God the Insufferable Jerk

Tuesday, September 18, 2012 by The San Francisco Chronicle

by Mark Morford

 

I am delighted to report God still appears to be a bit of an unbearable twit.Not at all pleased with your appreciation of pornography, yoga, or Barack Obama.

Petulant. Uptight. Whiny as a third-grader with recurring lice. How do we know? Because, against all deeper understanding and without a single care that He’s not the slightest bit real in the literal sense, the Almighty still insists on keeping score, observing your every move, measuring your capacity to hate others who do not agree with your narrow view of life, or love, or America.

It’s true. If all reports for the past week – and the past handful of incoherent centuries – are to be believed, God does nothing but laze about the couch with a golden iPad, tracking how many times He’s mentioned on television, who won the Packers game, how often you watch porn or say something nice to a gay person, and who commits more acts of guilt-addled fear in his glorious name.

Oh, and love. There’s love in there somewhere. Maybe. Unless you’re a liberal. Or Muslim. Or gay. Then you’re on your own.

Recent proof? Easy. Did you happen to notice how Fox News was simply bursting at the fanatical seams to tell everyone that, during our recent pair of national political conventions, the Republican party mentioned God twelve times in their platform? Twelve times! They must really love God. They must love God, despite how their candidate believes God’s message appeared on magic golden plates to a huckster polygamist in the woods in the 1820s, and called it a religion. Never mind that now.

God was reportedly sort of pleased at being name-dropped a dozen times on national television (God is wildly vain that way), despite how the lesser-known Shotguns & Slim Jims Party mentioned Him a whopping 147 times during their convention, all while blasting mailboxes from the bed of a speeding Ford F-150 in rural Idaho. But of course, their convention was only broadcast on YouTube, so God was all, “meh.”

And what of the Democrats? They only mentioned God once during their convention, maybe, in passing, sort of under their breath, and apparently completely forgot the part about Jerusalem being the capital of Godlandia. Can you believe it? If there’s one thing God cares about most in the eternal flux of the vast and impenetrable universe, it’s regional cartography. And college football.

The Republicans, as you might expect, had a conniption fit at the Dems’ omission, to the point where Mitt Romney actually suggested that the president secretly wants to remove “God” from our national identity, our currency, our scared and angry America, and replace him with… I’m not sure who. Kobe Bryant or something. Horror!

God, of course, does not like any of this one little bit. The Almighty, as envisioned by the majority of spiritually malnourished Americans, is a bizarre, baffling, curmudgeonly creation, prone to raging outbursts, impossible to please but insanely easy to offend, wielding his moral compass like a hammer made of shame and fear and only trace amounts of the aforementioned love. But only if you really earn it. And of course, no one really does.

You disagree? You dare to deny this definition of God? You perhaps think the divine is some hippie-dippy notion of, say, pure light energy, divine anima, infusing and radiating from all things at all times everywhere including Muslims and Mormons, genomes and genders, dogs and donuts, babies and bison?

You maybe think God is actually something wider and far more beautiful? An all-pervasive sense of divine consciousness, perhaps, fully present and available to every single being at all times in an instant, requiring no church, no priest, no bloody cross, no cash outlay, no whiny political party to validate and empower? What are you, some sort of book-reading communist? Pipe down and go do some yoga, hippie. Scared people are running the world.
 
It is, of course, painfully easy to mock. It is terrific but sort of lazy (I admit) fun to jab at the tragicomic American definition of God as irritable grandpa-child who cares far too much about what happens at nauseating political conventions, gun shows, children’s beauty pageants, ad nauseam.

It requires a bit more compassion to understand that most Americans, like most of the world, are simply desperate for any sort of meaning, any sort of simple understanding amidst all the madness, war, and the lack of education. And therefore even just the mention of “God” on the dollar, in the national credo, in another insipid political platform, this somehow gives a hint of stability, a shared mythology, to an otherwise impossible and terrifying world.

