April 8, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:Essay question of the day
Here's a question I thought of the other night. (Neither marijuana nor hallucinogens were involved, though you could be forgiven for thinking so . . . and come to think of it, the mushrooms in the empanadas did look a little funny). I throw it out in the hope that my favourite bloggers will answer, though I have little faith that they actually will. The question: say they were holding an election for God. Further, say the fringe benefits were so terrific that you wanted the position. Finally, assume that once elected, you can't be deposed. What's your campaign platform? Why should we elect you to this desireable position?
Posted by Jane Galt at April 8, 2007 7:38 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksAs an incredibly lazy atheist if elected I promise to do absolutely nothing.
Question: When you are elected God, are you bestowed magical omnipotence and omnipresence? Or is it more like being elected President for life?
As God I promise to make anyone's (who votes for me) dreams come true.
1) Maintain Causality
2) Retroactively eliminate the Platypus.
3) Six new colors.
4) Life-extending chocolate, beer and french fries.
If you aren't hurting anybody but yourself, it's none of My business.
If elected I will abolish five of the Ten Commandments:
1. [No more monotheism. Too restrictive!] 2. [Idolatry is fine. Knock yourselves out!] 3. [Free speech in the use of My Name.] 4. [Sabbath. Booooring! And none of my darn business what you do on Saturday.] 10. [Coveting is okay, as long as #8, non-stealing, is observed.]
Donuts really will have less calories on weekends.
Also, people can choose to live in a reality of their own desires, but they only get to make that choice once.
First off: Peace on Earth. I figure this is actually a lot easier than it looks. There are probably 10 or 20 thousand key people in the world responsible for most of the trouble. The solution is to eliminate them. No, not the way Mr. Bush is trying. That often just makes more of them. Nope, I'll just give them all cancer -- really fast cancer. Who are the magic 10,000? How should I know? You haven't elected me God yet.
Second: No more cancer. Ironic, eh? Actually, I'd get rid of a lot diseases. If we're not going to be shooting at each other so much, it would be nice to live long enough to enjoy it.
Third: I'd shave four degrees off the Earth's temperature. No, I'm not worried about global warming. This would just be to shut Al Gore up.
Fourth: Appropriate scientists get the golden phone. "Um.. yeah, God, this is Bob again. We've got this whole grand unified theorem working across eight of the dimensions, but we just can't get the quark equations to balance in the other three. Can you go over the baryon decay patterns again?"
Fifth: By the time the overpopulation starts heating up (no war, no disease, do the math), I'll let you guys in on that whole faster-than-light travel thing. Or I'll have to make it. Either way, you'll be on your way.
Sixth: I retire. Not that I'm really into this whole deal of getting worshipped, but if I'm going to do all that work of being God, I figure I need to enjoy a few of the perks.
If you choose me, of your own freewill, as your God, I will do the following:
1) I will never use my position (or powers) to force you to like me. I want to do good things for you because my vision is about love, and I really care about everyone. But I don't want to be seen as this all powerful king who has your loyalty because you either see, or fear, my power. I will allow you your freewill to create lives of substance, and let every man's will collide or harmonze with the will of others. This may cause a certain amount of friction, or evil, but the alternative is for me, once in power, to force everyone to do right. And can you really force people to be good, or force people to love? Well I could, but I won't. I will leave you be to the extent you want to be.
2) I will, in time, reveal to you more science than you know at present. Right now we are at a level akin to a five year old who has figured out that 2 plus 2 equals 4. He has no idea about geometry or calculus, or how to get there from here. To him they don't exist. I will make every effort to bring you closer, expanding your knowledge and understanding of the universe. I know so much, and have so few to share it with, and so few who really want to learn more.
3) Upon my inaugeration, I will throw a big party at the White House for everyone, whether rich or poor, clean or dirty. Of course I keep a clean house with lots of nice stuff that I want to share, but I don't want it all tracked up and dirty. So if you arrive from work, or don't have good clothes and are quite filthy, just go out back to my employee Jesus (yes, he is illegal and from Mexico, but I am going to make him a citizen soon) who will wash you off and provide you with clean clothes so that we can party together--lots of good stuff in here. I just wanna be around people.
