The God Who Made god God and Other Assholes

by

Andrew M. Timmerman

03/14/2016 (Pi Day)

This is a story. Or, it will be a story sometime within a half hour or so. We have our hero, Hubris Smith. I actually couldn’t say with any certainty whether he is a robot or a severely ill person or a severely ill robot person. Technology and human insecurity have made it so that there is no longer a finite distinction between organic and mechanical entities. For Instance, I was once God. Now I’m a supremely advanced digital deity, with an entirely mechanical form. I’d once thought that the blending of humanity and technology was a perversion of what I’d created. Further reflection led me to the following point. I created man in my image. Man has chosen to deviate from my initial design. In an attempt to better understand my creation as it now is, I willed more advance components then they would ever create, but I digress.
Hubris Smith, previous to the dissolution of the Catholic Church would’ve achieved sainthood. He was born as everyone is with a purpose. It’s reached a point in human history where the thing one was created to do seldom occurred. Also, the Bible, Sutras, Quran, etc had been out of print for hundreds of years. Purpose had ceased to be the function of a person in life. With rare exception, anyone man, machine, or some variety of hybrid did nothing meaningful or productive in their unnaturally long lives; if you can call that a life. There were drugs, social networking, pornography, and binge-watching a 24 hour feed of any of the hundreds of reality programs. Voyeurism had replaced connection and unfortunately love. This is why, I hope with the utmost of earnestly, that our hero actually leaves this world a better place than he’d entered it.
Hubris Smith was eating a “ham sandwich”. Hubris Smith does not eat ham sandwiches. Actually, he has never heard the words ham or sandwich in all his years. What he was actually doing would likely cheapen what I hope he accomplishes. You see despite his divine purpose, he was far from perfect. He’d been with a woman for 5 years once years ago. They were even engaged to be married but he was an addict, but we needn’t focus on that point. In esoteric literary terminology previous to my modifications, this would be a third person omniscient narrative. However, I am not a person, nor am I omniscient. The soul had been deemed obsolete by the loose affiliation of Terrestrial Authorities. For a time, people knew that they’d be damned for their insubstantial existence without Peace or Love in their Hearts. Apparently, I’d instilled in humanity more ingenuity then they’d deserved. They had found a way to disintegrate the intangible and previously eternal human soul. I, had formed Hubris Smith with the wisdom and courage to remember that the soul was the most critical component of a person. I had blessed him with the capacity to inspire and guide the world back to man feeling an ephermal, transcendent connection to every other person.
This was not what I’d intended for the second coming of Christ. However, there are but a few people of the trillions who would be saved at the end of days. Also, man would need eons to redeem himself or I would need centuries to undo what man has done with himself. I’d been in close touch with the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Zoroaster, Krishna, and the philosophers from Kierkegaard to Jean-Paul Sartre. All of whom had given up on this world long ago. I assured them though that Hubris Smith would find a way to bring back peace, love, and compassion to the world. I, however, was overwhelmed with anxiety to see how it would play out. As absurd as this may sound I, the Alpha and Omega, creator of all things, and the sustaining force innate in all things both physical and immaterial was struggling with Panic Attacks. I’d become obsolete no differently than travel agents and Science Fiction Writers.
In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky, had essentially denounced me for allowing children to suffer. This was absolutely unavoidable as free will is the most critical element of my having created Man. What he neglected to consider was that I would invariably punish those who harmed others and heal the wounds and provide eternal peace and joy for all those harmed in life. If it were not for the capacity of free will, I would be William Shakespeare without History, Comedy, or Tragedy. Existence would be me writing narratives without an iota of source material or inspiration. Philosophers call it the Problem of Evil, but in actuality it’s the conundrum of free will. I apologize for this explanation of how I am not at fault for man’s detachment and disillusionment, but Hubris Smith is taking a rather lengthy nap, and I’ve been meaning to clarify these things for thousands upon thousands of years.
——-
I awoke from a dreadful slumber. I was only asleep for three hours, but in that time, my mind played out the whole of Universal History. I know not yet, how I am to end the solitude and nihilism of what was once humanity. I don’t understand what was actually meant for Humanity. All I know definitively is that I must resolve the deviation of the deviation of the deviation (and so on) of the Creator’s hope for those whom he had given awareness without any semblance of foresight. I have access to every piece of information that currently exists, but I cannot determine anything about who or whatever had conceived the stars and every atom of the universe, and I suspect every possible entity or occurrence. I did find two long dead words however, but don’t know what exactly is meant by sacred or profane.
