Kidding!
[In the afterlife.]
Atheist: Wow. I can’t believe I’m dead.
God: Believe it.
Atheist: Whoa! Didn’t see you there! Who are you?
God: Hi. I’m God.
Atheist: Ha, ha. No, but seriously. Who are you?
God: I’m seriously God. It’s nice to finally meet you.
Atheist: You’re God. You’re telling me that you’re God.
God: This is what I’m saying.
Atheist: I don’t believe you.
[God instantly transforms into a colossal version of himself as Studly Old White Man, with the white robes and beard and all. In a dramatic gesture he thrusts his staff aloft. The skies rent and crack with lightning. As quickly as he changed it, God then resumes his former appearance.]
Atheist: Um. Okay. You’re definitely God.
God: Really? Are you sure? Because you don’t want to jump into anything. Perhaps what you just saw was an illusion of some kind. Maybe you’re asleep, and this is all a dream. Maybe there’s a scientific explanation for what just happened.
Atheist: [pause] You know, you’re right. Perception is a tricky thing. There could always be—
[Instantly Atheist has a second head---which, like his first now, wavers at the end of a long, rubbery neck. The two heads swing into view of one another. They both start screaming. After a moment God switches Atheist back to his former appearance.]
Atheist: [dropping to his knees] I believe I believe I believe I believe.
God: So that’s what it finally took? Two heads?
Atheist: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so terribly sorry.
God: Well, you should be. Please—stand up.
Atheist: [slowly rising]: I can’t believe I’ve been wrong all this time.
God: Well, that’s not important now. Right now the only thing that’s important is whether or not when you died you happened to be wearing flame-retardant underwear.
Atheist: [panicked] What?!
God: Relax. I’m kidding. They’re not going to help you.
Atheist: What?!
God: Kidding! I’m kidding, okay? I do have a sense of humor, you know.
Atheist: [calming down] No, actually, I didn’t know that. I’ve heard you don’t.
God: You hear all kinds of crazy things about me. But trust me: I have a sense of humor. You have seen pictures of dinosaurs, right? How are they not funny? Those little heads!
Atheist: Yeah, I guess dinosaurs are pretty crazy looking. Hey, whatever happened to those guys?
God: Long story.
Atheist: I’ll bet.
God: Listen, about you.
Atheist: Must we?
God: We must. You know that for the entire time you were on earth, I was almost desperately trying to communicate with you. You do know that, right?
Atheist: I guess I do now.
God: No, you do know now. I’m telling you. I never stop trying to communicate to people who have chosen not to believe in me that I am, in fact, real. That I’m here.
Atheist: I’m so sorry I didn’t listen to you.
God: So am I. And I’m sorry for no other reason besides that you knowing that I was here would have made your life so much better for you. You would have been so much happier.
Atheist: I would have been.
God: Boy, do I love me some atheists.
Atheist: You do? I mean, I’m super-glad to hear it. But why do you love atheists?
God: Well, for one, I made them, didn’t I?
Atheist: Yes. Yes, you did.
God: And I made them with free will, didn’t I?
Atheist: Yes.
God: Well, once you give someone true free will, they’re free to think, believe and do whatever they want. That’s part of the package. Besides, what kind of God would I be if I designed people so that they couldn’t do anything but love and praise me? How excruciatingly boring for me would that get?
Atheist: Pretty boring?
God: Gee, ya’ think? Who needs a bunch of applauding zombies? What I want are partners. Friends. People who love me because they choose to, not because they have to. I want real relationships. In that regard, I’m just like you or anyone else.
Atheist: I wish I would have … known that about you.
God: Well. You were stubborn.
Atheist: I was.
God: And you were also an especially capable person, weren’t you? Smart. Resourceful. Good-looking. Great personality. You had it all, baby.
Atheist: I guess I did.
God: No, you know you did. You certainly knew it then. And people like the person you were—strong, smart, capable people—are always more resistant to my overtures than are people with a little more reason to look beyond themselves.
Atheist: [pause] Yikes.
God: Yeah. Funny, isn’t it? On earth, the very things that make a person a winner are most likely to keep them a loser.
Atheist: I always thought I could handle everything myself.
God: I know you did. And how’d that work out for you?
Atheist: Terribly.
God: But you kept up a good front, didn’t you? Nary a crack in the ol’ facade, right?
Atheist: Right. That’s right. I kept up a front.
God: And all along I tried to let you know that you didn’t have to do that. I tried to let you know that I was here, that I was loving and watching out for you. The whole system you were in is designed to unceasingly prove the reality of my loving presence. The earth. The sky. Wind. The seas. All of it.
Atheist: How I wish I had listened to you!
God: How I wish everyone would!
I also wrote Bob, Satan and God in Heaven.
**********************************************************************************************************
Email: johnshore@sbcglobal.net
Follow: http://twitter.com/johnshore
Befriend: http://www.facebook.com/john.shore1
Be Fan: http://www.facebook.com/pages/John-Shore/89494795412?ref=s
![John Shore on The Huffington Post](http://johnshore.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/huffpost.jpg?w=120 "John Shore on The Huffington Post\")
{ 38 comments }
« 1 2
Done here. Thanks, guys. Comments closed.
Leo,
"Man-up" would be sexist, not homophobic. I recognized that as I was writing it, but a similarly effective, gender-neutral phrase doesn't exist. It was our host that first introduced "bulls**t" [without asterisks] to these pages. And you seem continue to make my point by saying that evolution is bulls**t with " 'bulls**t' Ha! part of evolution, I guess. " (I think I got the quotes right)
For $12 I'll send you an autographed and inscribed copy of "Comma Sense: A FUNdamental Guide to Punctuation." Fun for the whole family!
No, but one reason you never read in the blog comments anything like "Katrina is God's punishment for homosexuality," or whatever, is because I delete that kind of nonsense the moment I see it.
Thanks. Duly noted. It is good to learn stuff.
Then all you need is commas separating the phrases: "Some people think that ballet is boring, flies are fun, and dogs should learn to play Scrabble." Simple. What you don't want to do is use quote marks if you're not actually quoting someone. If you write this: Some people think "ballet is boring."—then it's assumed you're quoting someone who actually said or wrote, "Ballet is boring." And you use single quote marks for a quote within a quote: Bill said, "And that's when she said to him, 'Dogs playing Scrabble? Are you insane?' God, I love that woman."
I would be happy to find a better vehicle to accomplish my goal if single quotes are not the way to do it. Who better to show me than you. I want to, in a single sentence, demonstrate three phrases. Those phrases would be single objects within the sentence and cannot be misconstrued as a single stream of words.
Mike: I don't know where you learned the usage rules for quotation marks, but yowzer, what you've said about them is wrong. "I used single quotes simple to delineate multiple phrases in a single sentence" is just …. wow. Brain Fail.
And, again: do you really think it helps your ongoing endeavor to appear imminently rational to argue a point someone made over three weeks ago in an entirely different post—and then make it clear they didn't actually say the thing you're complaining about?
I'm so torn between allowing you to continue to bury yourself, and shutting down this comment thread because it's so uncomfortable to watch.
« 1 2