Page 11 - Ferry Tales
P. 11

Lightfoot

          “Listen,”  I  tell  him,  “this  is  the  Styx,  not  de  Nile.  You’ve  got
        nowhere to go but down.”
          “I refuse to believe it! I was waiting for the Rapture.”
          “What you got,” I sneer, “was the Rupture: the ground opened up
        beneath your feet and swallowed you!”
          He considered that—for less time than I would have liked.
          “Well, what about divine judgment? I demand my rights!”
          “Pay attention, Lightfoot: you think you have a case to be won or
        lost? Your ledger closed with your last breath. No deities required.
        It’s  simple  accounting,  based  on  damage  done.  Automatic,  in  fact.
        Karma, in scientific terminology. You can have it one of two ways,
        but not both: either your fate was predestined or not. If so, your free
        will  or  power  is  an  absurdity,  an  illusion  foisted  on  you  by  an
        omnipotent deity amusing itself with the pain and suffering it created.
        If not, then no deity has absolute power over the entirety of space
        and time, and the cosmos therefore does not manifest a supernatural
        system of punishment and reward for behavior. In fact you would be
        hard pressed to explain the rationale linking piety and morality, or to
        disprove  the  notion  that  winners  and  losers  are  not  produced
        mechanically and randomly.”
          “I won’t listen to that!”
          “Indeed,” I say. “Why start now? If logic is a temptation, then try
        applying logic to temptation: who was the villain in the Garden of
        Eden? Yes, who set Adam up, who teased him with knowledge, who
        sent  a  snake  to  trick  Eve  into  breaking  the  human  promise  with
        Yahweh? Why, Yahweh himself, the supposedly beneficent deity. He
        is  repeatedly  shown  to  be  a  torturer,  a  mass  murderer,  a  petulant
        demander of tribute, sacrifice and absolute loyalty. But you assign all
        those negative attributes to the Devil—who is, in fact, scrupulously
        honest in his dealings with mankind. If you deserve punishment, he is
        there  to  administer  it  in  exact  proportion  to  the  severity  of  your
        offenses.  You  Westerners  don’t  understand  the  partnership,  the
        mutual dependence of your deities; so you think they are in a fight for
        ultimate  dominance.  Of  course,  that  describes  your  own  way  of
        relating  to  the  world.  In  the  East  they  accept  the  distribution  of
        positive and negative qualities as inevitable and eternal—which is not
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