So idly thinking about God today, just in my continuing quest to check that my atheism is the correct course. I was wondering if God farts.
It started from considering how far the concept of us being made in His image actually went. Are we just the same shape as Him? Do we merely resemble him? Or are we exact mini-replicas of the person of God? Do we have all the same bits? I wouldn't ask if God has a cock as that would be blasphemous and sexist, but what interested me was the internal workings. Does God have intestines? Does He actually eat and if so, does He need to use the toilet?
In a way it would seem odd if He didn't. He made us in His image, but decided to make us fuel ourselves under a totally different and somewhat messy system. Essentially it would mean Him inventing poo for no real good reason, unless it was a system He worked under already and was duty-bound to install in the miniature copies of Himself.
So if God does have an intestine and does poo, then does He also sometimes fart? If he's eaten a rich meal of some kind or some undercooked vegetables or just something a little bit leguminous?
Because if He doesn't fart, then that means the fart is something He introduced when he created animals and men. Either God's Holy intestine works perfectly or it is the same as ours and malfunctions a bit. Or again He never farts, but for some reason either chose to make humans fart when he doesn't or messed things up and caused us to fart accidentally. And if He chose to make us fart, because personally I cannot countenance that the Lord of the Universe makes mistakes, and if He Himself doesn't fart (again it would seem to awful to imagine if he did) then He actually invented farts especially for us. Out of nowhere. There was no real need for them, but God decided to invent them anyway, possibly as a cruel trick, but more likely as a kind of joke. And if for that latter reason then He was correct as farts are very funny (though apparently contributing to global warming). But what kind of sick mind would have thought to make up farts when farts didn't exist before? Even God isn't that clever or perverted. So I decided that God must fart and that we just get the design flaw passed down to us because of the whole being made in His image thing. I think theologians should take some time to discuss this issue, if they haven't already - they seem to have considered most thing.
I was also contemplating the threat of Hell. If we don't believe in God, apparently, we go to Hell for all eternity and get all burned and stuff. But I actually decided that being an atheist was probably the safest option when presented with this threat of damnation. Because there are so many possibilities as to who God is and what he wants to punish and which religion is right, that by nailing your colours to the mast (or the crucifix) is statistically a foolish thing to do. Say you choose to plump for the religion that thinks it is worth flogging someone for
naming a teddy bear after their prophet and it turns out that actually the people who think they are God's chosen people, (that he essentially has a sort of racist preference over which flavour of humans is best) are correct, then you are going to Hell, despite your lifelong religious faith. Maybe you decide that the bloke nailed to the tree was the one you should be following, but when you die you discover that you had made an incorrect decision about whether bread literally or metaphorically became his body, then bang - down to Hell with you too.
There are hundreds of religions and hundreds of sub divisions within all those broader faiths and the chances of you picking the right one (mainly based on what your mum and dad thought anyway) are very tiny. You get the wrong one and you're likely to be spending eternity on fire, or even if you think God is a bit more liberal, at least sitting outside the Heaven that you had been working towards and had given up earthly pleasures to try and reach.
By being an atheist, if God is strict, you're might well end up going to Hell, but I think your chances are slightly better. Because a God is going to hate people who worshipped the wrong God or a different God, much more than people who didn't worship any God at all. It's like if you support Manchester City, you hate anyone who supports Manchester United and if you got the chance to punish them for all eternity for their wrong decision, you would do so with some glee. But if you met someone who just wasn't interested in football at all, it would be hard to get worked up about them as much. You might call them a poof or a weirdo, but then you'd get on with looking for some Man United fans to fight with for so disrespectfully thinking the opposite of what you think.
I think Heaven would be the same. So whilst being religious you might give yourself a one in a thousand chance of eternal bliss (though a 999 in a thousand chance of eternal pain) at least by being an atheist, although you're never going to get the big prize, you probably have a 50-50 chance of just being sent to some kind of purgatory, or being ignored by God for being off the radar. Ultimately if you want to avoid being burned up for evermore then it is the only sensible choice and you have to be like one of the worst idiots on Deal or No Deal to carry on for the hope that the big money is actually in your box (even though the rest of the board is blue), because you have a "feeling" it might be.
This doesn't even take into account the slight possibility that the atheists may be correct and there is no afterlife at all. In which case it doesn't really matter what you believed, but it would be a shame to think you wasted this opportunity of this tiny window of existence in worshipping a thing that was entirely made up.
Atheism is the only course of action. Who would would want to worship a flatulant God anyway?
Oh and haven't done the draw yet. It's a mammoth undertaking that may have to wait til next week
