Pat Robertson's God Problem

American Mullah Pat Robertson disclosed recently that God told him 2006 will be a bad year for storms in the United States. Duh.

Of course, I don’t believe God spoke to Robertson. Not because Pat is a bigoted, intolerant, arrogant, superstitious loon. But because God told me he didn’t...

JT, I’ve never said a word to Pat Robertson. He’s a hostage taker, and the minute I open my mouth I won’t be able to shut him up. Besides, I never speak to Christians. Look what they’ve done to Jesus, turning him into an excuse for violence and hatred. And those awful portraits of him with pale skin and a morbid stare. Even worse, they claim I wrote the Bible. I mean, you’d think an omnipotent deity could do better than that creepy hodgepodge. Stoning people on the Sabbath? Me? Come on. And the guy who came up with Revelations was tripping on Sumerian peyote, in case you hadn’t already guessed.

Try to remember that Earth is a little speck of dust in my universe. I’ve created billions of galaxies, and billions of life-supporting planets in each galaxy. It’s a big challenge to keep track of. For example, there are eighty-six million genocides occurring at the moment. The one on planet Optrodus is particularly awful because it involves genetically targeted nanoassassins. Very sad, very messy.

And I should add that sixty-seven thousand planets will go extinct in the next terrestrial week due to poor stewardship, which doesn’t even include the nineteen hundred others due to supernova, asteroid collision and structural failure. The problems creatures create for themselves astonish me. Free will is complicated, but it doesn’t have to be lethal.

I often want to intervene, but that goes against the first principle of this whole thing of mine. If creatures take half the energy they spend on begging me to help them and put it into making their worlds better, the universe will be a significantly nicer place.

I know--you’re thinking that my communicating with you is a type of intervention, but it’s not. Nobody will ever believe you. For whatever strange reason, they keep believing religious fanatics and wingnuts like Robertson. It’s bad enough that preachers put words in my mouth, but the things they have me saying almost make me want the shut the whole experiment down.

Then again, when both suns rise at the same time over the yellow mountains of planet Grislbex, or when your whales sing their mating songs, or when….well, it makes it all worthwhile. Don’t you agree?