It’s a little tricky to unpack, but sometimes it must be acknowledged: There exists in the American mythos this fragile, long-abused idea that when you buy a gun, or a beer, or a Chinese-made pair of Levi’s using a piece of tattered green paper with the word “God” on it, that it actually means something, that underneath it all there’s this tiny, microscopic hint of divine glue holding it all together, somehow.

It’s sort of charming. It’s sort of wonderful, this delicate notion of spiritual connectedness that’s been mauled to death by capitalism and politics and buried beneath a million layers of churlish ignorance and fear of Other so rampant and sad, many Americans are terrified to leave their hometowns, much less visit another country and see how the rest of the world rocks the divine wow.

Nevertheless, it’s there. Behind the Fox News witlessness, underneath the insulting political platitudes, despite organized religion’s furious attempts to kill it with dogma and sneering patriarchy, lies a certain sweetness, a cultural naiveté borne of a deep and inescapable desire to know, to understand our place in the cosmos, even just a little, even if it means sacrificing the radically self-realized spirit to some bland and politicized whole.

Or maybe not. Maybe it’s not all that sweet after all. Maybe it’s one of the sadder, more debilitating aspects of the modern American condition, given how it’s no secret that organized religion, conservative politicians, marketers and megacorps alike love nothing more than to prey upon the poor and the less educated, anyone desperate for structure and divine meaning, but not quite willing or able to figure it out for themselves.

This is why the Republican cause is so frantic to invoke God as much as possible. “God” implies there’s some sort of explanation, impossible though it may be for pathetic and sinful humankind to understand. Invoking a bitter, judgmental God you can never really access (much less fully embody yourself) brings wobbly balm to those who live in fear of a complex and impossible world, those who feel everything is out of their control.

Hey, at least Angry Republican Grandpa in the sky has it all figured out, right? At least I don’t have to think too much, look too deeply in the mirror, or listen to that nagging, deep-down voice telling me nothing’s really as it seems, right? I mean, whew.

Signs God Is Furious With the Right

Whatever disaster strikes, there's always an upside in religious rightland, always somebody to point the finger at with glee. Let's turn the tables. September 16, 2011 

Editor's note: the following is satire... for the most part.

Why is it that whenever disaster strikes, right-wing religious nuts seem to have all the fun? Some might say it's just because they're sadists, but they always seem to find the silver lining. 9/11? God's calling on America to repent! (No, not for it's foreign policy, you dummy!) Hurricane Katrina? It was that darned homosexual parade the organizers forgot to tell anyone about!

Whatever disaster strikes, there's always an up-side in religious rightland, always somebody to point the finger at with glee. How come they get all the fun?

So when the East Coast got a one-two punch last month, earthquake-hurricane within a few days of one another, it got me thinking. When another hurricane followed up afterward, it was more than I could bear. And so, I offer you a list of God's Top 10 Targets from a not-so-right-but-possibly-more-righteous point of view.

There are at least three different ways to approach this subject, and we have examples of all three. First is to identify specific target groups for repeated offenses—sinners who just won't mend their ways. Second is to identify geographic targets for specific offenses—sin city or state, as the case may be. Third is to identify specific individuals.

1. Republicans, for bearing false witness.
It's not just one of the Ten Commandments -- the Bible has repeated warnings against slander, false testimony and plain old lying. But Republicans apparently think that God was talking to somebody else—the exact opposite of their usual assumption—especially since Barack Obama arrived on the scene. Obama was born in Kenya, he is a Muslim, he's a socialist, a Marxist, a fascist, he hates white people (like his mom and his grandparents), he hangs out with terrorists. It goes on and on and on.

God has repeatedly told them not to act like this—yet they pay Him no mind. It's not just Obama, either. When it comes to science, things get just as bad, be it evolution, global warming, reproductive health, or gender orientation; when the science isn't on their side, the lying and slander take up the slack. It's not just that the science is against them, you see. Scientists are fraudsters; they are always conspiring against God and his people, according to some of the more whacked out types—like GOP senators, for example. God may have a great deal of patience, but when folks start trying to drag Him into the mix, that's when the earthquakes and hurricanes begin.

