AND GOD SAID TO ME. . .
My name is Les Bugthorpe - almost always known as LB - and my main claim to fame is in my pioneering work in the area of 'reversible death'. I cannot bring back to life grossly damaged bodies of beings - human or otherwise - but I have discovered two things; one is how to bring back to life the 'brain dead' so long as fatal macro-injury is absent and, also, I have perfected the means of inducing 'brain death' in healthy living people. Technically, I have perfected the LBRDM - the Les Bugthorpe Reversible Death Machine.
Many of these machines are now, discreetly, in use and people with the money and the courage can take the ultimate holiday by opting for RD for more or less as long as they choose. Seven years is a favourite choice, for reasons which I do not understand, for those with teenage children. Those who see themselves as too useful, to be free from this mortal coil for so long as seven years, can go for our Wilderness Experience for forty days and forty nights. Our Empty Tomb weekend has not caught on so well; the steps needed to embark upon this tend to be rather uncomfortable and one client, in particular, has failed conspicuously to return from the dead in sufficiently convincing manner. .
The technology is admittedly difficult and the machines are very expensive to manufacture and, as is the way of the market, any rewards for increasing sales are ultimately passed on to the consumer by reason of the reduction in unit cost that long runs of production permit. People who mean business dare not be over-scrupulous in the methods they adopt to achieve the beneficent increase in competitiveness that enhanced sales volume alone can generate..
With the lucrative North American, Pacific Rim and Arab markets in mind, I introduced a gimmick in the form of a 'one arm bandit' feature. When the machine is switched on, the user has to press a button which sets three concentric drums revolving. These can each display the letters PA, PE or PU when the revolutions cease; the gimmick intended is that, if all three come to rest reading the same, the user will spend his death-spell in PAradise, PErdition or PUrgatory as the case may be. I have to acknowledge that this was intended quite dishonestly in that I considered that there were no such death-venues to go to and, in any case, I rigged the machine so that all three coming up the same would never happen - so I intended..
I decided to take a spell of RD myself and, as part of a sales pitch on the occasion of a particularly striking representation of the Blessed Virgin riding a unicycle down Pensylvania Avenue, I took the plunge in public.
One does have to be lucky as well as careful; the three displays all came to be PA - yes all of them, so help me!.
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I found myself, to my utter amazement, in a comfortable apartment well appointed in the style of an international airport - a sort of RIP Lounge, I suppose you would call it. Very soon a warm maternal lady approached me; she was wearing spotless white overalls with the letters HMG embroidered on a breast pocket. I knew, of course, that the letters WOGS used to mean Worker On Government Service but, patriotic Brit that I am, even I did not think that Her Majesty's Government had collared the franchise in the reception area of the Blessed Hereafter. (They would have privatised it anyway). The good woman inquired kindly, in the warm accent of County Kerry or thereabouts, "Would it be a cuppa you'll be after having, mister? The Ahlmoighty will be after seeing you in a wee whoile so He will. Himself has been expecting you, so he has".
As I took the tea and thanked her I could not but inquire as to the letters, HMG, she displayed. Of course - I should have known - she was the BV Herself, the Holy Mother of God..
We chatted amiably for a while, establishing, among other things, that she wouldn't be seen dead, alive or resurrected, on a unicycle - not even in Boston MAS, please God, never mind in that sinful place Washington DC. .
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In due course I was ushered into the presence of Almighty God. The rest of this chronicle is almost wholly a verbatim account of a most interesting conversation between Him (AG) and me (LB).
AG: Welcome, LB! Do sit down; may I offer you a dram of the Holy Hard Stuff?
LB: Thank you Sir.
AG: Just call me AG - its easier that way.
LB: Thank you AG; I have had a tiring journey although I was oblivious to it while I was on the way.
(I reflected that so amiable a Top Person was one with whom frank speaking would not come amiss - and he probably knew my thoughts anyway - so I continued). . . .
You will of course know, AG, that I have been a life-long atheist and that, consequently, I may experience difficulty in adjusting to a conversation which, by its very nature, I had not bargained for. I had not even foreseen that my little 'one-arm bandit' device would fail . . .
AG: . . . . but it did not fail, LB; I intervened to get you here because I wanted you to hear my views and for you to pass them on to people generally.
LB: Why, with great respect, did you pick on an atheist for this job?
