I think it was put best in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I trust all of you have read at least three times like me. If you haven’t read it at all, you’re banned from this site until you do. I’m only doing this because I don’t have the power to ban you from the country, at least not yet. When I do, you can bet you’ll be snuggling up to the communists in North Korea before you know it, you Red. I’m doing this for your own good, and because I can.

Anyway, in the book, there is mention of a book entitled Who is this God Person, Anyway?. That just about sums up the topic of this article. Who and what is God, exactly? Is he the omnipresent, all-powerful being who created everything, is he nothing but a work of fiction conjured up by the extortionists we call the church, or does he exist in some other form that we’ve never even thought to consider before? We’re definitely not going to arrive at any conclusions in this article or in this world, for that matter, unless God himself decides to show himself and knock the Truth into our heads himself, which he has failed to do yet.

I’m going to step back and do my usual spiel about how I’m not denying the existence of God and not trying to interfere with or promote any religion. This is merely a series of questions and speculations posed to bring some thought to a very important topic. I’m not doing this to offend anyone. No, wait, I’m actually a little motivated by the thought of upsetting a lot of fundamentalist yahoos who think that anyone with a different opinion than them is bad. Intolerance for the intolerant, that’s my motto, and now that I said it, you guys can’t peg me for being an uncompromising bigot, because I know you won’t tolerate intolerant people, eh, Mister Chick?

I know a little about God, since I was raised in a Lutheran (the mellow guys) household. I still attend church, but not by my own merit. I sort of tag along and listen to the same old sermons touching on the big things in the Bible without delving into the obscure material. Like most churches, we get sermons about how real life right now relates to the Bible, how great God is and how he gave his only son to die on the cross for your sins and you should love him, here’s the offering plate. I grew up with God around, and as I kept growing up, I found that I had questions about the guy that didn’t have answers.

I think the big question is if there is a God or not. This is an easy one, because those who believe are right, and those who don’t are also right. Simple, eh? Now before I make it seem like I’m copping out on this one, let’s take a loving look by at George Orwell’s 1984, which you should all start reading after you’re done with Hitchhiker’s Guide. One of the themes in the book is that if no one remembers something that happened, then it didn’t happen, and any made-up piece of history can be inserted in the blanks. I’m not suggesting that this is exactly what’s going on with God, but it puts the message in perspective.

Basically, whatever you believe right now, anything at all, is right, because that’s your reality. The problem is, there’s a lot of reality from other people that seems to be getting in the way. For example, let’s say that you claim you can fly, but the reason you can’t is because God doesn’t wish it (extra credit to those who tagged that as a 1984 concept). You claim that when you die, you’re going to heaven, but once you kick the bucket, there’s no way to tell what happened to you. It’s that second one that has people worried. Death is something that’s final and absolute (Earthly death, anyway), and people are scared of it because they don’t understand what it is. That’s why God is so important. In fact, that’s why religion is so important.

That’s one reason why faith is such an important thing for a person to have, because everyone knows that there is no way that humans should be in control of things. Enter God, who is at the reins of this mess and is by far most qualified to run things because, hey, he created it. At least that’s what the popular belief is.

And that’s what brings me back to the question of if God exists. With all of our shiny technology that’s pretty much conquered everything on this planet, we, as humans, still don’t have a firm grasp on what reality is. It could be more or less spiritual than we think it is. It may be a cold, sterile, biological and chemical reality filled with abnormalities we call human thought, or it could be God’s Great Work. We have no way of knowing.

This leads me to believe that “God,” as he is, might actually be a creation of humans, not a fictitious character, but an actual being created from the hopes, desires, and fear of humanities' consciousness. This is touched on the graphic novel Lucifer: Devil in the Gateway, which I’m also adding to your reading list. Perhaps the gods, goddesses, and monsters of old really did exist, but somehow, people stopped worshipping them and they simply disappeared. Instead, people started worshipping God, who has so much power now because millions are worshiping him.

What if we were to suddenly stop worshipping God? If this theory is correct, then the all-powerful God would simply vanish, never to reappear until someone worships him again. Or maybe he simply wouldn’t have any power if people remembered him, but didn’t worship him. This is moving into some serious Nightmare on Elm Street territory, so let’s move on.

So does God only have power because humanity gave it to him? Either way, humanity would never try to take it away, because he’s God, and you don’t mess with God. It’s kind of like how American government works. The masses decide on a president, some ordinary slob who happens to have a couple million dollars, elect him as ruler of the world, and firmly believe that they can take that power away, but never will, so he can basically do whatever he wants so long as he isn’t directly blamed for anything serious. And with that, my string of cleverly-placed Bush insults continues to grow.

The one difference between God and Bush, though, is that Bush is human, and therefore we know for sure that he’s an idiot. We can’t size God’s IQ up very well, but since the Christians have given him an infinite one, that’s what he’s got. Another difference is that Bush’s rule will eventually end, whereas God is in the seat forever. But I think, overall, the democracy theory of theology might be a sound one, at least until I come up with something else.

Evidence that God may have been created by man also comes from the image of God. According the Bible, God created us in his image, but the wrinkle here is that the Christians also claim God has no true form. Almost invariably, however, God is depicted as a large, shiny, thunderous white-bearded guy who is all-powerful and all-knowing. It’s like the concept of elders being wise sages, having gathered the knowledge of the world, ready to pass it on. It almost seems like we created God in OUR image.

