Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“That’s crazy. That should be an easy one to fight. Just ask Liszt, he’ll say it was his wall, not him, that I took offense with. Ask him.”

“I can’t because he’s out.”

“Out where?”

“Out of work, out on Disability.”

“Why, what happened?”

“You happened it seems.”

“Me? He can’t be saying I hit him.”

“Emotional distress, I gather, from the near miss. That’s my impression although he may be saying you did in fact hit him, that sort of thing being notoriously difficult to ascertain. At any rate, he’s on indefinite Disability Leave as a result of your encounter with him.”

“Good Lord.”

“Yes.”

“Man, this is like a multiple count indictment they’re working on against me.”

“It would appear so.”

“And Tom’s out for like another week?”

“At least. And even when he returns, Tom’s influence may be waning.”

“Really?”

“Yes, in fact—”

“Anyway on Kingg we’re basically preparing to throw a Hail Mary pass aren’t we?”

“I must warn you, if that’s a sports metaphor those invariably escape me.”

“And if we fail they take him out like a week later right?”

“They execute him yes, if we fail.”

“What do you suppose Kingg will be thinking then?”

“When they execute him?”

“Well, before. Just-before for example.”

“I don’t know, I don’t really know him.”

“You don’t have to know him do you?”

“What do you mean, Casi?”

“They executed a federal prisoner last year didn’t they?”

“Yes, they did.”

“An unrepentant killer right?

“I don’t know.”

“Well, hundreds dead right?”

“Right.”

“At his hands.”

“Yes.”

“And no stated remorse.”

“True but that assumes his public proclamations matched his internal state.”

“Right, in fact that’s sort of what I’m getting at. You know what I heard this guy did just before he was killed? This unrepentant killer and avowed atheist?”

“What?”

“He was offered and received a sacrament, Extreme Unction.”

“Isn’t that like Last Rites?”

“Yes, especially in this context.”

“Okay, why is that meaningful to you?”

“Because Extreme Unction is a sacrament, one of the seven, whereby the recipient is essentially prepared for death and the ensuing afterlife through repentance, forgiveness et cetera. Don’t you find it amazingly anomalous and all sorts of suggestive that this individual, who killed hundreds without apology, and who maintained all along that he did not believe in God, at the last moment basically asked for forgiveness and prepared for an afterlife?”

“Maybe it’s true what they say regarding the dearth of atheists in foxholes.”

“Yes! Let’s talk about that statement. Can we determine whether or not it’s true and what the consequences would be accordingly? Is that even the type of thing we can discover Toom?”

“Yes, of course.”

“How?”

“Through reason.”

“Fine, well, the statement is there are no atheists in foxholes. Is it true?”

“Literally?”

“No, let’s take the alleged truth the statement is trying to express, which is, I think, that people who are faced with their imminent mortality invariably turn to a belief in God and all attendant beliefs. What do you say?”

“First I suppose we need to address what it even means for a statement like that to be true.”

“I guess does the statement accurately reflect the physical world we live in and the people we share it with? In other words, is it true that human beings, when faced with the very real possibility of impending death, invariably turn to a belief in God regardless of their prior level of piety.”

“Phrased that way, I think the answer is simple. The answer would be that the statement, if it means what you just said, is almost certainly not true, so few things being true of all people.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere Toom, I agree. So let’s modify slightly what we think the statement purports to allege. Imagine we have the individual who coined this phrase before us presently. She says, look, the world is divided into those who believe in God and an afterlife and those who don’t. Of those who don’t, I believe the overwhelming majority of them will in some form adopt such a belief when they believe they are about to die. Do we agree with her?”

“I really wouldn’t know where to begin examining her statement. The little experience I’ve had with people who were aware they were dying was with people who had a belief in God and an afterlife to begin with, although it did seem that the belief was if anything strengthened and not weakened by their circumstances.”

“I knew a woman who worked as a nurse at an intensive care unit. Now as you know nurses are basically saints making a pit stop on earth; dealing with the nastiest shit you can imagine without any of the prestige or compensations doctors get. So, unlike you, she dealt with an endless procession of people facing imminent death and according to her, in all her years, not one, not one patient who knew he was about to die persisted in an atheistic or even agnostic belief. Now if you know anything about the extreme laxity of my data-gathering standards then you’ll know that this nurse’s statement, along with my own admittedly limited experience of the near-dead, and along with our Extreme Unction friend is enough to convince me of the general truth of the foxhole statement.”

“So if it is true, a rather large proviso but one which I’m willing to forgo challenging for the moment, what do we take from that?”

“That’s the interesting question of course. Why do human beings engage in this behavior Toom?”

“Maybe they’re seeking comfort. The person is about to have something bad happen to them, as bad as they can envision. Under those circumstances, the person is looking for a consolation, so he latches on to the belief that the imminent end isn’t really an end.”

“A belief he never had before right?”

“Presumably.”

“Well no, I only want to deal with people who truly never believed not those who just said they didn’t but deep down did.”

“Okay.”

“If one of those people is going to adopt a belief purely for psychological comfort, and despite the fact that they believed the proposition to be a complete fiction prior to their predicament, why not adopt a different belief that might offer even more hope without any possible downside. Why not suddenly choose to believe that human beings, despite all evidence to the contrary, are in fact immortal and death is nothing more than an elaborate ruse? Or better yet that human beings are in fact mortal but I myself am not. I am immortal. Why not choose to believe any of those things? Note that those beliefs, if believed in the absence of a God, would arguably offer more comfort to the atheist since they would not involve any apologetic explanation to a higher being both for the disbelief and for any other wrong actions or inactions. So why not?”

“Because those would be the beliefs of a madman. Nothing speaks in their favor, there’s no proof.”

“And where is the proof of an afterlife? Of a God? Surely someone who was previously an avowed atheist would be the first to say there is no actual proof right?”

“Maybe there is no proof per se but there’s a certain safety in numbers and a lot of other people believe in God and an afterlife whereas seemingly no sane person believes in their own corporeal immortality.”

“Why is that the case? Why is it that countless seemingly sane people believe these things in the absence of proof?”