Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (30 page)

J
ONES:
If not this, then the next is the last, surely.

A
BBOT
(brightening)
:
Until you came along.

T
HE
C
APTAIN
(after a long pause)
:
Do you have a plan?

A
BBOT AND
J
ONES:
We have two plans. Two irreconcilable plans. Each involves you. I’m afraid you’re going to have to decide.

T
HE
C
APTAIN:
Let’s hear them.

Dr. Aristarchus Jones’s Proposal

Here are the facts:

The human species is finished on earth. Due to the delayed and cumulative effect of Ce 137 radiation or the reduction of ozone in the atmosphere by nitrous oxides and the resulting ultraviolet flare, male sterility is approaching 100 percent, and female is not far behind. In a word, we are either the last generation on earth or the next to last. You, Captain, and your crew are obviously fertile, but it is problematical how long you will remain so—a year? a month? And do you imagine that when your children mature sexually, they will be fertile?

My proposal: that we colonize Europa, one of the Galilean satellites of Jupiter. You, Captain, made a fly-by eighteen years ago and know better than I that it is probably habitable: planet-size, covered by water ice, evidence of newly emerging land—the famous greening seen nowhere else but here on earth—no vulcanism, no impact craters, what appears to be a river system and, most important of all, an atmosphere of 10 percent oxygen.

Your starship has sufficient reactor fuel for launch and to attain sufficient ramjet speeds to activate the hydrogen scoop. Hence, a journey of weeks.

Here in the good monks’ cellar I have found a supply of seeds, algae, plants, small mammals, and even insects. I have books, music, Shakespeare on cassettes.

As a matter of fact, we have no choice except to stay here and die. I will go along—you will need me as a technical adviser. Moreover, Tiffany and I already have a relationship. Who knows, I may not be totally sterile—no one ever is 100 percent. After all, it only takes one spermatozoon.

With a bit of luck, we can colonize Europa in much the same way as Europe colonized the New World,
except that
—and here is the exciting part!—there is no reason why we cannot develop a society such as the one my namesake lived in in ancient Ionia, a society based on reason and science, and do so without repeating the mistakes of the past, for example, the Dark Ages, two thousand years of Plato and Judaism and Christianity—a sexually free and peace-loving society where the sciences and arts can flourish freed from the superstitions and repressions of religion—no offense to the good monks, who are in fact invited to come along. I think it appropriate, with your permission, to change the name of Europa to New Ionia. At long last, we are going to put behind us forever the interminable quarrels of the people of the Book—first the Jews, then the Christians, then Islam. There will be no Middle East on Ionia, no Christian
vs.
Jew, no Christian
vs.
Moslem, Shi-ite
vs.
Sunnite, Moslem vs. Jew, Protestant
vs.
Catholic.

There is no reason why we cannot start a new society on another planet just as we started a new society in the New World.

In fact, we have no choice. Europa lives. This planet is dying.

There is no time to lose. I calculate that the launch window for Europa will occur for only a few days next month.

That is my proposal.

A
BBOT:
Are the children invited?

A
RISTARCHUS:
The space children are. It would make no sense to perpetuate genetic defects.

A
BBOT:
I see.

Abbot Leibowitz’s Proposal

Here are the facts:

The human species may or may not be finished on earth. Perhaps the incidence of sterility is lower in Seattle or New Zealand. We do not know.

But it makes no difference. In either case, I could not go.

Why not?

Because I believe that God exists and that he created the Cosmos (the Big Bang, as you vulgarly call it, embarrasses you, Aristarchus, doesn’t it?), that he created man through evolution, in the latest moment of which, perhaps the last Ice Age, man became ensouled and came to himself as man, body and spirit; that God thus created man as a person who had gifts of knowledge and love but most of all of freedom, that he somehow encountered a catastrophe, God alone knows what, used his freedom badly, and chose badly—perhaps chose him
SELF
, the one thing he can never know of itself, rather than God—and has been in trouble ever since. That, as a consequence, God himself intervened in the history of this insignificant planet, through a covenant with an even more obscure tribe, the Jews, through his son, a Jew who actually lived as a man on this earth, him and no other, through founding a church, the Catholic Church based on a very mediocre, intemperate Catholic, Peter, also a Jew; that he, God, is somehow inextricably and permanently, even hopelessly, involved with the two, the Jews and the Catholic Church, until the end of earth time.

