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fractal007
Senior Member
since 2000-06-01
Posts 1958


0 posted 2008-12-03 11:40 PM


The hum was a calm one, a murmur birthed indirectly by the pains of echoing genius through many generations.  Anselm had his ducks in a row and the engine was purring properly, each quantum fluctuation behaving as anticipated - at least as much so as was possible given the Copenhagen interpretation and all that.

Turning, Anselm caught a glimpse of his friend Lothar passing by.  Lothar's brief glance back at Anselm was signal enough for Anselm to stop and talk a while.  So Anselm left the railing beside the giant engine and advanced cautiously toward Lothar.

Anselm was expecting some kind of tongue lashing, perhaps vindictive rage on account of his not telling his friend of his newfound atheism - or perhaps of his lighted heart.  In truth, he did not want to tell Lothar but he wanted to proclaim the inner truth atop the roofs.  The fact that he was aboard a starship and not in a town precluded this, and so he was left to keep a blog instead.  

"Can atheism explain the big bang?" Lothar asked quietly, a look of concern crossing his face.  Was this genuine concern or a part of the ministry training?  Was Lothar trying to address Anselm in terms of what he believed to be Anselm's cosmology?

"No." Anselm answered.  "Does it need to?"

"If atheism can't explain it then what can?"

"I don't know," Anselm said.  "I did not stop believing in order to explain the origins of the universe.  I stopped believing in order to stop hating others."

"Hating others?  Whom did you hate and how did theism cause you to hate them?"

"The decadence of society," Anselm said, "the indifference of others toward my joy, the desire of others to rob it from me, to convert me to an atheist."

"So you became one," Lother remarked a little sarcastically.

"I came to love them so much by destroying the veneer I plastered around myself, and tearing away the white cloth of world view which separated me from them."

"So you lost your innocence?"

"No," Anselm said, annoyed.  "I deflowered the world by pricking it with a spirituality constituted of what I saw as its own atheistic materialism.  I broke the barrier inside of me."

"How can you be spiritual when you are an atheist?"

"I can be so by not believing - which an atheist does not by definition."

Anselm walked away then, called back to the rattling of the engine.  He knew he owed no allegiance to whatever being he might imagine, no matter how wondrous or perfect it might be.  Ultimately, such beings were the creations of his own imagination, to be enjoyed and loved at his own leisure.

Lothar left, praying and asking Jesus or the Holy Spirit or God himself to intervene and remove the veil which divorced Anselm from the Truth.

Life's short.  Think hard!
Me!

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