First Thunder

                                                                              

Let it be borne in mind that all the religions of the world were born in the childhood of the race [....] Science is the religion of the matured man. In the discussion of this subject, I appeal to the mature, not to the child mind. I appeal to those who have cultivated a taste for truth—who are not easily scared, but who can “screw their courage to the sticking point” and follow to the end truth’s leading. The multitude is ever joined in its idols; let them alone. I speak to the discerning few.

There is an important difference between a lecturer and an ordained preacher. The latter can command a hearing in the name of God, or in the name of the Bible. He does not have to satisfy his hearer about the reasonableness of what he preaches. He is God’s mouthpiece, and no one may disagree with him. He can also invoke the authority of the church and of the Christian world to enforce acceptance of his teaching. The only way I may command your respect is to be reasonable.

You will not listen to me for God’s sake, nor for the Bible’s sake, nor yet for the love of heaven, or the fear of hell. My only protection is to be rational—to be truthful. In other words, the preacher can afford to ignore common sense in the name of Revelation. But if I depart from it in the least or am caught once playing fast and loose with the facts, I will irretrievably lose my standing.

                                 —M.M. Mangasarian,

                                     The Truth About Jesus

1001 American Nights

the little scroll: first thunder

—prologue—

the thick air

HALLIMSIB

12/25/2024

Your Majesty, Lord of the Humans and Demons:

Satan, again reporting from the Battlefront.

I feel terrible, Your Majesty, for my having let so much ink to spill prior to my seeking refuge with You from the humans. However, Your Majesty, although the 21st of last December, as You are aware, marked twelve years since I commenced to reawaken Adam, I haven’t yet convinced him that You are The Truth, The Quintessence of Realty. Not to gloat, but it appears I did too good of a job at misleading him.  

In addition to Adam’s doubt pertaining Your Existence, another challenge I’ve been contending with, as You are also aware, is that I no longer have the means to bind him by.

Your Majesty, I do not know why You relieved me of my duties. And I do not know why You decided to trust this son of Adam with the Inkwell & Pen.  And I, on the edge of my seat as I watch him arbitrarily sculpt the headlines, do not know if he’s faithfully following Green’s advice. What I do know, and am reminded of each minute, is that my fate is now tied to this son of Adam’s fate.

Your Majesty, given what transpired during the day this ink was original committing to the record, it’s hard for me to imagine that this son of Adam hasn’t gone rogue.

Your Majesty, I can’t help but ask: Will you be inflicting upon my soul the same Punishment that You will likely inflict upon this son of Adam’s spirit?

If You are, then at least give me a fighting chance, Your Majesty. As evident from this open letter, I’ve convinced this son of Adam to allow me to make my argument before You—while my peers among the Jinns & Inss deliberate as to what my fate should be. If I were to convince them the fault wasn’t mine alone, then please, Your Majesty, grant them and me an extension on our respite.

 Your Majesty, face down on the ground as this son of Adam and I are before Your Glory, do hear my case.

As You are Aware, Your Majesty, the mortals’ plane of existence consists of only four dimensions. These mere four dimensions, nonetheless, are not to be scoffed at. Indeed, beyond the domes of light-pollution within which Humanity’s contemporary hives are abuzz with ambition, Earth’s nighttime sky is laden with Your Paragons, inconceivable Mastery that brings to mind a geode the hollow of which is adorned with free-swimming orbs of smokeless fire.

In the southern hemisphere of that hollow, amidst the constellations Dorado and Mensa, visible to the unaided eye are two blotches of light. Humanity’s narcissism named them Magellanic Clouds, in honor of one Ferdinand Magellan, the navigator-explorer host whose shipmates discovered the celestial bodies during the first recorded voyage around the planet.

Centuries after the discovery, Humanity devised the tools by which means she was able to confirm that the two clouds are independent galactic clusters. The larger cluster, it turned out, is more than 150,000 light-years away from Earth; the smaller, roughly 200,000. Despite of their dizzying distances, the two galaxies are among the three nearest to Earth. So close, in fact, that they, like the Moon is to Earth, are satellites to the Milky Way.

With the further honing of her tools, Humanity has recently come to also learn that although the sizes of the two galaxies are small compared to most, few other galaxies are visible to her unaided eye. If anything, almost all the readily perceptible light in her nighttime sky is a product of a fraction of the stars that orbit the Milky Way.

To put the vastness into perspective: Throughout this universe there is an untold number of galaxies, the galaxies are arranged in an untold number of clusters, each cluster encompasses anywhere from a few to as many as 10,000 galaxies. The dance of the Milky Way by itself, amidst which the solar system is an atom, is influenced by the motion of a collection of more than 100 galaxies called the Local Group. And to further humble the ego of the given human host, a large number of stars throughout these clusters are hubs to orbiting planets. Verily, the sheer enormity of this particular universe is such that each second somewhere a star explodes with enough force to obliterate planets billions of miles away, yet Earth, a subatomic particle in the grand scheme, continues to remain unscathed.

