Wednesday, April 8, 2009

God of the Ants


When I was a child I had an ant farm, one of those plastic frames with clear sides filled with sand. You could watch the ants digging and doing their ant thing. I diligently fed them sugar and water. I watched them build their tunnels, never interfering with their daily goings on. They had the ant version of Free Will and manna from heaven.

Had these ants possessed reasoning ability, they would have probably worshipped me as their source of life, their God. Certainly my benevolence and omnipotence would be evident. I was the life giver.

What these ants were totally unaware of is that this same god that gave them sustenance was also a wrathful god. I used to bait wild ant hills with sugar, wait for the colony to swarm, then encircle and crisscross the mass of wild ants with highly flammable model airplane glue and set it on fire. There was no escape. There were never any survivors. It was utter ant genocide. Not even the virgin female ant was taken captive. Clearly if these ants could think it would have been perceived as the act of an angry vengeful god wreaking divine punishment for some inexplicable ant sin.

Eventually I became bored with the ant farm. They were flushed down the toilet, or dispersed into exile in the wilderness, I can't recall which. I guess it was the ant version of the Diaspora, The Great Flood, or maybe the Rapture.

So, was I a good benevolent god, or a punishing wrathful god? I guess to these two disparate groups of ants I was both. I could giveith and taketh away. I worked in strange and mysterious ways. My “Plan” for them was not for them to know, it was something only I could understand.

Theists are much like ants. They credit their unseen imaginary God for their lives, their daily bread, and their fortune. They accept His wrath for their sins in the form of disease, and disasters. They both praise its benevolence and fear its potential for anger and punishment. That they can do this is the result of having evolved a sophisticated nervous system and an imagination far beyond those of primitive insects. But, to the ant’s credit they would if they could, at least have been worshipping an observable carbon based life form.

Advantage: Ants.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

An interesting observation, and it also goes to show; even if there was some big power in Neverland doling out pleasure and punishment, who's to say his reasons for doing so are any more complex than being bored?

This reminds me of way back when I had a dog that would bring dead animal bodies to me every so often (until eventually he figured out that was why I was punishing him).

Sacrificial Tribute to his Patron Diety, perhaps?

-- TheMr.RogersDude

Dromedary Hump said...

Mr. rogers,

your comment prompts a thought: What kind of supreme all powerfulsupernatural being who holds sway over the infinite vastness of the universe would give a fiddlers damn about Aunt Sadie's vaginal prolapse, much less who wins the NCAA tournament?

I mean seriously, if there were such a being he'd really need to get a fuckin life.

Thanks.
Hump

microdot said...

And now onward to conquer and dominate the universe of the Sea Monkeys!

Dromedary Hump said...

Heheheh!! seamonkeys!!
I never got into those.

Barb said...

The ants had a "god" --though you did not make them --you ruled and wreaked havoc on their lives.

It's rational to think there is a God over YOU, like an ant.

and this God sent His only son to the ant farm, for your insignificant antly self, to die for your antly sins, and those of all the other ants.

And all you had to do, was believe, receive him, and follow Him --and He would take you to an ant farm paradise someday.

If you are so sure you are right, why so bitterly obsessed with Christianity? What does it matter to you if some of us believe in Christ? Why are you on a crusade to mock believers and promote atheism? I don't get it. We promote Christianity because Christ told us to --out of love for other people --so they might have life and have it more abundantly. and because we believe that faith in Christ is a matter of life --or death. But why do you promote atheism with zeal? What do you have to offer that I should want to enlist in your church of unbelief? Could it be you are doing the bidding of a higher evil power --obsessed by him, and you don't even know it?

Aqueous Transmission said...

This was brilliant

Dromedary Hump said...

Aqueous,

Thanks for those kind words.

I just visited your blog. Nice. I'll drop by regularly.

Regards,
Hump

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