Speaking Sense On Sunday

From America's Finest News Source:

PRINCETON, NJ—According to a new report published this week, researchers at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study have definitively concluded that it—all of it—is some kind of sick joke.

The comprehensive study, which carefully analyzed fields as varied as physics, theology, history, economics, sociology, and philosophy, is said to have found overwhelming evidence that it is all just one big sham specifically designed to humiliate us and cause us as much misery as possible.

[...]

"The question we're ultimately left with is what kind of a savage and twisted god would find this funny?" theological scholar Meredith Hemphill said. "Unfortunately, the only thing we can say for sure is that we're not dealing with a benevolent deity or even a detached and unfeeling maker, but apparently some unknowable force that takes a perverted, I would argue psychopathic, pleasure in watching its creations struggle and fail."

[...]

"There appears to be no escaping the feelings of humiliation, emptiness, and despair this barbaric joke exacts on everyone," said Nobel laureate and professor emeritus of psychology Daniel Kahneman. "However, trial studies show humankind is far better off when we push it all into the back of our heads, try not to think about it, and just trudge mindlessly toward death."

"And let me remind everyone that the joke does indeed have an ending, one which generally occurs much, much sooner than we expect," Kahneman added.

The fact that, regarding the triple threat (all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful) god of the Christian right, I've said as much in all seriousness, makes it no less funny; nor, despite coming from a satirical source, is it any less true.

And maybe this is as good a time as any to comment on Penn State.

In particular, I find it astounding, nearly unbelievable except that unbelievable is what belief is about, that Joe Paterno, and, later, members of the board of trustees there, said we should pray for the victims. To whom, for gods' sake? The god who let ten year old boys be raped? Who, in his all-powerful lovingness, gave that coach a hard-on and let him shove it up the rectum of a child? That god? It's he to whom we should direct prayers? So he'll do what, now, suddenly, after decades of abject failure? Bring peace of mind to the children he abandoned? Why? Because more people are begging him now than merely the several victims back then? Those little boys didn't pray hard enough, or were there just too few of them to cross the celestial ego-threshold?

Sickening, at all levels.

At the game yesterday, the teams met midfield to pray for the victims. What pathetic pretentiousness. What willful ignoring. If the god they're praying to answers prayers, then he let the serial rapes happen and doesn't give a good god damn; or he doesn't exist. Either/Or. Take your pick, and save your breath.

Pray for the victims. As if that'll make it all right, get everyone off the hook, including god. That's the greatest immorality of all. And the sickest joke.