So, why did you do it? I ask.

I was bored, God replies almost nonchalantly. 

You were bored. I see, but of course I didn’t. 

Well, and I was curious as well, God adds as an afterthought. 

Curious. How so? I ask, somewhat puzzled. 

Curious in the same way a scientist is curious. Curious to experiment, to test theorems and so on, he states in a matter of fact way.

So, this is all an experiment, partially driven out of boredom? I seek to confirm.

That’s about the sum of it. God shrugs. I almost detect a hint of embarrassment, as his eyes move furtively to the side. 

I see. This conversation was not going at all where I’d expected. Let me take you back to the creation if I may.

OK, God shrugs with obvious nonchalance, but she didn’t do it, he quickly adds, almost defensively. 

Didn’t do what?

Eat the forbidden fruit. 

You mean Eve?

Yes. Well, yes and no. She ate the apple but only because she was hungry. I hadn’t forbidden it.  I hadn’t forbidden the eating of apples, so in that sense she didn’t do it. In fact, it was a pretty harsh winter that year. Not much to go around, so she reached out for a Washington Red hanging from the tree. Why not? I mean I would. I like apples. 

A Washington Red?

Yup. Very matter of fact. 

But why a Washington Red, why not a Granny Smith, or a Fuji, or a Golden Delicious? This conversation was taking a surreal, even somewhat farcical turn. Apples!

Soil and climatic conditions were the deciding factors, I guess, God states indifferently. 

But the Garden of Eden “is” the garden of plenty, is it not? I put heavy emphasis on the “is”.

Nope. Not really. That was all you guys. Medieval propaganda. A narrative to suit the Church. All part of rationalizing the irrational. A convenient figment, upon which many other convenient figments were built. I don’t think they could really reconcile the fact that I was omnipotent and all merciful but yet, would tolerate pestilence and plague and so on. So, they came up with this concept of original sin, but the woman was just hungry. Makes me laugh really, blaming it all on a woman. The patriarchy. He scoffs. 

God a feminist? This was getting more interesting by the second.

But I liked the vignettes, the illustrations, the snake and the modesty and all that, he says with genuineness.

I see, I lied. I was becoming rapidly blind. So what about free will? And the doctrine of divine intervention?

I’ve always offered free will. I mean, do people really want some big guy in the sky tying their shoelaces, wiping their noses, telling them what to do? That’s a type of servitude, a divine dictatorship. People would be no better than a hamster in a cage. Enovation and terminal ennui would ensue, if not frustration and madness. And besides, I’m a democrat at heart. Give people boundaries, a civil code if you will, to define acceptable norms of behaviour, then let them go to it. 

So, the Ten Commandments is a kind of civil guide for humanity? And Moses an early day legislator? 

You could say that. 

So tell me, how does the doctrine of free will sit with divine intervention? 

It doesn’t. 

It doesn’t? My tone betrays a slight puzzlement. 

No. I mean, I don’t intervene. That’s what free will is all about. You have the freedom to live your lives the way you see fit, make your own choices, make your own mistakes and bear the related consequences, whether they be good, bad or indifferent. If I intervene to rectify your mistakes, whether trivial or monumental, then that would run counter to free will.  Free will and bearing the consequences that result from exercise of that will, are concomitants. 

What about the Crucifixion? That would have tested the doctrine of non-divine intervention? After all he was your Son and semi-divine. 

God looks down at the floor again, a brief wistful look creasing his otherwise placid features. I’m not going to pretend that one wasn’t hard. It was really hard, of course it was. He was my Son. Still is my Son in fact. I’m not afraid to admit, I was on the cusp of doing the ‘thunder bolt and lightening thing’ a thousand times. I wrestled all night with it – my paternal instincts wrestling with my doctrine, so to speak. In the end, I couldn’t show favouritism or exceptionalism, even for my own Son. I had to show impartiality and that, even I’m not above the law. 

You say you are philosophically, and in some senses, legally against acts of favouritism or exceptionalism. But what about the Red Sea and the flight from Egypt?

God harrumphs. That one. Another one of your constructs. I never parted the Red Sea. The area was geologically unstable. Much more so than it is today. There was significant seismic activity on that day that caused a highly unusual water surge, akin to a tsunami. The pursuing Pharaonic forces were actually in boats, not on foot and horse and consequently they were deluged, washed away. Bad luck really. 

