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2009-11-12, 03:58 | Link #1 |
Banned
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Author looking for criticism / proofreading of his story
This is a story I originally wrote in Greek and then translated into English. So I'm looking for someone to read it and proofread or criticize it. This is just the first part and I'm not going to post more if I don't see any interest.
Spoiler for Theodicy:
Categories: Symbolism, Humor, Fantasy
Notes: The numbers in the brackets correspond to the verses from the Old Testament (the Septuagint translation). Some prior knowledge about the events in the Bible and the famous personalities in this story may be needed to fully comprehend its context. All religious references are limited only to Christian Catholic and Orthodox teachings and misconceptions. The world of the story is an alternative reality. Its history is a blend of our own and is full of anachronisms purely for flavor. No issues around scientific realism or criticism are needed in order to comprehend the story elements. Various parts in the story make sense only through Greek wordplays. I added notes in the end explaining them in case you don’t speak Greek. 1. Theodicy (Theological term concerning the abilities and opinion of God towards the world) «Where the hell am I? It’s pitch dark. Shed some light you guys!» And there was light (1:3), as a pillar of light shed from directly above him. «Oh, my eyes! Hold it; you blinded me!» «The accused is to remain silent!» heard the judge’s voice saying across the room. «You will answer only when allowed to and only words concerning our questions.» «Well, ok, ask and see if you get anything out of it.» said the accused while trying to rub his eyes. The handcuffs where not letting him though, as the chain wasn’t long enough to stretch so high. «You are accused of committing the highest form of religious blasphemy by claiming to be God. How do you plead?» «I am; guilty as charged. Are we over; can I go now?» Murmurs began amongst the on-lookers. «Order! Order or I will evacuate the courtroom!» He hit his mallet a few times and all murmuring ceased. «Defendant, don’t you find this statement irrational? How could you possibly be the Almighty? Aren’t you simply just a nutcase?» «No, I am sharp as hell. I am really God.» «If you are really God, then how do we have you chained and incapacitated right this very moment? If you were God, you could free yourself in an instant.» «Jesus could have done it too but he didn’t. He had his reasons you see.» «Meaning that you could untie yourself but you refrain from doing so because you have your reasons?» «Basically I can and I want to but the stupid me fell asleep and I can’t move if he doesn’t click the commands.» «The what? What does all this mean defendant?» «I mean you are lucky right now that I am sleeping over at my home, in front of the computer, after four beers. Otherwise, you would have never managed to catch me.» «What nonsense are you spouting defendant? You are right in front of us. You were arrested while standing still for hours in front of a church yelling you were God. You were not caught in your house while asleep, in front of someone who was computing.» «Well, I can explain but you won’t understand.» «You cannot leave this place until you do explain yourself.» «Sigh, since right now I am sleeping like the idiot I am and I have nothing better to do, I might as well explain. It will kill some time until I wake up. From where do you want me to begin?» «From the very beginning.» «That’s a long story.» «Speak defendant. Your testimony will determine if I should request for you to be sent to an asylum.» «OK then, since you want to learn so bad… Well, in the beginning I made Heaven and Earth (1:1) …» 2. The Meaning of Life (One of the main existentialism issues of the average person) «Hold it defendant!» «What now; you said to start from the beginning.» «Then begin with WHY you made Heaven and Earth, as you claim. For several thousands of years and even today, mankind is searching for the reason of its creation by God. For uncountable years there are conventions, disputes, wars, genocides and many more taking place, while trying to find the very meaning of our existence. We study the stars, we study the human body, we philosophize and tear ourselves looking for the answer.» «OK, I see; and now you want me to give you the answer?» «Of course. Everyone in this room would like to hear the reason you created us… If you really are God.» «I am.» «Then tell us. What is the reason of our existence? Where are we heading? Why did you made us? Why are we here? Why does everything in Creation happen the way it does?» «… Because I was bored.» «… What? …» «As I said … because I was bored.» Laughter broke out in the courtroom. In