In a sense, nothing has changed. Here is the Christian remnant, still hanging on, a slightly mad enclave of odd sorts, gentile-bums collected from the hedgerows and invited to the feast. And over there in Israel, we know, is still the Jewish remnant, still hanging on, long ago dispersed and now come back to the same place, proud and stiff-necked as ever, still persecuted, still fighting Assyrians. What has changed?

I am both. I am both Jew and Catholic, whether Jew or Catholic like it or not, and generally they do not, usually have no use for each other, in fact, and even less use for me. The Jews think I have apostasized, and the Catholics think I am a Jew. They don’t think of Jesus and Mary as Jewish. But me? I’m still a Jew. And they’re right. I am. Catholics are a queer lot—I’ve never really gotten used to them. I admire their, our, faith, adopted it in fact, but I wish they loved learning more, as they loved it in the High Middle Ages, loved science and art more, like our brother Aristarchus here, just as they loved them in the age of the great Giotto and Roger Bacon and the monk Copernicus and the great Galileo; like Moses Maimonides and Einstein; like the monk Gregor Mendel. We are a church of sinners, yes, but can’t sinners love science and art?

But the two, Jew and Catholic, are inextricably attached to each other, like Siamese twins at the umbilicus, whether they like it or not, and they both detest it, until the end of earth time.

I believe that we have the promise of God and his son that he, Jesus Christ, having come once to save us from the death of
SELF
in search of
ITSELF
without any other
SELF,
will also come again at the end of the world. We also have his promise that the Church will endure until the end of the world.

Now, it is also the case that I have no reason to believe that the Holy Father or a single bishop has survived the holocaust. As Dr. Jane Smith recently told me, jokingly but more seriously than she knew, I may very well be the Pope. That is to say, as an abbot, I have the episcopal power of consecrating priests. And if there are no bishops left and no Pope left, guess who that leaves. As abbot, I am in the apostolic succession, the direct line of laying on hands which goes back to Christ himself.

As Pope, my first act will be to revive the University of Notre Dame around a nucleus of Jewish scientists whom I shall lure from Israel. The Catholic Church is responsible for the birth of science in the West, but it got too rich, got distracted by family quarrels, and dropped the ball, which the Jews picked up.

Are you getting the point, Captain? I may be the only man left on earth who can consecrate priests. The only candidates for the priesthood I can see, not counting my little malformed innocents, are these boys, your sons, Krishna, Vishnu, Siddhartha, Oppie, Carl Jung, Chomsky, and John. Whether or not one or another chooses to become a priest is his business and God’s business, but it is my business to be around, to stay here in case the human race survives and needs priests.

And if it is the end, it is still my obligation to remain, because the Church will survive until the end of earth time and until Christ himself comes, and so, if I’m the putative head of the Church, as putative head I stay.

My proposal: Will your craft fly like an airplane? Yes? Can you land it anywhere? Yes? Like a helicopter? Yes? Very well.

I propose a variant of Dr. Jane Smith’s proposal. I propose that you fly Dr. Jane Smith and the children and my odd little brood here and my two monks, yourself, and me, and whoever else wants to go, to Lost Cove, Tennessee.

There, as Dr. Jane Smith and I have reason to believe, the residual radiation is not so bad, that under the blue haze of the Smoky Mountains, the ultraviolet flare may not be excessive, and that your beautiful children may remain fertile.

Accordingly, I propose to you, Captain, that you accede to Dr. Jane Smith’s wish that I marry the two of you properly—your marriage in space by yourself is canonically suspect to say the least—and that I baptize the children in Lost Cove Creek.

I wish to come with you for one reason—otherwise, I would rather remain here in my beloved Utah and be let alone and die in peace—but I am obliged to be present to serve the survivors as priest and ordain as priest any one of them who might wish to become a priest, and to await the coming of the Lord if it is the end. I’d as soon wait for him here, but what can you do? Veh.

