Solipsis: Escape from the Comatorium (40 page)

“
Within
a few months, everyone for six towns in any direction is a believer
in your god. You suddenly have power, money, social standing, you're
a revered leader. You send missionaries, but they need a book,
something to help spread the word. So you get some guys together to
write the book, they steal from a bunch of old myths, born of a
virgin, some magic tricks, god's your dad, etc. Well, it's nice, but
it seems kind of fake. You need some gravitas, so you take the book
of an older religion, tack that on and say that it was just part one,
and you've come to be part two and finish the story. Suddenly it
doesn't seem too recent and made-up, it conjures of the feelings of
mystery and reverence for the past.”

“
There's
a religion similar to yours that's been spreading and now your
borders come up against each other. There's a battle for the minds of
these people. Both religions offer infinite rewards in the
after-life, but without proof. How can you con these rivals into
switching sides? And then it hits you: if you can offer eternal
reward because nobody can debunk it, why not offer eternal punishment
too? Nobody can debunk that either. So you come down from the
mountain and say that god has updated you. Now belief is rewarded
with eternal happiness, but disbelief is punished with eternal
damnation. The people have a little Pascal's wager of their own. If
the rival religion is right, and they believe in it, they get heaven.
If they don't believe, but as long as they're good people, they still
get treated nicely in the after-life. If your religion is right, and
they don't believe in it, it doesn't matter if they are good people,
they go to hell forever.”

“
So
w
hat
do they have to lose? The only situation where they really lose is to
not believe in your faith and end up wrong. Within ten years, you've
taken over the whole region.”

“
What
are you getting at?” Seth demands. “Just say it, don't
lecture me.”

“
That
right there is why the major religions claim to be the only path to
heaven,” the other Renee jumps in. “It makes no sense,
because it means that billions of very good people are bound for hell
because they were born in the wrong country. It makes god look like
either an idiot or a racist.”

“
Your
power expands and you run into another religion. This religion also
has a hell for non-believers. You try to convert each others
followers, but with such similar faiths, there's little progress. So
you go up to the mountain again to think of a plan. Remember, you
made this god up, you know it's fake, but you want power. You come
back down the mountain with a message from god: anyone who tries to
convince you to stray from this god is an agent of the devil, and you
are morally commanded to kill agents of the devil. Your people
quickly take up arms to fight the good fight. They go into the rival
towns and burn their churches, murder the men, take the women and
warn other towns to convert or else they'll be massacred and enslaved
too. The rival religion crumbles. The devout try to fight and are
killed. The less devout convert under a very real threat of real
tangible suffering on Earth.”

“
Your
territory expands, your religions grows. You come up against another
religion, this one equally large, it also has the same philosophy and
has also been militarized and has wiped out their neighbors. You
battle each other, but enter into a stalemate since both sides are
militarized and about equally powerful. You go up to the mountain to
think about it, you come down and claim that god came to you and told
you that he put his people here so that they could be fruitful and
multiply. They shouldn't screw around, they shouldn't use birth
control or engage in sex acts for anything other than procreation. In
fact, he wants girls to be married off as soon as they reach
maturity. So your nation starts marrying and breeding at a tremendous
rate. Two generations later, your grandson, the new king, presides
over a glorious military victory as your nation easily conquers its
neighbor with an army three times larger thanks to god's ban of
contraceptives and blowjobs and vestal virgins.”

“
What
are you getting at?” Seth demands impatiently.

“
Every
single thing about organized religion, every little nuance of belief,
every part of it can be understood and described by this process of
evolution. Mutation, advantage, selection. There's no divine
intervention, nothing but men trying to gain more power. Why does the
Catholic church oppose birth control? Why does Islam demand a
pilgrimage to Mecca? Why can't priests marry? All of these supposedly
moral ideas can be traced directly back to a human decision with
clear motives. So your supposedly celibate priests start raping the
alter boys. It's bad press, so you know, cover it up, but don't
change anything. It's more important that the church not be wrong,
more important that the priests won't be able to marry so we can make
money, more important to move the priests around and cover everything
up so you don't look bad. How can anyone look at that decision, to
allow more boys to be molested, as moral?”

Seth
stares blankly at her, not wanting to listen to a word of it. “You
know I'm not Catholic.”

“
If
you step outside your indoctrination, you'll see that religions are
obviously man-made constructs. Just because everybody bought into
some pyramid scheme two thousand years ago, it doesn't mean it's
true.”

“
You
are just so full of shit, you know that?” Seth dismisses her.