2. The Religious Right, for ignoring Jesus on the separation of church and state.
More than 1,600 years before John Locke and 1,700 years before Thomas Jefferson weighed in on the subject, Jesus said, “Render therefore unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God those things which are God’s.” (What's more, he said that, in part, as a way of opting out of a tax revolt!) But the Religious Right defiantly continues to oppose Him. God's been extremely patient with them over the years, but that patience has finally run out, as the most anti-separationist elements of the Religious Right—known as dominionists—have come increasingly to the fore. Some might say they're embarrassing Him personally. Others will say it's starting to get really dangerous. Whatever the reason, God's had enough.

3. The nativist right and the GOP, for a rash of anti-immigrant laws.
“Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Exodus 22:21 could not be clearer—unless, of course, we switched from the King James Bible to the New International Version: “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.”

But for some in the GOP, them's fightin' words. All they can think about is disobeying God. They are positively possessed with the Satanic spirit of disobedience. It began with Arizona's SB-1070 last year. And while a number of states followed Arizona's lead with anti-immigrant laws of their own, the most notorious was Alabama, which faced "a historic outbreak of severe weather" in April.

The same day the law was signed, Alabama’s Episcopal, Methodist and Roman Catholic churches filed a separate lawsuit, claiming the law unconstitutionally interferes with their right of religious freedom. Church leaders said the law “will make it a crime to follow God’s command.” Among other things, the suit said, “The bishops have reason to fear that administering of religious sacraments, which are central to the Christian faith, to known undocumented persons may be criminalized under this law.”  If criminalizing Christian sacraments isn't inviting divine retribution, what is?

4. The predatory lending industry and all who enable them. 
There are numerous Bible passages condemning usury. Typical of these is Exodus 22:25: "If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not be like a moneylender; charge him no interest." Naturally, the whole of modern capitalism is built on ignoring a broad reading of this. But predatory lending is a particularly egregious form of defiance. It's proved rather costly to our country as well.

A Wall Street Journal article on December 31, 2007 reported that Ameriquest Mortgage and Countrywide Financial, two of the largest U.S. mortgage lenders, spent $20.5 million and $8.7 million respectively in political donations, campaign contributions, and lobbying activities between 2002 and 2006 in order to defeat anti-predatory lending legislation. Such practices contributed significantly to the financial crisis that plunged us into the Great Recession. But it seems that wasn't a clear enough lesson, especially since those who lobbied most intensely benefited most from the bailouts as well, according to an IMF study. So earthquakes and hurricanes are an old school, Old Testament way for God to make his point.

5. The GOP, for its contempt for the poor. 
For more than half a century, the GOP has attacked Democrats and liberals for their concern for the poor. At least since the 1980s, the neo-liberal wing of the Democratic Party has tried to distance themselves from the poor, and reposition the party as defenders of the middle class, instead. The GOP has responded with policies to impoverish the middle class as well, so that they can be safely demonized, too.

But the GOP's venom for all but the wealthy has reached new heights during the Great Recession. Not only should those who caused the crisis be taken care of while all others suffer—far too many national Democratic politicians seem to agree on that one—but a renewed rhetoric of contempt for the poor has emerged, in direct contradiction to what Jesus said, in Luke 6:20: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God."

Increasingly, it seems, Republicans don't think poor people are even human. In January 2010, South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Baurer (R) compared poor people to stray animals: He told an audience that his grandmother told him "as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed." He compared this to government assistance, which he said is "facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that.

And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better." Then, in early August, Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, the frontrunner for the GOP senate nomination, compared poor people to scavenging racoons. Talk like that is what causes earthquakes and hurricanes.

6. Privatized public utilities, for the worship of Mammon. 
Public utilities are natural monopolies, totally unsuited to private enterprise, since there is no competitive marketplace. This, of course, makes them perfect targets for monopoly capitalists—Mammon's greatest worshipers.

