It's wicked to mock the afflicted

my pancreas and the holy whatever

My soul resides in my pancreas. My belief in God and my scepticism of man’s religions are all based in the contemplation of my pancreas. It used to be in my gall bladder but God saw it fit to have that organ of mine deflated and pulled out of my belly button¹. After all irony is his speciality.

Why the pancreas? Look at it. It’s ridiculous. It looks like an infected comma. Yet, this little ridiculously shaped unimportant organ shoved up each unimportant one of us upon this unimportant planet, etc. has an intense complexity. We aren’t talking about the heart, which is an organ easy to appreciate.

I am not saying this complexity implies design. I would think a designer could do an organ with 57’ Chevy fins or something cool. It’s certainly not designed². Ascetics aside, all that effort to come up with such a boring and ugly thing as a pancreas staggers my imagination to consider the purpose, reasons that such a thing exists. When I start to consider things like Platypuses, Weak nuclear forces, or just the digestive system in total, my mind reels. It is for this I have faith in some force or some idea that so far man has only come up with the word ‘God’ to describe. It is a terrible word with more baggage than my credulity weight limit can accept. I am sorry sir you’ll have to pay extra if you what to bring that terminology with you. It implies too much and misses too much. The Taoists had the right idea with respect to that. Before I am sprout a ponytail, Birkenstocks, and tie-dyes I’ll step away from rubbing on the Eastern mysticism. As my pancreas is also why I am not the follower of any religion.

The force or being or whatever that we have attached the “Hello my name is GOD” sticker to its chest has put all that subtly and complexity into that little unimportant organ never mind the truly staggering things that exist in this universe, and you are going to tell me that whatever is responsible for the shoddy workmanship of the world’s religions.

The rules and myths of our religions have the dirty smudges of man’s fingerprints all over them. They point to man’s insecurities not those of an omnipotent. I find it hard to believe that the almighty really has a hang up about pork and shellfish, or what I get up to on Sundays.

Sure. All religions have within them a moral philosophy, but I don’t need the Wizard of Oz routine to know that charity is a good thing and murder is bad. The God we have drawn for ourselves is too comic book for me. The lines too bold. The shading too stark. I understand the attraction. A benevolent personal superman that grants favours if you’re in the fan club is an attractive idea, but given the complexity of our own dull innards or even the simple things our scientists can explain, I doubt the whatever running the show and keeping those scientists guessing is going to be as simple as we’ve described them. Evolution points to something much more miraculous than some beardy bashing out prefabbed universes in less than a week.

Me and my pancreas’ plan is to keep doing good things because they are good, and if I have some moral failing, I’ll try to address it. Then, if upon my demise, God is that enrobed bearded super hero shooting out his creations like lemurs and comets from one hand and smoting and smiting them with the other. Well, if I am damned just because his PR campaign on earth failed, then so be it.

---

1) The profile of a typical person requiring their gall bladder removed is a post-menopausal and over weight female. So of course, you can see why I had to lose mine.
2) Yes. My criterion for intelligent design is ‘coolness’.