<p>Genesis is seen as a story about us and our responsibility for the predicament of the human cycle of life, suffering, and death. It is the story about our choices and where they led us. But what exactly did the animals have to do with Original Sin? Why were they punished? How is it possible to make sense of a deity that inflicts the worst kind of suffering upon sentient creatures that are incapable of doing anything wrong, yet prohibits them from being part of the redemption scheme? Is theodicy an inquiry that can ever make sense?</p>

Episode 18: The Genesis implosion, part 2. The mind of God. What was he thinking?

Wait... What!? is an often humorous, sometimes ferocious, but always entertaining romp through the bizarre memes that inspire mass lunacy, religious fanaticism, and ideological intransigency where basic reasoning is overwhelmed by willful ignorance. Why do people believe and refuse to ask simple questions about the nonsense they are fed by corrupt politicians, unscrupulous religious predators, and ordinary scam artists? What is the psychological mechanism that makes masses of people behave in ways that would make lemmings point and chortle? When X-files hero Fox Mulder said, "I want to believe" he was unknowingly speaking for religious fundamentalists, conspiracy theorists, UFO true believers, nut-case truthers, and ideologues who run the gamut from skin heads to Antifa -- people for whom there can be no other side of a complicated issue. What causes these people to willingly embrace nonsense -- ideas and claims that make little or no sense -- and shut out facts and reason as if they repositories of the Corona virus? What strange predisposition keeps them from putting both hands in the stop gesture and saying, Wait... What? Howard Siegel takes us on a voyage to a world where objective, reasoned thinking has been replaced with the powerful appeal of irrationally simple answers. Howard Siegel is an attorney, author, former MSNBC legal analyst, and hapless, sysphysian golfer. He has appeared on 60 Minuets, Larry King Live, The Today Show, NPR, and PBS. He lives in South Carolina where he is a practicing heathen, heretic, and herbivore.