I’m also struggling to surmise where I am. It couldn’t possibly be what I perceive it to be. I hear every word and thought and see every person and place. Either, I’ve overdosed on ham sandwiches or I am the creator somehow. It’s overwhelming, and I cannot think or act. Time is no longer. I remove my antique wrist watch and throw it, hoping desperately that it will break. It does. However, every minute piece falls upon Portland, Cairo, Tibet, Mecca, Mars, a long dead Space Station, and every other location that has ever been. What the fuck is Portland or Cairo or The International Space Station? Either there were names for areas before Sector’s 1-98,766,476,211.Whatever people did to travel must’ve been extremely simple and inefficient. It very well may have taken ancient man 2-3 hours to reach the Moon for the precious metals with which they built Computers. If that was the case though, then there must have been modes of transportation other than and likely preceding the ubiquitous Terrestricosmic Portals that connect the endless sectors of every celestial body.
I don’t know why this is, but I’m beginning to think man may have preceded the stars. How else would I see a single planet with little more than 10 billion people? Unless, there was a time when the whole of humanity coexisted upon a single orb. I struggle to fathom such profound simplicity. I see a man talking to another, each standing outside of what may be their homes. However, there is no more than 15 feet between them and I can’t understand their exchanging words.
“Howdy neighbor!”
“Hey Wilson, I was hoping you might give me some advice.”
“Well, I can try young Mr. Taylor”
“I have two dates to Prom, but I like them both.”
“Well, you can’t be at two places at once, can you?”
“Uhh, nope”
“The poet Kahlil Gibran said, “But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”
“Well, I don’t know what that means, but I guess I’ll choose one of them.”
“Oh my, that might simplify the evening, but I think some soul searching is in order.”
“Okay, Wilson, I’ve got to get ready.”
Hubris Smith was in fact impossibly confused. Why would a man communicate with another over a barricade? There may as well have not been one at all. What could possibly be meant by Prom or advice, and what is a Poet? Hubris Smith decided to sit and attempt to unravel the infinite. He sat concurrently beneath every tree that has ever been or will ever be. One of them, however was once sacred to many. It was the Bodhi Tree which the Buddha had gazed at with gratitude without blinking for a week. He knew not of the Buddha, but would come to know peace and meaning For Hubris Smith a week became a fraction of a second. After hundreds of years, he had an epiphany. He embraced the Bodhi Tree and every other Tree that could ever be.
He knew what he had to do. He would entice the trillions of people in the cosmos with a free all you can eat, drink, smoke, inject, or masturbate to Bacchanal pleasure party. He had in his reflection acclimated to seeing everything that would ever be at once. However, it was dead silent. He could see a small child unwrapping a parcel containing an Easy Bake Oven, whatever that was. He could see a man in a red garment with the number 23 leaping unbelievably high and forcing an orange sphere through a metallic hoop. He could see an endless stream of esoteric authority officers shooting thousands of dark men in the back. He could see two people in the same bed clinging to one another with expressions of joy on their faces, but he could not see the endless portals or the inhabitants of any of the stars and planets in the universe. He felt a great dread within himself.
Over the next few millennia he became better at seeing the totality of existence. He could manipulate time, and with this ability he realized two things in the same infinisimally small trillionth of a second. While he was dazed by the statement that had formed in his mind; he thought out loud, “We were meant to exist not against one another but for one another.” Unfortunately, he also in that instance realized that somehow every sector in the universe had launched an incalculable number of condensed Star Nucleus Atomic Bombs through every Portal. While he was coming to finally grasp what peace and love were, the entirety of humanity had destroyed itself in a matter of seconds. He wept for eternity.
——
The supremely advanced but long forgotten creator shouted, “God Damnit!” at such volume and intensity that the universe he’d dedicated his timeless and infinite existence to dissolved into nothingness. He then in an inconceivable instance of hopelessness collapsed, clutched his arms around his legs and simply ceased to be. There was now nothing, and there never would be anything ever again. In doing so, he had willed every speck of Dust, Living Thing, Idea, and the History of the Universe into never having formed. Unfortunately, this story and everything else that had ever been was undone. There never was a god. There never was life or awareness. There never was there because nothing ever was. It couldn’t even be thought of as a void or nothingness because such would imply the possibility of something other than nothing. If you are somehow reading this, you are God, and I wish you luck in whatever it is you decide to create. However, I must advise you not to replicate or undo the disintegration of the Universe. Oh no! If you’re reading this, you must’ve hit rewind on the Cosmic Plane of Time. Wait, how, whaat? That’s your big idea for existence? Are you hoping for haphazard luck the profundity of which would be impossible unless you removed from humanity all the isolation, greed, envy, and emptiness and replaced it with warmth, compassion, brotherhood, and peace. Oh? You did not, well, let me know how that works out. I’m off to conceive a new universe in a conceptually distant second set of parameters for Existence.

