Dead & Godless (3 page)

One
man stood apart. Wearing a dark suit and a fedora, he leaned against a maple
with
The Times
spread open before him, but he wasn’t reading the news. His
black stare was leveled towards the windows, towards Corwin.

Not
towards me,
Corwin realized.
At me.

In
the reflection their eyes met. Slowly the stranger lowered his newspaper, a
mirthless smile on his lips, and Corwin’s blood turned to ice. He swung his
gaze away from the windows, into the park, finding only dead leaves. There was
no one beneath the maple tree.

Dark Winds Rising

Braxton Hall’s
entrance was a set of glass and aluminum double doors that bespoke modern
sensibilities informing the Georgian bricks. Following on the heels of a troop
of students, Corwin and Ransom stepped inside and shortly took a turn, ascending
a broad stairway to the second story. The angel halted at a classroom’s rear
door.

“Sounds
like class is already in session.”

Like
a pair of tardy students, they slipped in quietly and found a place against the
far wall. It was a modestly-sized room with windows to one side and seven rows
of desks, mostly filled. A man whose abundantly gray hair clashed with his
tanned, only slightly lined face leaned behind a podium in a plaid dress shirt.
He spun the words of his lecture with a preacher’s passion.

“Professor
Valentine!” exclaimed Corwin. “Now there was a man who had a knack for
teaching! His course on existentialism introduced me to philosophy. But that’s
strange . . .” He gave the man a hard stare. “He looks as though he hasn’t aged
a day.”

“Has
he?” questioned Ransom. “Don’t assume that the same chains of time that bind
mortal men apply to me.”

“Sorry!
I didn’t realize that my lawyer was the
Ghost of Christmas Past.”

Corwin
reflected that the mild weather and turning of the leaves had been rather out
of place for the season.

The
professor relaxed against his podium, a copy of Albert Camus’
The Stranger
in hand. He was reading an excerpt.

. . . It was as
if I had waited all this time for this moment and for the first light of this
dawn to be vindicated. Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he.
Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward
me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and
as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in
years no more real than the ones I was living.

Snapping
the book shut, he lifted his gaze to regard the class.

“A
dark wind rising from my future,” uttered Valentine. “Camus describes death as
a dark wind, an irresistible force that lays low all the acts of our lives. But
it’s also a source of meaning, a commonality that binds us. We all die, and so
we are all brothers.

“But
is death enough? Is the reaper’s inevitable march enough to provide a source of
meaning in our lives? Nietzsche didn’t think so.

“The
existentialists and the nihilists agree in their rejection of an afterlife, but
not in the implications. Nietzsche believed that the absoluteness of death
rendered life meaningless, while Sartre and Camus believed that man could
create his own meaning.”

“But
isn’t it true that Camus never considered himself an existentialist?” objected
a woman with black-rimmed glasses.

“Camus
didn’t much care for labels,” answered the professor. “But in his quest for
meaning despite life’s absurdity, his thoughts largely echo those of men such
as Sartre.”

“Doesn’t
Nietzsche’s own concept of the superman contradict the principles of nihilism?”
inquired a flaxen-haired boy in a hooded sweatshirt.

“Good
catch, Corwin! Nietzsche’s model man was one who thinks for himself and lives
by his own rules. And yet, if everything is as meaningless as nihilism
suggests, what does it matter whether you live by your own rules or someone
else’s? Is it not all the same in the end?”

The
sight of his younger self gave Corwin a peculiar sense of déjà vu, and for the
first time since the train’s lethal impact, he genuinely felt as if he were in
a dream. Was that dark wind of which Camus spoke already swirling about him? At
any moment, might this dream shatter and banish him not to the waking world,
but to nothingness?

Professor
Valentine’s lecture drew to a close and soon students were emptying out into
the halls. Outside the windows, the sun was setting. A violet curtain shrouded the
heavens, save where the horizon blushed coral in the west. Pivoting a desk,
Ransom sat atop it and threw one leg up on the chair.

“Why
take me here?” asked Corwin. “If a philosophical debate is in order, I feel
that I may require more bourbon.”

“Before
you attended this university,” said Ransom, “you already had your doubts about
God and Christianity, but here something changed. Those doubts solidified into
a worldview, turning you from an agnostic into a hardened atheist. Do you
recall what spurred that change?”

“I
guess it was the first time that I’d applied critical thinking to religion. Once
you stop trying to justify the fairy tales, all that’s left are contradictions
and wishful thinking.”

“Yes,
yes.” Ransom waved a hand dismissively. “That’s all very enlightening, but it’s
not really what I wanted to know. What changed you wasn’t anything that you
realized about religion. It was something you realized about yourself.”

The
angel’s words struck a chord and Corwin understood at once what he meant. It wasn’t
any clever argument or decisive piece of evidence that had swayed him. To
question a creed was easy, and the merit of such arguments could be endlessly
debated by those who felt compelled to do so, but to look in the mirror and
question one’s innermost self . . . that took a bit more resolve.

“I
came to see that I’d been accepting beliefs, or at least entertaining them,
simply because they were comforting. They were what I had always been told, and
easier than seeking my own answers. At first it was scary letting go of
religion’s promises, walking the tightrope of life without a spiritual safety
net, but if I was to be honest with myself, it was a step that I had to take.”

“Good!”
Ransom clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s more like it!”

Corwin
blinked hard, unsure whether the angel staring back at him was still playing
for the same team.

“Humans
are creatures of passion,” said Ransom. “Whether finding faith or rejecting it,
the decision is often more a matter of the heart than of the head. Take the atheist
who scorns God on account of the foolishness that men do in his name, or the
believer who clings to faith because the harshness of life without the hope of
Heaven is too much for his fragile spirit to bear.”

