“I wish people would stop bringing Me into it.”
So complained God, the supernatural superbeing and all-powerful deity of the Bible, in an exclusive interview today with FreethoughtBlogs’ Blue Collar Atheist.
We sat in a small café in Schenectady, New York. On the day after Rolf Heuer, director of European physics research center CERN, announced the likely discovery of the Higgs Boson, God appeared in a blinding flash at roughly 9:17 a.m. (all the clocks stopped, as did most of the people in the room), stepping down from a small cloud as a host of angelic cherubs kept up a continuous long choral note.
He was rather larger than your average human. I couldn’t help but notice, as I stood up respectfully to greet him, that his backside (important enough to be mentioned in the Bible, by the way) lapped over his chair on both sides.
Wearing a somewhat shabby white robe, the white-bearded old fellow ordered potato pancakes with horseradish sauce, and decaf coffee. Black, two sugars.
After nodding at a shocked-looking Greek Orthodox priest having scrambled eggs at a nearby table, he stirred his coffee glumly, the spoon clinking against the porcelain cup.
“Look, I tell my story in Genesis, and there’s not a Me-damned subatomic particle in the thing. I brought forth all creation in 6 days, and I did it My way, with decent, respectable God-magic, and not with all this silly physics.”
God looked off into the distance as he mused about the discrepancy. “Science is all very well for some people, but for others … I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
Between bites of potato pancake, he set down his fork and put His mighty hands forward, pleading, “Look, if you buy into all this science and reason business, the next thing you know you’re dabbling in objective, non-biblical morality and pretty soon you start thinking that Catholic priests molesting altar boys and underaged choir singers is wrong.
“Hell, you might even look at the Pope’s holy vestments, you know, with all the gold brocade and stuff, or even the collected treasures of the ages, moldering in the depths of the Vatican, as somehow wrong. I mean, considering all the starving children in the world.
“But I do things this way for a REASON. What’s a few altar boys suffering lifetimes of anguish compared to my earthly representatives enjoying a few moments of respite from the very difficult work I require of them?
“Speaking of which — respite, I mean — this is all the Seventh Day to me. You know, the day I rest? Well, I’m still doing it. Or, perhaps I should say, TRYING to do it. I wish I could tell you the number of whiny prayers those little bastards send up to Me. ‘Oh, Lord, please not again! Make him not take me into the back room today!’ Nyih-nyih-NYIH-nyih! Jesus!
“Here’s the thing I just can’t get across to them: IT’S MY DAY OFF. Get it? Hey, I’ll get back to you in an eon or so about your insignificant little problem. Just, meanwhile, lay off, you know? It’s not like this creation business is EASY. I’m on my last nerve here.”
He interrupted Himself to hold his hand over his cup as the waitress, Julia, offered a warm-up from the orange-collared decaf carafe.
(A second later, the scent of hot wine drifted up. God peered into his cup with a muttered “Shit!”)
“Look, to Me you’re all temporary. Not to mention a bit limited in the brain department, compared to, oh” — here he waggled his eyebrows suggestively and spoke around a bite of toast — “a certain all-seeing, all-knowing omnipotent celestial being I might name. I should know, because I made you that way. On purpose.”
He waved a hand airily. “See, I have this bigger Plan you can’t possibly understand. You just have to accept it. Read your Bible and so forth. It’s all there.
“And, dear sweet Jesus, tell all those news media dimwits to shut the bloody Hell up about this ‘God particle.’ It’s just not a God particle. Not even the physicists call it that, and they discovered the damned thing!”
His large hand covered his visage momentarily in a remarkably expressive facepalm.
“What I MEANT to say was … Oh, crap. I tell you, some Days it’s just not worth getting up.”
Apparently that was the end of our interview. Affixing me with one last exasperated glare, God stepped back onto his cherub-supported cloud and simply faded out.
I couldn’t help but notice, though: He left without paying his tab.
Stiffed the waitress too.