I suspected as much

(click to enlarge)

I think Berke is on to something.

Last month I attended a debate between Christopher Hitchens, who was defending the position of his book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and Marvin Olasky, who was defending Christianity. One of Hitchens' main points was that God -- who doesn't exist, mind you -- is the ultimate totalitarian, because He is omniscient. There could be no privacy, because God would know everything you did and every thought you had at every moment. Richard Dawkins makes a similar argument, I think, in The God Delusion (I seem to have forgotten almost everything I read in that book).

Nevermind that, if God exists, He doesn't seem to do much with this information. Is He whispering into Hillary Clinton's ear that Fred Thompson bites his toenails while watching Desperate Housewives in the nude? Is He threatening to go public with a picture of Hillary's wrinkly backside? It's hard to know for sure, but I'd guess no. So what difference does it make if Something exists that knows all and sees all?

What came immediately to mind when Hitchens made his argument was, what does he have to hide? I suspect that only guilty consciences fret over privacy (sez the woman who posts under a pseudonym). But to chuck the idea of God and ultimate meaning and eternal life, because you don't want anyone to know that you pee in the shower or have embarrassing thoughts... it's so petty.