Afflicted With Belief

Beliefs are not born of will; God afflicts us with them, in much the same way as He afflicts certain people with club feet, or cleft palates, or hair lips - and for broadly similar reasons.

There is nothing God enjoys more than a good laugh at humankind's expense; indeed, the main reason He created humanity in the first place was to reinforce and vivify, by way of observable contrast, His own perfection, majesty and omnipotence.

Consequently, God loves nothing more than failure, disappointment, imperfection, anti-climax, squalor, crass stupidity, confusion, madness, fundamentalism, death - all of which remind Him, continuously, in palpably, eloquently, inexorably hilarious ways, of just how incomparably great He is by comparison.

Escaping one's beliefs is even harder than escaping one's sexuality. I, for instance, do not believe in luck, but I do believe in fate - despite the fact that belief in either is equally, insanely irrational.

I also believe, with irreducible convinction, in the jealous God described above, although I know beyond all shadow or scintilla of doubt that all Gods are nothing other than human inventions.

This, when all is said and done, is the greatest, most uproariously funny joke of all - that, despite possessing a sensory apparatus capable only of perceiving things in black and white, we nevertheless find ourselves endeavouring to navigate our way through a universe in which all the really important bits have been highlighted (presumably by God) in yellow marker pen.