Evil Explained?

I think I have determined why evil happens.

It all happened so suddenly. A while back I was lying in the bathtub trying to read a magazine without getting it wet and wondering why nobody ever hears much of the Mexican navy. Do they have a navy? Does it stay in port? Or does it simply go about its business in a quiet and workmanlike fashion? Anyway, I was contemplating this mystery when a larger mystery suddenly barged into my consciousness like a large man shouldering kids aside in the Subway "order here" line. I have since dedicated whole minutes to detailed and determined study of this larger mystery, and I can now say why evil walks the earth.

Religious athletes.

That's it. That's the Big Answer.

We'll need a theological structure to base my argument upon, and I've decided to use the theology of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But really, it could be any theology, including the Church of the Sub-Genius (I personally like their guarantee of salvation or triple your money back).

So let's say there's a conference going on that could bring peace to a region that has been plagued by religious, economic and ethnic struggles for generations. The two sides, under the watchful meatball-eye of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the careful nudging of His Noodly Appendage, are getting closer and closer to a breakthrough, the moment where they set aside their differences and vow to live in peace and trade kitten prints.

Then a rodeo cowboy prays for divine assistance to help him ride a bull for eight seconds. The prayer is properly formatted and apparently legitimate, so the Flying Spaghetti Monster has to leave the peace conference for a few seconds to help the cowboy cling to the bull with his butt-cheeks. Nine seconds later he's back, but it's too late. In the nine seconds that His Noodliness was away, a translator mistranslated "Those are nice slacks; where did you get them?" as "Your jockstrap smells wonderful; may I borrow it?" Seconds later, the peace conference dissolves in a general melee and forty-two people are beaten to death with lunch trays and elaborate blown-glass ash trays, and the region is plunged into violent madness for another ten generations.

A man driving a truck over a mountain road blows a tire in a driving rainstorm and shouts "God help me!" as his truck careers toward the precipice on the side of the road. The Flying Spaghetti Monster extends a good-sized Bolus of Noodle (we believe this usage to be accurate) to push the track back onto the road, but NO!

Suddenly a football player is praying to score a touchdown, so it's off to the football game. By the time the football game is in the books and the last cheeky "I'm pointing at you, God" salute is rendered, it's too late to do anything for the truck driver except tell the rescue crews where to start looking for the wreckage.

A dangerous fault on the floor of the Indian Ocean is starting to build up energy. The Flying Spaghetti Monster inserts Noodly Appendages as required to relieve the pressure in a long, slow, unthreatening sigh. But all of a sudden a bicycle racer prays for God to help him win a stage in the Tour de France. "But that'll take all damn day," the Flying Spaghetti Monster complains, but there's no gainsaying a prayer. So it's off to Alpe d'Huez for the Flying Spaghetti Monster, who delivers suitable divine assistance in permitting the bicyclist to pedal his keester off and win the stage before collapsing in sweaty ruin - just like the losers.

In the five hours He is away, the fault on the floor of the Indian Ocean lets go and a quarter of a million people are wiped out by the resulting tsunami.

My theory is that we shouldn't tolerate athletes who pray for victory. First, if you require divine assistance to win, there might be something wrong with your training, or your technique may need improvement, or maybe you just suck. Second, if doping is considered cheating, what do you call the intervention of a divine omnipotent entity?? Third, you keep distracting the relevant entities with your silly requests for victory and in so doing drag their attention away from the real issues and problems. Who knows, was Ted Bundy the consequence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster helping Bart Starr win a football game in the long-ago? (I can almost hear it: "Ted's already born? Oh shit, I forgot to put in his soul!")

But wait, people say - God is omniscient and omnipotent and can perform an infinite number of tasks in an infinitesimally small period of time - even more if He's well rested. But come on, it's one thing to say Someone is omnipotent, and quite another for it to be true all the time. Everyone needs a little slack now and then, after all, a time when one deliberately closes one's eyes and lays omnipotence aside.

What, I wonder, would Cthulhu do with a cowboy who prayed to him for help in riding a bull? I think the word CHAWMP! pretty much sums it up.*

* Yes, I know that Cthulhu is technically an immortal extraterrestrial and not a supernatural deity as such, but throw me a bone...