Chapter 5
How we can unequivocally know that there is No God, or at Least No Anthropomorphized God,
Condign, now with the blue ink of the pen used up, I write interchangeably in black and red, for it is blood and darkness that makes a man philosophize, with successful discernment accomplishing little beyond making him see an outline of the savage in the sublimated conduct of modern man, as though in understanding, it could be altered, which of course it cannot, and thus evincing philosophy to be bereft of all practical value.
“You certainly have an opaque way of saying something. It is like deliberately crunching the universe into one sentence,” said Luklawan, the gecko. “Now the trick is to go onto the next sentence doing the same but with a varied nuance so that each sentence is crunching the universe but never quite in the same way.”
“Then you understand what I am saying.”
“Well, you certainly are aiming at your target audience of the androids. And I have always been curious what it would feel like to be oscillating with the universe into the big crunch.”
News accounts are still of the two vans and a bus that were aflame hours earlier at the stadium. The bus driver in a futile attempt to escape the intensity of the inferno cowered in a fetal position on the toilet seat which he stayed on to his demise. This was his fate in material force countering material force,23when both sides of the political spectrum were attempting to embed their respective positions on democracy, an idea, onto this realm. And of course they would. An idea cannot exist unless it is imparted from one generation to the next, so despite what Plato says on this matter,24 ideas do not exist unto themselves as blueprints for the shaping of matter; but man, cognizant of being so temporary and insignificant, cannot bear the idea that his life is garbage, so he will do anything, kill anyone, and die as a holy martyr to ensure that his set of ideas goes from one generation to the next. In this case, as the two sides are intransigent and most likely to set Thai society toward civil war, that war may be what is needed: the heat and pressure that will wrought a durable alloy from these two disparate positions on democracy. And of the man charred on the bus, Thais will silently judge his fate to be the result of bad karma for having died in this horrific way; and yet if this were to have happened in a Western nation it would not have been all that different. Although Christ empowered the poor, only a relatively happy and stable life acquired from affluence of one’s position would attest that God sanctioned a given life. What else do the religious have as proof of their relationship with God but the tangible goods of this realm?
“Indeed,” said the gecko. “Perhaps if humans had been more conformable and ideas had more of a clear resonance of truth, conflict would not be needed. “But if a human is nothing without an idea and an idea is nothing without physicality of man imparting it from one generation to the next, and more than one side has an alternative idea that they want to embed onto future generations in this desperate attempt to be real rather than accept that to be put out with the garbage is the fate of both realms then conflict will come.”
“When will it begin, and how long, Luklawan of the Celestial Realm, do you think the Thai Civil War will last?”
“First of all, I am a reptile, with the bone structure of the front of the side my face the bone structure of the flanks of yours.25 I would hardly call it celestial although I am definitely hallucinogenic, your hallucination, and I cannot think of anything more hallucinogenic than religion.”
. Sometimes it is the mundane and seemingly inconsequential occurrences that make one feel the sordid qualities of the world most, as though he had been caught up in a sandstorm with the grit, the grains, felt in all articles of clothing and orifices; and even when not in belief of a God when so many injustices abound how can one not want baptism and ablution from the predation that is rife in all things? Not much happens in my life these days, as I am not working; thus they usually start at seven o’clock. I rush into the toilet to spit out the phlegm that has congealed in my throat when asleep. I jog if I can and if it seems safe to do so, feed whatever strays happen to be around, and then I head over to one of my favorite street restaurants where I like to eat and read. I usually sip tea while reading for a few hours as it is quiet there, and above all other things, I yearn for quiet so that I can hear myself think. Well, I just returned from one that I tend to go to most. The owner, if we can call him such, who set up a business for himself illegally as he is illegal, has fired an undocumented Cambodian worker like himself on the grounds that he was not productive enough; thus the adage of the big fish eating the little fish is not just true of larger entities.
Heartless and indifferent to suffering when seeking his own security and happiness at all cost, his negative emotions a protective defense like an instinctual reflex, his happiness a natural hallucinogenic like neurotransmitters of dopamine and serotonin keeping him content to be bound on this rock of the Earth spinning interminably in barren space and dark matter, and his logic the fuel of both emotions, this is man. But now it is for us to make a categorical statement about God once and for all. So lest we waste our time indicting the unindictable, or worse think that we can witness, if not visit him from a jail cell in The Hague, let us contain our arguments as to why He does not exist. I believe that despite Bertrand Russell’s myriad arguments26 that seem to hit everywhere but the target, one simple and salient statement will solve this situation once and for all and it is made all the more tenable for the virtual reality that governs our world. As we are living in what we can term virtual realities in which even the most incontrovertible idea can be doubted, why would God be a belief, and a dubious one at best given so much injustice and brutality in the world? If He were to exist, that reality would emanate through the ether and touch all of our senses with this one solid certainty. We would no longer be living virtual realities any longer. But such is not the case. To believe, and to actively believe, is to actively invent that which is not, and those who seek to believe in Him, do not seek to know, and this we can have faith in.
The gecko used the white board marker on the white board walls and began to rewrite the chapter before fading away, vanishing to my power to vanquish. It wrote:
Condign, now with the blue ink of the pen used up, I write interchangeably in black and red, for it is blood and darkness that makes a man philosophize: to question why in this not best of all possible worlds27,but the worst of all plausible ones, hatred and joy (reflexive instinct of defense of the former, a hallucinogenic of the latter) is the fuel of all “logic” for this most “intelligent” species that continues to exploit myriad other species and all mineral resources in a frenetic economy of ease exclusively for one out of millions of species while cognizant of the consequences of billowing the byproduct of societal ease in greenhouse gasses; why in modern society there is still this residual thrill of the hunt, the yearning to procure and succeed, the competitive strife, as success can only be understood in the context of others, especially if, in varying degrees, procuring as deciduous others fail and drift without possession, desiccated leaves skidding on the sidewalks of time--the competitive striving in those so cognizant of mortality making them even more avaricious to acquire instead of relinquishing that which they have in the realization that temporary beings cannot own anything); why a given man retains memories of childhood without being able to return to it again for a visit, not that he would want to if his childhood was horrific, especially as in parenthood one merely repeats the scratched records of parental mandates, bullishness, and peevishness played by one’s own parents; why, as witnessed at various times from the observation deck of the Bayoke Tower, the entire city of Bangkok in all directions is so replete in skyscrapers—but then, it is also replete in the three dollar a day workers that construct, maintain, and service the businesses of these edifices like slaves (slaves, at least in the past, being beaten for failing to be mo
re assiduous in performing the requisite tasks for the masters’ profits and never fired and left to starve on the streets); and, beneath the Bayoke a woman with her trinkets on a towel, and her son donned in school clothes, sitting in his wheelchair, with their hours spent in waiting for that which will not come as they are dark skinned and compunctious blights on modern society, and that look of dread on her countenance as another homeless woman, soliloquizing and clearly out of her mind, sat down on her towel (I looked away, and ineluctably, irrevocably, I am forever diminished as a consequence, and if shrapnel from a grenade wounds or kills any one of them in future days, I too will be culpable as I am culpable for turning away from a deformed shirtless man crawling on the sidewalk a week ago, the sun beating onto him, who gave me that expressive look of anguish..