At his request, today I’m turning the blog over to my alter ego, Mr. Crankypants. While he is not my favorite person in the world, it’s really hard to turn down a request from your alter ego (just ask Dr. Jekyll). Without further ado, then, please welcome my alter ego, Mr. Crankypants….

Humanism. Theism. God doesn’t exist. God does exist. Mr. Crankypants is sooo bored by Unitarian Universalists who have endless debates about whether or not God exists. It is just too early-20th century. Yawn.

I mean, for pete’s sake, thirty years ago already William R. Jones pointed out that the real divide isn’t between theism and religious humanism. It’s between the religious right who blame everything on God, and those of us who actually take some personal responsibility for the world. Why, in his essay “Theism and Humanism: The Chasm Narrows,” Dr. Jones sounds even crankier than Mr. Crankypants:

“For these reasons [says Dr. Jones], I see the coming encounter and dialogue between humanism and theism not as the occasion for sour-tempered vendettas, but as another of those recurring interludes in the history of the race when the search for truth pits conscientious antagonists on the battleground of human thought. The issue is not who wins, but whether the combat enlarges our understanding of ourselves. And as future generations review the coming clash, the verdict may well be that the adversaries were, unknowingly, not-too-distant relatives.”

Although the bit about “conscientious antagonists” is a little too earnest for Mr. Crankypants, and “enlarges our understanding of ourselves” is a little too pious, he does love the phrase “sour-tempered vendettas.”

Not that Mr. Crankypants has anything against sour-tempered vendettas. No indeed! He engages in them on a daily basis. But he is mortally offended by boring sour-tempered vendettas like humanism vs. theism. Let’s focus our energies on fun and new sour-tempered vendettas — perhaps a pitched battle about the way Unitarian Universalists market themselves to the world. What’s that you say? How delightful! Something new to get cranky about!