I drew in a deep breath at that one. So, you’ve never intervened, never felt compelled to cross your own divine red lines?

Look, let me put it this way. This is the first time I’ve seen him get testy. Ask Sargent Robert Cryer, ask Private Ryan O’Toole, ask 2^nd Lieutenant Algernon Farquhar. Ask any of them. 

Who is, or was Sargent Robert Cryer? 

Late of the 7^th Battalion, 1st Division, Australian Imperial Force. Died in action, 2^nd August, 1916, Western Front. His composure returns.

Please continue. I sense I need to tease this one out. 

He died in a fox hole. He was never a believer, certainly not a devout one at any rate. Only ever attended Church for weddings, funerals those sorts of things. A social church goer, not a man of faith. In fact, he wasn’t even there for his own funeral, poor chap. They never found the body. In fact it lies buried in the Commonwealth war grave at Thiepval. No one knows that, apart from me of course.  I detect a hint of melancholy. He pauses as if for reflection and then continues. Sargent Cryer found himself crouching, stranded in a fox hole, a particularly shallow fox hole, in a section of No Man’s Land, after an unsuccessful advance towards the German trenches. Fearing a second wave, the Germans laid down blanket fire in that section. Things looked pretty grim for Sargant Cryer, what with a constant barrage of HE rounds exploding all around him. That’s when he did it, what I call the ‘fox hole moment’. He pauses again.

What’s the ‘fox hole moment’? I ask encouragingly. 

He asked me to save his life and in return he’d become a devout believer and show up at Church every Sunday. I’ve heard it a million times. Everyone’s a believer when they know they’re just about to die. 

And you didn’t intervene?

No, of course not. Not that I wasn’t sympathetic. In fact I was sympathetic. Bob was actually a good guy, warm, generous, always keeping the men’s spirits up. Even shared his rations, meagre as they were. He was from Western Australia. Nice place. You should go. But ultimately what could I do? 

You mean self-will and non-intervention? 

Yes. 

Now, I’d like to turn to a different topic. Religious differences, different interpretations of faith, religious hatred and violence and so on. All play a fundamental part in many of the conflicts we see on this planet today. Do you feel any sense of responsibility for this?

Hmm. He pauses for thought. All the great monotheistic faiths just differ in their interpretation and comprehension of me. I leave it up to you to develop your own reference frameworks for comprehending me and how you wish to convert that comprehension into religious practice. Whether you want to view me through the lens of a Muslim, Jewish or Christian God, or if we look at the great Eastern religions such as Buddhism, that’s entirely up to you. To me, they’re variations on the same theme. All take their fundamental inspiration from me, in one way or another, which in fact provides a strong commonality across all religions, although of course this isn’t always explicit. Take for instance the Buddha and Jesus. Both underwent personal fundamental transformative experiences triggered by their ‘wandering years’. Both eschewed materiality and embraced ascetism. These experiences and the resulting tenets form the bedrock of Christian and Buddhist religious frameworks to this day. You see the commonality? So I don’t think its religious differences per se that drive inter communal conflict but rather Man’s historic and genetic impulse to fend for himself, his family and his tribe in a hostile world, which inevitably means competing with other individuals, families and tribes for scarce resources. Religion is just an excuse for conflict, not the cause. 

But we live in a world of plenty today, the supermarket shelves groan with untold sources of protein and other means of sustenance, so how can competition for resources still be a fundamental driver of conflict?

Genetic engineering was in its infancy during the Creation. In order to enable Man to survive in the early millennia in a hostile environment, competition was inevitable given the initial scarcity of resources. I therefore had to code strong competitive instincts into human DNA. What I didn’t do however, was time bound the efficacy of the competitive gene. In hindsight I should have built in ‘end of life’ into that DNA strand, so that when man had evolved to the supermarket age, the tribal feuding aspects of the competitive gene would equally evolve and in fact atrophy. So, in the age of the Hilton and Wal mart, we end up with this anomalous situation where man competes against man, driven by the same historic but redundant desires for food and shelter. But as I said, terra scale genetic engineering was in its infancy back in those days. 

I see. I find myself saying this a lot, when in fact I’m struggling to comprehend. So, the great wars and conflicts of the ages are all down to nascent and incomplete genetic engineering techniques.

Yup. But I’ve got the hang of it now. He says with no irony whatsoever. 

