The Egg by Anonymous

You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”

“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.

“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”

“Yup,” I said.

“I… I died?”

“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Are you god?” You asked.

“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”

“My kids… my wife,” you said.

“What about them?”

“Will they be all right?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”

“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”

“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”

“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”

You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”

“Where you come from?” You said.

“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”

You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”

“All you. Different incarnations of you.”

“Wait. I’m everyone!?”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.

“I’m every human being who ever lived?”

“Or who will ever live, yes.”

“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”

“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time.

“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”

“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”

“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

Ricky Gervais: Why I’m an Atheist

Why don’t you believe in God? I get that question all the time. I always try to give a sensitive, reasoned answer. This is usually awkward, time consuming and pointless. People who believe in God don’t need proof of his existence, and they certainly don’t want evidence to the contrary. They are happy with their belief. They even say things like “it’s true to me” and “it’s faith.” I still give my logical answer because I feel that not being honest would be patronizing and impolite. It is ironic therefore that “I don’t believe in God because there is absolutely no scientific evidence for his existence and from what I’ve heard the very definition is a logical impossibility in this known universe,” comes across as both patronizing and impolite.

Arrogance is another accusation. Which seems particularly unfair. Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence -­- evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn’t get offended when new facts come along. It embraces the body of knowledge. It doesn’t hold on to medieval practices because they are tradition. If it did, you wouldn’t get a shot of penicillin, you’d pop a leach down your trousers and pray. Whatever you “believe,” this is not as effective as medicine. Again you can say, “It works for me,” but so do placebos. My point being, I’m saying God doesn’t exist. I’m not saying faith doesn’t exist. I know faith exists. I see it all the time. But believing in something doesn’t make it true. Hoping that something is true doesn’t make it true. The existence of God is not subjective. He either exists or he doesn’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. You can have your own opinions. But you can’t have your own facts.

Why don’t I believe in God? No, no no, why do YOU believe in God? Surely the burden of proof is on the believer. You started all this. If I came up to you and said, “Why don’t you believe I can fly?” You’d say, “Why would I?” I’d reply, “Because it’s a matter of faith.” If I then said, “Prove I can’t fly. Prove I can’t fly see, see, you can’t prove it can you?” You’d probably either walk away, call security or throw me out of the window and shout, ‘’F—ing fly then you lunatic.”

This, is of course a spirituality issue, religion is a different matter. As an atheist, I see nothing “wrong” in believing in a god. I don’t think there is a god, but belief in him does no harm. If it helps you in any way, then that’s fine with me. It’s when belief starts infringing on other people’s rights when it worries me. I would never deny your right to believe in a god. I would just rather you didn’t kill people who believe in a different god, say. Or stone someone to death because your rulebook says their sexuality is immoral. It’s strange that anyone who believes that an all-powerful all-knowing, omniscient power responsible for everything that happens, would also want to judge and punish people for what they are. From what I can gather, pretty much the worst type of person you can be is an atheist. The first four commandments hammer this point home. There is a god, I’m him, no one else is, you’re not as good and don’t forget it. (Don’t murder anyone, doesn’t get a mention till number 6.)

When confronted with anyone who holds my lack of religious faith in such contempt, I say, “It’s the way God made me.”

But what are atheists really being accused of?

The dictionary definition of God is “a supernatural creator and overseer of the universe.” Included in this definition are all deities, goddesses and supernatural beings. Since the beginning of recorded history, which is defined by the invention of writing by the Sumerians around 6,000 years ago, historians have cataloged over 3700 supernatural beings, of which 2870 can be considered deities.

So next time someone tells me they believe in God, I’ll say “Oh which one? Zeus? Hades? Jupiter? Mars? Odin? Thor? Krishna? Vishnu? Ra?…” If they say “Just God. I only believe in the one God,” I’ll point out that they are nearly as atheistic as me. I don’t believe in 2,870 gods, and they don’t believe in 2,869.

I used to believe in God. The Christian one that is.

