Maybe it's time for a thought experiment again. There are only a couple of days left in the year, and I'd like to make a point before I start of on the other side of this coin. This particular experiment may strike some as odd at this particular time of year, but in reality there is no better time to try it.
Let's assume - just for the sake of argument and the experiment - this troublemaker Jesus was never born. Try to imagine (for the non-believers among you, it may be easier, but you're carrying more cultural baggage that you might like to admit) it is all "just a story" (whatever that means). Put slightly differently, and in order to get everyone on the same sheet of music, all those who believe in Gd should simply imagine that Nietzsche was right and He's dead. No Gd, no Jesus (and of course, no holiday, no time off, no holiday meal ... oh, right, just like most of the poor people in the world) ... what happens? What's next?
Part of what you need to imagine is that you have no Bible, no Koran, no real scriptures anymore (for they were never written). OK, one possible scenario could be that Gd died after He "published" His Book ... but that makes things too easy. What have we got to build upon? How do we organize ourselves and our society? How do we figure out what's right and wrong? How do we decide who's in charge? Is anyone in charge, or are we back to our survival-of-the-fittest routine? This isn't easy, I know, but it is necessary. If we no longer have the "Gd excuse" or the "Jesus excuse", just what do we have? Who's responsible? To whom do we appeal? How do we determine who has authority?
Do we simply descend into chaos? Are we simply left with a dog-eat-dog world? Does some misunderstood Darwinian fittest-survival mechanism kick in? I don't know, but I do know that it is worth the effort to think long and hard about it.
So, give it some thought.
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