Revelations

I’ve never been a religious man. However, for the last few months, me and my buddy Chris Wiggins have been going to this sit down group to help Chris deal with his drinking problem. It’s not Alcoholics Anonymous or anything like that; it’s just a few of us going down to O’Brien’s Tavern, enjoying some of the old sour mash, and making sure that Chris doesn’t have any problems getting home.

By now, I’m sure you’re asking what any of this has to do with religion. If you aren’t then you haven’t been paying attention. You see, Chris has some issues with people (and coming from yours truly that means quite a bit). Chris is always on some tear about how stupid people are and how he wanted to kill all the stupid people in Fresno. His basic plan was just to kill everyone in Fresno and write off the small number of smart people deaths as acceptable losses. I keep telling him that if there were no stupid people then he and I wouldn’t have jobs, and that’s kept him pretty content… until last week.

So, last Wednesday, Chris and I are knocking back a few of Kentucky’s finest when Chris gets this look on his face – a look like he was possessed or something – like out of one of those Linda Blair movies. All of a sudden, he looks at me all serious and said that he knew why there were stupid people in the world. Of course, I couldn’t resist so I said to Chris “Oh yeah? You’ve been bitching about stupid people since we met, so why now? How is this minute any different than the last one? How come you didn’t have this big answer before we walked in the door of the bar?” Now, Chris is still staring at me then says ‘Because God just told me.’ I figure this has to be one of those alcoholic “moments of clarity”, I just wasn’t sure if it was his or mine. So, I figure I’ll be a sport and play along. So I say “Go on Chris, what did God tell you?”

‘He says it’s his plan. Stupid people are all part of God’s great plan, Ted.’

I was somewhat awe-struck by this and asked him to elaborate. He explained that God had allocated a finite number of IQ points to the universe and that as the population of the planet increased the average intelligence of the average person would decrease. That, he added, is why most of Earth’s most brilliant minds are not contemporary. He continued, saying that it is only when people die that their allotted IQ points return to the universal collective, where they would be redistributed. God’s plan, according to Chris, had intended that it was only through negative population growth or global catastrophe that the average intelligence of the masses would ever increase.

By this point in the conversation, I was seriously contemplating a career change to something on the scale of Genocidal Dictator of the new Police State of California, but that was going to take a bit more effort than I could muster and Chris wasn’t finished explaining God’s plan.

However, I had to interrupt him. Not that I wanted to add anything to the conversation but my glass was empty. I wasted no time in flagging down the waitress to order another bourbon. As the heart-shaped ass of our waitress shimmied back to the bar I asked Chris, “So, if this is God’s plan why wouldn’t Adam and Eve, being the first people to ever exist, be über geniuses?”

Without missing a beat, Chris had an answer already prepared. Chris explained that initially God had not needed intelligence as he believed that his guidance and the free will of human beings would be enough. Unfortunately, God had underestimated the power of free will and the complete and total ignorance inherent in the human species and had only decided to institute intelligence as a last resort.

Ultimately it breaks down like this: God got fed up with having to repeat itself to humanity every time it needed to remind humans on how to behave, what to do, what not to do, who to fuck or who or what not to fuck and that sort of thing. After much contemplation God was sick and tired of repeating itself to humanity and decided to start writing everything down. Of course, after creating the world and all that God had become rather lazy so it was resolved that humanity would have to transcribe God’s laws themselves. This was the impetus behind the granting of intelligence to human beings. Somewhat anecdotally Chris added that Moses spent mot of his time on Mount Sinai trying to forge the signature of the Almighty.

This, the granting of intelligence, Chris said was a huge mistake and quite honestly, the beginning of the end for God. Intelligence became problematic when the really smart people exercised their free will and began worshiping all sorts of different things, calling it God and using their newly discovered intelligence to convince the masses that this was the true meaning God had set forth for them. Once this ideology was firmly in place people wrote God off entirely. Still, some people just couldn’t get with the program and wanted things to be the way they were; so they started writing their own books about what they thought God was all about.

By this time God was pretty well pissed-off and decided that it was time to get hardcore. This is when God runs the big Jesus scam on everyone and starts interfering with the natural order of things. Then people start running around talking about these books that a bunch of whacked out drug addict morons were writing. There was preaching and prognosticating and many crowds gathered to hear about these books and scriptures. They gathered like junkies at a methadone clinic; absorbing as much of that bullshit as they could. Now people are scared shitless of the Old Gods and live in fear of some mystical second coming of this Jesus asshole; which we’re still suffering from today.

There have been many cultures that have tried to pull us away from all this craziness but the population was expanding so rapidly at the time there just wasn’t enough intelligence left to go around, so here we are.

After finishing his tirade Chris took a couple of really deep breaths and began to blink rapidly for a few seconds before falling out of his chair. I casually left enough cash on the table to cover my portion of the bill and slipped out the door. I don’t know if God really spoke to Chris; but even if he had, the only convincing argument that Chris (or God) made to me was that Chris probably should be going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, assuming, of course, he survived that seizure.