some places, even curses could be heard. «Order! Order I say! … Defendant, this is more that enough for me to declare you a madman. Do you really expect us to believe that God … or you as you claim … made the world out of sheer boredom?» «Exactly. Why don’t you believe it?» «Because it sounds petty and simple. How could the supreme force in the cosmos have made us out of boredom? It is idiotic. The truth must be something far more to this. Something so incomprehensible that nobody ever thought of until now.» «Huh, I don’t get it. Do you mean that if I had given you an incomprehensible reason, you would believe me? While the one I just stated is rejected because it makes sense? Do you yearn so much for an illogical explanation so I can come out… logical?» «Aaah! You are either complete nuts or just pretend to be one. What about all the fuss about God creating the world out of pure love?» «It’s true. I cared to create you because I was bored and had nothing to do. So, I made something to keep me occupied. Even right now I am still occupied with you; thus I do care about you. I didn’t created you and then abandoned you.» «Nonsense! If you were indeed bored, you wouldn’t have done anything.» «Yes, and for a long time I didn’t. But then I got bored to just eat and sleep so I decided to make better use of my time and be more creative. So, I made the world.» «This proves you are lying. How could you eat and sleep if you are God? God doesn’t need food neither does he require rest.» «Indeed I do not require those while I am an Avatar.» «You’re a what?» «What you see in front of you. I’m only the depiction of your God in this world. The real “me” is sleeping right now.» «What do you mean defendant? That the world is nothing but a dream?» «No, although it began as a dream I had.» «Nonsense; God is perfect. He has no dreams, no needs and no desires.» «Being perfect does not mean I don’t have desires. And this is something all of you understand; pretty easily I must say.» «How exactly do we understand that?» «Because I made you in my own image and likeness (1:26). Because all of you have the potential for creation and growth.» «This explains nothing.» «But it does. Many of what you build are not vital for your survival. Music instruments for example. You can live without music. Or spices for food. Or the feasts you organize from time to time.» «These are forms of entertainment; not of boredom.» «One thing brings another. Even simple peasants want to sing, dance, and chill out once in a while. Imagine me who had absolute power but nothing to do with it… Boredom times infinity!» 3. The Problem of Evil (Theological term concerned with why there is evil in the world, while God is supposed to be almighty and infinitely good) «So you want us to believe you made the world for your amusement? We are all nothing but tools so you can have fun? So you can laugh watching our suffering and pain? Do you want us to believe that God is so evil that He made us just to entertain Himself by watching us suffer? There is no way for God; who is infinitely good to have done that.» «Sigh, you are all so short-sighted it becomes ridiculous. Can you tell me how would a world be without a single trace of evil in it?» «It would be Paradise.» «Wrong, it would be boring. If there was no reason to do something, you wouldn’t do anything. If you had no needs, desires, difficulties and the likes, nothing would ever be made.» «Exactly; it would be Paradise.» «It would be utter boredom. You would be bored to be alive. And I am sure that if had left the world without evil, right now you would complain for not keeping you occupied with something. Because, since I made all of you in my own image, you are never content even if you have everything. I also have everything taken cared of in my own reality and that translates to being unbearably bored. This is why I made the world to be imperfect. So I can constantly be preoccupied with something. I made it so it will constantly generate problems, so to spur you to have needs, set goals and create. And so I can be permanently preoccupied with fixing the problems it has.» «Or else, what; we would be bored?» «You wouldn’t appreciate being alive. Because down to it, only through your pain and mishaps is when you define your existence. Also, being constantly preoccupied with your needs, like food, health, protection, and entertainment, has another plus.» «What would that be?» «Forgetting to think so much and busting my balls with your nagging!» «Watch your mouth defendant! You are trying to label us ungrateful for not appreciating our own suffering!» «You should be the ones watching why they are complaining in the first place. I gave you the liberty to do anything you want and think for yourselves instead of being robots deprived of will and being in my mercy. And you complain for that… And wait a second, now that I think about it, it’s not like I didn’t ever give you the choice not to remain in Paradise. By yourselves you didn’t want to have everything taken cared of.» «What are you talking about?» «Remember that incident with the apple and the snake?» 