Pretty Much Turtles All the Way Down

I was just going to blow past the whole leaked Tom Cruise Scientology tape thing. Defamer did what Defamer does, we're moving on ... until I saw Ezra Klein, officially my favorite health care policy wonk, take a shot at it.

You know, I'm as Captain Mock-y as the next guy, but we're out of line here. All religions sound crazy if you don't believe in them.

I was raised Catholic, so for half my life I fervently believed God both had a Son through virgin birth and also WAS that Son (the Trinity's tricksy). Said God performed miracles -- including demon-fighting -- until some Italians nailed him to a tree, an act we remember weekly by consuming his Flesh. Not metaphorically, but thanks to a spiritual alchemy, literally his flesh. My Jewish friends are often hazy on transubstantiation, and react with horror when I explain the full ramifications.

Of course, Jews believe the Eternal and Almighty creator of the vast and infinite universe had a hangup about pigs and tattoos, and they also believe that certain rocks in the MidEast are so invested with Magical God Juice that they should fight and die over these rocks, rather than living comfortably in their natural habitat. By which, of course, I mean Manhattan's Upper West Side or the Beverly/Fairfax area.

Rinse and repeat for all belief systems.

I'm never going to do better than the South Park Mormon Episode -- which is possibly one of the sharpest bits of writing ever done about religion on television. But it's all about wrapping your head around the infinite. Once you decide to step away from a head-space predicate on physical evidence, whatever narrative you buy into in order to stave off the Madness in the Dark is pretty much as valid as the next. Gotta let it slide.

Except, of course, for Young Earth Creationists. Religion's meant to fill in the gaps of the Unknowable, not contradict the Knowable But Makes You Uncomfortable. There's a fossil record, assholes. Join the Enlightenment.