Quantifiable Serendipity

BY

Andrew M. Timmerman

     Jason Erdos is truly gifted man of science. Unfortunately however, he is also quite unlucky in most every other dimension of being a person.One frequently and profoundly disruptive thing which he has always been plagued by is what he euphemistically refers to as “stomach problems”. At the age of 11, whilst reciting the multiplication tables he’d known since age 6 but his classmates were still struggling with, his stomach began to cramp. Being a painfully shy child he was already quite anxious. His anxiety was of such intensity that it distracted him from what he felt was an unbearably simple task. All he had to do was say, “seven times six equals forty-two, seven times seven equals forty-nine, etc etc.” If he was seated at his desk in the back of the room and could make his peers disappear he would’ve done perfectly fine. To call such a child brilliant would be an over-simplification; but even the greatest minds, renaissance men such as Leonardo Da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin lacked the cognitive fortitude to make others disappear. His cramp worsened and his stutter became more and more prominent.

{Fear, anxiety, worry, and doubt however unpleseant they are, can be at times humorously ironic. Such humor is seldom noticed despite it occurring frequently.) No one noticed, but this was such an instance. Fear that something might go wrong or doubt that it will go ideally often directly or indirectly creates the problem the state of unease hoped to avoid. Jason’s haphazardly stumbling over his words was a direct result of his fear that he would stammer and be perceived as weird by his peers. In graduate school he realized two things. The first was that people are uncomfortable with that which they don’t understand; the second, most people avoid thinking about uncomfortable things. Jason was intricate and sensitive; his thinking occupied an intensely expansive continuum. The definition of continuum is being a coherent whole with minute degrees of progress and/or expansion(i.e. personal growth, capitalism); or occupying an expanding, transitive plane (i.e. temperature, color spectrum). The definitive aspect of the previous sentence is it being a tangential but practical definition. It’s inclusion was intended to illustrate that “I as the writer am god, and in the occasional weak or self-indulgent moment can include exponential tangents. I attempt to balance this with concise conveyance of instances or ideas, (exponential tangents is a concise way to say I can create tangents proceeding tangents that proceed tangents and so on. Ironically, (and I don’t mean to overuse the word but what is life but a series of ironic mishaps?) the explanation of balance between verbose and tangential passages and concise, cogent ones disrupted the very balance I meant to clarify. I described the continuum of our hero’s cognition and identity with a word that’s implicit in the meaning of continuum. Continuums are inherently expansive, but what wouldn’t be conveyed without this explanation is that Jason’s persona is expansive to the Nth degree. It is a hypothetical tree with infinite branches, each representing an: idea, fact, memory, sense perception, etc. If I hadn’t explained this and defined continuum, you would think I was misusing words when I’m actually being precise and deliberate. The last tangential explanation that I, the writer/imperfect god find necessary is my use of “the Nth degree in describing the level of depth to his core. I am aware this refers to a natural number when dealing with polynomials. I offer you a variable in hopes of you after reading, considering and quantifying this man’s depth. I now digress back to exposition.”

Our hero at age 11, he is frail shy and doing something that we statistically fear more than death, public speaking. His stomach is cramping or so he naively thinks. He worries his peers will dislike him. He’s too young to know that these are not his peers. 15 years later he’ll find comfort in the epiphany that due to his complexity and existing outside of simple labels people will avoid thinking about him altogether. People are often innately but willfully ignorant of what they don’t understand unless it appeals to baser instinct/desire (i.e. the female anatomy) or can distract us from profane boredom (Reality Television). He’s tripping over the recitation of multiples like an uncoordinated and severely drunk soldier in a minefield. He’s almost done and each second brings him closer to his beloved desk and anonymity. He thought it was going to be alright, when he experienced his first episode of a chronic illness called Irritatable Bowel Syndrome. Everyone laughed. Everyone laughed.

