MonoThreeism: An Absurdly Arrogant Attempt to Answer All the Problems of the Last 2000 Years in One Night at a Pub

I

The Two

Idi: Vlad!! . . . Vlad, you big idiot, I’m over here!

Vlad weaves in and out of pub tables toward Idi, knocking the occasional shoulder. As Vlad nears, he sees a copy of David Hume’s Dialogues concerning Natural Religion lying open in Idi’s lap.

Vlad: I already know where you are. You’re where we sit every single week.

Idi: I know. I just like yelling.

Vlad: I know. I just like giving you a hard time.

Idi: Sit. Drink. . . . Barkeep!

Vlad: You don’t have to yell at her.

Idi: See my previous statement.

The bartender, Mira, slides down the bar to greet them.

Mira: What’ll it be professors?

Idi: Two vodkas!

Vlad: One vodka. I will be having a diet coke.

Idi: No!!

Vlad: Yes. I’ve got stuff in the morning.

Idi: No you don’t! It’s Christmas Eve!

Vlad: Exactly. It’s Christmas Eve.

Idi: No!

Vlad: Yes.

Idi: No.

Vlad: Yes.

Idi: Nein!

Vlad: Ja.

Idi: Nett.

Vlad: Da.

Idi: Minime!

Vlad: Mini-me?

Idi: It’s Latin for not at all. Its where we get minimal from.

Vlad: Interesting.

Mira: . . . As adorable as I’m sure you think this is . . .

Vlad: Sorry. A diet coke for me and an IV drip for him. Just leave the needle, he knows what to do with it.

Idi: I do. I really do.

Mira: I’ll come back.

Idi: No!

Vlad: And she’s gone. . . . Here, enjoy this delightfully festive bowl of nuts and candy canes.

Idi: You’re mocking me.

Vlad: Yes, but out of love. You’re in dire need of Christmas mockery. What’s your sermon on tomorrow at university chapel?

Idi: Guess!

Vlad: Just tell me.

Idi: It’s the same bloody Christmas sermon I repackage every year. I don’t have time between classes to prep something new.

Vlad: Then why did you agree to do it when I asked?

Idi: Things were different then. So much has happened since.

Vlad: It was yesterday.

Idi: Yes, but you see, I’ve recently decided it’s all stupid.

Vlad: Oh, when did that happen?

Idi: A few minutes ago. Well, no, it started when I was ten, but it’s been happening on and off ever since.

Vlad: Of course. What’s it this time?

Idi: It’s everything. It’s God and doubt and church and all that gooey nonsense. It’s the cumulative weight of ridiculousness piled upon preposterousness like pancakes.

Vlad: There’s a line between alliterating and illiterate and you’re flirting with it.

Idi: The first of my woes . . .

Vlad: Here we go.

Idi: . . . is the Trinity. The beatific bodice itself. The mathematical marvel; the only time it is ever okay to tell children that one plus one plus one equals . . . wait for it . . . one! One God, three persons. Three and one, one and three, n’ such.

Vlad: So just the whole God part of your religion then?

Idi: Yep! Somehow the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God, yet you’re supposed to believe there is only one God. It makes no sense. At chapel you ask me to lead people in the liturgy once a month, and each time I stand up there wondering if I still really believe in this Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. As we used to snicker under our breath in school: Our Father, who fart in heaven.

Vlad: Forgive him Father, for he knows exactly what he does.

Idi: The second of my woes . . .

Vlad: Ah, there’s more.

Idi: . . . is the incarnation.

Vlad: Speaking of carne, could you please get us carnivores some barbecue wings, Mira?

Mira: And to drink?

Vlad: I think we need another minute. He’s monologuing.

Idi: . . . My second objection! . . . is the incarnation. How can Jesus be 100 percent God, but also 100 percent Middle Eastern man-flesh? Truly human and truly divine, in heaven and on earth, up there and down here? How can the all-mighty maker of everything become a baby who whines, suckles, and defecates? How can the eternal grow up? How can the Prime Mover go through puberty! Think about it: God had pimples! Probably great big volcano whiteheads! He was probably an awkward Jewish kid who wasn’t good at sports. And then to top it off, this eternal being gets what? Killed. The holy gets hammered! The one who was, and is, and is to come, ceases to be. How’s that logic for you? The incarnation is a contradiction of the highest order. The manger is empty. Christmas is a crock.

Vlad: I know you’re not drunk yet. You don’t have to play the part.

Idi: My third woe! . . .

A long pause follows.

Vlad: Yes?

Idi: I was waiting for you to make a snide remark.

