I Don’t Believe in Your Beanie.

…Metaphor torture for beginners…

There’s an entire mash of concepts and proposals that I don’t believe. People are always saying things without the benefit of proof or substantiation of any kind. Sadly, this does not include the local constabulary when they remind me that the restraining order is still in effect.

This cannot be news to any of you (not the restraining order, certainly…), since at some point everyone is exposed to some kind of premise that is either not proven or something that is unprovable. For example;

Unproven; “I think I’m sexually attracted to the planet Jupiter.”

Unprovable; “The ghost of Bill Bixby keeps shouting at me.”

Now you may very well have a deep, groin-oriented passion for The King of the Planets and I suppose that you could even measure it empirically but under no circumstances will I help you in any way, pervert. Regardless, as ludicrous as it appears on its face, it is possible that you want to nuzzle that big, red dot.

On the other hand, there is no system of measure or calculation in existence that can determine if Bill Bixby even has a ghost, much less that the ghost is shouting at you in humorous exasperation (My Favorite Martian) or in anticipation of radioactive, wall-smashing fury (The Courtship of Eddie’s Father).

Either way…well, let’s just say I’m not going to get you to help my daughter do her homework.

It may not come as a big surprise that I kind of feel the same way about gods, angels, psychics and what the Amazing Grumpy poetically calls “woo-woo”. Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not going to pull a Richard Dawkins and claim that if you’re religious that you have the evolutionary equivalent of scurvy, but I will remain politely skeptical of your beliefs.
At the end of the day though, what I cannot get around in my own clouded mind is that any god (say, your god) is not only no more likely than any other god (say, Hermes) but is in fact no more likely than the shouting ghost of Bill Bixby. Neither is testable, and neither can be either proved or disproved. No real evidence supports the belief that gods of any kind are real (same for Bill’s ghost), nor that any god or divine influence has ever actually done anything that can be proven (again,ditto for the spirit of Bixby). Even if we just stick to the realm of abstract logic, there’s no real imperative to show that your god, or the shrieking Bixby poltergeist, are real.

As a result, in addition to being Sinister, I am also (by definition) a skeptic. That’s me, The Sinister Skeptic (I even wear a cape and tights to fight crime…well, I wear a cape and tights). I feel the need to reiterate that I am not against religion, even though I don’t happen to be a member of the gang myself.

In that regard, I guess my feelings on religion are very much like my feelings on funny hats. I think you should be free to wear the product of the strangest haberdashery that fills your prescription.

I may not be inclined to wear a jester’s cap or a gorilla head with integrated antennae, but I sincerely hope that you will grab whatever headgear moves you and cram it into your eschatological situation.

For the sake of full disclosure, I did once own a funny hat and wear it on a regular basis – I really liked that hat too, it was comfortable and I had nicely broken it in. Alas, the funny hat eventually seemed too ostentatious, and I could no longer justify its enormous ornamentation so I downgraded to something a little more sublime. Eventually, I started questioning the need for funny hats altogether (even those small, Asian hats that only look funny when you get really close) and finally I just took the damn thing off.

While I am not asking you to take your hat off, I am asking you not to use it as a reason to make other people do things. My daughters should not have to wade through your pseudo science on how the Great Haberdasher created English muffins. I understand that some people think that the verdict is out on baking and that the entire school of making farinaceous foods is full of holes - don’t take my word for it, just look at bagels (ha!).

You and your hat-wearing pals should not get a tax break when those of us with nude heads do not. Your hat should not tell you how to vote and your hat should certainly never tell me how to vote. Your hat should not sell magnets and tell me that they cure migraines. Your hat should not lie to me and claim that it can bend spoons or predict the future with the power of The Hat.

Your hat has no place near the altar or the bedroom unless they are your own. Should your hat ever make you hurt anyone, take it off and burn it.

If you insist on doing these things in the name of your hat, I’ll have no choice but to get Bixby’s ghost to yell at you.

And remember, you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.