by Jeff Pollard
“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 what 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.
“Thanks,” Patrick says.
“Look out for her, okay?”
54
Both Renees, in new identical animatrons stand in the elevator, taking them down to the Comatorium. They walk to the pressurized door, entering the Comatorium through a gust of Xenon-Oxygen. They quietly walk, their metal feet clicking against the grates, through the maze of vats, until they find the one belonging to their mother.
One Renee crouches down, opening the rubber panel cover embedded in the floor. She pulls out a plastic receptacle feeding into several tubes that disappear into the base of the vat. She pulls three syringes from a pouch on her hip. She takes a deep artificial breath. The other Renee stares at the brain of their mother, floating in cerebro-spinal fluid.
“It's ready...I won't do it if you tell me not to.”
“Just hold on a second.”
“It was her call.”
“I know.”
“Put yourself in her shoes. If you wanted to die, would you want someone to take that right away from you?”
“Do no harm.”
“It's not that simple.”
“It is that simple,” she looks back into the purple-blue haze of fluid. “Do no harm. We both took that oath.”
“Her continued existence is causing harm.”
“She'll get over it.”
“She doesn't want to get over it. But I won't do it, if you say no.”
Gwen floats in an infinite, warm, golden, embracing bath of light. With her eyes closed, a smile slowly creeps across her face. She's joined by a Renee on each side, holding her close. Lost in a high of DMT and a lethal cocktail, her avatar dissolves into the ether, her consciousness disappears. Tears accumulate at the edges of her eyes, bulging in zero-gravity. A droplet escapes, forming a perfect sphere and floating slowly away.
Thanks to my teachers,
especially Brian, Whitney, and Mitch.
Special thanks to the four horsemen,
especially Sam Harris for inspiring much of this work.
For Hitch
www.JeffPollard.webs.com
www.amazon.com/author/JeffPollard
Table of Contents
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Acknowledgement