4) Finally, some have been asking me to erradicate Satan, and some have said I created that monster to begin with. Indeed he had my full support once and we were friends. He has his methods and I have mine. Of late he has been saying that I am an empty suit, and that I don't listen or keep my promises. Just the other day he said I spoke in circles and was difficult to take seriously. But if you observed in our debates, whenever I tried to focus us down on one topic, he would divert the audience to another topic, pointing them here and there, bobbleheading their brains. My message is simple. I love you. (And, again, contrary to his claims, this is not just about me trying to get big breasted women back into the White House where I can see them up close).
It is perversely sensible to elect an atheist as god, especially an atheist who is ethical, logical, and libertarian.
As an atheist god, I will not want your worship or your sacrifices. No tithing will be expected.
As a libertarian god, I will let you behave as you wish, except that I will prevent people from willfully killing or injuring others.
What will I do for you? Just keep you safe. The rest is up to you.
As long as I'm omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, I'd give everyone else exactly the same powers I have.
I'd promise to keep the cosmological constant low and the universe flat, which incidentally would maintain my job security, but otherwise, to be honest, I'd just sleep and watch TV.
I would create a system so that, with very little effort (talking into a flame, perhaps), everyone could know exactly where they stand on the whole afterlife thing at any given time. In the event of a negative result, they would also be shown the behavior that they would need to change to get back into My good graces. Free will rules all else.
I'm sure I wouldn't win the election, though.
God, by definition, is not an electable position. You have to be perfect and blameless to hold the office, which eliminates both the candidates and their most effective campaign strategies.
Do I have to keep my promises?
Who would want the job? Do you stop evil before it happens?
UN Sec Gen: Hey, Rea-GOD Fan*, why'd you kill Mayor Weaknee?
Me: He was about to perform FGM on some little girl. That is evil.
UN Sec Gen: Who says?
Me: I did. Right after I got elected.
UN Sec Gen: Jane Galt says you're wrong.
Me: Her? She promised that she'd lay off of me if I cured her asthma.
UN Sec Gen: She's fickle. Anyway, are you saying that you know for sure that he would have performed FGM?
Me: Yes
UN Sec Gen: Then he had no choice. You killed a man who had no free will.
Me: I didn't say that I made him do it. I said that I knew that he was going to do it.
UN Sec Gen: But if you knew he was going to do it and you can't be wrong, then he had no choice.
Me: So, you're saying that I should allow him to do evil to prove that he is evil?
UN Sec Gen: Yes
Me: OK I'll let him do it.
UN Sec Gen: What kind of God are you? You allow evil to happen in the world. And we haven't even touched natural disasters yet.
Me: But the last God allowed all that!
UN Sec Gen: Yeah, we didn't like him, either. He was all fire and brimstone and righteousness and stuff.** And he liked Joos. Don't forget that.
Me: What do the Jews have to do with anything?
UN Sec Gen: No time to get into all that! What about the agno-theist-free-lib-marke-tarians?
Me: Who the he...er... is that even a word?
UN Sec Gen: They are people, bloggers mostly, who believe that the chance that there is a God decreases as they get older. They put bumper stickers on their hybrid cars that say things like: My Missing Link Beat Up Your Imaginary Friend
Me: Wait a minute! How does their getting older affect the chances that I exist or not? That makes no sense.
UN Sec Gen: Sense? You obviously haven't checked out HuffPo or Michelle Malkin yet have you?
Me: No, not really...
UN Sec Gen: And they aren't even the tough ones.
What about the scientists that don't believe in you?
Me: What about them?
UN Sec Gen: Well, how can you condemn them for doing wrong when they don't even believe in you?
Me: I could try to talk to them, maybe send someone that believes in me to talk to them, how about a book? Would a book work?
