Although I was born and raised Catholic, having graduated from no less than four Catholic institutions of education, attended more classes on Theology and catechism than I care to admit, and celebrated four (and a half) of seven sacraments[1], today I am hesitant to call myself a Catholic.[2]
That said, the Judeo-Christian concept of an anthropomorphic, paternal God has always appealed to me on a gut level. How many of us can’t relate to a father who meddles in our lives only to go and neglect us in times of need. You can find a better father figure in a trailer park, passed out on shabby sofa, empty cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon at his feet.
And it’s only this kind of bumbling God that you can curse or blame for your quotidian woes. Buddhism, for example, doesn’t quite work when you miss your bus: “Damn, my desires!” ShintÅism with its “eight million” kami makes a curse awfully difficult to direct.
The Judeo-Christian idea of God also makes it easier for humans to see the man as a prankster with an odd sense of humor.
Take human sexuality. Who else but a practical joker would have created man with a sex drive that peaks in his late teens, precisely at a period in his life when most of us couldn’t laid if our lives depended upon it. At eighteen most of us are uncouth and uneducated, covered with zits and penniless, and yet are blessed with boners we could crack walnuts with. And it’s hardly better for the women: they peak sexually in their mid to late thirties, at the tail end of their reproductive years and when gravity has already done quite a bit of damage and their looks are fading.
Wouldn’t it have made a hell of a lot more sense for men to peak much later and women earlier? That way, men would have the financial and (hopefully) emotional stability to support children by the time they are ready to father children, and women would have much healthier eggs.
Really, what was God thinking?
[1] I was married by a Protestant the second time around.
[2] According to the Belief-O-Matic, 100% of my beliefs are Unitarian Universalism beliefs; 94% are Liberal Quaker; 85%, Taoism; and 77% are Mayhayana Buddhism. The religion that I am least aligned to is, Thank God, Jehovah’s Witness (10%) and—surprise, surprise—Roman Catholic (10%). I do like the new Pope, though.