I was reading a survey that was released recently by a polling group called Harris Interactive. The study was about God, or more specifically, how we think of him.
A little more than 2,000 people participated in the online survey in which they were asked such questions as, do they believe God is authoritarian or benevolent? Is he actively involved in the affairs of humans or totally removed? And what does he look like? Does God have a human form?
One of the more surprising finds (for me) is that, “42 percent of U.S. adults say they are not ‘absolutely certain’ there is a God.” I thought that number would be much lower, especially since only about 8 percent of the population defines itself as agnostic.
When people participate in these surveys, I wonder, do they think the questions through? Some of them clearly do not. How else is it possible that 42 percent of the population claims they are not certain God exists, yet only 8 percent say they are agnostic? That means that 34 percent aren’t sure if God exists and are not agnostic at the same time? Huh? Don't they know it’s the same thing?
The term “agnostic” comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge. When you put the a- prefix in front of a word, it means “without” or “not.” Just as asexual means not sexual, so does agnostic mean not knowing which, apparently, defines nearly half of America.
Wow. All my adult life I thought I was in that tiny 8-percent minority of agnostics. Turns out it’s no minority at all. Turns out they just didn’t understand the question. They didn’t think it through.
Another part of the study I found peculiar was when participants were asked about the gender of God. According to the survey, 36 percent of U.S. adults believe the Almighty is a male. That’s an astonishing number. I’m not saying these people are stupid, but they haven’t thought this one through, either. If they had, they would have come to the conclusion that God could not be male. Because if he was the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-creating, transcendent, omniscient being they say he is, then wouldn’t he have control over his own form? And I ask you, what lunatic deity would choose male as the ultimate in physical manifestations, what with their hairy asses, prostate exams and the inability to fold towels?
Then there is the penis problem. Think it through now. If you believe the Almighty is male, then you also believe that he has a penis, right? So my question to you Male God Believer types is, what does he need a penis for? Is God flogging the bishop? Because he sure as Christ ain’t getting laid. Who has a vagina vast enough to accommodate the immense phallus of The Lord thy Father? Possibly Arizona does, what with her Grand Canyon-size vachasm, but that thing is all dried out and jagged inside, like Dr. Laura’s.
Think it through Male God Believers: God doesn't need a penis and therefore would not have given himself one. He certainly wouldn't have a vagina either. According to the same study, roughly 20 million Americans think God is female. Talk about not thinking it through! There is no way an all-knowing, all-seeing, blah blah blah God would elect to have a vagina. I truly don’t think I could live in a world overseen by a deity who isn’t smart enough to avoid having one of those vertical horror shows, with the bleeding and the birthing and the relentless maintenance schedule.
Then there is the kookiest group of all. According to the survey, roughly 10 percent of American adults believe God is both male and female, which means that 10 percent of the population is also retarded. (Retarded people, I am told, have difficulty thinking things through).
The final group is the 39 percent who said God has no sex at all. These are my people, the Think-It-Throughers. They realize it’s more plausible that an omniscient being would create itself as some sort of ethereal life form that is not handicapped by flesh and sex organs. They realized that any attempt to assign a gender to God is an example of how utterly incapable we are of understanding him/her/it.
In conclusion, the Harris poll has this to say about Americans and their understanding of the Overlord: “There is no consensus on God's gender, form or degree of control over events on earth.”
No consensus on God? You know what that tells me? It tells me that we each fabricate a version of him to suit our wants and needs.
For instance, in a similar study by Baylor University, it was revealed that people who have liberal positions on such moral issues as abortion, gay marriage, pre-marital sex and pornography tend to believe in a less-engaged, less-critical Creator. But those who think more conservatively about such issues are likely to believe in an engaged and critical God—you know, the kind of sumbitch deity who sends hurricanes to wipe out sodomites and jazz players.
Even me, a guy who pretty much thinks that God is entirely removed from the goings-on on Earth and doesn’t give a good goddamn about what we do here—thereby allowing me to drink, do drugs, watch porn and root for gay marriage without any fear of retribution in the afterlife—even I got the God I wanted.
And how much would you like to bet that nearly all of those 20 million people who believe that God is female are also hardcore feminists? No disrespect intended to the butchy faithful among us, but I wonder if they ever pondered the coincidence between their idolatry of the body feminine and the fact that their God is female.
No consensus means everyone gets the God they want, and I bet even these Female God Believers disagree with each other as to whether God is a lipstick fem or the lumberdyke type.
No consensus: A fact that pretty much discredits all of our individual ideas about God, every religion on Earth and every sacred tome ever written—basically, any person, club or organization who ever claimed to understand the divine, all of them are full of shit. I'm just saying.
EJD
06/22/07
The hermaphrodite Shiva