Christianity, Life, Foreigner... Gosh!

So, a fellow tried to convert me to Christianity the other day... and by the other day I mean at 130 am on Sunday morning. It was, needless to say, an interesting time. The conversation was civil, yet compelling, and I appreciate the chap's willingness to share his faith with me. But, in responding to his invitation, I found myself expounding on my as-yet-still-very-confused philosophy of life rather lucidly. Which, in all honesty, was horribly surprising. I still need to fine tune it but what the heck, here's a sneak preview, only available at The Foreigner House:

So we all didn't come from nothing... there was something at the beginning right? Socks, sandy beaches, whatever. Where did those socks and sandy beaches come from? God knows. Point being, man didn't come from socks and sandy beaches. Man came, even if you believe the whole evolution thing, from something living. So there had to be something living to start it all. And something living can't come from something inanimate, or not living. So, something living had to come from something greater than something living. So God. Or whatever our concept of God is. So there was God.

And God ordered the world somewhat. You know, night and day, life and death, Naomi Watts being a little too old for me etc etc. BUT, as He was ordering the world, He said to Himself, "Hmmm, so if I order the world completely, the rest of eternity's going to be pretty damn boring, what with all this order and crap. Much better to leave a little disorder and add 3 tablespoons of free will (before mixing, otherwise the batter will get lumpy)." So now we have God with an almost ordered world and some semblance of free will.

Now the whole free will thing suits us humans (when we finally manage to kill off the dinosaurs and the crazy aliens that built Stonehenge and whatnot) just fine. There's drinking and dancing and orgies and very limited accountability (kind of like a corrupt third world government). And God thinks, "This is bad. The whole free will dealio isn't working out the way it should. Oh well, time to send some prophets." And the prophets came, and they told people that what God really meant by free will is that they should commit "random kindness and senseless acts of beauty," not the silly rubbish they were indulging in.

And the prophets were persecuted and killed. With good reason generally. Try to tell a bunch of drinking, dancing, orgying, unaccountable chappies that they're not supposed to be enjoying themselves so much and, chances are, they'll smack you upside the head with a debauched goblet of some sort. SO, God sent prophets to an almost ordered world to encourage people to stick to what He figured were a decent set of rules.

We humans are smart people. As the rules came from God, we modified our societies to fit those rules, but still managed to find loopholes that allowed us to have a little fun. But then there were those who disregarded the rules altogether. God persevered though, and finally, He figured He had come up with an pretty damn decent code of ethics, which Muslims (and those who like to think they're Muslims) like to call Islam.

Now that the pretty damn decent code was there, there was only the problem of making sure that people followed the code. Of course, He didn't want a bunch of machines because that would be boring. If you remember, that's why we're in this whole free will mess in the first place. So God decided to let the people try to figure things out themselves, but send reformers and stuff whenever He felt like it anyway.

So I figured I'd go with the latest... you know Islam 1.0, or Christianity 2.0, or Judaism 3.0, call it what you will. It makes sense to me, most of the time.

So here we are today. People all over the place looking at different versions of the same message. Oh, and killing each other.

Oh Abraham, if you had only known what chaos your seed would spread...