As Always, Mark Twain

 

In the previous essay, I tried my hand at humorous creativity to shoot down the idea that a benevolent God is in control of the world. But who was I to think I could do a better job than Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known as Mark Twain?

I looked through a collection of Twain’s unpublished writings. He left as many unpublished scribbled sheets as he did published books, if not more. This demonstrates that the success rate of a genius (assuming that is what he was) is probably below fifty percent. In many cases, I can see that these works were unpublishable. They just did not have the compelling wit of his more famous works. Especially in his declining years, he simply did not work as hard as he could have. Genius is not enough; discipline is necessary.

A recurring theme in his unpublished writings is that, if there is a God, He must be cruel. In his essay Thoughts of God, Twain tried to analyze the twisted thought processes of a God who could create the fly. God’s commission to the fly: “Persecute the sick child; settle upon its eyes, its face, its hands, and gnaw and pester and sting…Settle upon the soldier’s festering wounds in field and hospital and drive him frantic while he also prays…” And the plague victim: “sting, feed upon his ulcers, dabble your feet in his rotten blood, gums them thick with plague germs…” At least with humans there is the hope, or delusion, of life after death, but animals suffer from flies, “…all the kindly animals that labor without fair reward here and perish without hope of it hereafter…”

Twain then attacks the idea that, when humans help one another, they are doing God’s work. Twain could not have known John F. Kennedy would say, “Here on Earth, God’s work must tryly be our own.” Twain just considers human good deeds to be God taking credit for someone else’s good work. The only italicized passage says, “There was never yet a case of suffering or sorrow which God could not relieve.” If it is a sin to withhold help when we can give it, God must be a cosmic sinner.

In another essay, In My Bitterness (written when Twain was still bitter about the death in 1896 of his daughter Olivia (Susy) of meningitis), he wrote, “He gives you a healthy body and you are tricked into thanking Him for it; some day, when He has rotted it with disease and made it a hell of pains, you will know why He did it…He may tear the palpitating heart out of your breast and slap you in the face with it.”

In a story at the end of The Refuge of the Derelicts, Twain writes about the cruelty of the spider sucking the life out of her victims, and even her husband, and then along comes a wasp and lays an egg on the spider. The wasp grub “gnawed a hole in the spider’s abdomen, and began to suck her juices while she moaned and wept…” The wasp grub eats the spider from the inside, leaving it alive until the last miserable moment. The wasp was “radiant with that spiritual joy which is the result of duty done.”

Theodicy is the intellectual discipline of making excuses for God. You would think that it would by now have gone extinct. But humans want to believe, despite all evidence, that God is good. That is certainly what I want to believe, but, as Twain would have said, wanting don’t make it so.

Philosophical Debate of Two Fetuses

I recently became aware, years later than everyone else, about a story that religious people use to “prove” that there can be life after death. It is about two twin fetuses in a womb. One of them is an agnostic, the other a believer, in Life After Birth. The same reasoning used by the two fetuses could be used by us in our discussions of Life After Death. It is a really clever story.

The skeptical fetus says, “What evidence is there for life after birth? We have not seen the outside world, even if there is one, nor has anyone come back into the womb to tell us about it.” The other fetus maintains his/her faith in Life After Birth. The believer insisted that there was such a thing as a “mother.

The conclusion of this story is that just because we cannot see into the afterlife, and just because nobody has come back from it doesn’t prove that there is no such thing as Life After Death. I have no problem admitting that there might be. If the unitary universe theory is true, then it is more than a possibility, but a certainty, even though by this theory we are trapped in our infinitesimal slice of time.

As far as this argument goes, there is nothing wrong with it. But most religious people do not want the rest of us to merely assent to the possibility of life after death. They make claims about the specific content of life after death, and that you ought to believe this content. Things about Heaven and Hell, saints flying amidst clouds, the gates of Heaven, etc. These specific beliefs are unprovable at best and in many cases ridiculous, as Mark Twain showed in Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.

But fundamentalists take it much further. To illustrate the point, let us continue the story of the two fetuses.

Both fetuses are born, and discover that there is, in fact, Life After Birth. And the Mother somehow knows which fetus was the believer, and which was the skeptic. She holds up the believer, swaddles it in rich clothing, kisses it, and declares that it is the heir of all of her considerable fortune.

Then she turns to the other fetus. “So, little one, you doubted my existence? Here’s what I’m going to do to you. I am going to skewer you and roast you forever over a fire. Your body juices will drip down into the flame, but you will never run out of body juices, because I will continually renew them. You cannot faint, for I will keep you awake. Forever. As punishment for not believing in Life After Birth.

“And if you had believed in Life After Birth, but believed something incorrect about it, it wouldn’t have done you any good. I would still roast you forever in conscious agony.”

“But, how could I have known?” asked the agnostic fetus.

“Your sibling told you,” answered the Mother.

“But how should my sibling have any more credibility than I?”

“Invalid question. Now, let’s get started. Angels, bring me a skewer!”

“But why are you doing this?”

“Because I FREAKING LOVE YOU, that’s why. Now, this is going to hurt as much as possible…”

I could go on, but you get the point. Fundamentalists sometimes use arguments that seem clever, until you start asking questions about them.