The Religion War (4 page)

The interrogator stared at the Avatar, trying not to blink, trying harder to ignore the itch forming on his right arm. The seconds passed painfully until the silence was broken by the sound of scratching and cursing. The door to the interrogator's subconscious swung open.

"You're a collection of molecules," the Avatar explained, his manner now serious, "and those molecules are made of smaller bits, and those bits are made of even smaller bits. The smallest bits in the universe are all identical. You are made of the same stuff as the concrete in the floor and the fly on the window .Your basic matter cannot be created or destroyed. All that will survive of what you call your life is the sum of your actions. Some might call the unending ripple effect of those actions a soul, or a spirit."

"What's your point?" asked the interrogator, more confused than ever.

"Had I not met you today, you would continue to hurt people until your body lost its coherence and your dust was loaned back to the universe. Every day that you're alive causes harm to the universe, and you are aware of it. It eats you because your most basic nature is to contribute to your species, not work against it. Your life is a losing battle against a million years of evolution."

The interrogator listened, and paced. He said nothing, wishing for mental comfort but finding none in the Avatar's point about tiny bits of matter and evolution. It occurred to him that he needed the answer to a bigger question, perhaps THE BIGGEST QUESTION. Maybe this Avatar fellow knew the answer; he seemed to know so much about other things—things that a person couldn't know. The interrogator paused, took a breath, then looked directly at the Avatar. "Is there a God?"

The Avatar smiled. "In a manner of speaking."

"How can you be so sure? Half the guys in my unit are athe-ists.They don't seem so dumb. Maybe they're right."

"After you have released my arms, I will be happy to explain it to you," offered the Avatar, using another common hypnosis technique, making the interrogator focus on what happens
after
the arms are released, leapfrogging the question of
whether they
should
be.

The interrogator weighed the odds that this old man could escape the room, shackled or not. The door was locked from the outside, and the interrogator had a sidearm. His curiosity was piqued. He had searched his whole life for a better argument about the existence of God—either for or against—and he had a feeling this old man could move that argument. If not, he could always kill him later. Suddenly there seemed to be no hurry.

The unrestrained Avatar sat on a stool and stretched his arms. The interrogator pulled up a metal chair, keeping a safe distance. "Okay, tell me how you're so sure that God exists."

"Sometimes what seems to be a difference in opinions is in fact just a difference in definitions," explained the Avatar. "Defined carefully, atheists and believers all accept the existence of the same God."

"What kind of crap is that?" growled the interrogator. "Atheists don't believe in any kind of God. That's the whole point of being an atheist. Start making sense."

"My claim," said the Avatar, "is that I can define God in a way that both believers and nonbelievers will agree upon, proving in the process that their differences are only a matter of trivial details."

"My claim is that you're full of baloney," said the interrogator.

"If I can prove my point to your satisfaction, will you release me?" asked the Avatar.

"No. If I don't do my j ob with you, they don't let
me
out. The last thing Cruz needs is an interrogator leaving the reservation. If the guard outside that door gets a whiff that I'm turning soft, he's got orders to wax me,"

"I'm sorry," said the Avatar. "I really am."

"Get back to the point, old man. Define God so an atheist believes in it. I gotta hear this."

"The secret is time," said the Avatar. "My definition of God is acceptable to everyone if they can allow some flexibility in the scope of time. And I think you'd agree that an omnipotent being would not be operating on a predetermined schedule. If it took God one day or a trillion years to accomplish something, it would make no difference to him."

"Okay, God doesn't have a watch. I get that," said the interrogator.

"Tell me what qualities you believe God has," directed the Avatar.

"Well...obviously he's all-powerful. And he's everywhere. And he loves people, or so they say, although I haven't seen much evidence of that."

"Is he conscious?" asked the Avatar.

"Yeah, he's gotta be conscious. I don't want you getting away with saying that God is physics or natural laws or some crap like that. He's gotta be able to think and to have plans."

"Very well," said the Avatar. "I will define God in a way that meets all of your tests."

"I'm listening," said the interrogator, leaning back in his chair, legs crossed at the knees.

"God is all the matter in the universe, and all the blank spaces, and the probability that anything exists in any place at any time. That is the full definition," said the Avatar.

"You'd better have more than that, old man. How's that explain any of the powers of God?"

"It explains
all
of God's powers, simply and completely. God hides in plain sight," explained the Avatar.

"That explains nothing," argued the interrogator. "That's just a bunch of mumbo jumbo."

"What powers of God does it overlook?"

"Well, for one, God's gotta be everywhere at the same time, and your definition is...well..." The interrogator's voice trailed off. "Okay, I see. If God is all the stuff in the universe, then he's everywhere. But that's the
only
power that fits your definition. I mean, what about being all-knowing?"

"Do you know how information is stored on a computer?" asked the Avatar.

"Sure. It's a bunch of zeros and ones," answered the interrogator. "Youjust have to put them in the right order."

"Likewise, the universe has two fundamental conditions: There is only matter and empty space. Every part of the universe is a sequence of matter and empty space. All meaningful patterns of zeros and ones are stored in the universe, making it, in effect, all-knowing."

"That's crap," protested the interrogator. "First of all, you can't be sure that every pattern of ones and zeros exists in the universe. Secondly, you can't compare a bunch of random particles in an asteroid with information that's created by intelligent beings. And third, even if a pattern
is
in the universe, say in a teacup handle, it's not retrievable, so it's not the same thing as real knowledge."

The Avatar was pleased with the level of interest the interrogator showed. "Would you agree that if you could make the universe any size you wanted, with no constraints whatsoever— say a trillion times larger than you imagine it to be—that eventually you would get a pattern in some corner of the universe that was the equal, in ones and zeros, to all of Shakespeare's plays?"