I loved Jesus. He was my hero. More than pop stars. More than footballers. More than God. God was by definition omnipotent and perfect. Jesus was a man. He had to work at it. He had temptation but defeated sin. He had integrity and courage. But He was my hero because He was kind. And He was kind to everyone. He didn’t bow to peer pressure or tyranny or cruelty. He didn’t care who you were. He loved you. What a guy. I wanted to be just like Him.

One day when I was about 8 years old, I was drawing the crucifixion as part of my Bible studies homework. I loved art too. And nature. I loved how God made all the animals. They were also perfect. Unconditionally beautiful. It was an amazing world.

I lived in a very poor, working-class estate in an urban sprawl called Reading, about 40 miles west of London. My father was a laborer and my mother was a housewife. I was never ashamed of poverty. It was almost noble. Also, everyone I knew was in the same situation, and I had everything I needed. School was free. My clothes were cheap and always clean and ironed. And mum was always cooking. She was cooking the day I was drawing on the cross.

I was sitting at the kitchen table when my brother came home. He was 11 years older than me, so he would have been 19. He was as smart as anyone I knew, but he was too cheeky. He would answer back and get into trouble. I was a good boy. I went to church and believed in God -– what a relief for a working-class mother. You see, growing up where I did, mums didn’t hope as high as their kids growing up to be doctors; they just hoped their kids didn’t go to jail. So bring them up believing in God and they’ll be good and law abiding. It’s a perfect system. Well, nearly. 75 percent of Americans are God-­‐fearing Christians; 75 percent of prisoners are God-­‐fearing Christians. 10 percent of Americans are atheists; 0.2 percent of prisoners are atheists.

But anyway, there I was happily drawing my hero when my big brother Bob asked, “Why do you believe in God?” Just a simple question. But my mum panicked. “Bob,” she said in a tone that I knew meant, “Shut up.” Why was that a bad thing to ask? If there was a God and my faith was strong it didn’t matter what people said.

Oh…hang on. There is no God. He knows it, and she knows it deep down. It was as simple as that. I started thinking about it and asking more questions, and within an hour, I was an atheist.

Wow. No God. If mum had lied to me about God, had she also lied to me about Santa? Yes, of course, but who cares? The gifts kept coming. And so did the gifts of my new found atheism. The gifts of truth, science, nature. The real beauty of this world. I learned of evolution -– a theory so simple that only England’s greatest genius could have come up with it. Evolution of plants, animals and us –- with imagination, free will, love, humor. I no longer needed a reason for my existence, just a reason to live. And imagination, free will, love, humor, fun, music, sports, beer and pizza are all good enough reasons for living.

But living an honest life -– for that you need the truth. That’s the other thing I learned that day, that the truth, however shocking or uncomfortable, in the end leads to liberation and dignity.

So what does the question “Why don’t you believe in God?” really mean. I think when someone asks that they are really questioning their own belief. In a way they are asking “what makes you so special? “How come you weren’t brainwashed with the rest of us?” “How dare you say I’m a fool and I’m not going to heaven, f— you!” Let’s be honest, if one person believed in God he would be considered pretty strange. But because it’s a very popular view it’s accepted. And why is it such a popular view? That’s obvious. It’s an attractive proposition. Believe in me and live forever. Again if it was just a case of spirituality this would be fine.

“Do unto others…” is a good rule of thumb. I live by that. Forgiveness is probably the greatest virtue there is. But that’s exactly what it is -­‐ a virtue. Not just a Christian virtue. No one owns being good. I’m good. I just don’t believe I’ll be rewarded for it in heaven. My reward is here and now. It’s knowing that I try to do the right thing. That I lived a good life. And that’s where spirituality really lost its way. When it became a stick to beat people with. “Do this or you’ll burn in hell.”

You won’t burn in hell. But be nice anyway.

Waiting for an epiphany.

After much tossing and turning I've taken to wandering the house. I’ve tried reading but my concentration level is in the toilet. I sat down at the computer but none of the projects I’m working on at the moment interests me.

