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This website is being renovated throughout 2008. Pages and the content of pages will continue to change until the end of the year and there may be some inconsistencies and missing links. Please do not quote from or link to specific pages (apart from the home page) without contacting the webmaster first. Bongo Rabbit and the cherry tomato It is nature, not God, that overwhelms us By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 800 words Publication date: April 16, 2006 Matt Groening’s widely syndicated “Life in Hell” cartoon has appeared weekly for almost thirty years. Its oldest inhabitants are the rabbits Binky and Sheba. They were soon joined by Bongo, Binky’s son from a previous relationship, and the gay adolescent fez-wearing identical twins Akbar and Jeff. A and J offer a heady mix of surrealism, egoism and sly comments on prejudice that often make me laugh out loud. I feel more empathy, however, with Bongo, a third- or fourth-grader whose life swings violently between two emotions – frustration at the restrictions imposed by parents and authority figures to prevent young boys from having fun, and amazement at the absurdities and wonders that he discovers as he explores the world around him. Groening went on to create The Simpsons. It is easy to see Bongo as a proto-Bart, although Bart is older and more cynical. It also takes little imagination to see how Sheba’s long floppy ears evolved into Marge's blue haircut. The resemblances cease there. With many contributors and twenty minutes of freedom, The Simpsons has the luxury of covering several bases and dozens of verbal and visual jokes each episode. Life in Hell, with its single creator and limited space, must make a virtue of economy. Back in the 1980s two Life in Hell strips marked small steps in my long journey towards atheism. (Apologies to Groening if my memory plays tricks with the details.) In the first, Bongo kills a squirrel under the wheels of his bicycle. Appalled, he gets down on his knees, clasps his hands in prayer and promises God that if the dead rodent is brought back to life he will worship him forever. He waits and waits but the squirrel does not revive. Recognizing that the prayer has made no impact, Bongo declares that “the theological implications are staggering” (a phrase used by Homer Simpson a decade later when God appears in a dream with five, rather than four, fingers on each hand). The simplicity of the message – prayer is only speaking into the void – made more impression on me than years of reflection or a dozen works of theology. In the second strip, Bongo is writing two lists: reasons to believe, and reasons not to believe, in God. The evidence probably included examples such as Julia Roberts and Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream in the first column and zits and school bullies in the second. Bongo quickly runs out of pro-God examples. There is a hiatus as the implications sink in. The scene closes with either a worried “uh-oh” or an unconcerned scrunching of the paper as B rushes outside to play. Again, a simple message clearly expressed: there are many more reasons to doubt God’s existence than to believe it. I was reminded of Bongo the other day when snacking on half a dozen cherry tomatoes. I bit into the first, expecting the familiar sensation of sweet and sour that makes the red fruit so delicious. What came was a flood of juice and flavor so intense that I exclaimed “Proof that God exists!”. My companion, an agnostic who inexplicably sees tomatoes as one of nature’s mistakes, was not impressed. Most of us experience these occasional moments of pure exhiliration when our senses overcome us. To the taste buds, good chocolate comes close to cherry tomatoes, but other senses may come into play. We are sailing across the ocean with a Force Seven wind. We overcome the challenge of a difficult interview. We get married. We have sex. At other times, instead of ecstasy comes tranquility. We are on top of a mountain bewitched by a perfect view. In a concert hall, transported by music. Transfixed by a painting. Or retreating into ourselves in meditation. At such moments, whether we overflow with life or withdraw from it, other people fade from our consciousness. We are the solitary masters of our fate, at one with ourselves and the cosmos. Everything seems possible. The moment should last forever and we know it is already fading. To some, these responses are proof of God. He created this magnificent planet or inspired the composer’s pen or artist’s brush. He instilled in us a soul or spirit – the capacity both to appreciate his creation and to commune with him. All we have to do is recognize his presence and let him in. A nice thought, but poppycock. So-called spiritual experiences are no more proof of God than the Bible or so-called miracles. All they prove is that we are conscious and alive. We would be much poorer without these moments of intense joy and awareness. But whatever triggers them, a loved one, an opera aria or the beauty of a national park, let us be honest and admit that it is nature that overwhelms us and ourselves that we experience.
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If God existed, he would... admire the beauty of a universe that he did not create recognize that eternity is meaningless deny both heaven and hell disown all men and women who speak in his name denounce the harm caused by religious "morality" help the human race to thrive without him If God existed, he would be an atheist. |