Towing
Jehovah
by
James Morrow
The angels call upon Captain Anthony Van Horne, who was thought to be responsible for a major oil spill a while back. They charge him with a “crusade” to take God’s dead, two-mile long, naked, body to an icy grave in the Artic. Also the Holy Church was tagged, and they would be sending Father Thomas Ockham to keep the ship under control and find out why God died.
On the way to pick up God the ship came in contact with a ship wreaked woman named Cassie Fowler. Since Father Ockham didn’t want to risk stopping anywhere, Cassie was left on board.
The crew wasn’t informed until they were in sight of the drifting corpse. No one really wanted to believe it, but once it was in tow, everyone had to accept it, even Cassie, who was a committed atheist and feminist. She believed that if ever the knowledge of God were to spread, women would lose their standing in anything. So she snuck a telegraph to her boyfriend Oliver in New York, asking him and their group of atheists to find a way to destroy the corpse of their Creator.
The “Idea of the Corpse” finally got to the crew when the ship ran up on an uncharted island and the Corpse broke loose. The “Idea of the Corpse” as Father Ockham explained to Anthony, was that there is no God anymore, therefore no heaven, and no one to watch or stop anything they do. So the crew abandoned ship with most of the food and only a few were left onboard. Father Tom went to find and bring back them back. When he found the camp he found murder, gluttony, and lots of sex. He reminded them all of Kant’s “The moral law within me, and the starry skies above me.” and left, for them to come to grasps with it.
Three days later the crew awoke to their awful stench and hunger, for they had eaten all their food. They were ashamed of the way they acted and set back towards the ship to see if the Captain would take them back and give them food.
Food was also a problem for those on the ship, and suddenly God’s corpse resurfaced. Their problem was solved. So, the people on the ship regained their strength with meat from the Holy Father, which tasted surprisingly like Big Macs. The ship had a wonderful cook who discovered how to make the meat into many different things, and soon the Captain was throwing the starving crew on the beach below cheeseburgers and fish fillet sandwiches (tasting perfectly like MacDonald’s).
The ship was dug out and they set out again. The big guys in Rome told Father Tom to turn around and wait for another ship bring gallons of stuff to anoint God with and set him a light. Anthony and Father Tom continued towards the grave made in the ice by the dying angels.
Close to the site, the corpse was hit by torpedoes and missiles from Pembroke and Flume’s World War II Reenactment Society, who had been hired by Oliver, since the corpse wouldn’t sink they Pembroke and Flume decided to sink the ship and have it drag the corpse under. Oliver was shocked, because Cassie was still on the ship, and Cassie was shocked because she was getting struck by missiles, when she told Anthony that it was her fault that they were here, it crusher him because he and Cassie were a bit more than good chums. The other ship from Rome showed up and started to shoot down the planes, and all were taken onboard.
God was placed to rest, Cassie broke up with Oliver, and Father Tom came to a conclusion. He thought that God had committed suicide because he wanted the world he had created to get over him and move on, because the idea f him was keeping the human race from progressing farther. The Pope rejected the idea, but Father Tom said that they should go back and get God and put him on tour, thinking that that was what he wanted. It was voted down because they thought that the idea would shatter people. So in the end they published a book about it, and let people believe it or not.
God
is dead. That’s the main issue in this book, the fact that God can die and
has; pretty hard to grasp since most people believe God to be a being of pure
spirit. Could God actually be of flesh and blood, like He made His creations?
And what about His bellybutton, how could God have a bellybutton if He was the
prime creator?
Being an atheist, it is pure fantasy for me, but being not sure at all about the world if I was to see a two mile corpse of God I would believe it. I am not a hard core atheist who thinks anyone who believes in God is not right in the head or horribly mislead, but there are quite a few of those in the world. If it were found that God really does (or did) exist, how far would people go to destroy Him? It is only human nature to want to protect your ideas, seeing that we are thinking animals capable of reason. To admit that you are wrong sometimes takes guts, even when it’s just a little thing like a math problem, so how would people react when they find out that what they believe in and trust with their lives isn’t true?
The blow that God is dead would affect people who believe in God as well, because I think that they would start to question things: such as the question of the bellybutton, or how to adapt to God as being just like a normal sixty year old man. The commandments wouldn’t be of use anymore; prayers wouldn’t be of use, either. Uprisings will occur: “The Idea of the Corpse”, in which people will think that there is no God anymore so that there is no one watching us, no one the condemn us. People dropping all their responsibilities, drinking, murder and sex in the streets would be a common thing, unless Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of the moral law within all of humans kicks in.
If no one but the few who were to bring God to his icy grave knew about God’s death, what then? People would continue believing in God and their prayers would be in vain. Would that be good or bad? The down side, of course means that people are believing in a dead faith, the up side would stop all that would surely happen after it was brought to the light.
God committed suicide. Why? To help the human race, of course. According to the priest in the book God thought it would be better for us if He were to die, leave His corpse in full view of anyone who might happen upon it, and let us leave the idea of God and move on to new things.
Think of the world fifty years after God died. If it was reveled to the world, I supposed about the first ten years will be war and crime. Then things will settle down, and low and behold the world would have taken a strange turn. I think that everyone will be more open to scientific discoveries and people (hopefully) will devote more time to the philosophic search of the human nature and of nature itself. I am not one to say that I am sure that it will be a better world, even though God did in the book (committing suicide to help us progress) there might be a nuclear war and the world might be wiped out. If that happens then new life will come from the remains, if scientific theories are correct in the evolution of creatures. Or maybe nothing will happen, if God’s death means an end to all life when the world ends. Or a new God will appear, maybe God really did have a mother and a father, both gods, and that would be wiping the slate clean of monotheism.
This book leaves open lots of “what if”‘s, the kind that are needed to start thinking about God. In my opinion the more your brain hurts with thinking, the closer you are to true philosophical insight, because all of a sudden there will be a calm spot and the truth as you see it will smack you upside the head.
At the end when Captain Van Horne (senior) dies, a sailor says to Anthony “He was a great man.” And Anthony replies, “No, he wasn’t a great man. He was a great sailor, but he wasn’t a great man.” “The world needs both, I suppose.” “The world needs both.” It seemed like they were talking about God, he wasn’t a great man, he was ruthless at times; mean and one sided. He was a great creator, though.