“
No,
it's logic. Just suppose hypothetically that there is no god and
religions are man-made. Now apply that theory over the history of
religion. Do you see anything that doesn't fit with the theory? The
theory could be proven wrong with just one well-documented miracle.
There aren't any. Perhaps the bible could have had an account of the
big-bang, of heavy element synthesis in supernovae, of relativity, of
evolution by natural selection. If there were a god, and the bible
were divinely inspired, then it should have some evidence, it should
have some insights that couldn't have come about otherwise. But it
doesn't. There are no verifiable miracles, there are no divinely
inspired works, it's all just a god damn pyramid scheme, it's a cult,
but if it lasts long enough it becomes a magical wonderful religion
instead of a just an idiotic brain-washed cult.”

“
You're
so angry, it's overcoming you,” Seth says. “You're mad at
religion when you should be mad at specific people. Religion isn't
inherently wrong. Plus, you can't make these judgments, you have no
moral ground to stand on. Without god, there is no right and wrong.”

“
You're
right,” Renee replies sarcastically, “you know, I get my
morals from the bible. The ten commandments, that's what I live my
life by. You know, rape is wrong, so is slavery, I learned those from
the ten commandments. Thou shalt not rape, which commandment was
that?”

“
You
know it's not one of them,” Seth replies through gritted teeth.

“
Which
one condemns slavery?” the other Renee asks.

“
You
have to understand it as a historical document,” Seth replies.

“
You
mean the divinely inspired historical document which says
menstruating women have to leave the village,” Renee replies.

“
That's
Old Testament,” Seth barks in response, “that doesn't
apply anymore.”

“
So
it's the word of god but we can ignore half of it?”

“
No,
it's still important, but those rules no longer apply,” Seth
says, getting increasingly angry at this tag-team attacking him.

“
So
god's just a really bad editor?”

“
I'm
not listening to this anymore,” Seth replies. “I'm
getting out of here.”

“
Does
the cognitive dissonance hurt too much?” Renee asks
sarcastically.

“
You
know, you're throwing away an emotional connection, a human
relationship, all because you can't be tolerant. Where's the morality
in that?”

“
Hey
it says here, thou shalt not kill, then later he commands people to
kill, what a prankster! Which chapter tells the story of him burying
fake dinosaur fossils to mess with us?”

“
You
can't even take this seriously, you just want to mock me,” Seth
says, shaking his head.

“
I
do take this seriously, and the fact that you are brainwashed to the
point that you can't spot obvious bullshit is a serious problem. You
can't be a rational person and believe these things. Either you care
about truth or you don't. If you don't, then you don't ever get to
tell me what's moral. You live in a fantasy world. That's fine, but
it's
your
fantasy
world, don't foist it on me.”

“
Morality
is black and white,” Seth relies. “Whether you listen to
me or not, it is still black and white, and you'll answer for the
dark things you do.”

“
I've
both killed and raped at this point, and you know what, I was right
to do those things. Nothing is always wrong. Nothing is black and
white. There are always gray areas. No book, no mythology, no
philosophy can cast enough light in the gray to make everything black
or white. There will always be gray areas, and people like you who
think that nothing is gray are a cancer on society.”

“
A
cancer!?”

“
Yeah,
because thinking like that is what leads to someone telling my three
parents that they're sinners and torturing them because of the way
they organized their love-lives.”

“
And
don't say you don't think the same way, because you just told me I
can't have two boyfriends because it's a sin. Please tell me where in
that book which is fine with rape and slavery that thou shall not
have two boyfriends. Just admit it, you do not get your morality from
god or that book. Morality is a function of the brain based on
evolution. You just attribute your feelings to being divinely
inspired as an appeal to authority to make your moral feelings have
more weight. It's total bullshit and I won't put up with it.”

“
You
are so self-centered,” Seth replies.

“
How?”

“
When
Paul took off with one of you,” Seth says, “why did you
go after him to save the copy of yourself, leaving me on the
operating table? Why didn't you let her go and save me? What was your
thought process?”

“
You
only have a few years to live, she can live forever. There's more at
stake for her to die. It's a pretty clear choice.”

“
I'm
leaving, and I'm not coming back,” Seth replies. “How's
that for a clear choice?” Seth storms down the stairs, leaving
the Renees in the observation dome. He heads to the televator,
slamming it shut behind him, and disappears. Patrick sees him go,
wondering why he seemed so upset. The televator door re-opens and
Peter emerges. Not Medved, but Peter.

“
Patrick,”
Peter says. “I'm gonna be gone for a while. I need you to look
after the girls. I want you to have this.” Peter hands Patrick
a flat disk. He presses a button and it shows a hologram of Medved's
avatar. Patrick smiles, looking up at Peter.