UN Sec Gen: That's been done to death! All the former gods have books.
Me: Ok.....fine. Here's an idea: I'm just going to off the entire world.
UN Sec Gen: Fire or Ice?
ME: What difference does it make?
UN Sec Gen: Well, if you use fire, you are going to make all the fundies AND Al Gore right and we'll have to spend eternity listening to them both saying, "I told you so." If you destroy the world by ice, the scientists will say that you violated the laws of nature and we'll have listen to endless hours of 'String Theory'.
Me: TRIBBLES. I will use tribbles to destroy the world. Happy?
UN Sec Gen: Fine with me. Of course, I think the lawyers are going to want to have a few words with you...
*I admit. If elected god, I can probably come up with a better name than 'Rea-GOD Fan'. Or, I may turn you into a Newt. Don't push me.
**Your god's behavior may vary. Check local listings for your current god's characteristics.
God have mercy! Who could want such a thing but an atheist? By virtue of the fact that you can be elected, the whole thing's shot to hell from the get-go.
"...say the fringe benefits were so terrific..."
I fail to see how they could NOT be. It's pretty much a corollary of the "omnipotence clause" in your employment contract...
1) Chocolate will grow on trees. Oh, wait...
2) Psychic powers for everybody except government employees. But only telekinetic powers. Telepathy would cause too many hurt feelings, and will be a privilege reserved for My chosen disciples.
3) David Bohm's theory will be right, by fiat. So the universe will finally make sense.
4) Cold fusion! Cheap, clean, renewable energy for everybody! No more environmental problems!
No more wars for oil!
5) Even without oil to fight over, people might still fight over water and agricultural land. OK, My priests will have the power to turn salt water into fresh water. And if they play favorites with this service they'll lose their power. So no more water disputes!
6) Middle East peace: I'm pretty sure that solving the problems of energy (oil) and water will take care of this. If it doesn't, my frequent apparitions and proclamations will hopefully do the trick. But, on the off chance that humans still want to kill each other, I'll create an inferior extraterrestrial civilization for humans to unite and fight against.
If elected, the invisible hand will become suddenly visible.
To get elected I'd have to promise a policy of strict interventionism. I'd have to promise to stop death and loss and sadness.
To protect human freedom and the value of life I'd have to reneg on that promise immediately and NEVER intervene under any circumstances. Being my chosen people - i.e., being a living, conscious being - would mean only that I cry in celestial silence when you suffer.
I might also promise a heaven with beer volcanoes and a stripper factory.
i'll reduce the occurence of bad things happening to good people by 15% over my first 5 years and create what i call a social security "lock box".
I'd play dice, just to spite Einstein.
"If you vote for me, all of your wildest dreams will come true."
Vote for Pedro.
1) I will eliminate or render genuinely harmless all otherwise-non-useful disease-causing organisms. Immunity to illnesses caused by the useful ones shall be conferred by chocolate. Everyone will cease physically aging and at age 25; those who have aged past 25 with be retrogressed. You'll still die of old age at age 125, but it'll be after a century of great health. No degenerative or congenital diseases, allergies, asthma, or the like.
2) Natural disasters will be miraculously prevented.
3) Anyone attempting to do anything in My Name I disapprove of will be taken aside and given a lecture to stop claiming my approval. If they persist in their attempts after being told otherwise by Me, they will be placed into an separate universe completely identical to this one, except they'll be the only sapient being in it. Thus, you will be assured that anything done in My Name actually is something I don't object to being done in My Name.
4) The Temple Mount? Yeah, I'm clearing everything off of it and setting up a spire of blocks of corundum set in platinum and whatnot in its place. A manifestation of Me will always be in the place, and heads of state will be entitled to send a petition for advice to Me every week, which I will always answer as I see best. I will, of course, decide for Myself who's the legitimate Head of State when there's a dispute as to who gets to ask the advice.
