Man is a religious animal, much more so than, say the iguana, or even the praying mantis, which likes to make a show of it. It seems to be his nature to grapple with moral questions, usually within forty-eight hours of the incident. The questions seem fundamental, like the one everybody else keeps asking you--why are you here? Do right and wrong apply to me? Where are the Jewish televangelists offering careers in law, medicine, and accounting if you just call this number? Man asks the questions and religion supplies totally implausible answers, which, the way things are going, are probably true. This, then, is faith.

This is not to say that much of what appears in the Bible does not reflect cultural biases. The notion that woman was made from man's rib, for example. I've made some good ribs, but never one that started telling me about herself and what I could do to help. That would win the cookout, easy. Women get a bum rap for sin as well, simply because they are the one sex to whom a reptile would open up. Adam had been eating the apples all along (hence, Adam's apple) and knew that they were naked the whole time. He liked it. They probably were shown the door to Paradise because Adam was keeping another rib on the side. It's tough to stop with just one.

Philosophers have argued the existence of God for eons. One of these days He may be forced to break up the argument in a dramatic fashion--involving, say, lava, vermin, and possibly boils for good measure, just like the good old days. To prove the existence of God it would be necessary to build a God trap, but, being all-knowing, He's not about to step into it. Some point out that the Divine in "the Divine Miss M." had to come from somewhere, but the simple truth is faith has to be taken on faith, like a cosmic "Because I Said So." Still, there are answers to many questions if you just don't think too hard about them:

Why do we have to die? Why do leaves have to die? Why do we have to rake them up when they do? Why is there fifteen-minute parking downtown when it takes that long to cross the street? Simply stated, God has the inventory. He's got to move it, and the lot is only so big. Becides, what is it about you that you think should go on forever?

Why doesn't God intervene anymore? He doesn't want Charlton Heston to work. Besides, He's got a lot more kettles whistling than just ours--creating universes where opposites repel, for instance, and where plaids and stripes go together. Maybe he's working on a Bigger Bang (for the Buck) theory, or something so large even He can't lift it. Could be He's just trying to figure out where he put his gravitational lenses so He can see what's going on.

If there's a Supreme Being, how can there be evil? That's like saying if there's a refrigerator, how can there be dirty fingerprints on it? Somebody put them there, and ate the rest of the tuna fish, too. This is not a theological problem; this is your problem.

Is there an afterlife? This isn't hard enough, you want to live without public transportation or ice water? The sad truth is, there is no afterlife and there's not much happening at the moment, either. Maybe he who has the most two-for-one dinner coupons at the end does win after all. (I would check expiration dates.)