Against them, God struck a mighty blow. In Mansfield, Massachusetts, which has had its own municipal power service since 1903, electrical service was restored for most customers within 24 hours after Irene hit, even though 4,000 out of 9,500 households had lost power—quite unlike what happened to nearby communities served by a commercial outfit. According to a local report, the storm “uprooted old trees and knocked down utility lines all over town.”

“Unlike homes and businesses in Easton, Norton and Foxboro, however, local customers did not have to wait for National Grid to respond with crews or listen to a recording on the telephone.... [M]uch of Easton waited three days for power to return and areas of communities such as Foxboro are still in the dark.” According to another report, about Foxborough, “The outrage expressed... is similar to the movie Network in the scene where people flung open their windows and said, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore.'”

Then there are a couple of geographically specific targets:

7. Virginia. 
Virginia was the site of the earthquake's epicenter and the second state where Irene made landfall, so the state is a target-rich environment.

There's House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. On God's bulls-eye scale, the epicenter near Mineral, Virginia is in Cantor's district—a direct hit. And in budget negotiations this year, Cantor's contempt for the poor came through loud and clear. He's been the most aggressive congressional leader when it comes to budget-cutting and pushing the economy as hard as possible over the cliff. Then, after the earthquake hit, Cantor said any federal relief would have to be offset with spending cuts, and quipped, “Obviously, the problem is that people in Virginia don’t have earthquake insurance.” He reiterated his demand for offsetting cuts when Hurricane Irene hit shortly afterward—even though he voted against such a provision after Tropical Storm Gaston hit the Richmond area in 2004.

Then there's Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. No way he escapes God's wrath. Cuccinelli's widely criticized witch-hunt against eminent climate scientist Michael Mann represents the most extreme right-wing attack on the mythical “climate-gate” scandal, which consisted primarily of scientists making snide remarks about ignoramuses like Cuccinelli. He's all wrapped up in sin of bearing false witness. Which is where Hurricane Irene comes in—although it surely doesn't help that Cuccinelli is suing to keep people sick, and has told Virginia's colleges and universities that they can't ban anti-gay discrimination.

And, of course, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell has tried to have it both ways with God, as well as with the people of Virginia. On the one hand, all the way back in 1989, he wrote a Christian Reconstructionist M.A. thesis, “The Republican Party’s Vision for the Family: The Compelling Issue of the Decade” at the College of Law at Pat Robertson’s Regent University. McDonnell's authorship of the thesis came to light during his 2009 campaign for governor, but because the establishment is in deep denial about Dominionism in general, and Christian Reconstructionism in particular, the full weight of his thesis never really sunk in. On the other hand, McDonnell has tried very assiduously to walk away from that past, given that almost no one wants to admit to such extreme views. He's wobbled back and forth on a number of issues, but generally tried to strike a reasonable demeanor—in sharp contrast to Cuccinelli. But God doesn't like folks who run hot and cold, which is why McDonnell's a target, too.

Finally, just to be a wee bit bipartisan about it, we need to include Virginia's Democratic Senator Mark Warner in our list—though with a bit of twist. On the day of the earthquake, Warner was scheduled to speak at the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation in Culpepper, Virginia. He arrived about 10 minutes after the quake, according to the local Star Exponent, which reported:

The building had been emptied of its staff and the approximate 75 people who came to hear Warner so the former governor talked from under a tree atop Mount Pony. 

“I was not going to mention the fact that one of the last times I was in Culpeper there was a tornado,” he said of an appearance years ago at CulpeperFest marked by wild weather. “If you don’t want me to come back, there’s an easier way to do this. If we start seeing frogs, it may be a sign of things to come,” he said. 

So it's not that God is angry with Warner, exactly. He just targets Warner for amusement, to see what he'll say next. And, of course, because he, too, represents Virginia, truly a state of sin.