Flopping on the couch, after careful rearranging the cats, I’ve been flipping through the hundreds of cable channels I have at my disposal and I’ve settled on Wes Anderson’s ‘The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou’. I don’t love every movie that Wes Anderson has made, but the guy gets huge props for bringing out the very best in Bill Murray. I love Murray’s classics like Ghostbusters, Stripes, and even Kingpin, but for the most part he’s had a spotty history on the big screen.

Before settling on Life Aquatic, I watched a few minutes of a feature on the History Channel that detailed the introduction of soda pop in the United States. It was a lot more interesting then you might imagine. During a commercial break there was a four or five minute commercial for one of those “Feed the children’ corporations. Years ago, Sally Struthers from the television series “All in the Family” used to narrate those commercials, but these days I don’t think anyone knows who she is/was anymore.

The current commercials are narrated by a very earnest looking, bald and bearded gent. He wanders through the mud caked streets of a village which is filled to the brim with starving children. Not listening to every word he says I catch something about thousands of children dying of hunger yesterday, with the same thing destined to happen today and tomorrow.

If I were a caring, conscientious person, this information would probably bring me to tears and send me running for my checkbook, but I guess because this horrible atrocity isn't happening in my backyard or even in my neighborhood, it’s easy enough to change the channel and ignore the problem.

Back in the day, when a cup of joe cost around fifty cents, Sally Struthers used to say that for the price of a cup of coffee you could feed a child for a week. This was before the Starbucks phenomena and the four-dollar cup of coffee. Who knows what four bucks a week could buy in your average starving nation.

The bald and bearded, thoughtful looking man says that if I sponsor a child I will get regular photos and notes from him/her.

How in the world do you imagine this works? If I sign up for sponsorship and send in my fifteen dollars a month, what happens to the child I’m assigned? Does he get uprooted and shipped to a different part of the town or country—to a place that has running water, feeds him two or three bowls of rice a day, and maybe a Peace Corps volunteer to teach him the three R’s?

Or, does the sponsored kid stay in the same mud hut he lived in before, only he’s given special treatment on the sly. He eats while those around him go hungry, he gets new clothes and shoes while his brothers and sisters run around mostly naked, and he gets a toothbrush—the only one in the entire town.

I wonder if the children who are lucky enough to get sponsored and who receive monthly letters from their host families in Terra Haute, Indiana and Crystal Springs, California here in the US of A, are ostracized and get endless beatings by the others in their village? Perhaps they are able to buy protection from the daily beat downs by offering up the Gummi worms and Wacky Taffy their host family sends them each month.

Maybe it gets so bad after a while that sponsored kids request to be taken off the sponsored kids list? What are the sponsor families back in Terra Haute told? Are they automatically given the next kid on the list? Would they even notice, or care that the kid in their pictures has changed? Perhaps the whole notion of sponsor families getting regular photos and notes from the kids is a scam. Maybe hundreds of families get the same photos and ‘hand written’ notes from the sponsored kids. What if the notes are produced in backroom sweatshop somewhere in the Honduras?

I guess it could be legit. And maybe ninety-nine cents of every dollar donated goes to helping the children. I worry that I might be getting cynical in my old age, but I think I’ve always been this cynical. I think it comes from being raised a Catholic and being required to attend Catechism classes every week.

The whole notion of Catholicism only really works if you’re willing to buy into the concept from the start. It’s like someone trying to tell you a joke and you totally miss out on the punch line because you’re still back at the start, trying to figure out why a priest, a rabbi, and a Shetland pony would be lost in the desert together, and how the pony, who can’t talk, could make his three wishes from the magic genie after the trio finds a dusty lamp and they give it a good rubbing. If you don’t buy into the set-up there’s no way you’re going to get the punch line. I never bought into the whole notion of Christ and the subsequent Christianity, so what the nuns were trying to teach me in Catechism came across as downright confounding and mostly silly.

I wanted to understand. I had a ton of questions that I wanted the answers for, but when I asked the priests or nuns they looked at me like I was speaking Esperanto and sent me back to my seat. For starters, I never got the whole “Father, Son and Holy Ghost” thing. So, the Father is God, right? And the son must be Jesus. But who the heck is the Holy Ghost? And why even bring ghosts into the mix. You’ve got some pretty titanic concepts for people to chew on, with God sending his son down to earth to die for our sins, and stuff like that, so why bring ghosts into the mix?

