chocolate bunnies) explains that sin comes along. (Writing “sin” and thinking about Raquel Welch’s breasts as hefty solid chocolate bunnies is bringing a nice little solidity to the mighty fortress that is my jeans.) Mr. Christ-a-gician doesn’t explain why an all-powerful god doesn’t just stop sin. He doesn’t want to open that can of bees. I use the metaphor “a can of bees” instead of the “can of worms” cliche because, as Goudeau has pointed out, opening a can of worms is no big deal. Can of worms—so what? But opening a can of bees—that’s an unpleasant emergency. Explaining why god gave us sin only to hate us for it is a fucking can of angry wasps in an enclosed space. After not explaining why there’s sin at all, magic boy brings out some brown liquid and pours that into the clear, pure water, and the whole glass of water turns yucky brown. The faithful conjurer says that when sin is added to the water, the water becomes “gross.” He might use the word “gross” to show that he’s down with the youngsters. “Gross” is like gangsta slang in Branson, Missouri.
Now it’s time for some clever patter about how any amount of being good can’t get you into heaven. This is a can of mutant immortal white-faced hornets that gospel magicians seem thrilled to open with impunity in the claustrophobic dirty-old airtight phone booth that is their gospel magic act. It’s another part of Christianity that is so fucked and twisted. You need some line like “Living a good life and doing good deeds won’t get you into heaven.” That’s a little more of the disappointing hollow chocolate rabbit full of red harvester ants that is Christianity. The Bible Blackstone explains that, nope, no amount of being good to people will get rid of the gross brown sin. The saved conjurer pours more clear sinless water into the dirty sinful Raquel Welch/Ringo Starr-in-the-trailer- between-takes water and it stays sinful. God doesn’t give a fuck how good you are, you are fucked without fucking Jesus. (That’s not the actual patter, but that’s the idea. The real patter is probably more like “God doesn’t care how good you are, he still thinks your sins are gross.”)
Then the pious prestidigitator pulls out a model cross about the size of Ron Jeremy’s dick and stirs up the gross sinful water in the glass that represents that glass of life that holds our dirty water, and it clears up miraculously to pure, clean, clear, no-vagina water again. That’s the message of salvation. The all-powerful god makes us sinful and we can’t get un-sinful no matter what, unless we pray to that all-powerful god to do what he could have done for us in the Garden of Eden without all this genocide, slavery, torture, and hate. For a guy like me, who loves overextended nonsense metaphors, this is almost as good as Raquel Welch in
To be a good magic trick and make the theological point, the Wizard of the Word needs to drink the newly pure water, but he doesn’t—the trick has to end with the cross-stirring. The evangelical enchanter won’t drink the clear pure water because it’s not clear pure water, it’s a chemical cocktail that god can’t make pure any more than god can magically take our trespasses away. The presentation explains divine truth with what is admittedly a magic trick, but it’s an overextended strained metaphor that isn’t even true. If god’s love were real, would you have to buy a magic trick to show it? They’re justifying a fairy tale with a lie, and that’s why I love gospel magic. At a very deep level it really is true. They are explaining the way the universe works with an example of their god that doesn’t work, just like the real world. There isn’t even skill involved. There’s no sleight of hand. No magic skills whatsoever are required. You just buy the chemicals, mix them up, and the trick works, except for no punch line—you can’t drink the supposedly pure water. If I set it up for you right now and put your patter on a teleprompter, you could do the whole trick cold. You don’t need to practice or rehearse, just don’t drink the “water” at the end.
There is no good antonym for “gospel,” but let’s imagine this trick being done by a magician who embraces the real world and science and has the same low level of skill as a cheesy gospel magician: Me. How would I do this trick?
Here’s my presentation for the Atheist Magic version of the “Gross Water as Sin Trick.”
“You see this pure water I’ve been drinking? This is tap water that I put in a sports bottle to save some plastic, some carbon, and some coin. If we left this water to god, it would be full of parasites and disease. Without filtering, and a touch of man-made chemicals, I’d be drinking dysentery or worse. God seems to want water to either be non-existent or deadly. This water is pure not because of god, but in spite of god.
“This chemical I’m adding to the water is iodine. Iodine is processed by humans for many nutritional and medical applications. Trace amounts of iodine are needed for human health, so humans have added it to table salt in most of the world, but where humans haven’t added it, god has chosen to leave about two billion people without it. This gives rise to hypothyroidism, the symptoms of which include but are not limited to: extreme fatigue, goiters, and mental retardation. If there was a god, couldn’t he give some iodine to those two billion?
“I’m also sneaking in a little starch to make the water look really gross.” (Atheists like komedy and use the word “gross” too.) “Iodine is an indicator for starch, so a little spray starch snuck in the water binds the iodine and really gives a strong rich color. Hmmm, if I snuck this starch into the clear water with a bit less iodine, I could make what looked just like water turn into something that looked just like wine. Never mind, no one would ever fall for a shitty trick like that. I’ve got enough starch and iodine in the water so that it’s not a pleasing purple like wine. I’ve put in enough of this cocktail that it’s kind of gross, and putting in more water doesn’t dilute it enough to change the color much.
“Now, I have this model of a torture and execution device that was used in ancient times. Yes, we still have capital punishment in this country and that’s unforgivable. The USA is very religious, so of course we still have capital punishment. Fortunately, there is a movement to get rid of capital punishment, but god is doing nothing to help eliminate this torture and murder—like the clean water and iodine, the good for the people is done by the people.
“This cross has ascorbic acid on it, or stuck to the back, or inside it, or something, I don’t know, I just bought this stupid trick at a magic shop. Ascorbic acid is vitamin C, necessary to human health and again withheld by god. God is fine with people having scurvy. If this citrus cross is used to represent Christianity, when it gets put into the sinful water, it makes the water look clear. Water has a neutral pH, and iodine is either neutral or slightly basic. The starch is also basic, so when it reacts with the iodine to produce the purple color, the resulting solution is also weakly basic. The ascorbic acid, as the name would lead you to believe, is acidic, so adding it to the solution moves the pH into the acidic range, which breaks down the starch, releasing the iodine back into the solution and ‘shutting off’ the purple color. It looks like clear pure water but it isn’t. Christianity allows Christians to feel forgiven for the horrible things they’ve done, but if I were to drink this cross-purified water, it’s actually still full of iodine and starch. Although the cross has made it look pure, it’s still poison. You can’t pray away the damage your malevolence, mistakes, and thoughtlessness have brought. The forgiving change brought about by Christianity is merely cosmetic—the sin, the hate, the poison are still there.
“Iodine is necessary for humans but this would be overdoing it. This trick requires a lot of iodine to get my water gross enough. One gulp of the not-gross-looking-but-still-toxic water probably wouldn’t kill you. It would taste like rancid sin (think Eve’s privates), but it probably wouldn’t kill you. If you get booked in a lot of church basements doing your gospel act, you’d probably eventually hit over a gram of iodine and that could lead to burning in the mouth, throat and stomach, and/or abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, weak pulse, and coma.
“Seems like a small price to pay to demonstrate god’s love, so I guess I’ll drink it down.”
That’s the version I would perform, and I would drink all the water at the end. Why not? I’m not the best sleight-of-hand artist, but I’m a passable stage magician. On a big body turn, I could certainly switch the phony, sickening Jesus-cleaned water glass for a glass of real, clean American tap water that was hanging under my suit jacket with a rubber ball in the top to keep it from spilling. A glass switch isn’t that hard.
Happy Easter.
May all your chocolate rabbits be solid.
HITCH AND TOMMY