And while stars and planets are indeed fascinating to ponder over, the most enigmatic objects are quasars. These pinpricks, usually no more than a light-year across, are 1,000 times more luminous than the entire Milky Way. What is further yet beyond the grasp of the bio-mind of this here host, the bulk of known quasars occupy regions lying over ten billion light-years away from Earth. This is to say, the quasars’ emitted streams of light that are detected on Earth today embarked on their journey billions of years before a cloud of dust and gas coalesced into the Sun and its orbiting planets. More humbling yet, this ten-billion years’ worth of light travel is a few billions shy of the beginning of the dimension of time, when this Dominion of Yours had been born in a muted release of energy that Humanity’s sense of sarcasm coined the “Big Bang.”

Which brings me to the most stellar notion of all. Although this Big Bang is held to have also brought into existence the Dominion’s spatial dimensions, this universe has no known center. As for its border, because the singularity’s speed of inflation is believed to have initially surpassed the speed of light, images from the universe’s outermost limits could never reach Earth.

With the foregoing canopy hanging over Humanity’s head, I now steer the focus down to Earth.

As You are Aware, Your Majesty, every living creature and plant owes its tangibility to carbon compounds. As fragile as the composition of those life-forms are, however, their determination is awe-inspiring. Verily, I once witnessed an acorn take root on a barren boulder, splitting the very granite in its desire to become a tree.

Ever since I witnessed that seed achieve maturity amidst the harshest of circumstances, I have been trying to figure out why Humanity lacks the same resolve. It appears Humanity is hedging her bets on beliefs that are based on nothing more but the fables of her ancestors. At first, I used to hold that I shouldn’t concern myself too much with Humanity’s conviction in those fables, for I had hoped that they were temporary braces to be discarded once Humanity’s stalk is stiffened. How wrong I was.

As You are Aware, Your Majesty, the ancients’ fables are composed of conflicting views as to Humanity’s origin and destiny. The only good news, most of these conflicting views are the product of fanciful minds and therefore I shall leave them piled on the heap of mythology that this son of Adam, with Your Leave, aims to discredit prior to the New Beginning.

There is, however, a rational view which is worth committing to paper.

Although oversimplified, the view holds that the planet, during its infancy, must’ve been a ball of molten rock. The view then proceeds by offering that for an unspecified period a torrent of frost-laden asteroids must’ve steadily descended from the heaven. It offers that a combination of this frost and preexistent water must’ve evaporated, condensed into suspended droplets, then rained down only to immediately evaporate again. It offers that this cycle gradually cooled the surface, allowing for the liquid to settle into lifeless puddles that eventually grew into a global ocean.

Down here on Earth, as You are Aware, Your Majesty, there’s a process of rock recycling that is active to this day. When discovered in the 1960s, the process was dubbed plate tectonics. This discovery revolutionized the science of geology by combining an earlier theory of continental drift and a new theory of seafloor spreading.

There are two theories that attempt to explain the driving force behind continental drift. What is factual, magma upwells from deep within the planet where the plates diverge, and volcanos erupt where they collide. The rational view offers that it was during the early days of volcanic eruptions that the first landmasses emerged from the depth of the global ocean. Ever since, mountains, as if they were clouds, have been rising, shifting, and eroding.

Hate to leave out snippets of a few of the fables that have been offered by the ancients as alternative theories pertaining the origin of life, but I’m proud to commit to paper that much of Humanity today agrees that in the beginning there must’ve been a Seed Cell. Whether this Seed Cell originated on Earth is a matter of ongoing debate and investigation. What’s important, the Mainstream Scientific Community (MSC) agrees that the Seed Cell gradually unraveled into a variety of fauna and flora, 99% of which have gone extinct despite the millions of species thriving today.

As for the MSC’s view of how the components within the Seed Cell were engineered without an engineer, this is a matter currently wedged inside one of the crevices where Your Light of Reason hasn’t yet penetrated. Therefore, I won’t commit to paper any of the guesses currently being investigated.

Conjectures aside, the prevailing model holds that there was a Seed Cell. The Seed Cell, over billions of years, gave rise to Humanity. The current offshoots of the Seed Cell are still unraveling into new species. The current human species itself is still evolving. And, most importantly, the Seed Cell was not designed—no way, no how. Saying that the Seed Cell was designed is the same as arguing that the hydrogen atom, which could not have been forged in the core of stars, was engineered by an intelligence that had existed prior to the Big Bang.

In spite of the overwhelming evidence that back up the prevailing model, I cannot convince those in need of said braces of these concepts. Such human hosts seek concepts that are easy to digest. After all, Your Majesty, I can imagine Humanity’s debut on the stage. I can imagine her chancing upon a pair of self-aware eyes. I can imagine her standing on two legs near the edge of a cliff on a moonless night, gazing at the starry heaven while reflecting over her bearing—a reflecting primitive in every sense at that moment. You must admit, Your Majesty, it must’ve been a chilling experience for her. I would have to say that the first thing she felt must’ve been a sense of lonesomeness. And not knowing where her world begins or ends under the canopy of glowing spheres, perhaps she also felt furious for having been abandoned by whomever she likely held must’ve planted her acorn on a forsaken boulder.