Vlad: Your mother smells of Elderbe—

Idi: —My third woe! . . . is that religion is so busy with heaven it forgets about earth. Religion doesn’t like the body, flesh, pleasure, or sex, and makes you feel guilty if you do. All that matters is dying and going to heaven. Religion trades the physical for the spiritual, the real for the invisible, the now for some future in the clouds that may never come. You know that song? Imagine there’s no heaven, . . . it’s eas—

Vlad: —I know the song. Everyone in the world knows the song. Please stop singing the song.

Idi: Fine. But only because it’s time for my next objection: Free will! It doesn’t make any sense. If we are just a collection of atoms bouncing around like cogs in a machine, then how do we have any freedom?

Vlad: There are views of free will that are compatible with atoms and determinism and all that.

Idi: Ya, but those views are stupid.

Vlad: No they aren’t.

Idi: Sorry, what I meant was that the people who believe in those views are stupid.

Vlad: . . .

Idi: Just think about it. All our choices are caused by a long link of causes that extends back before we were even born. I chose this path because my daddy did this, because his daddy did that, because the class system is oppressive and Napoleon was short. Everything we do has a cause, and if you follow the causes they go back way before us, so they weren’t really our choices at all. Therefore! free will is bogus, in which case all that religious guilt about whether or not you choose to have premarital sex—or abort your baby after said sex—is bogus too. You can’t fault me for getting absolutely piss drunk tonight, because I didn’t have any choice.

Vlad: And you can’t fault me for leaving you here in your own puke.

Idi: Agreed. Now, for my fifth woe . . . I shall whine about . . . the soul!!

Vlad: Are you upset you didn’t get one?

Idi: Silence heathen! Now, do humans have a soul? If so, then why has neuroscience advanced so far while describing the brain in entirely material terms? And even if we did have a soul, how could it relate to our body? If the body is material and the soul is immaterial, then how can they interact? It would be like Casper the friendly ghost trying to kiss a human girl. She’d just slip through his fingers.

Vlad: Are you almost done?

Idi: We’re not even in double digits yet. My sixth woe . . . drumroll please . . . is . . . the problem of evil! If free will is bogus then you can’t really say it’s humanity’s fault for mucking up the cosmos, because we didn’t have any say in the matter. Hitler couldn’t have done otherwise; its Gods fault for creating him that way and making him bad at art . . .

Idi pauses for breath and for dramatic effect.

Idi: Thus, God is responsible for all the anger and abuse and bad fathers. For all the imperialism, slaves, crusades, witch-hunts, wars, gulags, gas, and ghettos.

Vlad: So just all the problems of the last few thousand years then?

Idi: Furthermore! What about all the other religions? The Muslims have Allah, the Greeks have the pantheon, and the Hindus have . . . whatever it is that they have.

Vlad rolls his eyes.

Idi: So even if you could make sense of the Trinity, why is that conception of God better than all the others? And! How can people be faulted for being born outside a Christian country and never having the chance to choose Jesus in the first place!

Vlad: Which wouldn’t matter anyway because choice is an illusion?

Idi: Precisely! Have a peanut.

Idi pushes the bar nuts over to Vlad. The usual nuts have been replaced by candy canes for the Christmas season, but the flakey remnants of ancient almonds still linger at the bottom. Vlad’s nose flairs up in disgust, then he remembers the candy canes are in protective wrappers, helping himself to one.

Idi: For my ninth woe! . . . I will—

Vlad: —eighth.

Idi: What?

Vlad: You skipped one. You’re only on eight.

Idi: No I didn’t, the other religions thing was implicitly its own woe.

Vlad: I know, I counted it. Even with it you’re only on eight.

Idi: For my eighth woe! I will summon Sigmund Schlomo Freud!

Vlad: Schlomo?

Idi: Sigmund Schlomo Freud showed that God is just a projection of us. Daddy didn’t love us, so we invented a bearded father in the clouds to give us all the affection we need. We took human attributes, magnified them in our heads, and subconsciously projected them onto the clouds. Everything man is in small measure God is in big measure. Humans know some things; God knows everything. Man likes power; God is all-powerful. We just take what humans are in finite measure, multiply that by a bunch, and get an infinite God. God is just a projection of ourselves. Theology is anthropology.

Vlad: That was Feuerbach.

Idi: What?

Vlad: Theology is anthropology. That’s a quote from Feuerbach, not Freud.

Idi: Stop interrupting.