“People
believe what they want to believe,” affirmed Corwin.

“When
perceived truth differs from the truth one desires, a person must choose. You
chose the right master, Corwin. In your self-reflection, you stumbled upon a
simple and profound, yet seldom followed principle.”

“And
that would be?”

“That
the only good reason to believe something is if it’s true.”

A
decade earlier, Corwin had arrived at the same conclusion while pouring through
volumes of philosophy, asking the fearful questions that he had avoided all his
life.

“But
the truth I found led me to reject your god.”

Ransom
stood, and as he did so the world darkened until only the faint orange disk of
the sun remained. A shadowy cross divided it, and then it was no longer the
sun, but a four-paned ocular window. Hazy light streamed into a stuffy room
stacked with boxes, chests and forgotten furniture. Corwin had to stoop,
checking his head as he ducked under the beams of the low, vaulted ceiling.
From the rear of the attic, a staircase creaked with footsteps. An elderly
man’s spectacles peeked over the floorboards.

“A
man finds an old, dusty painting in the attic,” said Ransom, his character
living out the story in time. “He rubs one corner and uncovers a feathered
wing. You’re like that man, thinking you’ve found the portrait of a bird, but the
wing belongs to Saint Michael.”

A
thick gloom washed over them and Corwin saw that he was back in the classroom,
twilight’s first stars poking through the dusky sky.

“If I
was wrong, then life is surely a cruel trick, a puzzle meant to deceive,” he
argued. “Let the lord drag me into his courtroom and I’ll tell him the same
thing that Bertrand Russell once said: ‘Not enough evidence, God! Not enough
evidence!’”

“You
chose to limit ‘evidence’ to that which fits neatly into units of measurement.
Even there you might have found clues, but it is not my intention to belittle
your convictions. That fear of which you spoke, it is a trial faced by every
truth seeker who challenges his own preconceptions.”

“Even
angels?” Corwin couldn’t resist asking.

Ransom
laughed. “The Father’s existence was never in question to my kind. Our test was
not one of faith, but of pride.”

“Yet
somehow you managed to pass,” Corwin said slyly. “Whatever did god demand that
was so humiliating anyway?”

“That’s
nothing that pertains to your case.”

“It’s
my
soul on the line. Indulge me.”

Ransom
strolled to the windows, a faraway look in his eyes.

“Long
before the dawn of this universe, there existed an age when we angels were the
Father’s only children. Ours was a realm of thought and song and symmetry. Then
came man. By all estimation, your race was vastly inferior to us, yet even so, the
Father doted on you, favoring the lowest of humans with no less love than that
which he bestowed upon the wisest and mightiest of the seraphim. Confounded by
his ways, some began to distrust, but another test would prove greater still,
for the Father not only cherished you. He became one of you.

“When
one beholds God in all his glory, worship comes as naturally as the sense of
awe that stirs within when staring up at the stars or at a majestic mountain
range. We recognize our smallness and are filled with humility and wonder. But
what if the Father should humble himself? When it was foreknown that he would
become man, the thought was too much for some of my brothers to stand. Lucifer,
whose power and beauty was first among us, decided that rather than bend the
knee to a God made flesh, he would rebel. And so was fought the Betrayer’s War.”

“Do
all angels think so little of us?” inquired Corwin, more surprised than
offended.

“Your
race’s history doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. Most humans sin so often and
so readily that you appear to comprehend your world no better than booklice
devouring a novel comprehend the words written on its pages.”

“Well
it’s comforting to know that racism isn’t a uniquely human vice.”

“How
eagerly would you bend the knee and pledge your eternal loyalty to a God who
took the form of an insect? A rodent? A wafer of bread?”

Ransom
left the question hanging in the air. Turning away from the windows, he lit up
another cigarette.

“You
still doubt that this place is real.”

“I am
a skeptic, after all.”

“A
skeptic!” scoffed Ransom. “Everyone’s a skeptic. Religious people are skeptics
too. They’re skeptical of atheism.”

“A
materialist then, or an empiricist,” elaborated Corwin. “My personal philosophy
has no need of anything so insubstantial as faith.”

“No
need of faith?”

“You
know what I mean! I have faith that the sun will rise, that gravity will keep
me from floating away, that my car will start when I turn the key in the
ignition. But my faith is rooted in the world’s physical laws, not in any
supernatural, metaphysical delusions.”

“I
see,” said Ransom. “Tell me, what is religion’s place in your mind?”

Corwin
considered his words carefully.

“Religion
is a crutch. Man desires something outside himself to lean on, to afford a
sense of security, but this I did not need. I could walk on my own.”

A heavy
silence passed between them and the humorless mask of Ransom’s face left Corwin
wondering if perhaps he had roused his attorney’s ire.

“That
sounds about right,” Ransom said at last.

“You’re
agreeing with me?” blurted Corwin in disbelief.

The
angel shrugged.

“Your
overdramatic choice of words has more sting than substance, but the assertion
that man yearns for something outside himself on which to lean—I don't disagree
with that. Where our difference lies is in what that longing means.”

“I
suspect our differences run a bit deeper.”

“But
surely even you must admit that religion is a natural inclination of man?”

“That
seems obvious enough,” conceded Corwin. “Why are we here? What happens when we
die? Everyone likes to imagine that there’s some grand meaning behind it all.
Burial rites are as old as humanity, and it’s not hard to see why.”

“As I
recall from your file, you even wrote an essay about it.”

“I
made a frequent habit of putting my thoughts to paper. Sometimes we see ideas
clearer when we write them down.”

“Fortunately
it makes my job easier as well,” said Ransom. “In your essay, aptly titled ‘Why
People Cling to Religion,’ you identify three main causes of religious thought.
Why don’t we start by revisiting them?”