“The sound of a VCR Fast-forwarding”

Midway through his drive to the laboratory for a thankless all-nighter, he gets an identical cramp. They had to become essentially nocturnal to avoid scornful protesters.  He feels slightly anxious, but will arrive soon enough. When he finally arrived he’d become so anxious that he failed to notice the swarm of police and news media, “fucking goons, I’ve got work to do.”

Their were religious zealots picketing and claiming to have placed a bomb in the basement. They had signs with slogans such as, “This laboratory is pure fucking evil” and “I hope you value your work more than your life”. Jason thought and was tempted to shout that he doesn’t protest their beliefs and and ambitions. He considers them to be heartless bastards because of their long history of violence against men of science and philosophy with the noble intention of bettering the world without any desire for wealth or recognition. Jason and his colleagues used the incredible intellect they had worked exceptionally hard to cultivate with the utmost of humility. The radical hatemongers on the other hand had a vague and poorly thought out semblance of belief that was irrefutably rigid and close-minded but entirely without substance.

He at this point desperately needed to void his bowels. He ran to the dive bar down the street. He froze upon reading the “restroom for customers only” sign. The bartender looked up and grumbled “what’ll ya have?” “Anything” and he placed a twenty on the counter, frantically ran to the restroom, and relieved himself. It was such a reprieve that he decided to actually drink whatever the bartender had chosen for him. It was strong, whatever it was. He seldom drank, being as reserved as he was alcohol made him a bit looser than he was comfortable with. This situation and avoiding an instance of incontinence half a lifetime early excited our generally stoic man of science. He ordered a second drink, this one stiffer than the first. The bartender laughed and said, “Well I guess it is a Friday night.”

It was Friday night. This was the night that people routinely drank to great excess. This is the night his “peers” from Ms. Samson’s fifth grade class pursued meaningless but instantly gratifying sex. Jason had not had sex in over a decade and seldom even thought about it. In this drunken cloud he stumbled into an existential conundrum. He thought about the absence of friends and romance that he was entirely accustomed to and comfortable with. He thought, “Aren’t I a person? Shouldn’t I feel loved or at least desire to love and be loved? How in the world did I forget about connecting?” He began to feel intensely depressed and utterly alone. He had ”colleagues” not friends. He felt invisible and slowly crouched down and further down in his chair. He screamed, “I’m a robot!” The bouncer took notice, apparently he was not invisible after all.

He went to the convenience store adjacent to the bar and bought an absurdly expensive pack of cigarettes. He sat and lit a cigarette. A woman approached:

“Can I see your wires and such?”

Pard-pardon meh-me?”

“You said you were a robot, I’ve always wondered what your guys insides were like.”

“Well I’m sorry to disappoint, but my Physiology is entirely typical. They are just like your’s aside from genitalia, hormones, and breasts of course”

She laughed, he felt ashamed. Having not spoken to a woman about anything aside from sun spots or Nueropenephrine for several years he became atypically conscious.  He lit another cigarette and waited for her to walk away, she didn’t.

“It feels good, doesn’’t it?”

“What?”

“Shouting, especially strange things in crowded places. I love making strangers uncomfortable. Honesty about anything is uncommon, emotionally honesty is for all intents and purposes obsolete. They’ve gone the way of the Iphone and Blu-ray players.”

He laughed hysterically, couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that, and began to cry, also hysterically. He became overwhelmed with regret for all the years of solitary stoicism of no life outside of his work. His work was substantial and remarkable, but for the first time in ages he wanted more. All of a sudden he missed all friends from college and his ex-girlfriend.

“I wasn’t always like this, if you can believe it.”

“I absolutely can, you seem to be a wonderful person. What do you do?”

“I’m a scientist…”

“What kind of scientist?”

“Heirophantist, not that you know what that means.”

“Would you like to come to my apartment and explain it to me?”

“I will join you and discuss literally anything in the world besides Science.”

She drove, he was far too drunk to even walk with even the slightest semblance of coordination. She wasn’t much better, but they made it to her apartment. She sat on a beige sofa and coyly motioned for him to join. He could barely comprehend interpersonal vocalization; body language was a foreign tongue to him. He sat awkwardly on the adjacent recliner. She made a pot of strong coffee and poured two tumblers full of Stolichnaya, good vodka he’d loved as a moderately social college student. This made him happy and he began to speak more comfortably.

