Chapter 1
1987
My parents believe everything that happens is God’s will. When my father was born with bad lungs, it was God’s will. When my mother had four miscarriages, birthed six girls, and no boys, it was God’s will. When my sister was struck and killed by a car while walking home from school, it was God’s will. So you can imagine how irritating it would be for my devout parents that their youngest daughter wasn’t particularly interested in getting on God’s good side.
While all of the other little ducklings fell in line, obediently trailing Momma down the center aisle and humbly kneeling in the middle pew, the last of us bristled under the covers refusing to get out of bed. At the wise age of six I was already questioning “If God wants me to go to church, why don’t I want to go?” or “Why does God plan mass so early in the morning?”
Since I was only four when God killed my sister Frances, sending the rest of my family into a tailspin, it didn’t occur to me to be particularly angry with Him. I have no memories of that sister. However, as the years passed and my parents become fearful tyrants, barely letting any of us out of their sight, I became increasingly pissed off at Him. I believed in God back then, and if everything else was God’s will, than it followed that it was God’s will for my parents to become fearful tyrants. See the logic?
Sophomore year of college during an Introduction to Philosophy class Dr. Edgar Martin introduced me to a God alternative: a theory called Hard Determinism. According to this theory, God has nothing to do with it. I listened and watched as Dr. Martin explained the theory to the class. It was mid-semester and I hadn’t seen him get this excited about any other theories he’d presented. He obviously believed this one was the theory of all theories. Dr. Martin was an atheist! The first one I’d ever met.
The theory of Hard Determinism states:
All events in the material world are governed by cause and effect.
All human actions are events.
Therefore, all human actions are caused. (NOT BY GOD!)
This explained an awful lot. For example, instead of God killing my sister, I could trace a series of events that caused her death. Let me do that for you now. The clock struck 3:10 p.m. causing the nuns to dismiss the children. Two third grade girls, my sister and her friend, walked out of school down the street toward the crossing guard. The rule: if you live on the other side of the street, cross with the guard or don’t cross at all. The main street through town is a busy thoroughfare with the Catholic school on one side and my house, several blocks down on the other. On that particular day, the two girls were involved in an animated conversation about one Mathew Stahl whose antics earlier that day caused Sister Anne Mary to grab him by the shirt collar and toss him into the coat closet. The girls’ dialogue caused my sister Francis to continue walking with her friend on the wrong side of the street. Realizing she’d be in trouble for disregarding the crossing rule, Frances decided to cross the street two blocks before arriving at our house. Waving goodbye to her friend, head turned away from the street, Frances stepped into the path of a 1967 Chevy. My sister didn’t see the car because she was looking the other way. God didn’t kill her at all. She simply walked in front of a Chevy causing the Chevy to kill her. Since the lady driving the Chevy was controlling the car, it follows the lady killed my sister, not God.
It was bound to happen. Not because it was God’s will. According to the theory of hard determinism, it was determined to happen simply through a series of material causes.
I wrote a paper using my sister’s death as the perfect example demonstrating the theory of Hard Determinism. I got an A. I became Dr. Martin’s favorite student. Cause and effect: writing a paper espousing the merits of Hard Determinism causes professor to like me.
Hard determinism became my God alternative. And, it’s how I’m going to explain the story that I really want to tell. Here is the thing I still haven’t been able to resolve. Get this. If everything that happens is God’s will, it doesn’t seem fair to blame anyone for anything. If, for example it had been God’s will for my sister to die, you couldn’t blame her for disobeying the rules and you couldn’t blame the woman driving the Chevy. If it was Hard determinism, you couldn’t blame anyone either. Hard determinism, it seems, takes away culpability just as much as the God theory. If a series of causes produces some effect and decisions are effects, you can’t really blame anyone for their decisions, can you?
Anyway, you can decide for yourself after I tell you the whole story.
