genesis

In circumspect, I can see now how belief in a god can happen. This tapping happens and I have no way of determining what is causing it, or even, in fact, exactly where it is coming from. And I've TRIED oh so many things to figure this out. And the fact that it keeps happening, and I keep not being able to figure it out, drives me to the point of distraction. How much easier it would be for me to tell myself, "TOD is making the noise. I think TOD is an invisible spirit that created everything and that tapping noise is just TOD's way of talking to the house-spirit."

And if I believe that TOD is making the noise, I'll soon believe that he is probably the unseeable cause for most of the previously unexplainable effects I've ever experienced. If I think about all those things TOD does, I can probably piece together some sort of picture of him based on why I think TOD is doing all those things. Pretty soon I've got a very complicated and detailed description of the whats and whys and wherefores of the all powerful TOD. And if someday a plumber or carpenter tears up my floor or ceiling and finds that the cause of the tapping noise was caused by the pipes shifting and rubbing a floor joint every time the hydrostatic pressure in the neighborhood pipeline changed more than 1 millibar (? making this up as I go, obviously). Every time someone on my block turns on the tap or flushes the toilet, my dining room ceiling goes "TAP!". When I discover that and someone says, "See, it wasn't TOD at all!" I'll just smile knowingly and say, "Oh really? Perhaps TOD made the plumbing in this house, in this block, in this city, like that so that I would discover him and his awesome works. It has been revealed to me that I might better understand the shear awesomeness of the TOD. For this to be a coincidence is just way too far out...this is a complicated scheme, a plan, a series of cause and effect that could only have happened by the design of some superior being, of TOD."

And besides, if I'm not being driven nuts trying to figure out why everything is the way it is, I'm able to be more productive at other things like making bricks out of shit or hunting for food, which makes a belief in TOD something of a beneficial trait that evolution will select.

So, being an atheist, I have to relax and get comfortable just not knowing why my dining room ceiling goes TAP and just not worry about it until it actually does cave in (which is no longer covered by my policy).

So, I guess you could say that TOD exists BECAUSE of evolution, not despite it.