Last week I took a break from playing Dungeons and Dragons to glance briefly at your column; it was about something, probably related to the headline, which I forgot.

It was about atheism.

Life is a high-stakes game in which even the slightest misstep, like missing having your breaks go out, can cause “total disaster.”

So when it comes to something like denying the existence of God, consider this:

To make Ken happy, let’s consider that Ken is right: There is no God. Well, get this, somewhere in the world there’s gotta be at least 16 people who would, without a second’s hesitation, kill Ken immediately for saying that.

Probably more than 16, since for the majority of human existence, there has been a prevailing belief in at least one god. The Romans had a few dozen gods and they killed Christians for believing in just ONE. Then there are Communists, who have zero gods, killing the crap out of Hindus, who believe in, and just ask Professor Lindquist, thousands of gods, including just one as well.

Then there’s the other guys who all believe in one God, but with a slightly different hat. So if you go and say, “There is no God,” you’re basically making an enemy of everyone, including the Communists who still get pretty uptight about admitting Tienanmen Square was anything more than a rowdy block party.

There, you just pissed off like the whole world. Why would you go and do that? The world is pissed off enough.

Man, you wanna hear problems? There’s this place called Iraq. Man, Iraq is just full of so many problems and if you could solve them, Mr. Ueda, we could tell everyone. You could say, “We’re going to evacuate the whole damn place and use the money we save to abolish the IRS.” I mean, I think you could make a pretty convincing case on a platform of “No More War and No More Taxes.” Even if you lost a kid, as an Iraqi to the American forces, you could say to yourself, “Man, you know, all these bombs and bullets in my neighborhood sure would be a welcome tradeoff for not paying taxes here myself.”

That’s what I want, Ken, I want you to stop taxes. I’d rather hit you than God any day because God is either non-existent, in which case I’d throw my shoulder out, or he would destroy me because God can apparently do that.

Now, look at chiropractic. All through high school, high intensity pressures like running all over the place screaming obscenities put a strain in my knee. That affected my rugby performance, but I had a pretty healthy distaste for chiropractors. Then, in my first semester playing rugby, I had to go to one.

From my history in life I had an acquaintance whose acquaintance was a chiropractor by the name of Tom Garzillo. So on the phone with the acquaintance, it came to mind that asking for this witchdoctor’s services may be in order. “Oh yeah, sure, he’s great. The guy popped my rib into place.”

That’s what real doctors do. “Yeah, he just had me in and asked where it was and pow, in it went.”

So I went in with confidence that at least, if a witchdoctor, Dr. Garzillo seemed to be a pretty convincing one.

During the torture session, someone commented that it sounded like my knee just popped. That was the same bum knee that kept me out of the Galaga finals senior year, and I haven’t had a problem since.

Then there are people who come back from cancer, and they seem to attribute a lot of it to God. That ain’t perfect, but a lot of people have recovered in some wild ways. That’s great news and it’s pretty cool that there’s something like God so nobody has to take credit for it.

You know, “Star Trek” doesn’t exist. It’s a TV show, and some of the stuff in it is impossible. Black hole travel currently appears impossible because you have to travel in a way that negates the effect of gravity, which is the only universal expression of matter.

But a lot of things have happened recently that are impossible, like Chinese democracy and Duke Nukem Forever.

A lot of things are scientifically feasible, like rail guns and a Mars Mission, but they just aren’t around right now. Then there are things that are scientifically feasible and exist, like decent education, but you don’t get them around here.

So perhaps, Ken Ueda, there is a God that is doing many wonderful things, but he just hasn’t gotten around to making your life pleasant yet, and that’s a real shame because this attacking foundational concepts like belief is an attack on curiosity.

God explains that which we cannot comprehend, not in the sense of what lies over the next hill, but why didn’t the universe choose to make earth a barren rock floating through space instead of that little lump of clay and water hovering between Venus and Mars?

Sure, go read up and explain the Doppler effect, but you have to admit life on earth is a pretty unlikely scenario, especially considering how stupid most people are. You’ve got war and hate and liars wasting energy for the rest of us, but luckily, through solid scientific data, good always wins. Therefore, based on the notion that good wins over evil, especially when the good is outnumbered and hopelessly overwhelmed by dark forces, we can expect the concept of God to account for unlikely scenarios like David’s rock hitting Goliath, or, since you hate stories, how 17 plucky Americans snuck through the long grass to silence a machine gun nest on October 18, 1918. Then as they engaged the position, bullets crackled, sending six men to death. Since everyone who outranked him was dead or pinned, a young kid named Alvin York went ahead and started shooting back, firing so fast there wasn’t even time to hide behind his own rifle. York called at them to surrender; he didn’t want to kill any more than he had to.

In classic German style, it wasn’t until First Lieutenant Paul Vollmer emptied his entire magazine on the kid, only to miss like the machine guns, that surrender occurred. The private accepted the officer’s surrender, and the seven surviving Americans escorted 132 prisoners back to American lines.

So if you haven’t gotten to the point where the concept of supernatural can suffice to explain miracles, try using this:

Some events happen in such swift succession with no explanation that by Occam’s razor it makes more sense to accept the existence of God than a series of extreme scientific improbabilities at once. In short, God is the Quantum Leap.

I hope God makes warp speed possible soon so that “Star Trek” can come true.

That is the truth as I see it.

Questions? Comments? Austin Rucker is a senior English major and can be reached for comment at [email protected].