The Gluurg Conjectures

Of all the religious concepts I have created and toyed with in the years -- and it is strange to realize how many I have created, from the Book of Spoons to the Church of the Auto-Deity to Nasirology to Crypto-Solipsism -- out of all of them, probably my proudest moment was the creation of Gluurg. Gluurg is just like God, you see. Except he's not God, he's Gluurg. Later on I ret-conned that Gluurg stood for something. Galactic Lifeform Universal Something Something Something. I believe the proper term is "backronym." But really there was no meaning. I liked the sound of Gluurg. I liked spelling it with the double u. The point of Gluurg is that Gluurg means nothing. Because Gluurg is just like God. Except he's not God, he's Gluurg.

It's like this. Every time some true believer makes a statement about God, replace "God" with "Gluurg" and see if it still sounds reasonable or if it sounds nuts:

• Gluurg is the uncaused cause.
• Gluurg moves in mysterious ways.
• Gluurg is love.
• Gluurg knows all, and sees all.
• Gluurg is infinitely merciful and infinitely just.
• Gluurg created the heavens and the earth in six days.
• Gluurg exists outside of time and space.
• Gluurg is transcendent and immanent in all things.
• It's in the Bible, Gluurg said it, that settles it.

And what you wind up with, is a description of a character that sounds something like a cross between a Jack Kirby super-hero and the guy from those Dos Equis "Most Interesting Man In The World" commercials. Someone making these sort of statements about this sort of character with a straight face would be necessarily insane in some variety.

This was the whole point of Gluurg. "Gluurg" is a syllable the same way "god" is. It is an accident of history and culture that the single syllable we use to express the concept of deity is "god" rather than "gluurg." So why would one syllable make for statements that sound credible to most of the populace, and the other one take on a completely different connotation?

(pictured: "Gluurg" by the author, 2002)