The Voice of God

I am an atheist. I believe that we are the more or less random result of billions of years of evolution, shaped by the physical reality of the planet we live on. I believe that the future is unwritten. I believe in free will. I do not believe in an afterlife.
I’d like to be proved wrong. Eternal life is appealing.
In any event, I have noticed that believers in God have steadily backtracked and fudged on the definition of God ever since the dawn of science. If you talk to most people today who say they believe in God, they would say that it is not some human type form up in the sky, who smites the wicked with bolts of lightning and who answers our prayers, no matter how trivial, if we’ve performed the proper rituals and given the called for offerings. No, God is a concept, God is spirit, God is inside us, God is simply that force which is everpresent and never dying throughout the universe.
Well, taken that way, God is just a synonym for universe, for existence. So, if you want to put it that way, and only if you want to put it that way, I would admit to a belief in God. In fact, it makes for a convenient sort of poetic shorthand. Even though it sounds a bit pompous and presumptuous to talk about God, it sounds even more pompous and presumptuous to talk about the Universe.
Put that way, I would say that God most definitely does not work in mysterious ways. He/she/it just works in ways that we

No, She Was Just Nuts

are not evolved enough to understand. God (i.e. the universe) is speaking to us all the time and clearly communicating his/her/its intentions. Your parents tell you to look both ways before you cross the street, and their voice is the voice of God, filtered through years of human experience. If you choose not to listen, God may speak louder the next time, in the form of a speeding automobile’s front bumper. If you see rain clouds up in the sky, God is telling you that it’s going to rain. If you ignore him/her/it, then he/she/it will go ahead and piss all over your head.
Put that way, the key to success and happiness in life is obvious: The universe (or God, if you insist) is talking to you. Pay attention!