8. North Carolina. 
Hurricane Irene could have barreled directly into South Carolina, but it delivered a stiff upper-cut to North Carolina instead. And why not? Governor Bev Perdue tried her darnedest to protect the state. She vetoed its draconian budget bill, only to see her veto over-ridden. It too was an attack on the poor -- the bill didn't just fail to balance spending cuts with tax increases, it actually let a temporary one-cent sales tax expire, along with some income taxes on high earners, while cutting $124 million in local education funding on top of $305 million cut in previous years. Perdue also vetoed a highly restrictive abortion law—one that, among other things, has a 24-hour waiting period, and force-feeds anti-abortion propaganda to women seeking an abortion—call it the “Bearing False Witness By Doctors Act.” But that veto was over-ridden as well—by a single vote in the state senate. So, really, God's hand was forced on this one. He had no choice but to strike North Carolina, and strike it hard.

Finally, there are two individual targets to consider:

9. Rick Perry.
While the one-two punch of the Virginia earthquake and Hurricane Irene were far removed from Texas Governor Rick Perry's stomping grounds, God had not forgotten Perry, but was merely preparing to toy with him. Perry, after all, had responded to a terrible drought in Texas not by implementing any long-term policy measures (which might make Texas better able to deal with the prospects of more severe droughts to come as global warming impacts increase), but by calling on Texans to pray.

Back in April, Perry proclaimed the "three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas.” Since then, however, things have only gotten worse, as Timothy Egan noted in the NY Times “Opinionator” blog, "[A] rainless spring was followed by a rainless summer. July was the hottest month in recorded Texas history....Nearly all of Texas  is now in 'extreme or exceptional' drought, as classified by federal meteorologists, the worst in Texas history. Lakes have disappeared. Creeks are phantoms, the caked bottoms littered with rotting, dead fish.”

Somehow, though, it seemed like most folks outside of Texas had no idea of Perry's failed prayer initiative. That's where God came in, following up Irene with the tantalizing prospect of a Gulf of Mexico storm that would finally bring relief to the Longhorn state. But alas no. First Tropical Storm Jose petered out entirely, then Tropical Storm Lee turned to Louisiana instead. If you pray with Perry, you obviously take the Lord's name in vain. As one frustrated Texan wrote on Reddit, “Perry's prayer has been answered. The answer was 'No'.” God is making things perfectly clear, as Richard Nixon would say: If you want someone praying for America in the White House, Rick Perry is not your guy.

10 God.
Yes, it's true, God Himself was one of the main targets of God's wrath, particularly during the earthquake, which did remarkably little damage to the living. But, as Rob Kerby noted at BeliefNet, churches took some pretty hard hits:

“Churches seemed to bear the brunt of Tuesday’s 5.8 earthquake on the East Coast.

“Significant damage was reported to Washington, D.C.’s National Cathedral and St. Peter’s Catholic Church, historic St. Patrick’s Church near Baltimore, and two churches in Culpepper, Va., close to the epicenter — St. Stephen Episcopal Church and Culpepper Christian Assembly.” 

Okay, so maybe God's not self-flagellating. Maybe it's the tenants who are being targeted. But who's to say, really? And if the God's wrath biz is all about appropriating authority to cast blame around, then why not think really big, and proclaim God Himself to be the target? Pat Robertson & company have monopolized this gig for far too long. If the rest of us are to have any hope of catching up, we're got to make ourselves a splash. And what better way to make a splash than proclaiming that God is the target?

Rick Perry: "God Crashed Economy, To Return Us To Biblical Principles"

(Oh...it's God's fault because He's mad at us...OK, right. This guy wanted to secede from the Union a year ago over "Obamacare." Now, he wants to be president? Uh, fuck you, Perry!

Say it with me: "NO MORE DOUCHEBAGS!  NO MORE DOUCHEBAGS!"--jef)

God Crashed Economy

By Matthew Desmond

– June 14, 2011

Texas Governor Rick Perry

In an interview last month, Texas Governor Rick Perry explained how the economic crisis is part of God’s plan, to return us to biblical principles. Gov. Perry has expressed some interest in running for President in 2012, and polled voters nationwide in January to see how he would do.