You’ve expressed great tolerance for different religious interpretations of yourself but so far you’ve only framed that tolerance within monotheistic concepts. Do you hold equally tolerant views of polytheism?

I’m supportive. Again, it’s a matter of interpretation. You say tom-ar-to and I say tom-ay-to but we both know we’re talking about; the red berry of the plant Solanum lycopersicum. Interpretation and its expression is driven by a host of factors, including differences in stages of development, climate and geography, relationship with natural resources, language, underlying socio-political precepts, economics and so on. In fact, animism for example, is a very practical interpretation of the divine, given the importance of plant-based food sources to the well-being of certain agrarian societies. He continues with obvious relish for the topic. Even before the advent and widespread adoption of monotheism, I was a fan of polytheism. I mean some of it was just downright creative, a credit to the fertile and adaptive intellect of man. He pauses. If you look at the Hellenic Patheon, it was rich and colorful and beautifully poised for the divine needs of its followers at the time. In many ways they were much more religiously observant than today’s adherents of monotheism because religion was the means of making the inexplicable appear explicable. Before the advent of empirical observation and science, how did you explain lightening for example, well you couldn’t in the sense you can today, so hey presto you created Zeus. By the way I was a big fan of Zeus, quite admired his looks and the way the Renaissance masters used him as an inspiration for my likeness on church ceilings and such. I’m half tempted to ask him who his favorite Italian master is but decide against it. Having said that, some of this went too far, I mean a God of Tricks, Dolos, that’s really stretching the bow. And Janus, the two-faced God? And what about that guy who slaughtered bulls, Mithras. What were they trying to say about me? He sounds peeved. So I change the subject.

If you look today at the global political, social and economic outlook, we face unprecedented pressures and indeed factures in the world order. We’ve seen the return of strong man politics, nativism, tribalism, geopolitical rivalries, a global economy addicted to cheap debt and of course the climate change crisis and Coronavirus. Are we close to the Revelation, to Apocalypse? 

Well fundamentally I’m an optimist. I think modern day pundits are overly given to pessimism. The outlook remains overwhelmingly positive in my opinion, particularly if you undertake objective historical benchmarking. For instance (he’s getting really passionate now), you mention strong man politics, yes, I get that but if you view today’s landscape through a lens of historical comparison, the situation is actually quite bright. What do I mean by this? Look back only as far as the nineteen forties and you had the unholy quad of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. Some of the most egregious despots and mass murderers known to man. Then add on thirty years or so and you can count in Pol Pot, Pinochet and others to the Pantheon of evil. So, do you really think we’re on the eve of destruction? 

This guy is really engaged at this point in our conversation, then all of a sudden, breaking into a dead pan tone, he says:

I knew Gavrilo Princip. 

You knew Gavrilo Princip? You mean the guy who assassinated the Austrian duke that triggered world war one? I was a bit taken aback. 

Yes, that guy. 

I see. 

Do you? God challenges. 

Well, maybe let’s hear it from you just to be on the safe side.

Well, there was a flourishing cross-dressing scene going on in Sarajevo at that time, combined with homo eroticism, dressed up as the Avant Garde. It was a shining light of liberal experimentation in the Austro-Hungarian empire. Much more so than Vienna or Budapest. Princip was a luminary in that scene. 

OK. I must admit, I’m a little lost now.

His nom de couture was Eve. Don’t you see? We’ve been on the “Eve” of destruction many times before. But man always bounces back. Collective genetic engineering. 

I stammer something unintelligible. Is this some sort of puerile humor, or are divine conversational twists just beyond my mortal sense of conversational convention? 

I try and move the conversation back onto firmer ground, firmer for me that is.

But what about climate change? Man hasn’t had the wherewithal to poison the planet in the same way he has today. 

That maybe so but what the Earth is experiencing today and will experience in the next several decades, is trivial compared to previous climate crises. Again, man’s propensity is to believe he lives in the worst possible time in history. It’s a form of conceit and inflated self-importance really. 

Can you expand on that?

There are two climate crises that make everything else that has since been or will be, simply irrelevant. The first is the Ice Age, or to more accurate the Ice Ages, when continental-size glaciers cover enormous regions of the Earth, associated with Milankovitch cycles. The second is the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, a mass extinction in which 75% of plant and animal species on Earth became extinct, including all non-avian dinosaurs, caused by the Chicxulub impactor, striking the Earth. Now that’s not to say the current climate crisis is of no concern, it certainly is and it doesn’t bode well for the next several generations, but when you’ve been around as long as I have and I’ll continue to be around for a long time yet, everything is relative. I want to ask him if he still uses aerosols but hold back in case it comes across as disrespectful. 

