Unanswered Questions

Hello Father.

 

It’s me again. I know that you’ve told me that whenever I am filled with doubt, I need only turn to the Bible and there I will find my answers, instead of calling your home phone every night. But I’ve really been grappling with some questions for as long as I can remember, and I was hoping that you would be able to give me some guidance.

 

Here’s what’s been on my mind:

 

• When a bassist drops his instrument to the ground, does he chuckle and make a joke about dropping the bass, or would the seriousness of the economic consequences of the act prevent him from perceiving humor in the situation? Does the answer change if the bassist is rich? How rich does he need to be for this situation to become humorous rather than tragic? Isn’t it bizarre that those two possibilities exist on the same continuum?

 

• Is the concept of having a good hair day enough to necessitate the existence of the Other? Does there exist an a priori concept of “good hair day” that would be impossible under an existentially solipsistic philosophical point of view?

 

• If someone opens the door for me, but it’s a door to somewhere I don’t want to go, are they being polite or rude?

 

• It has been said that there exists a Snapple cap which states: 85% of Snapple Facts are untrue. Have we ever decided whether this fact is reliable? Do we need to start considering the implications of this Snapple Fact’s potential accuracy? What if this one is the only inaccurate one?

 

• Do actions always speak louder than words? At what decibel level can words drown out actions? It would seem to me that words, when shouted at approximately 100 decibels, would probably do the trick.

 

• It’s been hypothesized that all dogs go to heaven. Is there any way for us to be sure about this? What about really bad dogs who fight other dogs and steal their sticks without ever repenting or seeking forgiveness? Or inherently decent dogs who accidentally hurt really good dogs and forget to go to confession? What if they haven’t been baptized? Are any of them going to hell? Is it okay to make jokes with “dog bones” as the punchline if they’re jokes about the skeletons of dead dogs?

 

• How do we know that we’re not all supposed to be on drugs in order to transcend the meaninglessness of our existence? What if that drug is chicken liver, which an enormous percentage of the population will never get the chance to try because it is inherently disgusting to them? Or what if it’s toothpaste, and no one ever finds out because we’ve been taught ever since the age of 2 to never ever swallow our toothpaste, no matter how good it tastes?

 

• How do we know that there are actually stars and not that the sky is just a giant blue blanket covering an immense, glowing, infinite sun, but the reason that we think we see stars is that God poked holes in the blanket? Or maybe giant moths ate holes in it? And maybe those moths are God?

-LH ’16