Why should you of Copernicus 4 believe any of these things, which must surely seem preposterous to you? The only reason, from your point of view, is that you have no choice. You know now that if what I say is not true, you are like the gentiles Paul spoke of: a stranger to every covenant, with no promise to hope for, with the world about you and no God. You are stuck with yourselves, ghost selves, which will never become selves. You are stuck with each other and you will never know how to love each other. Even if you succeed, you and your progeny will go to Europa and roam the galaxy, lost in the Cosmos forever.

I agree with Dr. Jones: we should leave as soon as possible—but for Tennessee, not for Europa.

Question:
If you were the captain, which of the two proposals would you accept? or would you accept neither? Do you have a better idea?

(a)
I’d go with Aristarchus Jones and the others to New Ionia.

(b)
I’d marry Dr. Jane Smith and take her and the children to Lost Cove, Tennessee.

(c)
I’d go to Qumran and fight with the Israelis.

(d)
I’d go to Jordan and fight with the Arabs.

(e)
I’d drop the abbot and Jane Smith in Tennessee, send the children to Europa with Jones and Tiffany, leaving me and Kimberly to take our chances in Uxmal.

(f)
I’d take no chances. I’d cover all bets, even the million-to-one shot that there might be something to Abbot Leibowitz’s preposterous claim. I’d go with him and Jane and the children to Lost Cove, Tennessee, wait for whatever he’s waiting for, monitor my sperm count—yet keep Copernicus 4 fueled and ready to go. (This, roughly, was Dr. Jane Smith’s response, in a rather vulgar aside to the Captain, after hearing the abbot’s proposal, in which she lapsed into a dialect of her Southern Methodist origins: “Well, why not? Who knows? The whole thing is preposterous, of course: two niggers and a Jew claiming to be Roman Catholics, a Jewish pope and two black monks. Popery and monkery in the middle of nowhere. But what have we got to lose? They’re Christians, after all. I’ll go along with it, especially the marriage ceremony and the baptism.”)

(g)
Other (specify).

(
CHECK ONE
)

Thought Experiment:
An experiment in shifting one’s perspective toward the end of determining the relative preposterousness of modern Cartesian consciousness vis-à-vis the preposterousness of Judaeo-Christianity—that is, whether they are two unrelated preposterousnesses or whether one preposterousness is a function of another, i.e., whether Judaeo-Christianity is preposterous from the point of view of the modern scientific consciousness precisely to the degree that the latter has elevated itself from a method of knowing secondary causes to an all-construing quasi-religious view of the world—whether, in fact, the preposterousness of Judaeo-Christianity is not in fact an index of the preposterousness of the age.

Play the following game. Adopt the following perspective: the point of view of Aristarchus Jones (little or no effort is required of you if you are a creature of the age, that is, a rational, intelligent, well-educated, objective-minded denizen of the twentieth century, reasonably well versed in the sciences and the arts; we are all Aristarchus Jones):

Judaeo-Christianity is indeed a preposterous religion, far less compatible with the modern scientific temper than, say, Buddhism or Brahmanism.

Judaism, to begin with, is a preposterous religion. It proposes as a serious claim to truth and for our belief that a God exists as a spirit separate from us, that he made the Cosmos from nothing, that he made man, a creature of body and spirit, that man suffered a fall or catastrophe, and that as a consequence God entered into a unique covenant with one of the most insignificant tribes on one of the most insignificant planets of one of the most insignificant of the 100 billion stars of one of the billions and billions of galaxies of the Cosmos.

Protestant Christianity is even more preposterous than Judaism. It proposes not only all of the above but further, that God himself, the God of the entire Cosmos, appeared as a man, one man and no other, at a certain time and a certain place in history, that he came to save us from our sins, that he was killed, lay in a tomb for three days, and was raised from the dead, and that the salvation of man depends on his hearing the news of this event and believing it!

Catholic Christianity is the most preposterous of the three. It proposes, not only all of the above, but also that the man-god founded a church, appointed as its first head a likable but pusillanimous person, like himself a Jew, the most fallible of his friends, gave him and his successors the power to loose and to bind, required of his followers that they eat his body and drink his blood in order to have life in them, empowered his priests to change bread and wine into his body and blood, and vowed to protect this institution until the end of time. At which time he promised to return.