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In Search of Appropriate Gods

First it was "legitimate rape" versus . . . what?  Now it is Richard Mourdock, a Republican candidate for the Senate, from Indiana.

 "I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen," Richard Mourdock said in his Tuesday night debate against a Libertarian candidate.  

 Let us establish a general rule:  when anyone starts to talk about god while running for the Senate, something stupid is going to be said.  

 It isn't about running for the Senate.  It is running with god on your side.  By logical definition, if you say you have god on your side, you are asserting something like absolute truth.  And absolute truth?  Good luck!  It is in short supply.  

 The idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful, absolute god is a hopeless idea.  You will end up blathering about the difference between legitimate and illegitimate rapes.  You will hear yourself consoling rape victims by saying that it was god's will.  Well, if god is all that smart, and all that capable, why does he or she allow brutal evil to happen?  What kind if a god would allow children to be raped, girls and women to be impregnated by savage men?  So people say, "God had a plan".  

 Baloney!  Nobody needs a god like that.  It would be better to have a whole stable of ineffective little gods, each with a specialty, such as skin rash, or spring rain, or lizards.  You could safely ignore any or all of them:  a good idea!  But an all-knowing, all-powerful god has a lot to answer for.  

 No wonder politicians so easily assert that they have a secret plan to balance the budget, or end all wars, or provide health care at the local drug store level.  It is like saying that god has a fantastic plan to make lions eat grass and sleep alongside lambs.   It is like asserting that god is on the side of the U.S.A., and that we are a chosen people, a shining city on a hill, and that Mexico and Canada and Uruguay are populated with just ordinary human beings.  "God bless America, and god bless us Christians, each and every one, but us more than most of the others!"

 That man--Richard Mourdock--wants to be a United States Senator, and he says that if a woman is raped, and becomes pregnant, "that is something god intended to happen"!  And I will bet that a star, somewhere up there in the cosmos, blinks on precisely at that moment!  And I will also wager that Richard Mourdock also opposes universal health care for those women.  Is pregnancy a pre-existing condition?  If god had intended universal health care, we would have been born with medicard tattoos and bar codes.  

 Somebody please help!  Which of the gods is in charge of sanity, and medicinal Scotch?  


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