Finding God
Our curious obsession with imaginary entities
If a technologically advanced alien civilization were ever bored enough to add planet Earth to their list of tourist destinations, they would immediately notice one rather astonishing defining characteristic of the human race. No, not our eternally complacent ignorance, nor our general incapacity for coherent thought. Nor would our endless bickering and wars come as much of a surprise, because the fundamental laws of economics, which themselves derive from the basic laws of thermodynamics, apply everywhere throughout the cosmos. Everything is in permanent competition with everything else, and so it’s inevitable that violence is one consequence.
What would astonish our imaginary alien visitors is this: the overwhelming need our species has to invent gods.
Wherever the place and whatever the time, we humans have always invented gods and then fervently devoted ourselves to the febrile products of our limited imaginations. Whether we’re building ziggurats upon which to cut out the beating hearts of infants or promulgating a wide range of sexual neuroses supposedly favored by the stunted mashup god of Judeo-Christian-Islamic mythology, we humans never cease to yearn to abdicate all responsibility in favor of chanting whatever soundbites happen to be associated with whatever religion we desperately…
