If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways by Daniel Quinn Read Free Book Online Page A

atrophied in me. It strikes me as foolish to believe in things that may not exist — or to deny the existence of things that may exist. Nonetheless, I've peopled my own personal universe with gods who have a care for all living things. I don't pray to these gods or build shrines to them or expect favors from them or perform rituals for them. Nor do I expect other people to "believe" in these gods or to people their own universes with them.
    Elaine . I understand. This resolves a question that was very much on my mind — and is probably on the minds of many of your readers.
    Daniel . What question is that?
    Elaine . I imagine a great many of your readers consider you a nonbeliever.
    Daniel . I assume you mean a nonbeliever in the Judeo-Christian God.
    Elaine . In any kind of god.
    Daniel . I'm afraid I don't know whether that's true or not. But I'm not sure why this is relevant. Or what question I've resolved for you.
    Elaine . You've explained how it was possible for you to write a book like Tales of Adam , in which the gods figure so prominently.
    Daniel . Yes... ?
    Elaine . Some readers must wonder if you were writing from the heart or if it was just a sort of... poetic re-creation of the animist worldview.
    Daniel . Someone might imagine that I'd merely adopted an animist persona — a false or alien persona — for literary purposes, as James Hogg did in writing his Confessions of a Justified Sinner .
    Elaine . I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that.
    Daniel . It's a classic that enjoys a sort of cult status. To write it, Hogg had to adopt a persona diametrically opposed to his own, that of an extreme predestinarian, one who believes that one's salvation or damnation was ordained unalterably by God from the beginning of time. Believing himself to be of the elect, regardless of any sin he might commit, the narrator considered himself "justified" even as he murdered his brother, his mother, and others, and allowed others to be hanged for his crimes. The book, written in the early 1820s, decades ahead of its time, was received with scorn and fell into obscurity until being rediscovered by authors like Robert Louis Stevenson and André Gide... In any case, you can be sure that the Tales were definitely written "from my heart," to use your phrase.
    Elaine . I didn't doubt it.
    Daniel . So... Where are we? I take it we've disposed of the question of my personal beliefs.
    Elaine . Yes.
    Daniel . Let's see... On the same general subject, how would you answer this question, which I've received in many different forms: "Do you think God recognizes the danger we pose to the world and therefore sends such things as AIDS, cancer, plagues, and natural disasters to keep our population in check?"
    Elaine [ after thinking about it ]. It strikes me as a pretty silly question.
    Daniel . Yes, perhaps it is. But when an anthropologist sees people doing or saying something that seems silly, he asks himself two questions: "Why does this seem silly to me?" and "Why doesn't it seem silly to them ?"
    Elaine . Yes. Of course you're right.
    Daniel . So why does the question seem silly to you?
    Elaine . Perhaps it would seem less silly if it weren't a question about God.
    Daniel . You'll have to explain that. Is asking questions about God inherently silly or do you find the very concept of God silly?
    Elaine . No, neither one... Would you repeat the question?
    Daniel . "Do you think God recognizes the danger we pose to the world and therefore sends such things as AIDS, cancer, plagues, and natural disasters to keep our population in check?"
    Elaine [ after thinking for several minutes ]. The questioner doesn't seem to realize that there is any causality at work in the world except divine causality. He uses the term natural disasters but doesn't actually accept the fact that they are natural. He doesn't connect the tsunami that devastated South Asia with an undersea earthquake, he thinks God "sent" it.
    Daniel . Or "sent" the earthquake.
    Elaine .