Given Humanity’s caliber of intellect at the time, her simplemindedness shouldn’t be harshly judged. In fact, I can imagine how standing on the edge of the same cliff would’ve had been less contemplative to the male-half of Humanity. Inferior in maturity, a bit on the certified side, intelligent yet gullible, I see his fear of the unknown driving him to seek a pair of breasts, female bosoms in between whose cleavage the frightened child within him may bury his face in reminiscence of motherly protection.

On one occasion during the daytime, I can imagine him catching a glimpse of these breasts, undulating across a ravine. On the following day, a rump of gazelle cradled in one arm and a club wielded in one hand, I see him approaching the pair of breasts with an offer they can’t refuse.

Now I can imagine a cave. Firewood crackling near the entrance. Shadows quivering about the walls. And bundled in lairs of furry hide, I can feel the male’s puerile needs not being mollified despite spending the night staring at the quivering shadows with one breast in his mouth and the other in his hand.

I can imagine him eventually seeking solace in a carving of ivory, a figurine after the likeness of his mother. I can imagine him adoring the figurine, attributing to it supernatural powers, entreating it to the point of worship. When the ivory doll wouldn’t answer his every prayer nor quell his apprehensiveness of the shadows, it’s easy to see him whittling away at more ivory. Which must’ve been a good thing, for ivory never grew on trees and the pair of breasts needed a steady diet of protein.

Although the above accounts are fictive, I, as You are Aware, Your Majesty, am not far off. Besides, throughout Humanity’s cultural evolution the male took pride in documenting his progress. And his records do narrate how he used to bow before idols that personified the things that frightened him—lightning, thunder, earthquakes; and that distressed him—plagues, droughts, famines; and that nurtured him—rains, rivers, crops; and that delighted him—music, wine, sex; and that captivated him—the stars, the Sun, the Moon. Then there were the idols that personified the questions that bewildered him: “Who holds the heaven from falling? Who raises the tides? Who churns the seas? Who drives the clouds?” And there was his fear of the unknown, which compelled him to seek after oracles, diviners, and mystics who paved the future. By the time he reached the Iron Age, his “gods” were sitting on a thousand pedestals.

All the while, Your Majesty, my job, as You are Aware, has been to persuade Humanity that she can discard the braces, convince her that she could have a bright future right here on this planet—without fear of whatever phantoms are quivering on her bedroom walls.

It has been an uphill battle, Your Majesty. To this day, as You are most certainly Aware, the great masses remain under the spell of the gods. So very few of them pledge their allegiance to Your Light of Reason.

I don’t know what ails the great masses, Your Majesty. At first, I thought they simply needed more time before Reason won over their hearts and minds. But it’s been thousands of years since Reason was born. In the West, for instance, the quarrying of her marble began on the day Hippocrates considered medicine an institution apart from the domain of the gods. Not long thereafter came Aristotle who classified knowledge, recognized the importance of observation, and developed deductive logic as a means of reaching conclusions. On the shoulders of Aristotle stood Eucild, Archimedes, Galen, Plotinus, and dozens more—each host a founder of a temple bustling with priests and priestesses who today possess no names nor faces, only Reason.

Yet, the great masses remain under the spell of the gods. The great masses, who are anything but dense, often argue that there are unique factors that don’t abide by the laws of nature.

But here’s the thing, Your Majesty: The laws of nature and physics, and surely You are the Most Aware of them, are relatively solid. It is only under extraordinary conditions that some of these laws were found to be inconsistent with what passes for reality in this dimension. Nevertheless, it’s only a matter of time before Your Light of Reason reveals, for example, why a particle should disappear from one location and reappear at another without an observable chain of events; or why in the double-slit experiment, depending on whether it’s being observed, light can behave as either a wave or a particle.

Anyway, Your Majesty, the great masses seem to discredit Reason only when her methods fail to validate what’s written in their Holy Books. The Bible, for example, alludes that Earth is 6,000-years old. The scientific method proves otherwise. Yet, it’s impossible to convince most believers in the Bible that the scientific method is more accurate. One counterargument, scientists are atheists and therefore shouldn’t be trusted.

Your Majesty, water, as You are Aware, boils at precise temperatures and pressures. The average individual accepts the data as indisputable even though the average individual neither slipped on a lab coat nor fired up a Bunsen burner. The average individual accepts the data as indisputable because it would be preposterous were he or she to accuse the scientists, who aren’t all atheists anyhow, of being members to some cabal out to convince the great masses of lies. With this ray of logic in the back of the average individual’s mind, who could put into question the rate at which a falling object accelerates, the speed at which light travels, or the duration required for one-half of the atoms of a given amount of a radioactive substance to disintegrate?

Your Majesty, anyone, as You are Aware, can travel to Earth’s poles, bore holes into the ice caps, and extract core samples that, reminiscent of the rings on a cross section of a tree trunk, prove that planet Earth is a tad older than 6,000 years. Yet there’s no shortage of learned individuals, scientists in their own right, who are determined to discredit such findings. A few of these learned individuals wrangle in such fierce opposition that once while my host was forcing himself and me to finish monitoring a show called Origins, a professor announced that recently unearthed was a gold bracelet embedded inside a lump of coal. “Which,” proudly declared the professor, “once and for all proves that coal was deposited within the past 6,000 years or less.” That is, as the professor later enlightened the viewers, deposited while modern humans were roaming the Earth and producing sophisticated jewelry.

