What other explanation covers the facts?

Man: We need to talk about God? I think not.

A Witness: We've always needed to talk about God.

Man: God isn't even supposed to exist, so who are we talking about?

A Witness: Think of this conversation as part of a mind game going on inside your head.

Man: It's not very different from what religionists have inside their head - this notion that God exists. Heck, why am I even 'personalising' 'God'? God is either just a notion, a fear psychosis or some figment of someone's imagination. Richard Dawkins says the idea of God is a virus of the mind.

A Witness: Hmmm..interesting. So what else does he say?

Man: Look, I don't have the time. I've got things to do. Places to go. People to see.

A Witness: Why is it that when you think of God, you always go to people who will obviously tell you God doesn't exist? Perhaps, deep down, you would like that idea to be true? Why, for instance, do you not go to someone who will say that God does exist?

Man: Because I instinctively don't trust people who say God exists. They start saying this "God" or "whatever" exists and soon enough they're telling me what to think, how to live and looking in on my private life. I don't need that kind of supervision! I'm not a child - I'm a fully informed adult...and please tell me, when are 'God's people' going to grow up and get a life of their own without God? Besides, these are such antiquated out-of-date ideas!!! We live in an age where we've thrown off these relics from the Dark Ages.

A Witness: So you go to the people who tell you, essentially, what you like to hear about God, right?

Man: So what if I do? It can be proved that nothing like God exists.

A Witness: Really? How are you so sure these people are not as half-crazed as the 'religionists' are?

Man: Maybe they are. But the probability that they are right is surely far more than the probability that the 'religionists' are right.

A Witness: Has it ever occurred to you that for God to be God, God would have to be something or someone unlimited? Man, after all, is a limited prototype.

Man: Well, man needs to be able to touch, see, feel, smell, move, think....and evidence is a big deal for me.

A Witness: Exactly!! Has it ever occurred to you that those senses you have limit you? That they are your boundaries, in one sense? If there was something that existed that you cannot touch, you'd have no way of knowing that something. Isn't that what you're saying?

Man: Meaning what?

A Witness: Meaning, maybe God is beyond those boundaries you cannot help living by - touch, feel, see, hear, think and so on. And if at all, by your own conception, something or someone like God exists, this God would have to be able to transcend your boundaries, isn't it?

Man: Yeah....but if that were true, then I'd have no way of knowing whether God (or something) exists, because we live in two different planes of existence that may or may not intersect....

A Witness: Unless.....

Man: Unless they actually intersect at some point?

A Witness: Well, for God to be God, He or 'something' would have to be able to both transcend the boundaries your prototype is bound by, and, curiously, also inhabit the boundaries too. That seems fairly logical. Otherwise, looking at it from your point of view, you would not call this 'something' God.

Man: Hmmmm. Makes sense, but who even knows if such planes of existence are real or not! Aren't these just mind games? I'm sure a religionist has been here.

A Witness: And so has an atheist.

Man: Whatever. Look, I've got to rush, okay?

A Witness: Hold on. Have you ever wondered where you got this curious idea of a 'higher being'?

Man: Well, the idea's been there since the dawn of the age, don't you think? And it's been handed down to us from our ancestors. Over time, any number of myths or legends could have taken root that could have become the strands of 'religion' today.

A Witness: But why did the idea even come to be, in the first place?

Man: Who cares. Probably a fearful someone needed a crutch and felt good.

A Witness: A fearful someone feared what?

Man: Certain death, attack, assault, who knows. Or, even worse, someone just felt insecure and invented this, to control others.

A Witness: So you'd say it is a figment of the imagination?

Man: Undoubtedly.

A Witness: Why would man need to fear death?

Man: Because one man might have seen what happens to another man when he "dies" - the dead one cannot do anything anymore, for himself or anyone else; the dead one just 'ceases to exist'.

A Witness: Still, why fear it?

Man: Because it is some unknown thing. It's so horrible to think of its finality, that we find ourselves wishing fondly sometimes that death is just a door to some other world or some other kind of life.