When I say this, I mean that the men created God in their image, since he is always referred to as He, and even though it’s supposedly a metaphor, I’ve never seen a Christian depiction of God as a woman. I suspect that this would offend the mighty men that gave their parts so God could make women, who in turned caused all of humankind to be branded with the Original Sin.

If you think about it, Christianity is really very chauvinistic, and before you fanatics start thumping open your Bibles to the birth of Jesus, let me remind you that the moment good ol’ Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant, he started thinking of dumping her so she wouldn’t make him look bad. That’s pretty much what it was like. Women didn’t have any of the really cool roles like the men, who were fighting giants and parting seas. The women were selling their bodies and getting stones thrown at them. Great message, guys.

Anyway, without going into the big conspiracy theory about how the Bible could be made up or the people who wrote the Bible could have really misinterpreted some key things or that a lot of stuff got switched around in the thousands of years between those events and now, with a lot of human intervention in between, I think we can all agree that religion itself is a creation of man. Sure, God kind of told people what he wanted from them to make him happy, but it was mankind who built the churches, invented the ceremonies, and took the money of the parishioners. That’s a lot of humanity involved, and a lot of ways for those humans to go on a power trip.

Let’s go back to the American government example. Presidential campaigns will run into the millions of dollars, money spent on getting a guy into office that won’t even make close to any of that back with as much as the job of commander in chief pays. So why go through all the trouble to get your guy elected? It’s because people lust after power and they’ll waste valuable resources just to appear superior to everyone else. The Democrats and the Republicans both want their interests to control the world, because they are humans and it makes them feel good, the benefit of the people be damned.

The job of president may end at the eight-year mark, but the glory never fades. Bush will be know as Mister President forever, and people will bow down to him even though he’s an ordinary guy who just happened to control the most powerful nation in the world at some point in his career. If it were me, I wouldn’t give an eagle’s butt about it. If he were my neighbor, you could bet that there would be A LOT more leaves in his lawn.

Back on topic, we know that the Catholic church, many hundreds of years before I was born, sold “indulgences,” which were little slips of paper that said if you give the priests money, they’ll snuggle up to God and get him to let you into heaven, or at least not let you rot in purgatory for so long. The priest/minister/pastor/rabbi/robed dude has a lot of responsibility and power on him, and if you end up with a jerk as your spiritual leader, you can expect a lot of trouble.

It’s possible that these “religious authorities” could have been making it all up just to reap profits and keep their power. If you read Selmek’s piece on Jesus, you have an idea that God is a profitable industry to be in. You tell people a bunch of stories, take their money, and they have no way of proving that any of it is true, and neither do you. Actually, it’s a lot like how the movie industry works, but at least we occasionally get Halle Berry.

I think the most distressing part about the question of whether or not God exists and in what form if he does is that the guy doesn’t show up and tell us. He clearly knows what we’re like, stubborn pig heads who need to see in order to believe, and yet, instead of just appearing in the sky one of these days and saying, to effect, “Yo, humanity, listen up! This is God and you’re going to follow these rules or you die!” he leaves the task to a bunch of his “faithful” who seem to be taken in by some kind of scam.

The worst part about some of these converters is their techniques, which I’ve been slamming for sometime, so let’s just point at Jack Chick and get it over with. The guy just doesn’t know how to write propaganda, thinking that if he enrages people, they will wise up and believe whatever he says. Jack, when you enrage people, they feel rage, not humbleness. Piss them off and they’ll tear through you and your tracts like a piñata at an ADD children’s convention.

These are the wackos God has working for him. As an entity of infinite wisdom, he should know that no one is going to take these people seriously. That’s the reason I’m skeptical about the entire thing: a being of infinite knowledge desires the truth to be spread by nutcases and punishes those who don’t buy it? It just doesn’t make sense. I mean, how many nutcases from other religions are also trying to do the same thing? Who the hell is right, anyway, and how?

I’m sure there are many Christians out there who are laughing softly and pompously at my skepticism and silently assuring me that everything is in God’s plan, but don’t buy that crap either. “God’s plan” is just their way of saying that they have no idea why something is the way it is and they haven’t made anything up to cover their butts. Or at least that’s how I look at it.

So in the end, I’m urging all of you to give up religion and go about your business, right? Not so fast. The message here is that while God could or could not be the creation of man and may or may not exist, that doesn’t mean that I’m making any conclusions here, because conclusions don’t exist. You psycho Christians out there that I’ve been railing on all this time may have this one right, but you already knew that. The point is that there is no way of knowing if any of us is right about any given religion, as we’ve pointed out time and time and time again, and will continue doing so until one of you practices your Christian love by killing us on crosses and burning our server down.

In any event, if you’ve read through this article and managed to keep all of your beliefs intact, good for you, you’ve got something good going, but I implore you to keep it to yourself and your Christian friends. I understand that it’s the Christian Duty, and the duty of any religious follower, to convert others to the cause, but please don’t stomp on other people’s beliefs like my good friend Jack Chick does; you’ll get better responses with a hint of passiveness and earn my respect, which I can tell is what you really want. Simply say “I believe this…” and keeping an open mind is a lot better than saying “You’re wrong and I’m right, here’s why, but I can’t prove it.” Just remember that you could be worshipping the Holy Bible: Wisdom of the Ages or Uncle Job’s Big Book of Really Made-Up Tales, but if you believe the former, go for it, but keep in mind that I’m not convinced either way. God will love you for it.