Maybe the intelligent designer is in the details
Completing a transaction in a shop usually involves fumbling with my debit card and the debitcard machine, trying to run the stupid card through the stupid machine the right way. Sometimes the clerk, in the world- weary way of clerks accustomed to dealing with stupid people, will point out the little symbol on the side of the machine that illustrates which way the card is supposed to go. Great. I can never figure out what the stupid little symbol is telling me to do — this way, that way, who knows? A couple of weeks ago, by way of lightening the mood, I said — it came out of the blue, like a revelation — “ If I was God for a day, I’d make it so all the debit cards go through the debit- card machines the same way,” by which I meant they should all face in toward the keypad, or out. I don’t care which. What did occur to me, though, was that this would give the proponents of intelligent design the first-ever actual instance of something in the universe that was designed intelligently, and proof, therefore, there must be an intelligent designer, even if it turned out to be me. The clerk said, “ What else?”
I said, “ What else what?”
“If you were God, that’s all you’d do?” He sounded kind of indignant. “Something totally inconsequential?” He started listing urgent problems that need attending to. Peace on Earth. Cures for cancer, for AIDS. All kinds of things. He turned out to have quite an extensive agenda.
“ Well,” I said, trying to weasel out gracefully. “ I did say that’s what I’d do if I had only one day. If I was God for a second day I might make it so the gas- tankfiller spouts on all cars were on the same side. Think of the stress and ill- feeling that would eliminate at gas stations.” The clerk was so dismissive I slunk out feeling somehow inadequate.
Since then I’ve been trying the God-for-a-day, debit-card-direction schtick on a regular basis, sort of as an experiment, and there are two predominant reactions. The first is the standard reaction of clerks in Toronto, which is to pretend you’re not there at all until, at the very end, when you say, “ Thank you.” And they say, “ No problem.”
Like it actually was a problem, you coming in and interrupting them in the middle of something extremely important like standing around waiting for a customer to come in, but, although it pains them, in this rare instance they are prepared to make an exception and pardon you for it. But seriously, do you have any idea what it’s like for them, having to accept your pathetic business?
Still, they’re big about it.
“ No problem.” The other reaction is more like the ( fairly) muted disgust of that first clerk. God would not waste time on niggling details. Maybe. I don’t know. It got me started thinking that the God who is God in perpetuity, the One who created all this around us in six days, might have been a shade overambitious. Creating us in His image strikes me as just one example of overdoing it since, presumably, His image involved more than just the way we look.
Presumably it also had to do with the way we act and the way we think. And the ways we act and think have caused almost every problem we face in this life short of our susceptibility to viruses and germs. And tell me that wasn’t a fairly significant design flaw.
Inhumanity to other humans, to pretty well everything in fact, appears to be hardwired into us. Cain’s approach to settling disputes wasn’t a one- off. What was the big rush? God had all eternity to get the job done. He could have taken six billion days and it wouldn’t have mattered, except he might not have turned out a human product that is as filled with glitches and flaws as those new game controllers Microsoft hurried to the market with. They overheat and blow their circuits. So do we.
At least with the Microsoft gizmo, you can take it back and get a replacement.
All the enormous things people suggest they’d do if they were God for a day turn out to involve correcting things God got wrong, and this doesn’t speak very well for His reputation as a designer, or as a manufacturer.
Obviously He wasn’t a capitalist, or He’d have gone bankrupt and be on welfare. Slinger’s column appears Tuesday and Thursday.