AG: Oh come off it LB - you surely don't think I'm daft enough to trust believers with the truth. Most of them would simply distort my message so as to harmonise with the crap that most of them have been saying about me for yonks. They mostly have vested interests in talking incoherent claptrap; most of them have painted themselves into corners from which they have neither the desire nor the guts to escape . If there's one thing bound to get up any god's nose . . . . that thing is the community of believers. After all, I invented the aphorism, "God save us from our friends . . . "
LB: But how can you trust me not altogether to hush up this conversation in the atheist interest?
AG: Your misapprehensions as to my existence have been abolished at a stroke and so you can proceed, ideologically unencumbered from now on, with a clean sheet. We can do business on that basis, so to speak. In any case, if you double-cross me I can put you into that machine again and next time . . . . it will come up with three displays all the same - and NOT PA's I assure you. So we can talk turkey - yes?
LB: Yes indeed, turkey is what we'll talk, AG.
AG: I knew you'd see it my way, LB. I will now spill the cosmic beans.
First, I did create the universe - and I know that you are now thinking, 'who created the creator, will He tell me that?'. Listen LB there are some things you just don't ask - remember the one-arm bandit so don't push your luck.
LB: Fair enough, AG, any answer there may be to my unspoken question is likely to be either formal (in the strict philosophical sense of articulate but without verifiable or falsifiable meaning) or it will be opaque to humans. So I accept that it is a silly question for me to ask - a question to which there is no useful answer accessible to the likes of me.
AG: Believe me, LB, creation has been a very hairy business. The Big Bang is a doddle to trigger off but it really is a bugger to adjust during countdown. If you can make something out of nothing once then you can do it as many times as you like; there's no shortage of nothing to make something of, is there?
LB: Quite so, AG!
AG: I can set 'em off as often as I please but what's the use if the various physical constants, settled in the first few microseconds, don't come out right.
If, say, the gravitational forces are too strong then the show never gets on the road; the Big Crunch instantly negates the whole creative exercise; the Big Bang turns into a Big Phut. If the gravitational forces are just a little too weak then the debris is dispersed beyond recall and never gets itself organised into any sort of decently respectable universe at all - the Big Whoosh.. Believe me, LB, I've done more Big Bangs than you've had hot dinners and they've all gone wrong except the last. The latest one seems to be more or less OK; the Big Crunch will come - but after a decent cosmic interval and I'll settle for that.
Creating universes by Big Bangs is a kind of natural self-selection process - only the ones with the fundamental physical constants with the suitable relative values can survive at all. The rest crunch or scatter - implode or explode beyond repair.
LB: You said, "only the ones with the fundamental physical constants with the right values can survive at all" - really? Perhaps other different sets of compatible values would permit other viable universes to exist - perhaps simultaneously. They might even compete in a "struggle for existence."
AG: I think you may be right (indeed I fear you must be right) but I have chickened out of any more Big Bangs in case you are right. One bloody universe is enough thanks all the same and it'll have to do. 'Tis a poor thing - but mine own'. (That's another of my one-liners, by the way).
LB: But the Bible . . . . Genesis . . Let there be xyz . . . . . . "God said it was good." Don't tell me the Bible has nothing to do with you, or with creation, AG.
AG: You look worried, LB, so take another pull at the Holy Hard Stuff and I'll give you the lowdown on the Bible.
LB: I do wish you would; Bibliolatory is the biggest obstacle in the path of effectual human thought - and that's a pity because there is plenty of good stuff in it too. Plenty of believers and plenty of unbelievers might agree about that.
AG: It's really like this; I did, effectively, write the Bible and for two reasons. Perhaps you might try to guess what they are.
LB: One of them may be to test human credulity. There is enough significance, truth, goodness and wisdom in the Bible to compel us to take it seriously while there is enough that is trivial, untrue, incoherent, silly, and even downright evil, to give us pause. I can quote chapter and verse to substantiate those claims . . . .
AG: Please don't bother - I know the bloody lot by heart.
LB: People are driven either to contriving excuses for it, or trying to pretend that it means what they want it to mean or only looking at the good bits and hoping that the bad bits will simply go away. This last ploy is becoming quite prevalent now that people hardly read anything anyway.
AG: Yes that is one reason and I have to say that I am sad about how people debase the brains I gave them making excuses for the inexcusable bits of scripture.
Do they really think I collect Philistines' foreskins? Do they really think I am impressed that some rustic preacher - a nice enough chap in an assertive sort of way - supposedly died to save their precious souls? What did the poor chap's death do for me, do they suppose? I can save their souls anytime I please and when they grow up a bit, and stop misrepresenting me and hurting one another, I may well do so.
