Pluto

Dear astronomers,

I’m not against democracy. I didn’t invent it – I actually think a benevolent dictatorship is the best – but it isn’t too bad.

Sometimes democracy - I will resist calling it dumbocracy – produces things to chuckle about. Italy, for example. Ross Perot. Florida 2000.

I still cannot for the life of me figure out how you think you can bring democracy to a country with the barrel of a gun. But that’s your business. I’ve given you permission to figure it out yourselves, and I’m pretty curious about how it’s going to work out. Maybe you finally will decide that a benevolent dictatorship is the best thing after all.

We did have to laugh when you decided (democratically?) that I was dead. “God ist tot!” screamed the madman in Nietzche’s The Gay Science in 1882. “And we have killed him!”

He couldn’t convince his community of that, and so he cried “I’ve been born before my time!”

But I did realize for the first time that you all thought you could determine whether I existed or not.

In 1966 it was official. “Is God dead?” asked Time Magazine on the cover.

"Ours is the first attempt in recorded history to build a culture upon the premise that God is dead" observed the Princeton theologian Paul Ramsey.

O.K. If you want to be that way. I can take it. Italy. Ross Perot. Florida 2000. My own existence.

But today you’ve taken on a favourite of mine. Pluto.

According to a democratic vote she is no longer a planet.

Now you’ve gone too far. I won’t stand for it.

You’ll get McCain. Or Hilary. I can't quite decide.

With lots of love,

God

P.S. Did you remember that you sent an explorer to Pluto in January of this year? It won’t get there until 2015!!

What a knee slapper that is!