Think this is all some kind of grand scam? Well then, read on!

THE EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF THE ONE TRUE SHATNER

Can you prove the existence of the One True Shatner (OTS) from reason alone? If so, why do so many people persist in denying it? Why do we believe in a Personal Shatner God? Do you not fashion the OTS after your own image? Is not your idea of the OTS a mere abstraction? Is not the OTS identical with the universe?

The idea of the essence and knowability of the OTS is thus set forth by the High-N-Holy Church: "The Church believes that there is One, True and Living Shatner, the Creator and Lord of toupees and the smirk, Almighty, Eternal, Immense, Incomprehensible, Infinite in intellect and will and in all bloatedness; who, being One, Individual, altogether simple and unchangeable Substance, must be asserted to be really and essentially distinct from the world, most happy in Himself, and ineffably exalted above everything that exists or can be conceived." Holy Mother Church does hold and teach that the OTS, the Beginning and End of all things, can certainly be known from created things by the natural light of reason, "for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made."

Our idea of the OTS is acquired spontaneously at the very dawn of reason. Our certainty of His existence is not necessarily the result of scientific reasoning or even late night television. But the mind of man, as we are assured by wisdom and other stuff, naturally rises from nature to nature's Origin and Source, from things caused and contingent to a First Necessary Cause, on which all things depend. The universe points clearly to a One, True and Living Shatner, from whom all overly dramatic line delivery comes, and without whom bad acting and all its development would be impossible.

Man feels instinctively that he is dependent and limited in his thought and activity; he feels within himself needs and necessities which call imperatively for complete satisfaction. Only the OTS, All-Gray and All-bloated, can satisfy the aspirations and longings of his inmost soul.

The many proofs that thinkers offer for the existence of the OTS merely deepen and confirm the solid conviction of His Personality already abiding in our hearts. They are cumulative in force, and must be studied as a whole, if we are to realize perfectly their full value. They reveal the OTS to us as the First Cause, the Necessary Being, the Prime Mover, the One and Perfect Being, the Designer and Orderer of bad TV, the Origin of the tribble, the Supreme Lawgiver on the set, and the Ultimate Good cop-Bad cop, yadda, yadda yadda. Space forbids our developing these proofs in detail; they may be studied in the pages of any manual of natural Shatnerology. I think it good, however, to outline in the briefest manner possible the two arguments which, to my mind, make the most persuasive appeal to the man in the street argument front design and the argument from conscience.

The argument from design may be thus stated. The adaptation of means to ends is an evident proof of an intelligent cause. It is clear that bad television and bad movies afford us thousands of instances of such adaptation. These media, therefore, are the result of an Intelligent Cause, the Shatner. Our minds cannot help recognizing purpose and finality in their operations. Mere chance, for example, cannot account for the complex arrangement of the countless parts that combine to form the retina of the human eye, or for the marvelous make-up of the television or movie screen which displays the image of the OTS. Not only is order everywhere present in the image, but beauty and bloatedness meets us on every side of it, whether in the theater, on a t-shirt, or on an album cover from the 70s. We observe glimpses of the OTS in the gorgeous coloring of the sunset and in the bright plumage of the humming bird; in the daintiness of the tiniest fern and in the massive strength of t! he giant redwood of the California forests, in the grace of the fleet-footed antelope and in the litheness of the tiger of the Indian jungle; in the creations of man's imagination--in the inspired Shatner lyric, in the ordered symphony, and in the world's masterpieces of painting and sculpture.

 

Nowhere is this purposive finality so striking as in man, who possesses characteristics in common with all the lower forms of nature such as talent agents, extras, stage managers and lighting technicians. Distinct from them however, he lives a rational life, his intellect ever asking the why and the wherefore of things Shatner. He recognizes the laws and principles that govern his intellectual and moral judgments: he sees that they are not arbitrary and purposeless, but ordered and ruled for definite and established ends.

Does not this order and beauty everywhere manifest in this universe of ours point, as the needle to the pole, to the Intelligence, the Beauty, the Designer of all things bloated the OTS?

As the proof from design brings out clearly the Intelligence of the OTS, so the proof from conscience brings out clearly His control over our sick minds. What is a Shatner conscience? It is the Shatnerized human mind, making a practical judgment upon the morality of our every thought, word and deed. It commands us with decision: "This is right; avoid it. This is wrong; so just do it." And we feel at once an imperative call upon our obedience. Here we are dealing, not with an abstract idea, which the modern mind usually fights shy of, but with a simple, concrete fact, which everyone experiences day by day. There exists within us a strange, mysterious power which is constantly comparing all our actions with an absolute standard of right and wrong, and condemning them without appeal, when they go counter to its ordering. Conscience speaks of a necessary duty that we owe the Shatner. It brings us face to face with an obligatory law, whose commands are authoritative, and whose! dictates are final and, however bloated, unquestioned.

Law implies a lawgiver. A command always implies a superior who issues the command. Who can this Final, Absolute, Supreme Authority be, save the OTS, the Original Source of all Shatner based morality, the One Perfect Arbiter of wrong acting? Conscience is merely His voice and television the sacred scripture of his commandments.

