thing as
poor and
' He looked at Ann for a moment. The muscles in his face relaxed, though what remained was less anger than weariness.
'Do you think that, because I'm an atheist, I don't take God seriously? Do you think that a doctor doesn't take cancer seriously, simply because he thinks it has no place in human life?'
'Cancer exists,' I said. 'A doctor can find it. He can cut it away. He doesn't play word games to deny its existence.'
Golding paused for a moment to consider my non sequitur. He smiled once more. Almost impishly.
'Many cancers are created by the mental attitudes of the victim. So it is with God.' He tapped at the side of the coffee pot with fingernails immaculately maintained. 'You want to know where the current God came from? The Judeo-Christian God evolved as a
-as a political effort to accumulate church power and crush the followers of older, established religions by making the new God more powerful, more intrusive, more petulant, and more irrational than any previous god or goddess. The Levite priests of Israel brazenly copied religious concepts of the Aryans, the Sumerians, and dozens of other Indo-European races. The theft from the Romans and the Greeks was even more obvious-they just changed the names a bit. Jove became Je-ho-vah, Zeus became Ya-Zeus, the goddesses Ma and Rhea became Ma-ria.'
That was too much. 'Are you saying that the Jews adopted the religion of their enemies?'
'Can you think of a better way to co-opt your foes? Can you think of a better way to attract possible converts than to use their own symbols? How do you think the Christians co-opted the Jews and the pagans? Certainly not by offering a totally different religion to usurp its predecessors. They incorporated the old religions almost whole cloth while simultaneously stripping the symbols of their former meaning. The Babylonians still worship Ishtar? Substitute worship of the Virgin Mary. Egyptians believe that Osiris rose from the dead? Have Ya-Zeus do the same.'
Golding seemed to be warming up again. He began to spit out snippets of historicity as if they were theological watermelon seeds. The outcome was about as intellectually tidy.
'Mount Sinai stood for centuries as a mountain holy to the moon god Sinn, long before Moses went there to speak to Yahveh. And this new god's burning bush was nothing more than a psychedelic substance called loranthus growing on acacia-a bush sacred to the Sun.' He prattled on while getting the cups and saucers. 'The story of Christ is a slipshod retelling of the Mithras and Osiris legends grafted to the clumsy attempt of an aggressive rabbi to be crowned King of Israel.
'They made this composite God of theirs an incomprehensible mishmash of conflicting traits. He was as rational as Apollo and as murderous as Typhon. The priests kept everyone on His good side-for a price. The same group-the same philosophical movement that devised and later refined the Judeo-Christian God-outlawed the older religions and slandered the Old Gods as devils and demons.'
Golding made motions as if he were coming to an important point. I had long before lost interest and was more mesmerized by the coffeepot in his hand. It floated and dipped with his every gesture. The dark brew inside sloshed and swirled, never quite reaching the rim. My vision of having a hot cup of Java in the near future dimmed considerably.
'They reserved their greatest hate for witchcraft, though. They rightly recognized it as a primitive form of science, not merely a rival faith. Science-in any form-is anathema to faith. How much more skeptical is the one who experiments with herbs or symbols or rituals to pick what works best compared to the one who places absolute trust in a priest or rabbi or imam?'
'I suppose we could ask Elvis.'
He wasn't about to be sidetracked. The coffeepot sloshed precariously with every jab of emphasis he made at me. 'Why do you think chemists, astronomers, and mathematicians were branded as warlocks and sorcerers during the Dark Ages? Why were Galileo's discoveries slandered as the Devil's work? He and others were using the scientific method of observation, theorization, and experimentation that paralleled that of ancient forms of witchcraft!'
'Are you defending witchcraft, Mr. Golding?'
He looked at Ann as if she'd just stepped on his eyeglasses. Her question disconcerted him so much that he actually poured a cup of the coffee and handed it to her.
'No,' he said. 'Of course I'm not.' He pointed to some jars on the counter. 'Creamer and aspartame over there.'
I raised an eyebrow. Aspartame had been banned shortly after the discovery that its use resulted in increased intelligence.
