You aspired to be God's advocate, you got the job, you performed admirably. But God's advocate was ipso facto my advocate. Theodicy's a sucker's game, Professor. When Yahweh was operational, humanity's obligation wasn't to worship Him, for chrissakes. It was to celebrate His creativity and stand forevermore opposed to His malice. And anybody such as yourself, anybody who sought to shoehorn an omnibenevolent God into the same universe as Auschwitz...that person, Dr. Gregory Francis Lovett—that person did the Devil's work for him.
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I am what I am. I am Christ and Antichrist, God and Satan, Heaven and Hiroshima, Arcadia and Auschwitz." Smiling devilishly, Sarkos lumbered up to Lovett. "Get it, fat boy? God is a duality. Dr. Jehovah and Mr. Hyde." He lobbed the bottle cap into his mouth and chewed. "Allow me to tell you a bedtime story. It's called 'The Day the Gas Chambers Malfunctioned at Auschwitz.' On second thought, why bother? You know the plot—the title gives it away—I'm surprised Braverman and Kelvin left it out of their overblown epic. Can you imagine how it feels to be a seven-year-old Jewish child, standing in line with hundreds of other Jewish children, waiting your turn to be thrown alive onto an open fire?" Swallowing the bottle cap, Sarkos swerved toward Martin. "Don't you see? It's the only solution that can possibly work. No other theory comes close. Of course God has a dark side. Not just dark—evil. Radically, radically evil.
Asia gave us dowry deaths and the caste system. Africa elevated famine to an art form. North America cultivated chattel slavery for far longer than I would have dared hope; South America has done things with political oppression that I am obliged to call brilliant; Australia showed the world that the only good aborigine is a dead aborigine; and Antarctica has fabulous weather. Of all the continents that constitute Earth’s terrain, however, Europe remains dearest to my heart and closest to my soul.
I allude here not to the sweatshops, the world wars, or totalitarian socialism (though none of these innovations has escaped my notice) but to the fact that the European imagination endowed me with a degree of glamour—you might even say charm—that in pre-coma times enabled me to function with extraordinary effectiveness. The concept of an Evil One is intrinsic to Islam, of course; the ancient Hebrews had their “adversary,” their satan; the Egyptians feared a dark deity called Set; Zoroastrians believed in Ahriman, essence of destruction (forever warring with Ohrmazd, source of all things bright and beautiful). But only in Christian Europe did the Prince of Hell acquire a personality as vivid and endearing as any you will meet in a Dickens novel.
I stand before you today not as your hypothetical descendant but as the ambassador of my kind. The statistics, as you may know, are appalling: two of us sloughed off for every six who make it into the world. In all of history, there was never a more prolific abortionist than God Almighty. Make sure the tribunal learns that fact.
It doesn't derive from any sort of biology," snapped Augustine. "It derives from sound reasoning and the Book of Genesis. 'In Adam's Fall, we sinned all.'"
"Through Adam's shlong, our race went wrong," replied Saperstein, jeering. "I'm sorry, Your Grace, but it just won't wash, either scientifically or theologically.
When an upright citizen hears his neighbor has met with an earthquake or a hurricane, he doesn't stop to ask, 'Is there a hidden harmony here?' He rolls up his sleeves and tries to help."
"Exactly." With an athleticism that defied his years, Noah regained his feet and climbed onto the long, taut mooring line. "If I learned one thing from the Deluge, Your Grace, it is this: a man who seals up his ark for the sake of a greater good is a man who has ceded his soul to chaos." Slowly, cautiously, he tightrope-walked toward the rudderless vessel. "The hidden harmony defense is pornography, Bishop Augustine—pornography for priests!