4. The Original Sin (The Christian explanation of why Man suffers) «Defendant, are you now trying to tell us that the incident around Adam and Eve biting the apple really happened?» «For real; checked and confirmed.» «Weren’t all these about the snake and the apple just symbolisms? Metaphorically speaking like it was the curiosity of Man leading to his doom?» «No relation. These are the words of priests passing along their conservative ideas as the only way to improvement out of fear of progress and free thought ruining their authority over the people. Curiosity happens to be one of the greatest gifts of Man.» «Impossible; God Himself said “Believe and do not research”.» «First of all I never said that. Second, there is a comma in the original Greek text of the phrase that reverses the meaning of the sentence1.» The people in the room began to bellow with discomfort as they breathed heavily; but none was talking as they wanted to remain in there and keep listening to the madman’s gibberish. «Care to explain then how did the incident of the Original Sin took place? We are all curious to learn how could a snake talk or an apple can transmit evil into Man.» «Ok, I will tell you.» He coughed and took a deep breath. «Well, in the original version of the world I made, everything was going like a clockwork. Everything was predictable, everything was controllable. I had made the first man and the first woman and had them moving at random directions in Paradise. But there was a bug in the applications of certain programs that were crashing parts of the memory.» «What? Bug? Crashing whose memory?» «Yes, the program with which I made Paradise was of my own invention and was sharing some applications with other programs on my computer. And it was crashing at some parts due to encoding. It was hitting in practice that is.» «What exactly … err … was hitting?» he asked without understanding a word of such terminology. «Well, it was the snake.» «The Devil?» «Yes, Devol, I named him like this because he was “devolving” my progress in applications. He was initially the program responsible for the illumination of Paradise and I called him Lucifer2. But he was sharing applications with another program and that eventually caused problems.» «What program?» «The one called “Microsoft Office”. But you misplaced the name “office” with the old Greek word for “snake3” and thus the misinterpretation was made.» «I don’t understand. Then what was the apple?» «Oh, that was the brand of my computer. It was Apple, with a bitten apple for a symbol. It wasn’t compatible with Windows so Lucifer began to do his things. When Adam and Eve found the bug, out of curiosity they went in and gained access to the tree branch.» «The what?» «The options that defined their behavior. You know; ”if RIGHT then this, if WRONG then that”. You people simply call it the Tree of Good and Evil. After gaining access to it, they began to tamper with it. Thus they gained free will and were doing afterwards anything they felt like.» «And since you were the almighty God, why didn’t you correct that?» «Because I liked the chaos that was caused by all this. A huge pile of parameters entered the system and made everything completely unpredictable. I liked having to deal with this strange thing so instead of erasing the program and rebuilding the world anew, I left it as it was.» «If you were really God, you would see into the future that this would happen and wouldn’t allow it to occur.» «Have you ever solved a cross puzzle or a riddle or a sudoku?» «I have solved a few cross puzzles. What does this have to do with it?» «Did you gained anything when you finished it?» «No but I had a good time.» «Would you have the same fun if you simply got the answers from the next volume and you simply filled the empty squares?» «Of course not.» «Well, here’s your reason.» «Enough! This is the first time I’ve heard so many gibberish one after another.» said the judge who could barely tolerate him all this time and didn’t understand a word of anything he said. «This guy is clearly insane. There is no reason to listen any further. This courtroom finds the defendant in need of psychological attention. Take him away.» Two guards started dragging the alleged God away. The room was then filled with intense discussions concerning his sayings. Some were laughing, some were cursing, and some were amazed. The alleged God himself though was totally pissed. «Just wait until I wake up» |
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