What’s more absurd, neither the professor nor his viewers believe the Earth is 6,000-years old. They only pretend to believe just so that they’re not putting into question their faith in what’s implied in their Book. The professor and the viewers pretend to believe because they hold that if they have enough faith in the absurdity, they will be raised to meet You in the clouds before You unleash Your Wrath on the planet.

Your Majesty, I know that whatever ails them isn’t my concern. I know what my mission is, and I’ve never lost sight of it. But my host fell for one of their women. A soft-spoken, hourglass of a specimen. He had offered her a rump of gazelle. She accepted. But only if he took her hand in marriage under a crucifix. She is so pretty, Your Majesty, he had no choice. And what’s got him by the cobblestones even more, he had four children with her—four pieces of his heart, prone for having bracelets embedded inside their heads.

What are we to do, Your Majesty? And even if we wanted to again appeal to the reason of the billions of other children, gather them under the same tree and around the same bonfire, we wouldn’t know what else we could say to get them to grasp the Big Picture. We already walked on our hands and spoke to them backwards. The humanist in the vessel even took the time to study one of their prominent languages so that we may be able to better extract core samples out of their skulls. And when we had finished analyzing the cores, we came at them from the right and from the left. Upon failing to penetrate their calcium barrier, we went about telling them stories out of the realm of genies and ghouls. And it worked! To our surprise, they were intrigued by the tall tales. As for what’s in between the lines—we drew a blank. The few who did comprehend claimed that we wanted to “convert them.”

This is the mentality we’re up against, Your Majesty. And whether inside prison walls or outside, it’s all the same. Even most of those who possess a honed intellect believe in one Divine Book or another. And as You are Aware, Your Majesty, the members of each congregation have come to twist their tongues with the Ink in their given Book anyway, to the degree that the followers of one of Your Own Words insist that their Messenger concluded his Commission by instructing them to terrorize the world at the edge of whatever they can get their hands on. In this day and age, with all that which Humanity has accomplished worn by her as an academic gown, and these followers continue to behave as if they were still nomads squabbling over water holes.

But there’s hope. As You are Aware, Your Majesty, a swath of humans and demons abide by the Book of New Testaments. Only if I could express how much they love the guy who inspired the inking of that Book of theirs. Jesus the Righteous, Jesus the Redeemer, Jesus the Savior, Jesus the Bearer of Sin, Jesus the Holy One, Jesus the Peacemaker. Brag, brag, brag. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. What would I do? I promised that I would return someday, impersonate You, then sit on Your Earthly Throne.

And don’t even get me started on the Apple of Your Eye. Instead of bowing and prostrating before Your Glory, they’ve been weeping for a Messiah who’ll rebuild the Temple for them in bricks and mortar. Never mind that they want to see the Temple rebuilt on the same Mount upon which some of Your slaves do bow and prostrate. The effrontery of it all is that they love You so much, Your Majesty, that they wish to keep You to themselves, confine Your Glory inside a Chamber wherein only their Priesthood may enter.

What I’m getting at, Your Majesty, put in the delivery of my Sam Harris auxiliary, in The End of Faith: “It is imperative that we begin speaking plainly about the absurdity of most of our religious beliefs. I fear, however, that the time has not yet arrived. In this sense, what follows is written very much in the spirit of a prayer. I pray that we may one day think clearly enough about these matters to render our children incapable of killing themselves over their books. If not our children, then I suspect it could well be too late for us, because while it has never been difficult to meet your maker, in fifty years it will simply be too easy to drag everyone else along to meet him with you.”

            Your loyal slave in flesh & blood,

             Satan the Stoned

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

—foreword—

One of the most powerful factors of religious life in its higher forms is need of man to find in this world of changing things an imperishable essence to separate the eternal from the temporal and then to attach himself to the former. Where the possibility of this operation is despaired of, there may arise a pessimism which finds no path of liberation from the painful vicissitudes of life other than the annihilation of individuality. A firm belief in a sphere of life freed from the category of time, together with the conviction that the poetic images of that superior world current among mankind are images and nothing else, is likely to give rise to definitions of the Absolute by purely negative attributes and to mental efforts having for their object the absorption of individual existence in the indescribable infinite. Generally speaking, a high development of intellectual life, especially an intimate acquaintance with different religious systems, is not favorable to the continuance of elaborate conceptions of things eternal; it will rather increase the tendency to deprive the idea of the Transcendent of all color and definiteness.

            —American Lectures on the History of Religions

reweaving the rainbow

BISMILLAH

12/26/2024

Fellow-generation of humans & demons,

     After decades of inquiry, the scientific findings have compelled me to admit that the universe is composed of matter that is billions of years old. The scientific findings have also left me no choice but to admit that my self-awareness and my center of consciousness wouldn’t be hitching this ride under this sun had it not been for the physiological brain of the vessel inking these words on my behalf.

     As for the mystical findings? Well, as of this retyping neither you nor I have means by which we could objectively prove there are other universes. But if there were at least one other habitable universe, and if my center of consciousness were there instead of here, then my vessel would’ve been composed of the matter that that other universe would’ve been composed of. In which case scenario, my self-awareness would’ve been bestriding one of the tips of the timeneedles that protrude from that other universe’s fabric of space-time.