5) In general, I will not otherwise directly intervene in mortal affairs. You guys have free will, and I'm not going to crush that.
1) Chocolate, apples, oranges, walnuts, and pecans will all grow on trees. Take that, Thoreau!
2) What's this wussy business of transporting egomaniacs who claim to speak for Me to alternate universes? I will strike them dead with a divine lightning bolt - you'll know it's divine, because it will appear in mid-air without any connection to clouds, and even inside buildings.
3) If you ever run out of egomaniacs who incur the punishment of #2, I will think of some other way to give frequent proof that I do exist. Not like that Yahweh, who stopped doing miracles a thousand years ago...
4) From the day that anyone declares their intention to run for elective office, they will have to speak nothing but the entire truth - or lose their voice for the rest of the campaign.
5) Heaven and Hell? I don't believe in an afterlife. This is what you got, make the best of it. In my experience, evil people make a hell for themselves right on this world - My help rarely needed.
If elected God, I will provide healthcare to everyone, it will cost less than it does now, and it will be better than the healthcare that you now receive.
If I were elected, I would fulfill every liberals dream and have free health care, education, and welfare for everyone. As long as I can make it cost nothing, may as well. Ya know?
You want to know what God thinks? God's going to tell you what he thinks. No more of this speaking through prophets, mysterious crap. If somebody says something stupid in My name, I'll clear it right up. (And hopefully, omniscence will give me a good answer to that "Why do I let bad things happen to good people" issue, because I'm going to get that a lot.)
First off, I would like to say I have nothing at all against the incumbent.....
If elected I promise to continue the policies of the previous administration.
With one exception. Every Sunday from 4:00 to 5:00 P.M. it will rain chocolate pudding. Not the kind with the skin that your mother makes, but the good kind.
Also, I would make the writers of Battlestar Gallatica rewrite the last 6 episodes so that it
doesn't "jump the shark" as it has so obviously done this season.
Vote Me - 'cause some folks need smitin'.
I promise to fill your eternity with humor (and hugs).
Easy:
"Vote for me, and I'll make all your dreams come true"
I will accept suggestions for my first Smiting - at a special on-air Fox News appearance.
Seriously, Jane: who would want the job?
Omnipotence is useless, if you're going to be a benevolent God. Once you have omnipotence constrained by benevolence and justice and all that, you just have a pain in the ass. You're always having to fix things just right, you never get to have any fun.
And can you imagine the spam? Billions and billions of spam prayers per day! Just deleting them would take half your time.
And, of course, you have to live forever and ever, no matter how tired of it all you get. For you, since you know everything to begin with, nothing ever changes. You can't have any friends and, of course, there are no appropriate partners for sex. You can't get drunk and you can't blow it all off and go fishing.
Being an omnipotent, benevolent God is probably the worst conceivable job.
Clearly, MarkM, you have no imagination. Just blasting them out of existence? Borrrrrring. Anybody who's so solipsistic to claim to be speaking for God after a lecture from God deserves a more ironic punishment.
Jane - there's a rule about taking my name in vain...
These kinds of questions make it clear to me how people can be athesists when they think of God in this manner.
I will drop a few hints in the right places as to how to create cheap faster-than-light travel. (If that is not possible under current physical laws, I will change them.)
For practice, I will make Mars and Venus (at minimum) habitable in the 1930s SF mode (tip 'o the hat to Steve Stirling there).
And ditto on the cold fusion (or some other unlimited non-CO2-generating power source).
I promise -not- to have a blog.
As God, I promise that your neighbors will suffer more than you do.
cdub? Just consider the problem of natural evil.
When boiled down, there are only two possible outcomes if we start by assuming an all-powerful-god. Either pain and suffering from natural causes (disease, disasters, and the like) is good, or God is not good. One or the other.
Me, I have no evidence of the former. Oh, I know the theodicy, but the arguments are all painfully hypothetical. Jesus told us that "by their fruits you shall know them"; if God exists, the fruits of his creation make him look like a sadist to me.