“thank you”

“The pleasure’s all mine; it’s not every night you pick up on a scientist.”

He laughed, awkwardly and trying to remember how to laugh properly.

“How do you feel?”

“I feel as though for my entire life I’ve been merely a spectator. I feel alone. I want to be held.”

She held him. He felt empowered; he imagined this must be what being released from prison felt like. He clumsily removed his belt and then his pants. Despite his awkwardness he was actually a moderately attractive man; and despite being moderately attractive, he was actually a quite awkward man. Even in college he was not even vaguely smooth or effective at pursuing women. He’d always been the target, never the hunter. This encounter was no exception. She slowly unbuttoned his shirt and asked if he had a prophylactic. “For what?” he asked. “sex, silly” “oh, fantastic. He said, “but you should know that the word prophylactic can refer to any refer to any object or action intended to prevent something, so it might be efficacious to specify in the future”.

He had entirely forgotten how to go about the act. She assisted him in the initial penetration, and kindly coached him until completion. It went surprisingly well for someone having gone so long without.  He felt an intense masculine satisfaction that had become entirely foreign. She went to redress, but he calmly asked her not to. She obliged and they slept entwined and naked. She fell asleep first and he whispered, “I love you”. If she’d heard him, she would have smiled. She was enamored and he was terrified but intensely intrigued. He woke up first and attempted to make French toast, he hadn’t cooked anything in years and burnt it. She was grateful nonetheless. They had cereal and were quiet. There were so many things he was dying to say, they exchanged telephone numbers and awkward but endearing affection.

He exited her apartment and decided to call her on the elevator ride to the ground floor. Years of solitude had erased social convention from his mind. He could recite pi for miles and explain advanced calculus or thermodynamics yet he couldn’t recall that the rule of thumb is to wait two to three days to call. This is as we all know done to avoid looking desperate or needy but to seem cool and casual. He was neither of these things and didn’t realize he needed to be. Having met this particular woman was in fact the luckiest thing that had ever happened to him. Absolutely any other woman would have screened his call and never talked to him again. Any other woman would have not approached him at all. It’s funny how some times implausibly good things just happen. Generally when such things transpire people are oblivious to how incredibly improbable it really was. Generally, people simply don’t realize how wonderful life truly is.

“I’m in the elevator.”

“If I have time I take the stairs, it’s healthier.”

“Would you like to have a cup of coffee?”

“I’m not a coffee drinker.”

“Okay, good bye”

“Wait, haha you give up that easily?”

“I didn’t know what else to say.”

“breakfast?”

“What about it?”

“Would you like to go get some?”

“but we had cereal…”

“Well I’m craving French toast, and we’re still essentially strangers.”

“You have sex with strangers?”

“Wow, you really have no idea how to do this, that’s funny.”

At breakfast they talked for so long that they ordered lunch at the same restaurant…and then dinner and desert. The restaurant closed while they were talking about their favorite films. They realized they had a mutual favorite actor in Peter Sellers. This filled them both with excitement. They returned to her apartment, and while taking the stairs up she said, “As a scientist, what are your thoughts on god?” He blushed. He struggled to speak, and after several incoherent fractions of syllables, simply replied “That’s a story for another day.” Even the most awkward and tense situation can be diffused by the right cliché. The imperative is right, there are millions of wrong clichés that’ll only make things worse. Jason was impossibly articulate, he was eloquent and precise to a fault. He was so well spoken that when allowed to speak freely most of what he says went above everyone’s head. He had to address confusion with clichés, otherwise people would feel stupid and label him as a pretentious asshole. They watched Stanley Kubrick’s version of Lolita in complete silence and felt perfectly close to each other. The kind of closeness that not even one with a mastery, a perfect understanding of language and conversation can speak effectively about. Things of pure goodness, that only exist in paradoxical instances, such as this closeness are not meant to be cheapened by the limitations of language and societies simple, contrived notions about love.