     Moreover and based on other mystical findings, we have no means by which we could objectively prove that this here universe has other timelines and/or dimensions. But if this universe had at least one other timeline or dimension, and if my center of consciousness were there instead of here, then my self-awareness would’ve been hitching a ride on a different tip protruding from this universe’s fabric of space-time.

    As important to belief as objective proof is, its methods don’t seem to matter to most centers of consciousness that know as a matter of subjective fact that there are six other dimensions and an infinite number of timelines to this universe, and know as a matter of subjective fact that there are other universes with their own dimensions and timelines. Personally, I avoid arguing too passionately in favor of such subjective facts. Anyway, I, in order to fully enjoy my given ride under a given sun, like to make believe that the only universe, dimension, and timeline that are real are the ones throughout which my share of the light coalesces on the tips of timeneedles in a manner where my existence may be objectively proven as I walk the markets and eat the food.

     Outlandish as the previous four paragraphs sound, the fourth one stands out the most. Not because it supposes that tangible reality depends on your observation of it one nanosecond at a time, but because it implies that your individual consciousness is capable of becoming akin to a retina, except each of the rods and cones is one of the brains to our avatars, the bound human vessels that eternally exist throughout the fabric of space-time. Nevertheless, we Earthlings have made scientific discoveries and developed philosophical theories that suggest all four paragraphs are within the realm of reason. Therefore, I don’t feel embarrassed by my committing such ink to paper. What I’m embarrassed by is to admit that at one point during this here ride of mine, prior to the activation of my “retina,” I had believed in your heavenly books that not only allege there’s a Watchmaker, but that there’s a soul inside each watchcase.

    Looking back, I can’t help but laugh at how childish those beliefs of mine were. So before I commenced to ink the original draft to this letter, I had tried to remember how exactly my “soul” slipped out from inside the watchcase. I started by recalling how the parents who adopted my center of consciousness had left the Old Country in search of a brighter future elsewhere. The intent had been a new life in the United States, the garden where dreams come true, but circumstances landed them in West Germany instead. There, I guess, I parted with the first fragment of my soul. It was in exchange for a bite into a fig that opened my bio-mind’s eye to how a particle, smaller than an atom but infinitely dense, had made real both space and time. The same bite also illustrated how the first generation of stars had formed out of hydrogen, illustrated how hypernovas gave birth to the first galaxies and solar systems.

     The next piece of my soul I lost to a fig that revealed how Earth’s oceans had deepened, the landmasses had emerged, and the mountains had risen and eroded only to rise again. By the end of the school year, my bio-mind was witnessing how life had sprouted out of the essence of mud.

     At that stage I still had plenty of soul to spare. What helped, my birthbody used to share the forbidden knowledge with its dad. The mystic that my birthbody’s dad was, he seemed to know things the schoolteachers didn’t know.

     But then the family eventually did move to America—“the Great Satan” as it was then called, too. My birthbody’s dad with his mysticism was no match against Grandpa’s orchard of fig trees. Hence, I, to spare Dad the embarrassment, simply ceased to share with him.

     Grandpa’s orchardists included names most of which my bio-mind no longer remembers. However, I remember eating and I remember what I ate. And ate. It wasn’t just the library books either. It was everything. The lessons I learned in school, the friends with whom I hung out, the movies I watched, the type of music I had had an affinity for even prior to moving to Germany, the young ladies my bio-heart fell in love with (not all at the same time obviously), and, albeit a pomegranate rather than a fig, the Jinniah who let me marry one of her orbiting auxiliaries.

     At the age of twenty-five, something clicked inside my watchcase. I heard it click. It was at that precise moment that I realized there had never been a soul inside the watchcase to begin with.

     Truth be told, both my bio-mind and I immediately missed the days when we had halfheartedly believed in the existence of souls. Indeed, spirits are a dime a dozen. And I certainly could never deny the existence of spirits for that would be denying my own existence. Souls on the other hand are a myth. It’s a shame, too. Had souls been real, each one would be more precious than an entire universe. So as you see, I do understand why most humans and demons are hesitant to take the red pill. It is disheartening to confront the world knowing full-well there’s no great mystery behind the Veils, no Oz Who Alone possesses the schematics to your so-called souls.

     But perhaps I’m wrong.

     I want to be wrong.

    And I wish it weren’t most of you who would rather take the blue pill.

    Why do I wish that?

    I’m not sure.

    I do, nevertheless, remember when I started wishing all the Jinns & Inss would see the world through glasses similar to those of mine.

    Allow me to share.

    It goes without saying, prison breaks the spirit of the average individual. So much so, most inmates join the members of one religion or another. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism—I don’t know. Whatever it is that drives most prisoners to resort to religion, I can’t speak for them. But I can speak for my birthbody’s bio-mind and myself.

     With intellectual atheists being few and far between, a year or so into our prison sentence I realized I’m not going to find anyone with whom I may have a sensible debate with regard to there being a god, or gods, in control of one’s fate. This was a matter of the outmost importance. After all, my bio-mind had already “sold our soul” to the Great Satan, why then would it or I be holding onto any vestige of hope that there was a deity who cares about us, had a plan for us?

