Belgrade, Yugoslavia -- At a news conference in this troubled city, God launched a tour in support of Confessions of the Highest Being, a new book co-authored by Andrew Morton in which he apologizes to all humankind for events of the Twentieth Century.
The apology in Confessions is part of the abbreviated recovery program customized for God by Alcoholics Anonymous. "First, I admitted I was powerless over alcohol," God writes in the Introduction. "Then, I made a moral inventory of myself. I made a list of everyone I harmed, and now I'm going to make amends wherever possible. This book is my way of saying, 'I'm sorry.'"
Due to God's refusal to believe in a power greater than himself, he was unable to follow the traditional 12 Step recovery program, of which seven steps involve appealing to a higher power. "I'm the highest power," he explained. "Talking and praying to myself would've been just plain silly."
A long-time alcoholic, God finally sought help after Satan held an intervention to force him to acknowledge his problem. "The situation was entirely out of hand," Satan said. "Hell has occupancy limits, you know, and with God killing millions and millions of people so quickly, we were having a hell of a time keeping up."
Problem of Evil Solved
Theologians are ecstatic about Confessions. They've always suspected that the atrocities and tragedies that dominate human history are God's fault, but there has never been a satisfactory theodicy -- an answer to the problem of reconciling evil with an omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity.
At about 300 B.C., Epicurus posed the problem this way:
In his new book, God finally provides the answer: he's a drunk. Confessions describes God's drunken fits of rage and paranoia during which he perpetrated vile and terrible acts on humanity, and the periods of drunken stupor when his inaction permitted millions to suffer and perish.
Moral evil, such as war, terrorism and genocide, was exceptionally popular during the twentieth century. Belgrade was selected as the first stop on God's book tour because of its location in the heart of one of the world's worst areas, even today. World War One began in the region and proceeded to kill 9 million people and wound 22 million more. Civilian casualties were even greater, but the "Great War" was prematurely named.
World War Two dwarfed it, killing more people than any other war in history: 40-50 million, including 6 million Chosen People slaughtered in the Holocaust. "I had a whopper of a hangover in 1945," God writes in Chapter 3. "I couldn't remember the last decade." His smaller binges account for the wars and genocide that have never stopped during this century.
Natural evil, covered in Chapter 4, also wreaked havoc when God was pissed and felt like offing a few thousand or million people. The numbers tell the tale: Spanish Flu (1918, 22 million), earthquakes (Turkey 1939, 45,000; Peru 1970, 30,000; Italy, Bali, Turkey, China, Philippines 1976, 780,000; Armenia 1988, 80,000), floods (East Pakistan 1970, 500,000; China recurring, and still counting), cyclone (Bangladesh 1991, 135,000), plus famine, hurricanes, fire, cancer, AIDS and innumerable other alcohol-induced divine gifts.
Finally, accidental evil occupies Chapter 5. Nuclear meltdowns (Three Mile Island 1979; Chernobyl 1986), industrial negligence (Bhopal, India 1984), auto/plane/ship/train collisions, mine collapses and all kinds of explosions are listed in great detail alongside God's recollection of a bottle of tequila, vodka or cough syrup. "Whatever was available was good enough for me," God writes.
Juicy Interview Anticipated
Despite containing these and more embarrassing revelations, sources said many juicy details were removed from Confessions because of the publisher's fears that they would lead to a drop in sales of the all-time best-selling novel: Bible.
Luckily for television viewers, Barbara Walters has no such qualms, and in a tell-all interview scheduled for broadcast next week, she asks God very personal questions. ABC's advertisement of the "event" shows Walters asking God, who sports a new hairstyle, to "tell us what made you move from Virgin Mary to Bloody Mary?"
Proceeds from sales of Confessions are earmarked for charitable missionary organizations. An eternally savvy marketer, God said he wants to ensure the spread of faith "not only in the absence of supporting evidence but also in the presence of contrary evidence."