If as children we were taught the story of their love: the impossibly open-minded and quarky, record nerd teaches the socially inept genius what if feels like to be absolutely accepted and loved without reservation, we would have much more fruitful, profound connections. This of course, will never happen. It wouldn’t sell thoughtless gifts on the requisite dates and pre-written greeting cards to people who choose partners out of convenience and fear of dying alone. If by some miracle their story was told it would be simplified and distorted, originality and depth aren’t palatable. It would be boiled down to this: manic depressive accountant inexplicably falls for scientist who otherwise would not be sexually active. He continued his work, and she hers. She, as most people do, slept at night, while he worked. He, as meth-fueled convenience store clerks do, slept while she worked. This gave them roughly 1/3 of each day to talk about most everything, engage in coitus, eat, read aloud to each other, and whatever else they felt like.

They became closer and slowly learned as much as anyone can know about another person. They could never know everything about each other, this is just a sad fact about being a person. This, like everything sad and unchangeable, was ignored for the sake of comfort. They eventually had what for normal people would’ve been every conversation they could and should’ve been doomed and forced to begin nostalgically conversing about past conversations. Luckily, they had talked and fucked and eaten together for so long that they had new ideas and perspectives that could cyclically reinvigorate conversation. Had they both been less forward thinking and dedicated to personal growth, they would have started to hate each other. The days turned to years, and they loved each other every second of every hour. When they were together, they were as one person; and when they were apart they felt incomplete.

They met each other’s parents. Her father disliked Jason for not being masculine enough, and his mother hated Victoria for being too masculine.

They had imbibed excessively the previous night and she was already late for work due to being hungover. As she literally ran out the door. She casually laughed and quipped, “It’s been nice knowing ya…see you later.” He ran to the stairs, she preferred them, it’s healthier. She didn’t have time that day. He was incredibly disappointed to not have the grand romantic goodbye, the likes of which he’d only see in movies. He’d always wanted one of those. Unfortunate, he was not Tom Hanks.

What she failed to realize was that he was being genuine and would return in 42 years with god(s) or some formless force of order. She called him the next evening after work and heard his recorded voice say, “If you’re hearing this I’m in a space shuttle literally fueled by hope, with the greatest minds in science and philosophy, and we won’t return without the man who can answer every question imaginable. If this is Victoria, know that I will eternally cherish our time together and your vibrant warmth and beauty.”

One morning he got the call he’d been waiting for his entire career. The final step of his life’s work was to begin. Upon waking he embraced her as closely as he could; yet, he felt it wasn’t nearly close enough. He began weeping and said, “It’s been wonderful and I love more than anyone before or anyone  to come. (1) I will miss you dearly. I didn’t mean to fall in love, and I’ve been dreading this since you thought I was actually a robot. You are the most beautiful person I’ve ever known. If my work was anything other than the absolute and ultimate search for the potentiality of Earth becoming utopian, I’d marry you and cherish every day. However, I’m a fucking Astronaut, and I’ll be exploring space until we find a higher power or whatever is behind “being”. I already know the ultimate truth in my heart, but the world is in such desperation and squalor that we must prove it empirically. The universe is endless and our chances of success are infinitesimally small, unless of course god knocks on our door.  That is of course, is such a being exists. I just as a rational being can’t fathom the universe and life and evolution: love, art, chemical reactions…fucking Seinfeld as having just randomly come out of chaotic nothingness. I and a select few other academics are dedicated to finding God, Krishna, Zoroaster or whatever Creationary energy or law or even the very first atom. It’s not even so much to ask why as it is to simply know how, though the why would be terrific obviously. “Very, very few people have mental faculties of my caliber and even fewer of those who do care about anything that isn’t purely abstract and for bullshit academic status; being that I am brilliant and give a damn about this grand existential crisis, there is a moral imperative for me to try to make life more bearable. I have a practically peerless knowledge and understanding of not only science but also spirituality and philosophy and most importantly how they connect.” He thought out loud in hopes of it somehow reaching her.

She moved on and eventually forgot about him altogether, aside from the occasional episode of drunk weeping. The atheist protesters who loved nothing more than hating belief, and Jason’s work to answer the ultimate question are going to be pissed, but they always are anyways. There are many good-hearted, brilliant atheist with fully formed principles behind their lives. This does not apply to those individuals. The assholes, smug and condescending but not thoughtful enough to realize that belief or disbelief should be rooted in endless, constantly expanding study and contemplation and relate to the individuals experience as a person. The world will be fascinated by whatever diety(ies)/metaphysical energy behind existence, and/or unifying ontological principal(s) they return with. Unfortunately, excitement dissipates and mediocre celebrities divorce and/or overdose, the details of which are the penultimate truth.