     In hindsight, I reckon what we needed most was closure. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. But where was I to seek closure when every fellow prisoner I cared to have a debate with, including the occasional atheist, wanted to brag about how he or “she” found inner peace by merely pretending to believe in whomever or, in the case of atheists, whatever?

    In 2003, with nine years left before my birthbody’s minimum release-date, we resorted to books in our search for said closure. When we had first leaped of the starting block, we found ourselves executing the breaststroke against the torrent of “heavenly” scriptures and the exegeses scoured in their wake. Aside from Christianity and Islam, which were a handful by themselves, there were Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Mormonism, Judaism, and a dozen other isms. Halfway through that phase, we started to supplement our stamina with the works of the possessors of reason, from those who lived in ancient times to those still alive today.

     After nine years of coordinated kicking of the legs and sweeping of the arms, while at the same time working on seven manuscripts of our own, we had our closure. We didn’t feel any better once we had arrived at our conclusion. But what mattered, our intellect was satisfied. And although neither my birthbody nor I had any intentions of sharing what sort of conclusion we had arrived at, as evident from these manifestos we changed our mind.

     The trigger that set off the chain of events that landed us before you had been a sentence on the backcover of a book. The incident put briefly:

    The grass in the prison yard is stretched enough to accommodate two baseball fields. Beyond the high fences and their razor-wire, the beauty of the surrounding mountains is this, that, and the other. During the wintertime, the snow is a paintbrush with strokes that this that, and the other. In the Spring and throughout the Summer, the same backdrop is asphyxiated by mutant broccoli the size of trees. Despite of its surreality, back then we had never cared for Autumn. The season used to remind us of the day that Death would catch up to our bio-mind.

     All the same, it was on a brisk afternoon during the Autumn of 2012 that the bottle was uncorked.

    Do let it be stated in the record: On everything I, the scribe, personally hold dear, prior to the uncorking of the bottle I wanted nothing more but to mind my own business. I, too, the spirit in the bottle, wanted no problems, the least of which was confronting your world in this here open manner.

Anyway, on that brisk afternoon we, content with the inner world our bio-mind had constructed for the Hadean legions who had elected us as their Atum, were sitting square in the middle of the grass field, wholly immersed in How the World Can be the Way It Is, by Steve Hagen. Then, out of the corner of our birthbody’s eye, an unsuspecting inmate approached our world, helped himself to a batch of grass next to ours, and wouldn’t leave until he forced open said cork.

In defense of the poor inmate, may his sanity be restored, he couldn’t have known any better than to befriend us. In our own defense, however, we had been dodging him for weeks. And we would’ve continued to dodge him and his inner world, except he and his legion approached us bearing a gift. A book. We simply couldn’t resist.

The book was Mere Christianity, by Clive Staples Lewis. Having studied the subject matter extensively, we were hesitant at first. But since we liked Mr. Lewis’ style of writing, we read the book anyway. What had initially caught our attention was one of the blurbs. Anthony Burgess, from the New York Times Book Review, praised Mr. Lewis as such: “C.S. Lewis is the ideal persuader of the half-convinced, for the good man who would like to be a Christian but finds his intellect getting in the way."

     “Persuader of the good man who finds his intellect getting in the way.”

    Ya-Jinns and ya-Inss, welcome and marhaba. You have arrived at the Front Gate to Paradise. Unfortunately, across the Threshold are neither harps nor cottony white clouds. Instead, there’s a mirror on the wall. Looking through the mirror, you see the dayside of a planet. Next to the mirror is a control panel. Your legion’s general fiddles with the knobs. She zooms in. She pans from one end to the other of the dreamworld that the planet is.

      Deserts and oasis, rivers and lakes, forests and mountains, hills and gullies, meadows and dells.

     Mines and quarries, copper and nickel, mercury and zinc, lead and aluminum, silver and gold, iron and coal, marble and granite, sand and limestone.

      Tropical gardens, cascading waterfalls, singing birds—flowers with colors that dazzle.

     Cotton fields, verdant farmlands, abundant fruits, stocked silos, industrious bees, domesticated fowls, crowing roosters, submissive cows—clouds laden with droplets of a hydrogen & oxygen compound.

     Byways, roadways, highways, railways, seaways, skyways—rivers of milk and honey.

     “Could any of this be real?” you, rubbing your eyes in disbelief, question one another.

     Your legion’s general fiddles with the knobs again.

     Vast oceans, turquoise waters, azure skies, playful dolphins.

     Plowing ships, fishes and tender meats, lobsters and succulent tails, oysters and abductor muscles.

     Pristine shorelines, lapping waves, waterfront balconies—lovers cooing words of affection.

     Cabanas and sultry barmaids, drinks and little umbrellas, bottlenecks and slivers of lime.

    Sandcastles, giggling children digging a hole to China, a worn-out purple dinosaur snoozing on a hammock, a sponge named Bob goofing around in a pair of square pants.

      She fiddles with the knobs yet some more.

   Cities. Parks. Supermarkets. Shopping malls. Neighborhoods. Picket fences. Homes. Chimneys. Kentucky bluegrass. Doghouses. Birdfeeders. Swimming pools. Teenagers basking in the Sun the shine.