I had a bunch of questions about Jesus that I never got the answer to. So, there’s God up in heaven, keeping an eye on this little earth project he’s cooked up. From the getgo Adam and Eve showed their true colors and demonstrated that mankind is flawed. God could have wiped the slate clean at this point and started over again, but maybe he created humans to be weak and prone to doing the wrong thing at the wrong time in most cases. So the human race grows too large for Eden and they start branching out around the world—all the while acting like the biggest bunch of sinners you ever saw in your life.

God comes to the conclusion that the only way he’s going to get everyone back on track and living the way they should be is to send a little sliver of himself down to live among the humans. This sort of makes sense to me, but the way he cooked up Jesus is kind of weird. God could have easily sent down a fully-grown man, complete with sandals, robe and hippy beard, to do the job. But instead, he impregnates a virgin to carry his son. This concept doesn’t appear to affect the soon-to-be mom, or her husband. If something like this happened today, two thousand years later, it would cause quite a stir—so I really can’t see it being casually accepted back in the day.

Did Mary know that she was carrying a little bundle of divinity in her belly? Immaculate conception aside, did Mary and Joseph know they had a ‘super’ baby on their hands once he was born? At some point was Joseph nearly crushed while changing the wheel on an oxen cart? Once he realizes he hasn’t been crushed flat does he look up and see that little baby Jesus is holding the fallen cart up in the air with a single finger?

Years later, young adult Jesus is making a living as a carpenter. He’s got no real competition, as he seems to be able to do the most difficult projects overnight. In fact, he probably completes most orders the same day they’re placed, but then leaves the finished product sitting around his shop for a week or two to avoid suspicion.

While he isn’t busy building quality wood furniture, Jesus starts preaching about how great his dad is. This doesn’t sit very well with those in power and before long Jesus finds himself perched up on a cross. After a while of hanging around up there, holding uncomfortably long conversations with whoever passes by, he’s eventually stabbed in the ribs with the Spear of Destiny. This pretty much kills Jesus who is then tossed into a cave (the entrance to which is blocked by a big heavy stone to keep the neighborhood kids out of there) and then on Easter morning he moves the big rock out of the way and wanders to look up his old friends. Possibly the fellow with the Spear of Destiny.

His resurrection lasts a week or so, during which time he puts on a show of his powers to win back his followers. Something happens and he dies again, only this time for good. I don’t recall what got him the second time, his father was probably involved, but it really did the job.

So, with his work complete down on earth, Jesus comes back to heaven. To do what? I had a nun tell me that he was sort of absorbed back into God, his father, like a sponge absorbs a puddle of water it left earlier on the counter.

This notion bugged the hell out of me. You can’t put someone down on earth for over thirty years, during which time he’s probably made a lot of good friends and has some fun memories, and then simply absorb him up like you're a Shamwow. Is this what all of us have to look forward to in heaven? All individuality gone. We just get sucked back into the mass of energy we were born from?

I guess we can forget about floating around on the clouds, playing the lyre for the babes, and making sure your halo is tilted at a jaunty angle. Is the afterlife we have to look forward to comprised of becoming the tiniest fraction of a gargantuan whole, with all traces of individuality to be stripped away? No memories of great books we’ve read, movies we’ve seen, people we’ve loved, exotic foods we’ve tasted? All that is gone?

I don’t know about you, but this sounds pretty crappy to me.

But who knows? Maybe religion was explained to me incorrectly. People talk about Jesus like he still exists. The religion is called Christianity, after all. I was always confused when I was young because the names 'God' and 'Jesus Christ' seemed pretty much interchangeable. People pray to 'Jesus' just as often as they pray to 'God. Adding to the confusion is the 'Lord'. Is Lord another name for Jesus or for God—or are all three one in the same, with the Holy Ghost tossed in for good luck? Will a shout out to any of the four get you the same response?

The sleep that had been eluding me now beckons me. I should go. Perhaps a religious epiphany awaits me.

This may have been around for a while, but it's the first time I saw it.