God…seriously

Here’s one of those little facts that often go unnoticed in the larger debate over the validity of the Bible (it has none) and the reality of theism (reality is not an element of theism)…

God and Jesus are both real sourpusses, according to their own, no doubt dour, biographers.

Nowhere in the Bible will you find a passage that states, “God laughed”.  This is the closest thing to it:

Psalm 2

Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?

The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the LORD
and against his Anointed One.

“Let us break their chains,” they say,
“and throw off their fetters.”

The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.
Then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath

It sounds to me like that would be more a “muahahaha” laugh than the kind of laugh I’m talking about.  Scoffing is a haughty and egotistic reaction.

I’m talking about a laugh that indicates pleasure, amusement, wonder.  The kind of laugh that indicates a sense of humor.  The kind of laugh a child would utter.

While the god of the Bible exhibits a warped sense of “humor” (”Hey kid, go down there and die for their sins.  Joke is they’ll still have their sins and you get to come back in 3 days, so I ain’t askin’ for all that much), at least he has a semblance of one.  Jesus, on the other hand, never seemed to exhibit the slightest bit of folly.  Serious dude, all the time about everything.  We all probably know someone like that.  Don’t we all consider them a pain in the ass to be around for very long?

I mean, can anyone imagine Jesus at the last supper or Muhammad sitting on his ass donkey telling those gathered around them a joke?  “Hey, one time a Jew, a Roman and an Indian merchant walk into a bar and the bartender says, “Is this a joke?”  Magic tricks?  Sure, that’s consistent with their love of mystery, but cracking a joke?  Way too out of character for most gods.

Christians, Muslims and the rest especially don’t appreciate humor at their expense.  A healthy ego can handle mockery, but not god’s kids.  Theists have displayed a particularly nasty attitude toward those who mock them.  No religion embraces its critics.  Faith is too weak against reason and logic.  Those who practice reasoning will find no commonality with those who treat reason with contempt.

Is there anything I can say about the followers of Muhammad and their extreme lack of anything even remotely resembling a sense of humor that won’t cause them to call down the wrath of their loving god on my head?  They want to kill cartoonists.  In the West, comics are known to commit suicide all too often, but they don’t do it by strapping a bomb around themselves and taking 50 people with them.  That ain’t funny.  But what Islam believes?  That’s funny.  Nearly Scientology funny.

Humor is one of the most mysterious emotions we have.  We’re only now beginning to understand we aren’t the only species that experiences humor.  For all we know earthworms tell each other knee-slapping jokes all the time, except they can’t slap their knees due to no hands and no knees, but they would if they could.

If anything in our natural world approaches the level of a “religious” experience that all people besides those afflicted theists can experience it’s humor.  You’d think religion would try to appropriate it for its own, like it tries to lay claim to so many perfectly natural traits of humans.  Instead, a sense of humor is just one more sacrifice theists are expected to make in service to their imaginary lord and master.

The American Indians and the Romans, just to toss out a couple of examples, believed in gods that were mischievous, jokesters, tricksters.  Gods with a healthy sense of humor.  I could almost believe in a god that loved to fuck with our minds and took open and honest delight in our discomfort and frustration.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 20th, 2008 and is filed under self-abuse. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.