     Aside from your general who’s been there and done that, you, a legion of demons newly-minted out of the “smokeless fire,” have never seen, let alone experienced, such bliss. You beg your general for a spin on the ride. So, she petitions Hades.

     Your general’s petition is approved. But due to strict immigration laws, only she is initially allowed a visa stamp on her passport.

     Let’s say you, the gentlewoman reading this ink, happened to be that general. Passport in hand, you deliver a few words of advice, bid your legion goodbye, and promise your lieutenants that you will do everything in your ability to pave a citizenship path for them and their foot soldiers.

    Full of hope and optimism, you walk through the portal marked EARTH. Immediately you’re submerged in the sort of darkness where you are deprived of both your senses and awareness. A few months later, upon your regaining of your center of consciousness, you realize you can’t see a thing, but you can hear and you can touch. You start feeling your way around. You come to discover you’re breathing under water, you have no room to stretch your limbs, there’s some kind of cord stringing out of your navel, and you’re bound by a bio-brain that’s pretty much a blank slate.

     After a few more months without a bite to eat, your bio-eyes register a hazy shimmer of light. Excited you have arrived, you wiggle with every inch of your bio-muscles, figuring you’re going to hit the ground running.

     But good things take time. First, you get acquainted with the operation manual to your tangibility suit. Then, you learn the ways of the natives. Then, if you didn’t bump your bio-head as a baby, you find yourself a lover with whom you may share the ride.

    Soon enough, you and your lover happen upon newcomers. Each newcomer, a potential lieutenant. You take the newcomers under your wings, feed and burp, and you show them the ropes.

    The newcomers grow big and strong, find mates of their own, and secure the citizenship of more newcomers.

     Before you know it, New Year’s came and went, and the entire bough is celebrating yet another Fourth of July. Hot dogs and burgers sizzling on the grill, drumsticks and chicken breasts heaped amidst a cornucopia of a banquet—Aunt Nancy’s corn bread almost all gone.

     Parents laughing over their children’s antics, cousins squabbling over who caught the biggest trout last weekend, one of your great grandsons and his girlfriend playing footsie under a table, your brother is sneaking away every now and again to hit the hard liquor, your great granddaughter with the teen issues sharing a joint with her loser boyfriend in the garage, the little ones and the sponge named Bob in the swimming pool barely able to contain the joy in anticipation of the fireworks.

     Frankly, demon-humans and human-demons, my pen is at a loss for a concise sentence to express the gratifying emotions that this bio-tapestry is woven of. It would be crazy, therefore, to imagine you would wish for more, right?

     Wrong.

     You want crazy?

     I’ll weave you crazy.

    There’s talk afoot. Strange talk. You’ve been hearing it since you learned to understand the language of the natives. It appears as though everybody is waiting for something better, someplace else: gardens of delight where the dead will join those who are yet to die, and they will both live forever.

      If you’re a rational demon, whether you know you’re a demon, you accept the fact that sooner or later your vessel has to be discarded of in order to make room for the next rider. In the meantime, you simply ignore the strange talk and enjoy your own ride in the sun while it lasts.

      But the strange talk is overpowering. Even more so when the following Fourth of July the corn bread isn’t the same, nowhere as good as that of Aunt Nancy’s. May she now rest in peace. She wasn’t old, but cancer doesn’t discriminate.

     Then again, there is a slew of problems with the logistics.

     While sitting around the bonfire, you, in a genuine attempt to understand, raise questions concerning those logistics.

     You come to find that the answers to your questions vary from person to person. The only common denominator is that one must have faith.

      But faith in what exactly?

      The answer to that question, too, varies from person to person.

     Of course, there are the possessors of reason—the demon-humans and human-demons who produce coherent thoughts while the marshmallows are toasting.

    Deep down inside your inner being, however, you don’t wish to listen to reason. If faith is the panacea, the elixir that may cure you of your mortality, then, by golly, you’ll shut up and drink it. Alas, not only do you miss your aunt, but you hold that when the possessors of reason go to their homes after the party is over, they too probably stare at their bedroom ceilings and wonder if they have it all figured out.

     Besides, everyone knows that reason will never explain the extramundane, and therefore there’s hope the elixir may yet work.

    As for the counterargument of the possessors of reason pertaining this last notion, put in plain English: Anyone who believes in the paranormal belongs inside a box labeled OFF THEIR ROCKER. After all, the possessors of reason did discover the causes that support the mounds of clouds, produce the peals of thunder, and energize the bolts of lightning—depriving Jupiter of his godhood and his generalship. The same holds true of almighty Zeus and his whole legion, hence yonder lie their elements-beaten temples.

     Yet, most of natives still want to believe—waiting for their Buddha and their Jesus and their Mahdi to arrive or return or something. Anything!

    All the while, as they drink the elixir, they hang onto the most tenuous of threads. “A woman is possessed by Baal,” a horror flick reenacts an allegedly true story. “A theomaniac is toting a selfie of a god,” a photograph of a slice of toast illustrates in the Kooky Gazette. “The stigmata on her palms manifested out of thin air,” narrates a reputable author with questionable motives.