I'm not qualified to judge him? Then whose judgment shall I substitute? That of the Being whose acts openly invite judgment? Hey, let's let those accused in criminal cases be their own juries; nobody else can look into their hearts, so only [b]they[/b] can judge themselves properly.
So, that's the basis for my campaign for the office. Unlike the incumbent, if any, I will eliminate natural evil. As a bonus, I'm going to not allow evil to be done in my name, and I'll actually give a few people of great importance unmistakable guidance, in hopes of mitigating some of the worst excesses without riding humanity too heavily.
It's a damn sight of a better deal than humanity's getting now.
Hmm, that begs the question that God can't microwave a burrito so hot that even He can't eat it. Further assumes that the natural world is good or evil, that interaction with the chaos of the natural world isn't a necessary component of free will, that omnipotence implies, umm, omni-usingence, a dualist nature of good and evil, etc. Heck, I'm an empirical apatheist, but even I can't understand how atheists can be so confident in the obvious conclusions that they reach in two steps based on 17 premises they can't/won't recognize.
Warmongering Lunatic has my vote (and I'm running!)
"Warmongering Lunatic has my vote"
While I find his policies inrtiguing, there's just something about his name that makes me uneasy about making him God.
Since smiting seems to be less of a distinguishing mark than I had hoped, I promise an immaculate conception in every household.
Top THAT!
AT, I don't have the time, space, or patience to write an entire book in these comments, covering all the arguments and counterarguments of centuries of theodicy. So, yes, I greatly oversimplified. But let's note it isn't an argument for atheism anyway; it's just aimed at the Christian (and to a lesser extent, Jewish and Muslim) God. It doesn't, for example, rule out Zeus by any means.
The argument for atheism is the simple one; least hypothesis leaves no room for God, the same as least hypothesis rules out there being fairies on Earth or cattle-mutilating interstellar voyagers. It's not a proof of the negative, but I'm comfortable believing in neither the existence of God nor the existence of the Sidhe.
If elected God, I promise no more pain or death, and plenty for all.
Vote for me!
"I could have created a better world with a bucket of sand and a wishing lamp."
--Wallace Stevens
How do you spell eternal and perpetual bliss if you vote for me?
D-A-L-A-S-I-O
How do you spell immediate and eternal damnation if I get elected against your vote?
D-A-L-A-S-I-O
Sorry, can't resist:
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains there's a land that's fair and bright
Where the handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every night
Where the boxcars are all empty and the sun shines every day
On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees
Where the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains all the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft boiled eggs
The farmer's trees are full of fruit and the barns are full of hay
Oh, I'm bound to go where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall and the wind don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains you never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol come a-trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats and the railroad bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew and of whiskey too
You can paddle all around 'em in a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains the jails are made of tin
And you can walk right out again as soon as you are in
There ain't no short handled shovels. No axes, saws, or picks
I'm a-goin' to stay where you sleep all day
Where they hung the jerk that invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
Since it worked, I would probably use the same platform that the guy who beat me for high school class president used against me: "I did a great job as president of the Ski Club, so you can count on me to do just as good a job as your God."
I was reminded of this by the first post, from the atheist who promised nothing. I ran a campaign kind of like that. "Being class president is meaningless, I won't make any promises, in fact I promise to abolish the office once elected."
But the Ski Club ploy buried me.
Jonathan's got 100% of the hobo vote - but what's 100% of nothing?
johnstodder: The best class president campaign I ever saw was run by a guy named Winowiski. First he plastered the whole school with 8-12x11 sheets of paper printed with his nickname ("WINO"), and nothing else. Then at the assembly for the candidates to speechify, he started off by joking about how the principal kept taking down his campaign "posters", and continued with other jokes until he ran out of time. No platform, no promises, nothing except showing that he was a likeable guy (and he was).
I think Wino got the biggest majority in the history of the High School. Why not? It's not like the class president actually did anything that mattered.
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