Governor Perry has taken criticism recently for his budget which would lay off 100,000 teachers, as well as the fact that he invited other Governors to an anti-gay prayer event.

In 2009 Gov. Perry publicly refused stimulus money, then secretly used stimulus money to balance his budget.

In April of this year, when Texas was facing massive wildfires, he publicly criticized the Obama Administration for not helping his state, even though he was receiving federal funding to help fight the fires.

Via Think Progress;

During an appearance on James Robison’s Life Today television program, Perry says he sees a silver lining to the devastating recession that has cost millions of families their jobs, homes, and livelihoods: it will return America to “Biblical principles” and free us from the slavery of big government:

PERRY: I think in America from time to time we have to go through some difficult times — and I think we’re going through those difficult economic times for a purpose, to bring us back to those Biblical principles of you know, you don’t spend all the money. You work hard for those six years and you put up that seventh year in the warehouse to take you through the hard times. And not spending all of our money. Not asking for Pharaoh to give everything to everybody and to take care of folks because at the end of the day, it’s slavery. We become slaves to government.

Watch it:

He said "revivalness." He really did.

Why Does God Reveal Himself to Some People and Not to Others?

Doesn't it seem likely that the reason all of us can't see God is because there is no God?
By Greta Christina, AlterNet, July 24, 2010

If God exists… why isn't his existence obvious?

And is "free will" a good answer to this question?

A few weeks ago, in this very publication, I posed the question, "Why did God create atheists?" If God reveals himself to religious believers, in visions or revelations or other spiritual experiences… why doesn't he do it with everyone? Why are those revelations so contradictory -- not to mention so suspiciously consistent with whatever the people having them already believe or want to believe? And why doesn't everyone have them? If God is real, I asked -- if religious believers are perceiving a real entity with a real effect on the world -- why isn't it just obvious?

Why is God playing hide and seek?

When I wrote that piece, I addressed (and dismantled) two of the most common responses to this question: "God has revealed himself to you, you've just closed your heart to him," and, "God doesn't care if you're an atheist --- as long as you're a good person, he doesn't care if you believe in him."

But I neglected to address one of the most common religious answers to this question:

Free will.

"God can't reveal himself to us clearly," this argument goes, "because he wants us to have free will. We have to be free to believe in him or not. If he revealed his presence to us, we'd be forced to believe in him -- and our free will is a precious gift. It's what makes us God's unique creation."

It's a really, really bad argument.

I'm going to dismantle it today.

The Freedom of Information Act

Imagine you're on a jury. You're asked to decide whether something is or is not real, whether it did or did not happen; whether the accused stole the diamonds, or set fire to their warehouse for the insurance, or shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. The prosecution doesn't offer much evidence at the trial -- it's all circumstantial at best, third-hand hearsay at worst, with excessive appeals to emotion and fear, and arguments based on faulty logic. So you decide to acquit.

And then, after you've reached your verdict, you're told there's a videotape, clearly showing the accused committing the crime.

You're baffled. You're outraged. You confront the prosecutor in the hallway, and ask, "Why didn't you show us this evidence at the trial? Why show it to us now -- when it's too late to do anything about it?"

And the prosecutor replies, "Because you had to be free to decide for yourself. If we gave you that videotape, it would have made your choice too obvious. Free will is a precious gift, a crucial component of the justice system -- and in order for the jury to have free will, we can't make the right verdict too obvious. That would have forced your hand."

Would you nod your head sagely in agreement? Would you think that was a sound and reasonable explanation?

Or would you think he was out of his gourd?

And if you think this was a ridiculous and outrageous explanation from the prosecutor -- then why on earth would you think it's a good argument when it comes to God?

Having more information doesn't make us less free to decide what's real. It's the exact opposite. The more information we have, the better able we are to make a free, independent conclusion about what is and isn't true.

