Well I can’t very well ask God to bring me back to life, can I?

Wish I could, though. Faith has a lot of uses, and that’s one of them. A belief in God would give me “permission” to generate the emotions I need myself.

But it’s far too late for that. I can’t believe in something I know not to exist.

Or can I? I have been wondering for a long long time whether belief in a literal, actual, existing God is strictly necessary.

I am not saying faith can operate without belief…. that’s a logical non-starter.

No, what I am talking about is a God that only exists in the hearts and minds of human beings. A God that is as real as love or mercy or justice – no more,. no less. A version of God and Jesus that neither requires nor accepts any proof of existence outside the realm of the interior world of humans.

A God that provides comfort and solace and understanding and all those other vitally important emotional inputs without being expected to, say, cure Timmy’s cancer.

Which reminds me : what kind of a just and loving God won’t do good unless you literally beg Him to via prayer? It makes God seem like a petty asshole who is only in it to get off on the power He has over you.

Of course, that is applying logic to something logic neither created nor supports. God accepts prayers because we fundamentally need to believe that there is someone we can appeal to when we feel scared and helpless. A powerful Alpha figure who has the strength to fix our problems and give us the feeling that we are safe.

So sure, if God were a real person and not just something we dreamed up to fulfill our emotional needs, then yeah, He would be a petty tyrant sitting there while some desperate mother grovels at His feet, hoping she can submit to him and debase herself to him hard enough that He will save her child.

But this is about creating something to fulfill our basic needs as social creatures, and everything about must be seen in that light.

From that point of view, it seems like a God that exists only in the hearts and minds of followers seems possible. After all, that’s the primary function of faith.

The reason I wish to reduce said faith to a minimal non-interventionary form is that everything else gets God in trouble.

Religious cosmology got destroyed by geology and astrophysics because it made specific concrete predictions that could be disproven.

Compare that to “if you let Jesus into your heart, He will always be there for you. ” That essentially means God is real as long as you believe in Him, and makes no disprovable claims, and therefore can survive and endure and help people.

The question of whether said God is “real” in an external, provable sense becomes immaterial. You might as well be asking if Homer Simpson is “real”.

True, Homer doesn’t exist as a real human being outside of the cartoons, but he is real enough to be known the world over and move a lot of merch.

And like I have said before, there are many fictional characters from whom people have drawn inspiration and comfort. Probably not quite as many as have drawn comfort and inspiration from Jesus, but still.

You can know something is fictional, and still have it be very real to you.

So why not a semi-fictional God? One that is as real as love and pain and Homer Simpson. One that is not in any sense a “real person” but nevertheless fulfill the truly important functions of monotheistic religion without there being any chance of it being “disproven”, or in any other way coming into conflict with reality?

I think it could work.

Maybe I will write a book about it some day.

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Back after a break. Wow, look at all those deep things I wrote.

It’s almost like I am smart or something.

One thing that weighs heavily on my mind from time to time is the question of whether I owe it to the world to use my extraordinary talents to make things better.

It’s an idea I instinctually resist because that would place a titanic burden of responsibility on me.

After all,. like Smilin’ Stan Lee used to say (we miss you Stan the Man), with great power comes great responsibility.

And I have great power. At least, in potentia. So it would follow that I have a great responsibility to figure out a way to use my powers for good, instead of just letting them rot on the shelf like expired beans.

The problem is that I am broken. The power is there but the transmission is shot and so the power never gets transmitted to wheels and I never get anywhere.

I just listlessly spin my tires by hand in a frictionless void and make the occasional vroom vroom noises as I pretend I am getting somewhere.

But I am not. I am down here in the same deep dark hole as always. The same deep dark hole that has swallowed me whole for my entire adult life. The blackest of holes, from which neither heat nor light nor love can escape.

Only information can escape. And so I type my lonely messages to the world, hoping someone will respond and prove to me that I am alive.

After all, I only exist when someone is paying attention to me. At least that is how it seems in this numbed out paralysis ward of a life of mine. I can’t feel my own existance so the only way to know I exist is to experience it through others.

Same with love, really. I pump it out so hard because I get so little of it back.

If only people could see below the charm and humor and wit. Then they would see the fires of Hell at work and the chorus of moaning demons demanding blood heat and the nasty little predators waiting to strike anyone unlucky enough to come near me and drain them of all that they are just so I can feel real for a second or two.

I wish I could be some other, healthier kind of person. But I am not.

I’m a parasite, and always will be,

I am just going to have to klearn to live with that,.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.