear that low cut shirt because she likes eye contact.

GINX: See, I’m of the opinion a woman should be able to dress any way she wants, even walk down the street naked, and not have to be subject to sexual advances.

GOD: That’s insane.

GINX: Not really.

GOD: You should offer her your shirt.

GINX: Well, if she asked for it, I suppose I’d probably give it to her. But what if she doesn’t want one?

GOD: That’s just wrong.

GINX: If you say so.

GOD: You just want to stare at naked women.

GINX: Even if that were true, there’s no crime in looking.

GOD: There is in my eyes.

GINX: Well, even in that case, it doesn’t take all that much effort to avert one’s eyes.

GOD: You shouldn’t have to avoid seeing nudity.

GINX: It’s really not that big of a deal.

GOD: It’s enabling temptation.

GINX: So it’s evil to enable temptation?

GOD: Yes.

GINX: So, you’re evil?

GOD: How do you figure?

GINX: Well, not only did you supposedly create everything, including temptation itself, you instilled within mankind a multitude of temptations.

GOD: Yeah, well there’s no point in having rules to follow if you don’t naturally want to do the opposite.

GINX: I don’t even know what to say to that.

GOD: It’s God stuff, your mortal mind couldn’t comprehend it.

GINX: So, you have no opinion on misogyny in the atheist community?

GOD: What do you want me to say? You know that atheism doesn’t make a person good. Misogyny isn’t caused by religion. If anything, the misogyny in religion is a function of humanity. Unless, of course, you believe a divine being handed down rules which dehumanized women, thereby giving humanity the entire idea to oppress women.

GINX: Right. It is human to discriminate.

GOD: You’re going to find haters everywhere, and atheism is full of those hyper-sensitive liberal feminists who think getting asked out while in a social setting is sexual harassment.

GINX: I don’t think that’s what women have complained about.

GOD: Sure they have.

GINX: I think it’s just more complex than that, and it’s largely a string of specific incidents which are exacerbated online with callous comments on the part of the opposition’s knee-jerk reactions against it and counter claims of massive abuse which are often also overzealous.

GOD: Well, smarty pants, if you have the answer, why did you ask?

GINX: Well, I’m just speculating. I just figure that, since you can see into what everyone is actually thinking, you might confirm or deny my theory.

GOD: What is your theory?

GINX: Some atheists are over-reactionary jerks, and when they bicker amongst themselves, their penchant for escalation results in a positive feedback loop of ever-increasingly hostile attacks.

GOD: I don’t know what “penchant” means, and everything after that was basically gibberish to me.

GINX: Great.

GOD: So, what has it been like being religious this week?

GINX: Well, that wasn’t part of it. I’m sort of looking at things through a non-atheist, secular lens all week.

GOD: That doesn’t make any sense.

GINX: Sure it does. I mean, for one thing, if I want to see things from “the religious perspective,” I would need to either pick one religion to the exclusion of others, or try out every religion.

GOD: You should just try out the one true religion.

GINX: Islam?

GOD: That isn’t even funny.

GINX: Well, I grew up Christian, and I married a Jew. The only other one of the big three I haven’t been immersed in is Islam.

GOD: You would never cut it, especially with those views on female dress.

GINX: True. Maybe I can give Zoroaster or the Baha’i faith a try. Or, I could expand my horizons into the polytheistic religions.

GOD: You would be wasting your time.

GINX: Actually, it’s never a waste of time to study a religion.

GOD: Of course it is.

GINX: If you’re willing to sort through the inane minutia, there’s quite a store of wisdom scattered throughout each religion. If you’re looking for gold, you can be sure each religion has a vein of it somewhere. You just need a good eye and patience.

GOD: So, maybe you learned this week that religion isn’t all bad?

GINX: I didn’t think religion is all bad before, and I’m not sure I respect religion anymore now than I did before. I’m also not sure I have less respect for atheism, either, though I did enjoy taking the opportunity to look at things differently.

GOD: Good for you. So basically, you didn’t grow as a person.

GINX: I suppose, if that’s how you want to look at it.

GOD: That is how I’ll look at it.

GINX: Well, this has been pointless. Any words of wisdom to leave us with?

GOD: Sure, that’s my specialty. Hmm… oh, I know. Some people will sell out their most cherished beliefs for a large enough bribe. The rest of you will do it for a small one.

GINX: Clever. You can’t go wrong criticizing the honor of humanity. How about you cheer me up with something that insults rich people?

GOD: Okay. Well, rich people often make the mistake of assuming that they’re worth a lot of money, when really they just have a lot of it.

GINX: Not as good as the last one.

GOD: Hmm… well you’re a socialist, so you’ll like this one. Money is like manure; nothing grows if it’s just lumped it one place. It’s best to spread it out.

GINX: Okay, that’s a good note to leave on. Thanks for chatting with me.

GOD: Anytime.