If God was real, but was playing hide and seek? If he was deliberately hiding himself from us? If he was leaving maddeningly frustrating and inconsistent hints about his existence, always staying one step ahead, always keeping carefully out of sight? That wouldn't give us free will. That would make us pawns in his manipulative, passive-aggressive game. (Especially if he punished us at the end of the game with intolerable, permanent torture, just because we guessed wrong.)

And even if clearly revealing himself somehow "forced" us to recognize God's existence… how would that force us to worship or obey him?

I mean, I have no doubt whatsoever that the San Francisco Police Department exists. They have made their existence very clear indeed. But I still have a choice about whether to obey the laws they enforce. I have a choice about whether to jaywalk, hire prostitutes, drink beer on the street. I usually obey these laws; I occasionally disobey them. I sometimes make that decision based on my fear of the cops; I sometimes make it based on my own conscience or convenience. But my freedom to obey or disobey the law does not hinge on my ignorance of the fact that the SFPD exists, and has power to enforce these laws. My awareness that the police are real, that they are not mythical creatures, does not in any way eradicate my freedom.

Why would it work that way with God?

Now, some people will argue that God is a special case. They'll argue that, because God's power is absolute -- which the SFPD's clearly is not -- revealing himself to us would be tantamount to coercion. It'd be like having the cops follow every one of us day and night… with the absolute power to put us in Abu Ghraib forever if we broke even the tiniest law.

But why would that have to be true? Couldn't God clearly tell us all, "Hey, I exist -- but I think you need to make your own moral decisions, so I'm not going to punish or reward you for good and bad behavior." Or at least, "I'm going to make your punishments and rewards proportionate to your actions, and I'm going to clearly spell out those punishments and rewards ahead of time, so you can decide for yourself if it's worth it." There's no reason free will couldn't be consistent with knowing that God existed -- or even with knowing that God was all-powerful, and could kick your ass from here to Saturn if he felt like it.

It's arguable, I'll grant you, that while free will could be consistent with this more open and moderate (albeit clearly non-existent) god, it wouldn't be possible with the more common notions of permanent, perfectly blissful heaven and permanent, perfectly torturous hell. But if what God wants for us is our free will… how would that version of the afterlife help matters? To return to the jury analogy: How would it make the jury more free to deny them the videotape of the accused committing the crime… and then throw them in Abu Ghraib forever for giving the wrong verdict? If that's the god you believe in… then with all due respect, your god is a capricious, sadistic jerk, who plays a cruel game of hide and seek with his most beloved creation, and then punishes us with intolerable, permanent torture when we lose. In which case, the only moral choice would be to reject him. (Which, supposedly, he made us free to do.)

And even the idea of Heaven raises its own set of problems here. Namely: If our free will depends on God playing hide and seek -- then how do people have free will in Heaven? In Heaven, God's existence is supposed to be blindingly clear. We're supposed to spend eternity basking in his presence. If knowing for sure that God exists eradicates our free will, then how do souls have free will in Heaven? And if souls don't have free will in Heaven, doesn't that undercut the idea of our freedom being the most precious and unique gift God could have given us?

It makes no sense. Again: When people are trying to make a decision, not just about what's real but about how to act on it, denying us relevant information does not make us more free. It makes us less free. In every area of life other than religion, this is clearly understood. It's the foundation of the principle of informed consent: when relevant information is denied us, our consent is impaired at best, and negated at worst. Having the best possible information about reality is essential to making good decisions about how to act in that reality.

Why is God an exception to that rule? Why is it that with everything else in our lives, having more information makes us better able to make a free choice… but with God -- and only God -- clearly revealing the simple fact that he exists and has power to enforce his rules would somehow turn us into his mindless robotic slaves?

How does that make any kind of sense?

Why Are There Special Snowflakes?