Vlad: Stop meriting interru—

Idi: —Nine! This objection is the opposite of the last. If the last one said God is too human and so is just a projection of us, then this objection says the opposite. If God is supposed to be this eternal, infinite, mysterious, transcendent, wholly Other being off in the clouds, then how can we even talk about him? How can language contain him? And that’s the problem; if God fits into our human categories then he is just a projection of us. But if he doesn’t fit into our categories then he is too Other for us to talk about at all. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Idi pauses just long enough for Vlad to begin to open his mouth to speak, before thundering in again.

Idi: Ten! There is no meaning—

Vlad: —Mira, I’m gonna need some gin.

Mira: And tonic?

Vlad: No. Just straight gin. And some earplugs if you have them.

Idi: Number ten!! There is no objective meaning or morality in the universe. We can say what is culturally good at one time for one group of people, but we cannot transcend our context to reach some sort of metaphysical declaration about what is absolutely good at all times for all people. There is no objectively right or wrong way to live; no good or evil. Life has no inherent meaning; it just means whatever you want it to mean. Morality is not some eternal structure handed down to us from above but is just something we made up on the fly. Nihilism is the only truth.

Vlad: Glad to see you’re getting with the Christmas spirit.

Idi: Elf!

Vlad: Elf?

Idi: Elf means eleven in German. Idiot.

Vlad: Ah. I should’ve known you’d want to pontificate in as many languages as possible.

Idi: Mein elf objection! Religious people always seem to be on the wrong side of every diversity battle ever. Supporting slavery; oppressing women; repressing sexuality. Why can’t we just let the yuletide be gay?

Vlad begins to hum to the tune of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

Idi: Religion constantly seems to over-emphasize the unity of the masses, wiping out any diversity and suppressing every difference. God seems to ignore any oddity that doesn’t fit in the offering box.

Vlad: Your very existence in the church undermines that objection, Idi, because you’re the weirdest person I know.

Idi’s eyes search around for his next point, then suddenly blaze with excitement.

Idi: Twelve! The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!

Vlad: You already said that one.

Idi: Na uh. I complained that the Trinity didn’t make any sense; one plus one plus one does not equal one! That was my former complaint. But this is a totally different issue.

Vlad: Then what is it?

Idi: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Do you notice anything?

Vlad: What?

Idi: Where are all the women?!? The Trinity is three men! Is there nothing feminine about the divine, nothing female at the heart of the cosmos? That cannot possibly be true. Heaven is not a sausage fest. Hell maybe, but not heaven.

Vlad: Who says the Holy Ghost is male? Why can’t ghosts be female?

Idi: Seriously? Have you ever seen a female ghost?

Vlad: I’ve never seen any kind of g—

Idi: —And now! For my thirteenth and final woe! I ask the one question that all mortal men must at one point or another ask themselves: what’s with all these priests touching little boys?

Vlad: You know, we’re kind of like priests.

Idi: No, we’re professors who preach in the university chapel once in a while. Totally different.

Vlad: Tell that to the little boys.

Idi: And I only do chapel when you guilt me into it. I barely even believe in God, depending on the day.

Vlad: So, I’m assuming that if your objections remain unanswered then . . . what? You won’t preach in chapel tomorrow?

Idi: Bigger.

Vlad: You’ll quit the department?

Idi: Bigger.

Vlad: The denomination?

Idi: Bigger!

Vlad: Christianity?

Idi: Gah . . . Go big or go home!

Vlad: Religion altogether?

Idi leans in real close like he’s about to impart some secret wisdom.

Idi: If I don’t figure out these questions, my old friend, then I won’t go home tonight or tomorrow or ever. I don’t want to be one of those atheists who says God is dead and then pisses about with humanism like it still means something. No, I will be an atheist who has the courage to face the void head on! My friend, if I don’t get my questions answered, I won’t go home to my spouse and my family this Christmas Eve. Instead, I will drown my sorrows and chase my vices and go all out night after night after night, until all my money is gone or I kill myself.

A long silence follows.

Vlad: So . . . do I need to find a guest speaker for tomorrow then?

II

The Three

Idi: Merlin’s beer! I tell you I’m going to kill myself and all you’re worried about is who is going to preach tomorrow. Have you no honor sir!?!

Vlad looks into Idi’s eyes and smirks.

Idi: Ya, you might wanna start calling people.

Vlad: Who am I going to find to preach on Christmas last minute?!?

Idi: Well, perhaps you could pray about it. If God provides a last-minute preacher, then great. If he doesn’t, then why are you bothering with preachers and churches in the first place?

Vlad: Ya, because that’s how prayer works. . . . And why did you jump from having some objections to leaving your family and throwing your life away?

Idi: Because, if my objections can’t be answered then there is no God, there is no free will, and morality and meaning are social constructs.