Do they really think that they shouldn't plant more than one kind of seed in the same field - bloody hell, I do it all the time and when I do it they call it biodiversity or some such thing.
I prompted some hack to write the Noah story - a story that shows a fictional god to be both cruelly unjust (drowning the innocent children and animals as well as the guilty adults) and ineffectual with it (the survivors soon became just as bad as their forebears). I hoped that at least they would jib at that but what do we see? Well-funded American loonies actually looking for bits of the goddam Ark - that's what we see, LB. Let's have another dram.
LB: I thought I was right about that but I am at a loss to see your other reason for procuring the writing of the Bible.
AG: I have already hinted to you what a hit and miss business creation has been even, perhaps especially, at the outset in the Big Bang. The living world is just as much a gamble from my point of view . . . .
LB: . . . . but, AG, the Design - Your Plan, the Order in Creation, the Laws of Nature that living things depend upon for their viability, that we inventors depend upon for our innovations within those Laws . . . . what about all that? Wasn't Paley even a little bit on the ball sometimes?
AG: You flatter me. The universe is pretty chaotic really; it only exists at all because the last Big Bang of many was the only one that did not turn out as the Big Flop. There is some order; you are quite right to see that if there were not at least some order then life could not be. But if you knew just how few places there are in the squillions of planets, stars, galaxies . . . . where life exists so precariously . . . . then, LB, you would realise how bizarre and vulnerable a phenomenon life actually is. It is the triumph of possibility over probability.
If I'd known just how sheer bloody speculative this creation lark was going to turn out then I wouldn't have bothered. What's been in it for me? Zilch, that's what!
I had no option but to put up with natural selection and what a crazy bloodbath that has been. All those failed species - and your lot aren't all that promising I have to say. 'In my image' - what a nerve some people have! Then again, those stupid great dinosaurs (the bones your lot have dug up were only the little ones - you just wait till archaeologists dig up the ocean bed) seemed to have succeeded and then, bingo, a cosmic chance clobbered them. What sort of a plan is that? Plan, my eye! It's been just one dam' thing after another. Can you not now begin to see why I had some Charlie write Genesis the way he did? Come on, LB, have a guess. Put yourself in my shoes!
LB: I'll stick my neck out and suggest that, in the light of what you have said, you found the real business of creation very difficult, very much out of control and often unrewarding. Many of us humans find life to be like that - I repeat "very difficult, very much out of control and often unrewarding" - and so we try to escape from real life to simulated lives that we can live vicariously; we have invented Soap Opera. The Genesis creation story is your escapist Soap Opera.
AG: If I had a hat on, LB, I'd take it off to you. You are dead right. I would so much have liked to have said "let there be . . . . whatever". And all done in seven days - even my mind boggles at that one.
I would love to have avoided this cruel, unpurposed, wasteful carry-on you call natural selection. Would it not have been fun to have designed species to my liking and have them live out their lives in cosy harmony? My living world does not set your human segment of it a very good example. It depends on being all the things I wish you not to be - cruel, wasteful, inefficient and very fickle. "Don't do as I do - do as I say" comes to people's minds when, at one and the same time, they see what goes on and hear what purports to be God's Word.
LB: Don't go on about it all; you'll make me miserable . . . .
AG: But I have had my just deserts. It has only been possible to make the Genesis story ring even half-true by blaming Eve and by your lot having to invent a truly absurd, and often insulting, god-idea instead of trying to understand me for the poor well-meaning blundering creator that I am. If people only knew what I am really like they would not worship me; they would offer me counselling!
LB: Oh come off the self-pity, AG. You can't win 'em all. There's time to get things a bit better before the Big Crunch. I am sure that kind comfortable looking tea-lady you have in the RIP Lounge is more positive than that.
(I looked down, not bearing to see his anguished face, and I heard him reply:)
AG: I have had enough from now on it's up to your lot, LB, to . . . .
HMG (bursting in): I've got some fellow down in reception causing a lot of trouble, sure I have, says his name's Paisley. You'll have to see him, AG; he is more than I can be doing with, so he is.
AG (wearily): Bloody hell! These believers'll be the death of me; all they really want is for me to believe in them. I'd make myself scarce if I were you, LB. So remember what I've said and push off.
And now I am back to life I will call in all the LBRDM's with the one-arm bandit feature.
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