Have you noticed how people who believe in God are always telling us how he/she/it wants us to behave, while God (the one in the Bible, anyway) behaves rather badly? What if he isn’t an old man on a cloud but is, in fact, a teenage boy? That might explain the behaviour. Mariella Frostrup interviewed author Meg Rossof on BBC Radio 4 today about her new book, ‘There is no Dog’, which imagines what the world would be like if God was a petulant teenage boy called Bob, who spends the majority of his time sleeping or having sexual fantasies about the human women he has created and causing floods, geological disasters and much suffering in his wake. In the first chapter (available to download online), she wrote,

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Only it wasnt as simple as that. The preferred candidate for God withdrew at the last minute saying he wanted to spend more time with his family, though privately everyone suspected he was having second thoughts. You couldnt really blame him. Earth was badly positioned miles off the beaten track in a lonely and somewhat rundown part of the universe. At a time of high employment, not many top-level candidates were willing to take on a tiny unproven planet, not to mention the whole creation rigmarole, which, when done properly, could be a real headache.

Great fun!

Richard Dawkins latest book was published today. He was interviewed about it on Newsnight a couple of night ago – you have a few more days to listen on i-Player. ‘The Magic of Reality‘ is a book for children that aims to replace myth with science, and make it just as exciting and magical.

Note that if you decide to buy either or both of these books, we’ll get commission if you do it through the link to Amazon on our website.