These are some sample
quotes from Polly!
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Cats are living proof God was only joking when he said
you should have no other gods before him.
The contract
[for life] ain't got 'sense' in it anywhere. Or 'fair,' for
that matter. Not even in the fine print. I read it all.
This is
where I impart to you the great secret of the universe. All
the wisdom of the ancients boiled down to a single word:
balance. Stay in balance and the world's your oyster. Assuming
you like oysters, that is, otherwise the whole metaphor's
worthless.
Entropy is
the constant tendency of the universe to run down, as
expressed by the Three Laws of Thermodynamics. I could bore
you with the fancy equations, but in layman's terms the First
Law is, "You can't get something for nothing." The Second Law
is, "It's gonna get worse before it gets better." And the
Third Law is, "Who says it's gonna get better?"
Think of
all the horrible things that are blamed on God--wars, famines,
diseases, tsunamis. Lawyers have a particularly dim view of
him. If something unforeseen happens that's bad, it's an "act
of God." But do they ever give him credit for anything good?
If
God-the-father is in charge of life and death, then the
supposed "sacrifice" of Jesus was a hollow gesture. In order
to have a sacrifice, you have to give up something precious to
you, with no hope of ever getting it back. Jesus knew Daddy
would give him his life back. It was like sacrificing your
nails when you get a manicure. I'm much more impressed,
frankly, when an atheist or an agnostic is willing to give his
life to help another. That is a sacrifice. But in
Jesus's case, the game was rigged.
Heaven and
hell exist, but you don't need God to create them. People
manage that extremely well without any divine help. Especially
hell. What could God ever do to compare with the Holocaust, or
the Armenian genocide, or the Rwandan genocides or the Bosnian
genocides?
People have
all sorts of things they think God's supposed to do. People
think God's supposed to smite their enemies, or at least help
them win a ball game. People think God's supposed to listen to
all their prayers, and maybe answer a few of them. People
think God's supposed to keep a big, giant scorecard with
little x's and o's for good and bad deeds. It's like Santa
Claus, figuring out who's naughty and nice. Is God just an
obsessive accountant?
The Bible
says God got one day of rest. One! After that he's on duty
24/7 with no vacation, no paid leave, no overtime, no year-end
bonus. What's in it for God? I'll tell you what: bupkiss,
that's what. Why should God go through all that aggravation?
What an
egomaniac religions think God must be, to crave the adulation
of beings so far inferior to himself. Let me give you a piece
of advice. If anyone ever tells you "I'm great and you must
worship me," nod your head and smile politely, then back away
slowly until you're out of range and run like crazy in the
other direction. You're dealing with someone who's mentally
unbalanced, maybe even dangerously unstable. If someone who
created the entire universe needs validation from you, he's
crazy and unworthy of worship.
Most
religions throughout history had lusty gods who enjoyed life.
Leave it to the Middle Eastern religions to come up with a
sexless, stultifyingly serious god with no sense of humor and
no capacity for enjoyment.
There's always
a test. Pay attention.
The enemy is
entropy.
Life don't
come with warnings. Get used to it.
Never
underestimate human folly, against which even the gods plan in
vain.
[About Job]
Here's this really great guy, always does the right thing, and
God and Satan make this little bet. They kill all ten of his
kids, they kill all his servants, they kill all his livestock,
they give him boils from head to foot. Just on a bet! What
kind of a God is that? This is the Supreme Being you're
supposed to turn to as the moral standard of the universe?
This is a God with the moral standards of Josef Mengele! What
did the children ever do to deserve capital punishment? What
did the servants ever do? For that matter, what did the sheep
and the camels and the oxen and the she-asses ever do? They're
all irrelevant to God. They're not real to him, they're just
window dressing, like a guard who stands beside a door just so
the hero can kill him. Yeah, Mr. J. gets ten new kids
and lots of new servants and twice as much livestock.
Do you think that does a fat lot of good for the old children
and servants who died just so God could see how his
bet would come out?
The story
with Isaac's no better. 'Hey, Abe, why don't you kill your
little boy for me? Oops, just funnin' ya. You shoulda seen the
look on your face! You didn't think I really meant it,
did you?' This is a deity you're supposed to worship? Of all
the self-serving, narcissistic, morally decrepit portraits of
God in the history of the Earth, these are among the worst.
Let me give
you the For-Dummies version [of the Three Laws of
Thermodynamics]: One--You can't win; Two--You can't break
even; and Three--You can't get out of the game.
The
universe is passive-aggressively hostile.
Confusion is
the path to wisdom, when it ain't leading to more confusion.
There's
millions of ways to fight entropy, 'cause entropy's all around
us. Anyone who makes order out of disorder, even for a little
while, is fighting entropy. Health care workers at all levels.
Police and firefighters. Janitors, gardeners, garbage
collectors, street sweepers, maids. Teachers, librarians, even
bookstore owners like you; they're major fighters of entropy.
File clerks and bus drivers...the list just goes on and on.
Anyone who makes the world a better place for someone besides
himself. All these people are doing God's work.
Things are
only hopeless when you lose all hope.
Contents of this page © 2021 by Stephen
Goldin. All Rights Reserved. So there!