The Devil and the Details

Jehovah's Witness Lady: Here's a Watchtower. Have you ever wondered where the Devil came from?
Me: Nope. Byeeee.

I'm keeping things short with her from now on because:
a.) I'm at work and should probably not be openly hostile to the customers
b.) It would take too long to have this conversation, I mean, I gots shits to do and
c.) Conversing would make no noticeable difference, in the end.

As I have previously mentioned, I'm not fond of this lady. Also, I don't like religion. I especially don't like it when other people try to push their religion on me. Hate is a strong word...but is it the wrong word? I mean, seriously, I feel bad that trees were murdered only to have their remains used for such an idiotic publication as The Watchtower. Which, incidentally, talks to it's followers like even it knows they are morons.

Had I given her a response, it would be more philosophical than religious. Because, no, I've never had time to wonder where the Devil came from, I was raised in a church. I was taught, like most Christians probably are, that the Devil (or Satan) was an angel named Lucifer who thought God was stupid for loving humans more than angels. So he rebelled, was cast from Heaven, and became the ruler of Hell, and basically the root of all evil. Origin story, BAM!

Currently, I have no religious inclination nor any use for religion. The Devil, to me, is merely an interesting and somewhat bewildering notion. Like, I can see how people, faced with an endless supply of things that want to eat them might come to feel that "sun is good, dark-time is bad". I can see how maybe they'd come to blame bad weather and a lack of food on an "evil" entity working against them. I can see how the evolution of religion could make sense in that way. And that's kind of interesting. But I fail to see how any Christian with any individual thought can still imagine the Devil as a literal being instead of an abstract concept. Or whatever.

or whatever.

If anything, God is the Devil. In a, ya know, dualistic sense. God totally suffers from a dissociative identity disorder. Except that he has to know that he's also the devil because he contradicts his own benevolent will something like 80million times. So he's probably more like a toddler blaming the spilled cheerios on the dog. I mean, he's omnipotent. If he was going to get all huffy about Lucifer trolling and etc, why wouldn't he just say "Well, fuck that shit" and just not make Lucifer? Or evil? Or humans? Or anything? Unless floods are just the way he bitches.

Don't bother with the Bible, just watch Tara. There's 3 seasons and  less murder.

Anyway, to summarize, the Devil to me is just some bullshit people made up to blame shit on. Instead of facing the fact that maybe shit just happens and it's not necessarily about anyone or anything. I think because the thought of there being nothing giving two shits about them is a scarier concept than the Devil. How fucked up.

#Monkeysphere Moments (sorry this is a long one)

While reading This Book Is Full of Spiders today, I ran into a passage that turned out to actually be true, despite the horrifying implications. A character (Dr. Marconi) was talking about Dunbar's Number, a study on the neocortex of primates that

 "suggests that there is a species-specific index of the social group size, computable from the species' mean neocortical volume." -Wikipedia

-which really just means that the larger the neocortex, the larger the amount of people you can reliably care about and remember. The average amount for humans is around 150 people. Anything larger than this and our brains start to hurt. "That is our maximum capacity for sympathy...Those who lie outside the circle are not human." This is what makes us heartbroken when our pets die, but give very little of a shit when 1,833 people die in a hurricane. I mean, we say we do, we buy the damn bracelets to show our support. But admit it, you still care way more about your dead dog.

David Wong actually explains all of this much much better and funnier than I could ever hope to in his article What Is The Monkeysphere. Read it. Go ahead, I'll wait. You didn't read it, did you? Fucker.

Anyway, all of that was to explain how reading about Dunbar's Number reminded me of this conversation I had at work. This lady, every week brings in a copy of The Watchtower, a Jehovah's Witness tract/magazine thing. As far as I can tell, it's about how we're all living in the "end times" or some bullshit (how long do these end times last? It was first published in 1879!). I mostly just throw them in the trash when I find them laying about, but this was the first time I had actually encountered the lady.

So she hands me the thing with a smile and I have an "Aha! This is the person who plagues my counter with worthless bullshit" moment. I give her a smile that may or may not have looked sincere and said "Okay". She then proceeded to tell me that this month's issue was about the eradication of sin. To which I probably replied, "Oh." Cue a totally insincere smile and eyebrow raise. She somehow translated my expression to mean "Please tell me more of your insanity!" because she continued with something about how God will soon once again rid our planet of the wicked and the unworthy.

 "He's already begun" she expanded, "the increase of cataclysmic events like the hurricanes and earthquakes are just a part of his cleansing power. He's done it before, in the Bible, and he's doing it again now." (I am making up some of this b/c I don't remember the word-for-word, but trust me, she did say "cleansing" which just still makes me want to vomit.) At this point I stop smiling, and I stop nodding, and I'm pretty sure the look on my face was quickly becoming a mixture of disbelief, anger and disgust. "Okay," I say, hostility possibly seeping through my pores "so, like the Flood? Jericho? Every man, woman, and child must go?"  "Well, maybe not exactly, but essentially, yes. When there is nothing good left in the place, the wickedness will be eradicated and the world made new for the faithful. Like when God smote Sodom and Gomorrah because there were not even 10 righteous men left." "And this place had no children? No babies that maybe could have been spared the holy sulfur smiting?" "Um..." "...So, essentially, you are okay with mass murder? Because God approves of it. FTW I'm on a boat, muthafucka!" I did not say, because at this point I just wanted her out of the store. So I totally sidestepped everything and said something like, "Didn't Lot get drugged and raped by his daughters or something?" "...Uh, maybe..." "Oh, hahahaha. That was a pretty disturbing end to the story, huh? Kinda ruined the holy genocide for me." She starts backing away, and is luckily saved from my crazy eyes by another customer entering the store.

crazy eyes

So, ya know, maybe I don't care as much about Darfur as I should. Because my brain literally won't allow me to. But at least I'm not a crazy ass bitch rooting for 90% of the earth's population to be "righteously" smote(smitten? smited?). Although I'm probably giving into my neocortex right now just by calling her a crazy ass bitch. Whatever.