"No, I don't agree. Maybe the simple patterns are out there, but not the more complicated ones. It's just too unlikely."

"Complicated patterns are nothing but simple patterns combined. For example, if you know that a monkey can be trained, and you understand the concept of a hat, you already know you can probably train a monkey to wear a hat, even if that information does not yet exist anywhere in the universe. Knowledge is the potential to bring simple information into consciousness and combine it," explained the Avatar.

"It has to be more than potential," said the interrogator.

"Does it? Consider your own so-called knowledge. Your conscious mind uses only the tiniest scoop of your total knowledge— whatever you are thinking at the moment. Everything else that you
know
is just an arrangement of matter in your brain that
couldpotentially
be retrieved but most of it never will. For example, your brain might contain the name of a grade school acquaintance that you will never again think about. You would consider that
knowledge
even though it will never be retrieved. Your own knowledge is similar to the universe's knowledge, mostly
potential,
not actual."

"You're making my head hurt I'm not sure I'm following all this, but I know you have a huge hole in your thinking.There's no consciousness controlling all of this random stuff in the universe. You can't have God without consciousness," said the interrogator.

"Define 'consciousness,'" responded the Avatar.

"Well, you know, it's when you're conscious.You know what you're doing and you feel you're doing stuff intentionally," tried the interrogator.

"So you have a sensation of consciousness. Fair enough. But how do you know if
I'm
conscious? Can you tell by observing me?" asked the Avatar.

"Not really. Ijust assume you're a human like me, so you must have consciousness too."

"So how would you know God was conscious, even if he stood in front of you?" asked the Avatar.

"Hmmm." The interrogator paused, gathering his thoughts. "I guess I couldn't tell from his actions, because there's no way to know how God would react to any situation. I mean, he wouldn't be afraid or hungry or curious, so he'd have no obvious motives to compare against what he did. I guess the only way I'd know is ifhe decided to tell me he was conscious, probably through some kind of messenger or angel or prophet or something."

"Allow me to give you a more workable definition of consciousness," said the Avatar.

"Okay," said the interrogator, sitting back in his chair, relieved.

"You say you know you're conscious because you have the sensation of consciousness, although you can't quite put your finger on it. Let's agree that the sensation is part of the package, but only a by-product," said the Avatar.

"What else is there?" asked the interrogator.

"Consciousness is a feedback loop," explained the Avatar. "It has four parts: You imagine the impact of your action, then you act, then you observe the actual result of your action, then you store that knowledge in your brain and begin again to imagine the next thing. All of those steps have a physical component, including the imagining—meaning that your brain is having chemical and electrical activity—so it's no wonder that you have a sensation that you call consciousness," explained the Avatar.

"You make it sound so simple," said the interrogator.

"Does it sound wrong?" asked the Avatar.

"No. I just hadn't thought about it before," confessed the interrogator.

"So then, if the universe exhibited the four steps that define consciousness in humans, would it be fair to say the universe as a whole is conscious?" asked the Avatar.

The interrogator paused for a moment before nodding a reluctant agreement.

"And would you agree that it's sufficient for this God consciousness to be located someplace in the universe—just as your consciousness is located in your brain and not in your elbow?" asked the Avatar.

"Okay," agreed the interrogator.

"Consider the collective actions of all the humans in the world," said the Avatar. "Would you agree that we imagine things—as a group—before acting?"

"No. Humans imagine things as individuals," said the interrogator, trying to hold his ground.

"You imagine
some
things as individuals, such as what you plan to have for lunch. But you have shared imagination for the bigger things, such as imagining what it would be like to cure cancer. Society's imagination is collective, with the more informed individual imaginations feeding into the whole, broadcast by the media, and changing the collective imagination by changing all of the individuals that compose it."

"Okay," agreed the interrogator. "So you're saying that God's consciousness is the sum of human consciousness. But how do you explain love? God loves us, right? Where's the love in your random universe?"

"Will you accept that God's form of love is a
better
version than human love?"

"I don't know about that. I've never felt either kind, so I'm no judge."

"Would God feel jealous, or needy, or vulnerable with his version of love?" asked the Avatar.

"No, I guess not," conceded the interrogator.

"So for God, it's a streamlined phenomenon, this love. It has none of the ugly baggage of human love."

"I guess so."

"For God, love is the highest level of preference. That which God prefers the most, he also loves the most. If you consider all of the patterns of matter and space that could exist, it is amazingly unlikely that human beings would emerge. And so it could be said that the probabilities governing the universe have displayed a preference for life over nonliving matter. Over time, the amount of life is increasing, while the total nonliving portions of the universe shrink as a percentage."

"So you're saying that God must love people because he's making more of them and not making more dirt?"

"Essentially, yes. When you remove the pain and baggage of love, you are left with
preference
as the only accurate indicator of love."

"That kinda makes sense, because people want to spend the most time with the people they love the most," agreed the interrogator.

"Have I made my case?" asked the Avatar.

The interrogator looked away, pausing overlong before responding. "I'm sorry I have to kill you, old man. I don't know if you're the smartest person in the world or not, but I will admit I'm not ruling it out. This is gonna be the hardest thing I've ever done."

"If it's any comfort, you won't be killing me," said the Avatar.

"How's that?" asked the interrogator, the energy drained from his voice.

"I'm afraid I've fiddled with your subconscious, unblocking it.You'll be doing God's work today," said the Avatar.

"I doubt that."

"Consider what's going on outside this building. Calculate the cost of a battle between al-Zee and Cruz. How many will die?" asked the Avatar.

"A billion. Maybe more," said the interrogator, sinking deeper into his chair.

"Unless something stops it."

"Nothing can stop it," said the interrogator. "It's happening."