Good morning. Those of you at my fifteenth annual farewell sermon about five years ago know that I see nothing happening on Sunday morning until the ideas flow in both directions. In my favorite talk- back mode, you'll offer your ideas just after I offer mine.

Our UU principles and purposes list sources from which we draw our wisdom. Among them: Humanist teachings that counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.

[The Doonesbury comic strip this morning, by coincidence, featured a radio talk show. The first few panels told us that half of all Americans believe in ghosts, 40 percent in alien abductions, some still believed in JFK assassination conspiracies and that the moon landings were staged. The radio host, Mark, asked if anyone countered them. The guest said "Reasonists. They believe in an evidence-based world, something called rationalism, but it's a tiny group, not so influential".]

As my eightieth birthday nears, I often wonder if it's too late to change my major. In my teens I chose the underpaid journalism to bring folks The Good News. And like most evangelists, I may never know just what's good about it.

Thirty years on our town's daily persuade me that I should have tried law. But lately, with reproductive rights, marriage inequality and student health issues, I may have found my true calling:

To bring radical reality to the rigid right! I dialog by e-mail with bible thumpers unable to tell fetuses from people, who see all embryos as little Republicans waiting to cheer-lead for Sarah Palin, who feel threatened if people who wed are not one woman and one man. My words are for them too.

God historian Karen Armstrong, a nun, puts The Beginning at 14,000 years ago even if her fellow religionists do set the earth's age at 6,000 years.

This in no way conflicts with the science numbers that Dave Simons gave us two weeks ago, a Big Bang some 14 billion years ago with humanoids arriving about 200,000 years ago.

I'll have a comment about faith in a moment.

In that beginning a hairy, sweaty, grubby new species scrabbling about for food looked beyond a new-fangled invention called "fire" and saw stars out there. Those distant twinkles elicited questions: Who are we? Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? Why do good things and bad things happen?

The stars, as usual, did not reply. That didn't stop homo sapiens. We invented a reply, usable on nearly any occasion. We called it "god." We often capitalize that. We styled it to look like us and added two corollaries:

Temples - god wants posh buildings in which to be adored - and priests, anointed intermediaries with the divine. I'm not sure if a designated prophet - Jesus was one - is really needed.

Sister Karen suggests god must be anthropomorphic - in human form - or we cannot relate. So we get a jealous god, upset by other gods even if he/she/it is the only god around, rewarding the chosen and smiting the rest.

This god ranks with humanity's top ten accomplishments, with fire, the wheel, movable type, gunpowder, the atom bomb, Blackberry, i-Pod, global positioning and Tivo.

With history, philosophy, epistemology and other human diversions yet to come, we pondered issues like food, sex and leisure (well - leisure was still kind of new). So naturally our creation pondered matters like food, sex and leisure.

The known universe then stretched from Turkey to Egypt. A deity, the first cause of everything, could fret over a few individuals' inconsequential mating habits. Today's universe contains 600 billion galaxies, some with 600 billion stars. Our invention needs a redefinition, an upgrade. He/she/it may not care if I "worship" on Saturday or Sunday, covering or uncovering my head while doing so.

He/she/it may not even care if I "worship" at all.

We try to manipulate this god into doing as we wish by focused thought we call prayer. Does god hear pleas for the Dow to rise, the 49ers to win or Aunt Sadie's malignancy to vanish? If not, for Auntie's soul to enjoy a peaceful eternity in a cool heaven instead of a warm hell?

Soul! Heaven! Hell! We couldn't leave well enough alone. We had to complicate the mythology with our new deity.

First, mortality. Life is too brief. So we concoct souls and hereafters. We cannot accept death as ending things. So we concoct eternal life.

How might that work? Well, parallel hereafters. One, caricatured as eternity plunking a harp on a cloud for those who did good, even if they lack an ear for music. For villains who did bad, a forever impaled on a spit turned by imps who are happy to devote their torrid eternities to this.

When I was eight and she was five, my sister experienced a sleepless night. I told her that I made the long night come, and that the night's length henceforth would depend on her behavior. She believed that until she was six.

It was religious terrorism's finest moment, but not unlike a downtown god factory's sending parishioners computerized letters, their names inserted in three places: If you don't tithe, Mr. Jones, you will go straight to hell without passing go.

Your final destination, however, usually depends less on the good or evil you did in your lifetime than on which prophet of which deity you buy.

(UUs usually have no prophets. Only losses.)

Final destinations are decided by a saint named Pete or by the deity itself. Leaving the mechanics of sainthood for now, a saint logs your mortal acts, labels them "good" or "bad," and then judges. I see some problems in that ...

Like most solutions concocted to solve insoluble dilemmas, this raises more questions than it answers. Streets of heaven paved with gold. Why streets in heaven? Why paved? Was the gold mined, or did it always exist? If it was mined, was it heaven for the miners too? Were the streets of dirt before the gold was mined? If milk and honey flow on heavenly streets, is it heaven for cows that give the milk and bees that make the honey, or did the deity merely ordain "let there be milk"? Whole, low fat or non-fat?

A famous anthem has the streets of heaven "guarded by United States Marines." Guarded against whom? How? With rifles and bayonets? Why? Stay tuned.