So when believers argue that God can't reveal himself to anybody without mysteriously eradicating our ability to make our own choices, that's my response. But that's not the only belief people hold about God and his supposed relationship to humanity. Some believers think that God reveals himself to some people, but not to others. Believers in the Bible, for instance, think that God used to reveal himself to people all the time: to Moses, to the prophets, and so on. Heck, the whole Adam and Eve story is based on the notion that they knew full well who God was and what he could do… and disobeyed him anyway.

And even people who don't believe in the Bible's literal truth still make an argument very much like this one. "Personal religious experience" -- i.e., the belief that God communicates his existence and/or intentions to some people directly -- is one of the most common reasons believers give for believing.

Which brings us back to the original question:

Why are there atheists?

Why does God reveal himself to some people, and not to others?

If it would eradicate my free will for God to make his existence obvious to me… why doesn't it eradicate yours? Or your neighbor's? Why doesn't it eradicate your priest's free will, your minister's, your rabbi's, your imam's, your guru's? Why didn't it eradicate Paul's, or Moses', or Muhammad's, or Adam's and Eve's, or that of any of the prophets and figures in religious texts who God supposedly spoke to?

If clear visions of God's existence would eradicate our freedom to believe in him or not… why does anyone have them?

I'm not looking here at the problem of why God reveals himself in such wildly different and even completely contradictory ways to different people. I'm not even looking at the problem of the mind being a highly fallible instrument, prone to a wide assortment of cognitive errors, and so if you think God is talking to you, you really need to confirm that hypothesis with external corroborating evidence.

I'm talking here strictly about the problem of free will. And I'm talking about the glaring contradiction in so many religious beliefs: the idea that, on the one hand, God reveals himself directly to some people and has done so many times in the past… and that, on the other hand, God can't reveal his existence to everyone, because doing so would somehow make us not free. I'm asking the question: Why are some people special snowflakes, able to communicate with God without it impairing their freedom to believe and obey him… while the rest of us aren't?

You can't have it both ways. Either God revealing his existence would undercut our free will -- or it wouldn't. If it would undercut our free will, then God must not be revealing himself to anybody… which means you can't count personal religious experience -- yours, or anyone else's, including the prophets who wrote your holy book --- as evidence of his existence. And if it wouldn't undercut our free will, then we're back to the question: Why isn't God making his existence clear?

Why does every religious believer have a different understanding of him, many of which are totally contradictory?

And why do some of us -- more of us every day -- not believe at all?

Why Are We Even Having This Conversation?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: If God existed, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. If God existed, it would just be obvious. If God existed, there'd be no reason for him to keep his existence a secret. There'd be no reason for him to create life, and yet somehow make that life look exactly like it would have if it had evolved naturally… right down to the inefficiencies, jury-rigs, superfluities, mind-numbing brutality, and other glaring flaws in life's supposed "design." There'd be no reason for him to animate conscious beings with immaterial souls, and yet somehow make those souls look exactly like they would have if they were biological products of the brain…. right down to the radical changes in people's consciousness and character that happen when our brains change. There'd be no reason for him to hide.

So why don't we see him?

Doesn't it seem likely that the reason we don't see him is that he doesn't exist?

The world does not look as if it was created by a supernatural being who intervenes with it on a regular basis. Or even on a semi-regular basis. There is not one scrap of good, solid evidence supporting this hypothesis. The world looks like physical matter and energy, governed by natural laws of cause and effect (and by that special version of cause and effect known as "randomness"). As Julia Sweeney says in her brilliant performance piece Letting Go of God, "The world behaves exactly as you expect it would, if there were no Supreme Being, no Supreme Consciousness, and no supernatural."

Given that that's true… which is the simplest, most plausible explanation?

That the world really has no Supreme Being?

Or that the world does have a Supreme Being, who created the world to look exactly as if he doesn't exist… just so he can play a cruel game of hide and seek with his most precious creation?

If you think the latter is true… you're certainly entitled to that belief.

But if you care whether the things you believe are true, you're going to need a really good answer for why this is.

And "free will" isn't going to cut it.