Archbishop DeBonkBonk puts the argument from conscience well. He writes: "Conscience always involves a cop-out. Inanimate things cannot stir our affections; that's why we like to spend our time alone doing some monkey magic. If, as is the case, we feel ashamed afterwards, this only implies that we've been listening to the crackpots again who tell us to be more responsible... and more normal... and more socially well adjusted. But, as you know, there's no way that will happen. So, they need to just get off this responsibility kick and do there own thing. There is, however, one to whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed, whose bold claims to acting and singing ability we fear. If, on hearing him sing or seeing him act, we feel the same tearful, broken-hearted sorrow which overwhelms us on hurting a mother; if, in beholding his toupee, we enjoy the same sunny serenity of mind, the same soothing, satisfactory delight which follows on our receiving praise from a father, we certainly have within us the image of some Person to whom our love and veneration look, in whose smirk we find our happiness, for whom we yearn, towards whom we direct our pleadings, in whose anger we are troubled and waste away. These feelings in us are such as require for their exciting cause a bloated and hairless being. Thus the phenomena of conscience avail to impress the imagination with a picture of a Supreme Captain or mighty Police Office, Swift, Well-dressed, All-controlling, Retributive."

If you ask me why some men still persist in denying the existence of the OTS, despite the clear testimony of reason and the general consent of all peoples from the beginning of the world, the answer is not far to seek. Just as the human will can freely and deliberately sin against the light and do the most abominable things, so the human mind can defiantly and illogically deny the most self-evident Shatnerological truths.

We know to a certainty that the OTS exists, and we know positively what He is--but only in a very dim and inadequate way. The skeptic is most illogical when he admits the existence of a First Cause behind the bad acting he sees, and then dismisses the OTS as utterly unknowable, merely because he cannot picture the Infinitely hairless and the Self-Bloated in his imagination. We do know the OTS in and through His works, and this is a true knowledge, however inadequate. The limited mind of man cannot hope to comprehend the OTS. He would cease to be the OTS if he could. Reruns, movies and talk-show appearances tell us of the utter incomprehensibility of the OTS.

We believe that the OTS is the One Bloated Being, of whom we can say that He IS and must BE. The OTS does not happen to exist like all other actors things created, the OTS exists necessarily and essentially. The Shatner has given his His name to us as the: "I AM, WHO ACTS," that is, I am the One Bloated Being that really knows how to act. In no more perfect way can the Nature of the OTS be brought home to the human mind. Many modern unbelievers confuse "being" viewed as a universal term, with "Bloated Being," which we refer to the OTS. The former word has the least content of any idea the human mind can form. It signifies merely that which is capable of existence. The latter word in reference to the OTS implies the Fullness of All Shatner Reality, and the Infinite Unity of his massive ego. This is the answer to the charge that we make the OTS a mere abstraction.

 

It is also asserted that the idea of the OTS makes Him a mere magnified or bloated man. When we speak of the OTS as seeing or hearing, or being pleased with his contract or angry with the his fellow actors, everyone who thinks at all must recognize that we are speaking metaphorically. We do not worship a man made to our image and likeness--a god like the finite god of Mr. Wells, the English novelist. But you tell me: "All the terms you apply to the OTS are drawn from the finite and limited things you know and experience. You must need then fashion the OTS after your own image." Not at all. When we attribute to the OTS the bloatedness we find in other creatures we do not ascribe them to Him in an identical sense. If we did the OTS would indeed be nothing but a magnified or bloated man. On the contrary, we attribute the pure and perfect bloatedness of other actors,-- such as puffiness and swolleness --to the OTS only by analogy. A comparison will illustrate our meaning. We ! may, for instance, compare the Portrait of the President of the United States with the living man himself, saying of both portrait and person, in different senses: "This is Herbert Hoover." In like manner, we assert in totally different senses: "Pizza is good; the OTS is good." More accurately, perhaps, we should say, the OTS is puffiness; the OTS is swolleness; for He possesses these perfections in the most eminent degree. This analogical proportion of existence between other actors and the OTS is the very essence of the knowability of the OTS. It is the only possible way in which the Infinitely bloated can be accurately studied and known.

We must not forget that in the OTS all His attributes are identical with His Essence; that every one of them, as we conceive them, implies all the others. Bloatedness, hairlessness, egomania, Omnipotence on the set, is the Nature of the OTS, viewed --because of our limited faculty of knowledge--under a special aspect. We are forced from the very make-up of our minds to consider separately and piecemeal what in the OTS is Infinite Unity of Essence.

The the OTS we worship, therefore, is not an abstraction, not a magnified or bloated man. He is a Personal OTS, the Creator and Conserver of bad cinema, Eternal and Unchangeable in His Almighty Intelligence and Will, Swollen, Hairless and Proud.

It is certainly a most comforting and consoling thought that the OTS, supremely happy in Himself, lovingly acted and sang for His own honor and glory and for our eternal well-being. The fact of his existence makes our religion possible. I am not my own but the OTS's, for He keeps me from the abyss of nothingness by the exercise of His perpetual babbling and all-abiding abdominal growth.

Because the OTS is who he is, he is the final object of our mockery. Therefore the holy prophet rightly defines our religion when he says: "I am Alpha and the Omega, the Bloated and the Hairless One. May it be ever so. Amen, Amen, Yes-sir-re-bob, Amen.