— No.
— So that leaves a decision-making entity that we’ll call God though I intend to demonstrate to you how little solace that should create. So I repeat. ¿Why this world?
—¿Which one do you prefer?
— Most would start with one where those men couldn’t do that.
—¿Couldn’t? ¿Physically? ¿Can they, we, do anything physical? ¿Are there no bodies in this world?
— They couldn’t choose to do it although physically capable.
— I’m all for it for them, as long as I can still choose. I’m no one’s machine.
— Okay so we need choice but He, I’m going to use imbecilic pronouns in the interests of speed, could interfere when things threaten to get too extreme.
—¡Yes!
— No. Understand that He never has and never will.
—¿Never has? That’ll be news to many.
— Ah that. Oh it’s a silly little book of course, telling us plenty about the time’s people and precious little of what hovers above them. ¿Man created in God’s image? That’s laughable. The creation imagery flows the other way I think. You apes would look at anything even mildly mysterious and cry God. Better yet all your venality and power-mongering would find its way into your gods or God, fine the singular form represented evolutionary progress from what came before, just as the Greek and Roman gods did to a lesser extent, but any concern I may have felt in this area dissipated immediately at first glimpse of the unrepentant jerk you’d chosen to worship. See even your most pious talk and behavior can’t fully mask the fact that it’s nakedly selfish aggression above all that you secretly wish to worship.
— That’s old news. May as well lampoon human science because it believes the sun orbits the earth. ¿You say Zeus and Yahweh hearten you? Can’t say I blame you, but curious that you don’t bring up Jesus Christ.
At this mention the immense Figure visibly recoils and for the first time its prey feels these might not be his last moments. Not sure what would be best he decides to continue:
— Because I don’t believe in anything, including him, but I love that son of a bitch almost despite myself.
The Figure rises to move closer and the man feels the futility of all that’s come before and, worse, how that realization can hollow a person out. The giant speaks through now-visible teeth:
— That’s man for you, impressed by the solution to a problem that didn’t need to exist in the first place. ¿Tell me Manuel, do you feel immortal?
— No. But I concede I have trouble effectively conceiving of my death.
— Granted, but I was pointing Time’s arrow the other way. ¿Do you feel you’ve always existed, meaning even before your birth?
— Of course not.
— Right. — becalmed, it sits back down—. So you may think a man or Man continues to exist after what appears on Earth to be death but no one thinks either existed before birth. Yet when it comes to God everyone rightly believes the same thing: immortality in all directions. Now talking about Time as it relates to God is always tricky since God somehow manages to exist outside of Time despite the fact that Time is itself an aspect of God, but that God once existed in the absence of man seems obvious. So man isn’t here solely because God created him. He’s here because prior to that God made a decision to create him. Let’s examine that decision. Make no mistake but that the desire to create stems from dissatisfaction. That means that God, to whom perfection is often ascribed almost tautologically, essentially felt loneliness. ¿Is there any other possible interpretation? Because there’s no logical system under which God needed man. He just wanted him. So he decided to create him. And he didn’t just make that decision in isolation either because here’s the critical part: he knew what the results of that decision would be. Soak that in a bit. He knew that a ten-year-old girl would be tortured and killed. ¿Which girl you say? ¡An infinite number! Every gruesome event, every indefensible act, known to him not as risk but as certainty yet forward he forged. Think about that. ¿Was it not a bad decision as soon as one girl was so treated, let alone the scores of dead? ¿Are we not talking about the height of selfishness here? I want company and I don’t care how much you have to suffer for it. ¿It’s the contingency of Life that offends isn’t it? ¿You say Life needs to be a certain way, fine, but Life itself didn’t need be did it? Existence was externally imposed on you. ¿Why? ¿Because God was bored? Man wasn’t consulted. ¿Know why? Because in all things it’s God’s whims, not his will, that controls. You’re a toy, a plaything, allowed to perform for his amusement then discarded when tastes change.
— These actions you find so offensive, presumably because of your high moral standing, are acts of Man not of God. Existence made them possible, true, but that fact can’t be used to poison existence, which in itself is neither good nor bad but rather what we make of it. If cruelty leads to suffering the solution is to eliminate cruelty not to bemoan the existence that serves as backdrop. If you want to see the swift elimination of cruelty follow me when this rain stops because I’m going to violently remove from this world some of its most bounteous sources.
—¿At what cost to you?
— Don’t care. I’m past redemption. The dangerous man is not the one willing to mete out violence, it’s the one willing to absorb untold violence with no regard for his safety. I have no regard left for my soul either if staring at it contemplatively is going to allow that evil to flourish. I’m going to do what needs to be done and when all is past we’ll probably meet again. Then be careful I don’t try to remove you from our world.
— Humanity needs more than you.
— I’m not interested in humanity save for two examples of it and for the sake of those two I’ll unleash Hell itself then let out nary a scream as its flames consume me.
—¿For what? ¿Are you that fond of delay as concerns the inevitable? As I’ve tried to show you, their world will remain full of billions, each free to devise their own particular form of mayhem. Beyond that is the question of the physical world you and they inhabit. You say Man didn’t have to be created but once created he had to be free to create that mayhem. ¿That doesn’t mean it all had to play out in such a merciless lion’s den does it? The reason Yahweh’s such a jerk is that Man was struggling to explain some truly horrific physical phenomena like flooding that left their world looking like all land had capriciously disappeared. Now you have more sophisticated explanations for how events like earthquakes and tsunamis happen but you’re still no closer to understanding why they happen. ¿These things aren’t truly necessary are they? They’re critical only insofar as they give us insight into the mind of God and what a picture! He’s fond of painting himself as a father but a father, as you know, protects. ¡And if he somehow fails in protecting, as you did, he remedies! Instead God watches the lifeless bodies float and the waves of suffering ripple out without end.
—¿What are you saying? ¿A world without water? ¿Do I need to list water’s many transcendently beneficial qualities?
—¡No, you need to explain why it’s not perfectly buoyant! Why your father places you in such constant peril then refuses to clean up his mess. ¿Because who is of greater use to Selena now? ¿Her earthly father who practically clears a jungle on her behalf or her absentee heavenly one?
—¡Enough of you! The globe is as it is and if you listen closely enough you can hear it laughing at my irrelevance. There’s no amount of vocal thought will change what I’m going to do. I know what you’re trying.
—¿Namely?