In the beginning

In the beginning God created man and woman. He also created the world, a perfect world, on which mankind could thrive, and a universe to accommodate the world, a complex universe, bound together by complex physics, a universe of unimaginable size and beauty. It took him ages, though he was always modest about the achievement – ‘What, creating the universe, oh, that only took a week or so’.

Of course, the world was jam-packed with perils, physical and moral dangers that mankind would need to avoid, and God fully intended to talk through these with his creations, but somehow he allowed himself to become distracted and never quite got round to it. Mankind had to find out the hard way.

The capacity for war, that was one of the things he’d meant to warn mankind about. Whilst many animals are capable of killing, the human brain, superior, dexterous, practical, was capable of devising weapons that could kill on a grand scale – the pointy stick, the sling, the flint arrow-head, the spear, the metal sword, and, eventually, weapons that would make pointy sticks obsolete: guns, then repeat-fire weapons, the gattling gun, the AK47, then bombs, tanks, planes, chemical weapons – clouds of mustard gas that could cloak entire battalions in a fog of choking death, biochemical weapons – new diseases that could wipe out entire civilisations, landmines, that would leave large areas untouchable for decades after the long-forgotten war is over, and nuclear weapons, weapons powerful enough to wipe out the world, and eventually black-hole bombs capable of swallowing the entire universe.

In spite of war, in spite of the numerous hazards of the world, mankind thrived, the species grew and grew, expanded from continent to continent. Each new tribe would create their own language, even their own god, soon the one true creator would be lost and forgotten amongst a vast collection of competing gods and religions. Instead people would worship trees, thunderstorms, crocodiles, spoons, there came even religions that worshipped not god himself, but god’s relatives, his son, his brother Pete who, it was said, was as powerful as god but hadn’t done anything stupid like create the universe, even God’s aunt Mabel was worshipped in some places in societies where aunt Mabels were held in particular esteem.

Soon there wasn’t enough food to feed the vast population, but mankind found a solution to that: vast forests were cut down to make way for crops, oil was found in the earth and this was used to create chemical fertilisers, which enabled more food to be grown, without a care that this short-term mass-production would destroy the soil, leaving the soil barren, infertile, a useless husk.

The oil was used for everything, as was gas, coal, even ancient dinosaur dung was used for fuel, and man no longer relied on his legs to get places, he drove, he went by train, boat, sometimes he even flew. The world became a smaller place, where you could get from Basingstoke to New York in a day, which made god question why anyone remained in Basingstoke, when the rest of the world was there, but by this time nothing made sense to god, mankind had long since passed beyond his understanding.

The oil was sucked out of the Earth, like greedy infants sucking every last drop of milkshake through their straws, in its place humans dumped the by-products everywhere, the surface of the Earth became one huge rubbish tip. The animals were wiped out, millions of species, leaving only the few that were mass-bred for food.  And as the oil burned it left a cloud round the earth, wrapping the earth warm like a winter-wooly, causing the ice to melt, the seas to flood, the green, pleasant lands to be parched dry and pale.

Through all this God stayed silent. Maybe, I shall dare to say it, the act of creation was too much for him. Maybe he too felt sucked-dry, and lay exhausted, in post-creation depression, like post-natal depression but on a near-infinite scale. Maybe he sat there in heaven, unable to attend his bawling infant race, eyes goggle-fixed on daytime TV, his divine hand reaching, not out to give solace to a feeble, mortal race, but to reach for a big bag of Quavers to get him through the latest repeat of Dallas. Maybe, for who can ever know the mind of the Divine, maybe he retired the very second after he completed his greatest work, maybe he simply gave up, all-consumed by the imperfections in a supposedly-perfect universe.

Whatever the truth is, his desire not to attend to the world was destined to fail. For mankind could do anything, eventually, if it put its mind to it. Atoms were there to be split, not one quantum particle was allowed the solace of non-discovery, scientists literally flung the contents of the world around at the speed of light in its search for answers, and, on finding none in the empty dust of our component parts, sought out the stars, and when the stars proved empty, eventually they sought out god, and in no time at all, less than a handful of billenniums in fact, mankind was there, at the gates of heaven, knocking on god’s door.

“Hello,” mankind’s spokesman said, “it’s us. Humanity. We’d like some answers please.”

And God was forced to rise from his inertia, to end his torpor, to turn to mankind, to rise from his divine throne, to answer the door.

Though he didn’t even say hello. He just stood there and got bombarded by questions.

“Why did you create us?”

“What would you have us do next?”

“What does the good life comprise of?”

“Is it really morally wrong to eat bacon, or was that just a malicious rumour spread by pigs?”   

Exactly what went through God’s mind we shall never know. But what is clear is that he had no intention of answering mankind’s questions, that he felt intruded upon to have mankind there, knocking on his door, asking silly questions.  

And so God finally got round to what he had doubtless been putting off for years, for millennia, for billennia. He flicked his hand, a wave of divine magic, and with that gesture the world came to an end, mankind’s eternal quest for something, only they were never quite sure what, came to one final, total conclusion, and god was left in peace, to do whatever it is gods do.

And that, my poor mortal child, is the end.