A Witness: Dead people enter some unknown world? But if death is the end, and the person has died, and nothing or no one remains, who is it OF THAT PERSON that enters an unknown world?

Man: I don't know.

A Witness: By the way, would you say, if you do admit to that explanation of death, then you are admitting some rudimentary notion of a different plane of existence other than this world?

Man: Not necessarily. Maybe someone who dies just goes away into this vast universe itself.

A Witness: Have you ever found any evidence to support this?

Man: No.

A Witness: While we're on the topic, why do human beings die?

Man: Because bodies slowly run down and decay.

A Witness: Why should this be? It's such an inexorable, irrevocable process. In fact, the day we are born, we begin to die.

Man: Perhaps when a human being dies, he just turns into some other kind of life somewhere else.

A Witness: But you're borrowing from the religionists there, aren't you. Besides, if you do admit this 'some other kind of life somewhere else', you are admitting some (rudimentary at least) different plane of existence.

Man: Okay then I don't know. But I don't care anyway.

A Witness: But you DO care. You don't want to die, do you?

Man: Well....yeah. What's your point anyway?

A Witness: My point is this - human beings never had to die. If God could help it, they were supposed to live forever.

Man: So how did death come then?

A Witness: Death is a fatal virus. It entered when the design for your prototype was tampered with. A mutation occurred, by which a new retrograde species was born. This species.....was MORTAL.

Man: How was the design tampered with?

A Witness: You know the story...and it's an old one. I won't repeat it to you.

Man: Oh no, not that!!!!! But isn't it all just a story? I mean, do you mean to again bring back this cumbersome, antiquated concept of Original Sin?

A Witness: What other explanation covers the facts?

Man: Oh darn!! I'm sure there are a myriad number of explanations....

A Witness: Well, name me one that's robust enough to tackle it.

Man: You don't mean to tell me that just because a man ate one small fruit, a new species was born? Isn't that so highly arbitrary?

A Witness: What was the fruit the man ate?

Man: God alone knows..I mean, who knows!!! Some gobbledygook about the knowledge of good and evil. Hold on!!!! Now don't tell me you're bringing that in as well?

A Witness: Well, it is beginning to dawn on you :)

Man: Well, what's wrong with knowing good and evil?

A Witness: Well, man's prototype was built without the ability to handle this knowledge. Or rather, man's prototype was built never to HAVE TO handle this knowledge.

Man: Why? Who built it this way?

A Witness: God did.

Man: Well, I still refuse to believe it.

A Witness: Yes I know.

Man: Anyways, how did just acquiring knowledge make man into a new species?

A Witness: Let's go back to the matter of death. What actually happens?

Man: They say a man's spirit leaves the body.

A Witness: So you are willing to go with the 'religionists'?

Man: It's just a theory.

A Witness: Well, it is true. The spirit of a man actually leaves the body. This means the soul ceases to exist. It is when the spirit enters a human body, that a soul is born. Doesn't it say, somewhere, "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." So, when the spirit entered a body, a living soul was produced. And somewhere else, it says, "As the body without the spirit is dead.." So when the spirit of a man leaves his body, the man 'dies'; his soul ceases to exist.

Man: Interesting. And the point of this would be?

A Witness: Well, at the beginning, the prototype was supposed to never experience 'the spirit leaving the body'. That's because the spirit always attached the body to the true source of the human being's 'life' - the creator. But when man chose to break away from the creator (essentially, that's what man meant when he opted for independence and 'knowledge' by eating the fruit), the spirit became subjugated to the soul and the body. With more sinister consequences, the spirit lost connection to its source of life - the creator. This meant that the man was now virtually 'dead', except that the spirit would be finally released when the body completed its cycle of decay. Till then, a constantly decaying physical life would prevail. The curse after the eating of the fruit was, ".....until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." Therefore, the new destiny was death of the body. A new species had literally, like Lewis said, "sinned itself into existence" - this new species had chosen, voluntarily, death and not life.

Man: Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!! Rave on!!!! You're kidding, right?

A Witness: What other explanation covers the facts?