Well, we’re unfortunately coming to the end of what has been a fascinating conversation. I clear my throat. So, that leaves us with the final and possibly largest topic to discuss.

Oh that. He interjects in a somewhat desultory voice. 

I carry on unperturbed. The question that is on everyone’s mind, not just today but since the dawn of man. Drum roll in my head. What is the meaning of…life…the universe…and everything, in essence…why are we here? There, it’s out in the open.

You should ask Arthur Dent. His lips curl slightly and seem to betray a personal joke. 

Arthur Dent? 

No, no, don’t worry. He moves quickly on. It never ceases to amaze me why your species is always searching for meaning; meaning in the bottom of a teacup; meaning in the entrails of a bird; meaning in a crystal ball; meaning in a ball point pen. It never ends. He scoffs. What is it with “meaning”? Let me tell offer you a parable, I’m good at those you know. He also offers a wry smile. There was a powerful potentate that ruled in a land in what we today call the middle east…and I won’t tell you which land, to avoid inflaming any sensitivities, he chuckles. He had everything his potent heart could desire; riches beyond any sensible definition of avarice; strength and beauty; the love and respect, or maybe fear, of his people; suzerainty over lands from desert to ocean; marvels of engineering and architecture; and so on. But after a while it wasn’t enough; yet another glorious foreign conquest, or one more palace of bizarre opulence, just failed to fill the inner hollowness that started to gnaw away at him. You’d call it the law of diminishing returns these days, God says as an aside. He consulted the royal astrologers, the priests, the Shamans, the charlatans, the natural elements and even in desperation a mountain lion! But despite it all, no one could offer him what he craved for most, self-fulfillment through finding…you guessed it…the meaning of his life. Finally, in desperation he turned to a wizened old man, a ragged old thing, bent over and wearied, hobbling on a stick, smelling worse than a mountain goat – you know the type. The old man told the great Potentate that he would show him the means to find the meaning of his life. The only thing the Potentate would need to do, was to simply open his eyes and view the meaning of life, when the old man told him to do so. The Potentate while puzzled and doubtful, nonetheless agreed. The old man shuffled off in the direction of the royal bedroom, beckoning the Potentate to follow. Once inside, the old man locked the bedroom door and instructed the Potentate to close his eyes. “You can open your eyes now”, instructed the old man. The Potentate was at first bewildered at the image that greeted his eyes, with his bewilderment soon turning to rage. “What is the meaning of this, you old fool!” raged the Potentate. “You asked me to show you the meaning of your life and I have done just as I promised”. “But it’s a mirror,” fumed the Potentate. “And in the mirror is the meaning of your life” answered the old man. In a fit of rage, the Potentate unsheathed his scimitar and chopped off the old man’s head, there and then on the spot. God pauses. Now, many years later, in fact on his death bed, the Potentate ruminated on the old man and his trickery, and the penny suddenly dropped! What he saw in the mirror, all those years ago, was in fact the meaning of his life; ‘he’ was the meaning of ‘his’ life. His whole purpose in life was to be himself. God stops.

I pause to take this in, turn it around a bit in my mind. After a few moments I speak. So, do you mean to say, that the purpose of life is starring directly back at us from the mirror, that we, our very selves, are the meaning of life?

Yes. He crosses his arms and folds them on his lap ever so serenely. I notice, almost notice, the vaguest of ethereal glows emanating from him now. He continues. Stop looking for that which cannot be found outside of oneself. The search for external meaning is often the corollary of a restless soul…trust me, I’ve known a few souls, he says as an aside. There is no universal or mystical puzzle waiting to be solved, there is no holy grail of meaning out there in the wide yonder. That is simply the iron pyrites of personal quests. Best to keep your VW camper van in the garage and instead go into a dark room to contemplate the self. Ultimate meaning is about you, yourself as an individual. Once you’ve found that meaning, you’ve found inner peace and the means of communion with me. The riches within a peaceful soul, being at peace with oneself, are beyond the dreams of the restless man’s avarice. Peace with oneself, means knowing me, that is…the meaning of life…the universe…and everything. He leans over enigmatically and whispers in my ear; without you, there is no me and without me, there is no you.