Thanks to his speech therapist, Gareth has been using a keyboard/touchpad system to type out his thoughts for the past couple weeks.  Usually, it’s pretty typical stuff.  “Play videogames” or “when is dad coming home” or “go bookstore”.

But not today.  Today, Gareth asked something I’m sure he’s wondered about for a very long time.  He asked why he doesn’t eat with his mouth.

Brandy sat down with him and explained why it is that he doesn’t eat like everybody else.  I don’t know whether or not he was satisfied with the answer or whether or not being different has caused him any heartache, but it’s so incredibly amazing that he can finally ask us these questions.

I’m sure we have many more topics to cover - why he can’t walk, why he needs suction, why he can’t talk like us.  And we’ll answer every one of them openly and honestly.

And while it won’t always be easy to talk about these things, we at least now have the opportunity to do so.  We have about 5 years of talking to catch up on.

Pressed for time yesterday, I acquired dinner via McDonald’s drive-thru and headed home.  Once there, I sat upon the couch, lounging too far back for civilized man, and consumed a double quarter pounder with cheese.

Inspecting the packaging, I noticed that this little sandwich packed 740 calories all on its own.

This got me to thinking about obesity in general, which led me to ruminate on why it is our bodies are so unable to properly handle the excess material we now consume.  And that led me to state: God does not exist.

Here’s how I got there!

It is quite clear that the human body is not able to recognize when there is no scarcity of food resources and is especially unable to trigger greater amounts of caloric evacuation when the body continues to ingest food while there is no exertion generally involved.

My thought is that this is because the body has not yet reprogrammed itself for our current fat, happy state.  It has been evolved over millennia with the idea that the consumption of food follows scarcity and exertion, that the body has to engage in physical work in order to acquire food.  It is also geared towards the idea that there might be a lengthy period of time between meals depending on whether or not food acquisition is successful.

So how does this negate the existence of God?  Pretty easily, actually.  If God had created us so perfectly, then wouldn’t our bodies have started off with the ability to adjust caloric retention in the face of increased consumption?  Adam & Eve were, after all, “born” in paradise where they wanted for nothing.  Adam didn’t have to lift a finger to get some grub.  Heck, the animals walked right up to him and, apparently, apples were plentiful.  But of course, he liked them apples and got kicked out at which point God made him horrifically mortal.

So for the time they were in paradise, Adam & Eve, supposedly, were not fatties even though hunting and gathering wasn’t really a concern shared in Genesis.  Besides, a perfect creator is perfectly capable of building a creature that doesn’t just suddenly get chubby every time he sits around too long.  Unless he’s looking to punish that creature for being a schlub.

Anyway, out of paradise, stuff changes.  Eve has to have labor pains and everybody goes mortal.  But only sort of mortal.  They still get to live hundreds of years, so God has essentially changed the DNA of his creations in order to rough them up a bit.  And then he does it again when he decides even that hundreds of years is way too much.

But, so far, no mention of letting them get fat.  If obesity isn’t a punishment from God, then why would he have created us in a way that would lend itself to our eventual fattening?  Does God get fat?  I mean, really, he just sits around all day listening to people, probably eating Kentucky Fried (mashed potatoes and gravy are as close to the Rapture as one can get).

And I just kept thinking about this.  The omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being must have purposefully created us to get fat!  What a jerk!  Somewhere in his grand design, he said, “Man, if these cats ever get lazy, I’m gonna make it so they just balloon up and spawn a plus size clothing market.”  Otherwise, why not engineer us so that we always stay thin?

After the rush of sodium and grease worked its way through my system, I stopped thinking about this topic, but when faced with the choice between the idea that our bodies have not yet evolved to take into account an abundant food supply and a sedentary existence versus the idea that an invisible guy made us to get fat in order to punish our success in being lazy, I decided to go with the one that at least seemed plausible.

And since I ruled out the involvement of a deity, well, I just threw the baby out with the bathwater and concluded (as I always do) that it’s easier to believe he doesn’t exist at all than to believe he’s a putz.