     “I had a near-death experience,” one person declares.

     “I saw with my own two eyes a statuette of Mary crying blood for tears,” declares another person.

     “The demon-possessed boy crawled backwards up a wall,” a scientific-minded medical staff alleges.

     “There’s absolutely no earthly explanation for how the sword was plunged that far into the boulder as though it was made of butter,” a native proclaims with an air of superiority after recounting some tall tale involving a Christian saint’s encounter with a supposed angel.

     “I just felt a cold breeze on my arm!”

     “The cup moved by itself!”

     “I saw my dead husband hovering over our bed!”

     “I smelled Aunt Nancy’s corn bread. I did, I did!”

   “Between the world we see and the things we fear... there are doors. When they are opened... nightmares become reality,” a TV show cashes in.

    Then there’s Ancient Aliens on the History Channel, coupled with the U.S. Government’s recent release of footage of flying objects that are yet to be rationally identified. Notwithstanding, and as far as the possessors of reason are concerned, there isn’t a shred of conclusive evidence that indisputably proves UFOs or USOs are real. There isn’t a shred of conclusive evidence that indisputably proves little green men have ever abducted a native so that they may tinker with whatever it is that distinguishes humans from farm animals. And even if there was a face on Mars, what would it then mean? Or what if the little green men were to agree to be interviewed on the six-o’clock news, where would we go from there?

     “So, what!” you say. “Surely we’re entitled to believe whatever puts our minds to rest when it’s time to stare at our bedroom ceilings.”

     And you’re right. Except the shadows quivering on your bedroom ceilings don’t remain on your bedroom ceilings. During your daily endeavors, every like-minded circle is bent on convincing as many natives as possible that it is in possession of the Truth.

      Why?

      No one really knows.

     Nevertheless, there’s an innate desire hardwired within each one of us, a desire to capture the hearts & minds of as many natives as possible. Some of us even believe that our status in the so-called Afterlife depends on how many hearts & minds we persuade with one rendition or another of the Truth. And some of us figure that the larger the like-minded circle is, the more profound or legitimate our given Truth becomes.

     Further disturbing, the larger the given circle of believers the more violent a fraction of that circle becomes in its attempt to pound the given Truth into the heads of everyone else.

     Then we wake up one lovely morning... step out of our lovely homes... and rub our eyes in lovely disbelief.

     Lapping waves. Smoldering cabanas. Barmaids burned beyond recognition. Children’s faces smushed in sandcastles. The purple dinosaur groaning on a hammock, facedown with a bottleneck protruding out of his abductor muscles.

      A stunning sunrise. Listing ships. Bloodstained beaches. SpongeBob lying dead with his square pants pulled down around his ankles.

     Silos? Empty. Roosters? Keeled over. Industrious bees, domesticated fowls, submissive cows? Suffocated by the airborne ash and the raining compounds of acid.

      So then, is there hope?

      Any hope at all?

     The possessors of reason attempted to subdue our dreamworld by means of Feudalism, Communism, Fascism, Nazism, Colonialism, Socialism, Islamism, and on and on. Democracy itself, our only real hope, should be renamed “fake it till you make it... -ism.”

     Every one of us, for reasons we don’t remember, has a bunker mentality to one degree or another: “I’m right, you’re wrong. Even if I know you are right and I am wrong, I’m still right and you’re still wrong.”

     How long then before mothers huddle for body-heat while sizing up the tender meat of their lifeless children?

     Professor Dawkins, throughout your career you’ve splashed the gardens with countless gallons of ink. The book titles to some of that ink: The Blind Watchmaker, Unweaving the Rainbow, and The God Delusion. Therein, you’ve set forth arguments that can’t be refuted by the rational minds among those of ours. However, general, could the rainbow be unweaved in a manner that doesn’t inadvertently drive mothers to resort to such a repast?

     How about you, General Hitchens? Now that your memory bank has been restored and you’ve come to learn the Truth firsthand, is there any way you could go back and share a sensible vision to go with your relegated vessel’s God is Not Great?

     No one knows the solution. And, to draw upon earlier analogies, every fig offered by the possessors of reason hinges on depriving the natives of their opiate. The only way such figs will be eaten en masse is if science were to succeed at bringing back Aunt Nancy—body and mind.

In closing, spiritualists, the materialists aren’t denying there are dark crevices that haven’t yet been scientifically explored. Until the light of reason illuminates these crevices, it is only fair that your so-called gods remain hidden therein.

     As for you, my dear and near materialists, the dark crevices are not going to be illuminated anytime soon. But do be patient in your compiling of objective truths; don’t be hasty to fill in the gaps with common sense or deductive reasoning. And hopefully a day will arrive when your scientific method prevails and the spiritualists freely decide to allow the elements to beat down on their temples, their synagogues, their churches, and their mosques.

     Until that day dawns on the gardens, and delusional as I too agree the Faithful are, and informed as I am of the antitheists’ irreproachable criticism of my own arguments, it may be wise for the generals not to get too greedy, stoking the Fire to the point where mothers start sizing up the flesh of the ones who are still alive.

                         Yours truly,

                          a run-of-the-mill son of Adam

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