A "bible" chronicles divine instructions on how to live your life - famously how much to get for your daughter if you sell her into slavery. When can you rape a woman you capture in war? If a man lieth with a dog, both shall be smote. All things that any reputable deity worries about.

Varied concepts of the rules depend on varied needs. So humanity built varied houses of worship to visualize the deity in varied images, varied books.

Churches, synagogues, temples, mosques.

Bible, Koran, Tao, Bhagavad-Gita.

Jehovah, Allah, Krishna, Buddha.

Cover your head during worship. Or never cover your head during worship.

Worship on Sunday. Or Saturday. Or Friday. This deity actually cares!

People kill each other in droves over such issues, even when admonished "thou shalt not kill." There are always exceptions. Especially for unbelievers.

We UUs emerged from an incredibly bloody bag. Our ancestors perpetrated crusades and inquisitions, were at least silent co- conspirators in genocides.

Our deity reflects pop prejudices, especially as one gender rules another. Cover women from head to toe? Or just the parts differing from men's? Sanctify mating processes for time and all eternity, or at least from mating act until the mother can nurture the offspring.

And if we invent souls, let's inject them into fertilized ova.

Religions create hoops to get "fun" things past guilty consciences, a byproduct of original sin. You go to Nevada (at least an Indian reservation) to gamble. You eat only the right foods after the right "prayers." In Islam with the right hand.

You make love only if a celibate shaman intones the right words, although females may have invented that ritual to assure male protection nine months after mating.

We use our "god" invention to push pet notions. Some of us insist their god rejects health care for all, not just opposes terminating pregnancies, but giving school time to do that.

God wants you to salute the flag. Or NOT salute it. Take your choice

And we invented faith! As often as you hear "see you later" you hear "keep the faith." Which faith? What faith?

Faith lets you believe what common sense tells you cannot be true. George Orwell wrote of doublethink: the ability to hold two conflicting beliefs at once. Like an earth 6,000 years old when science finds fossils six million years old.

Like earth at the center of the universe, orbited by the sun. A biblical Joshua made the sun stand still. Metaphor? Maybe. Christians rarely do metaphors?

But then it becomes easy to deny evolution as a "theory."

A visiting Stockton UU minister spoke here of "progressive Christianity." Those words are not mutually exclusive. "Deeds, not creeds," as if those don't go hand in hand. She called the religion of Jesus preferable to religion about Jesus (right on, preacher!), defined the social gospel as doing what "god" deems right.

We'd love for a deity to define what's right as we radicals define it, reaching a hand out to victims of social injustice whom we've helped since our awareness of justice was born.

Giving rags and cans to Interfaith Ministries is neither social gospel nor social action. That is working to eliminate a need for Interfaith Ministries. At dawn I must ask if such work really requires a benevolent spirit of goodness.

Religion is a shared belief. The Supreme Court has ruled that religions require no deity. And ever more Americans reject even the need for a deity.

Religion has become a means of social control. It speaks in moral absolutes we'd reject if given time to think. But - and this horrible thought often keeps me awake - maybe we need a god to stave off total social chaos.

Six decades ago my Poli Sci 1A instructor spoke of behaviorism. He said we go to church not because we believe in god but believe in god because we go to church.

So as my homely homily winds down to its long anticipated conclusion, you still want to know if a "god" really is out there. The only honest answer is that I don't know, you don't know and Pope Benny doesn't know.

Man may by definition be incapable of knowing, but I'd bet against a bearded old man hurling lightning bolts from clouds at folks making love. I won't risk the only existence I know on the off chance that some vengeful Lord Of All (Unitarians hedge with Source Of All) assigns me a hot or cold forever on the basis of a Sunday morning necktie.

Still, like Las Vegas - which doesn't know either - I do the ego thing and post some odds. No lawsuit allowed if I'm proven wrong, but that proof is unlikely.

Chances of a deity, some sort of "intelligent creator," out there:
about 1 in 10.

Chances that a radical reformer named Jesus actually walked the earth:
4 in 5.

Chances that this dude was divine, turned water into wine, raised the dead and was resurrected:
1 in 100,000.

Chances of a Moses having lived to lead his people out of Egypt:
about 1 in 3.

Chances of a Moses having parted the Red Sea and receiving stone tablets from On High while tripping on Mount Sinai:
1 in a half million.

Chances of a heaven to go to after you die:
1 in a million.

Chances of a heaven where you go after you die if you're good:
1 in 10 million.

Chances of a hell where you go for all eternity if you're bad:
1 in 100 million.

Chances of there being seraphims, cherubims and archangels:
1 in 200 million.

Chances if you add Satan, virgins, Republicans, hobgoblins:
1 in 500 million.

Chances that someone has a comment far more intelligent than anything I've voiced so far:
at least 50-50. Go for it.

[Delivered September 6, 2009. Fred writes that he is "a retired journalist and professional trouble-maker, especially active in areas of peace, environment, civil and reproductive rights. A founding member of the county ACLU chapter and its chairperson until last fall, he has been a UU since 1967 and was Fellowship president in 1980 and 1985."]