What we know about Steve (Theology)

Lonespark and I often say the traditional prayer to Steve, taught to us by the great prophet Eddie Izzard:

I was on the moon... with Steve.

The full prayer is actually, "I was dead at the time.  I was on the moon... with Steve."  This gives us some information on Steve, though not a lot.  Steve resides on the moon.  Steve is somehow associated with the afterlife.  Steve tends to be involved in cases where someone was dead but got better.

In the same sermon Izzard mentions Jeff the god of biscuits and Simon the god of hairdos.  Steve and Simon are conflated in many Izzardian traditions that don't check their facts often enough, leading to the belief that Steve is the god of hairdos who lives on the moon.

Fred Clark points out that Steve figures prominently in American religion in this post from 2004:

"Steve" has emerged as a central figure in American theology. He even played a significant role in the recent national elections. Yet despite his enormous influence, we know little about Steve aside from a single reference to him in our holy texts. This reference is, like the catechism, extra-canonical but considered authoritative:

"God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."

The catechism he mentions begins with these three questions:

Q: Who made you?
A: God made me.

Q: What else did God make?
A: God made me and all things — except Steve.

Q: Why did God make all things except Steve?
A: God made all things except Steve for His own glory.

Fred's post, which is worth reading in its entirety, goes on to speculate as to the nature of Steve.  Is Steve a little known fourth member of the trinity?  Fred thinks, "No."  He concludes with:

Thus again we come to mystery. Steve was neither made nor begotten; yet Steve is.

What can we do in the face of such mystery? It is beyond our ken. We cannot hope to understand, we can only drop to our knees to sing a bewildered hymn of praise to the Creator of all things except Steve.

The scholia to Fred's exploration of Steve contains some more hints of a Steveian tradition now lost to us.

John S Costello shares this:

SAT: Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
B, concurrently: Except Steve.
SAT: Praise him all ye creatures here below;
B: Not you, Steve.
SAT: Praise him above ye heavn’ly host;
B: Stay silent, Steve.
SAT: Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
B: And Holy Steve.

Tico asks:

So, if Steve is one of Satan’s minions, would that make all Steves evil (or stevil, as the case may be)?

Danil claims that Steve evolved.

lespool shares this bit of poetry:

Our Lord appears to lack ubiquity
(— obsessed with homosexuality)
and never knew the devil made his rounds
cajoling Eve inside the garden grounds.
Her ignorance was awful hard to take,
for poor ole thing starts talking to a snake.
But lost potential caused insanity
and she sought knowledge from an apple tree!
Whilst Adam had libidinous pursuits
till Eve seduced and tempted him with fruits.
Yet knowledge came with little aptitude
except to notice — God preferred them nude!
Hence, Eve and Adam drest in figs and leaves
concealing nudity as thick as thieves.
But disobedience shalt bear the blame
(— for modesty twas such a naked shame)!

And while Steve is never mentioned one must assume that it is somehow related for it is in the scholia to Fred's article about Steve.

Angelia Sparrow speculates:

Maybe Steve was one of those kids Mama Lilith had after she left Adam and went out to fornicate on the banks of the Euphrates with fallen angels?

though that would make Steve begotten.

ako gives us our best insight in to the lost Steveian tradition:

The real secret? God didn’t create Steve.

Steve created God.

Way back, before the beginning of the universe and time and everything, there was just Steve, his easy chair, and a fridge full of beer. It wasn’t a bad life (no linear time meant the beer never ran out), but it was a bit dull.

One night, old Steve got a bit drunk, and created an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent deity (he says he doesn’t remember if he made it omnibenevolent or not; there was a lot of beer). It took Steve awhile to realize what he’d done, but as soon as he figured it out, he made the obvious request.

Being bored, lonely, and also gay, Steve said, “God, make me a boyfriend.”

God said “Okay,” and whipped up Adam. And it was good.

Things worked out for a while, but Adam got bored. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do, and the sex just wasn’t…fun. Steve liked it, but it wasn’t really Adam’s cup of tea. He wanted to go places, do things, meet other people who had curves, and more interestingly concave bits.

“I’d like a universe,” Adam sighed.

“What do we need a universe for?” Steve asked. “We’ve got cold beer and a recliner. That’s better than a universe!”

“How about a universe that contains cold beer and recliners?” God offered.

“No,” said Steve. “I’ve got sex and beer. I’m happy, and you don’t count. God just made you so I could have sex. I should have told him to make you less whiny.”

Well, that was the end of it. Adam walked off, and asked God to whip up a universe for him to stay in. He left Steve, and ducked off into the universe, in hopes of meeting the interestingly curvy and concave person God promised.

Sure enough, Eve turned up, and her and Adam hit it off like a house on fire. But Steve kept hollering and throwing beer bottles from outside the universe, and messing up the Garden of Eden. Even worse, he’d sneak over for drunken booty calls with Adam that upset Eve no end. Eventually God had to step in.

“Look, Adam. I made you two Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Steve was there when I showed up. So you should stick with Eve. She makes you happy, you make her happy, and you two don’t leave broken glass all over the universe. So don’t date Steve. No Adam and Steve. Got that?”

Adam got the point, and that was the end of it. Unfortunately, future generations got a bit muddled, and somehow concluded that the warning also applied to couples named Bill and Kevin, John and Karl, or even Melissa and Penelope; despite the complete and total absence of Steve.

However this version of the Steveian tradition was clearly not universal as lespool almost immediately argued it was incorrect:

ako … That doesn’t make any sense — because you left out Lilith. Lilith existed long before Steve’s cosmic alcoholic haze evolved and in a drunken stupor created god to make Adam but not Eve even though God disobeyed Steve and created her anyway. You may have all the answers as to why the earth was created before the universe — BUT YOU CAN’T JUST IGNORE LILITH simply because she’s an inconvenient truth fer crying out loud!

And a further obvious challenge to ako's version of the myth of Steve is that the introduction claims it's a secret, which implies that what follows is an account of the Steveian Mysteries but the Steveian Mysteries, like the rules of Mao, must never be transmitted to outsiders.  We have an apparent contradiction: Since it is written down it cannot be the thing it seems to claim to be.

In the end we are left to grasp at the few scraps we know for sure and attempt to make sense of them:

• God did not create Steve
• Steve exists
• Steve was on the moon (with Eddie Izzard) at which point his companion was dead but would not stay dead
• God made all things except for Steve