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I don?t believe in god. I don?t even capitalize the g. And, what?s more, I openly discuss how and why I don?t believe in god! This isn?t how I was brought up, my mother tried to make a ?good?, god-fearing child out of me by bringing me to church every now and then, which wasn?t entirely god-awful, but didn?t exactly spark a holy fire in my soul. You see; I came to the decision on my own, with a little help from a clumsy chipmunk.

Prior to that fateful summer day I had been fairly well-educated in the ways of science, evolution, etc. but this had no impact on my revelation. I was enjoying a particularly nice day on a picnic table near my house and watching an unusually large number of chipmunks scurry about in the tree branches some fifty feet above my head. They were scurrying from branch to branch in their usual way, when one exceptionally daring chipmunk caught my eye. This little chipmunk was squatting on it?s haunches on a branch and preparing to attempt a leap to another branch about three feet away. Having never seen a chipmunk attempt such a feat I was certainly curious. The chipmunk eventually leapt from the branch it stood on, missed the branch it was aiming for and fell to its death a few feet from me.

None of the other chipmunks noticed, or if they did none of them stopped to gasp in horror, or pay their respects to their fallen clumsy friend, or even bring him to the local morgue to await his funeral service. Would this chipmunk go to chipmunk heaven? I wondered. Why would a chipmunk believe in heaven? If a chipmunk pays any mind to death at all, it probably sees death as nothing more than the beneficial loss of a competitor for food resources. Chipmunks don?t rely on their minds to survive, humans do. Humans made it to the top of the food chain by using their brains, by asking lots of questions. Unfortunately, along the way, a few humans asked some questions that neither they nor other humans could answer in a logical, scientific, or factual way.

Instinctually, humans as a species must answer all of the major questions that they ask of themselves and the universe. Needless to say, these unanswerable questions that arose were quite a thorn in many humans? sides. Some humans simply satisfied their instinctual craving for answers by reassuring themselves that the questions would be answered eventually by someone in at some later date. Others, however, simply could not ignore the discomfort this thorn in their side was causing them?they wanted answers now. So, these people invented an unanswerable question-thorn in side pain killer which they dubbed ?G-O-D?. This pain killer was said to be in charge of absolutely everything there was to be in charge of (it made everything too). In addition, while the pain killer made all the other creatures in the universe, humans were its favorite creatures of all. The pain killer worked like this: it told people that since it was in control of everything, the unanswerable questions could be answered by simply recognizing that the pain killer made things that way. The fact that the pain killer liked humans best made them feel special as well. The pain killer even invented places for humans to go after they died. It did no such things for chipmunks. The chipmunk form of the painkiller hadn?t even been invented yet, and for a strange reason too. The chipmunks didn?t need a pain killer. The chipmunks had no thorn in their sides, because they had no unanswerable questions, only ?where can I find a nut?? Here?s the kicker: the pain killer was a placebo.

Some people are allergic to the pain killer. Some people depend on it; some (like Christian Scientists, ironically) are even addicted. But some, like myself, have found that our bodies can produce a pain killer that is every bit as satisfying, that works as a stimulant instead of a repressant. The relief comes from the very place that causes the pain.