[ExI] atheism

Damien Broderick thespike at satx.rr.com
Wed Dec 16 00:32:49 UTC 2009


On 12/15/2009 6:02 PM, BillK wrote:
> On 12/15/09, John Grigg wrote:
>> Have any of you read the Isaac Asimov story about a man who is an avowed
>> atheist and upon his death learns there actually is a God and an afterlife?
>> The man rails against God for the ills of earth life and even declares that
>> he will dedicate his endless afterlife existance to finding a way to defeat
>> him!  I wish I could remember the title of the story.

> "The Last Answer" (1986)

<http://destructionoverdrive.blogspot.com/2005/06/last-answer-by-isaac-asimov.html>

...The Voice said, “I do not wish to constrain you directly. I will not 
need to. Since you can do nothing but think, you will think. You do not 
know how not to think.”
“Then I will give myself a goal. I will invent a purpose.”
The Voice said tolerantly, “That you can certainly do.”
“I have already found a purpose.”
“May I know what it is?”
“You know already. I know we are not speaking in the ordinary fashion. 
You adjust my nexus is such a way that I believe I hear you and I 
believe I speak, but you transfer thoughts to me and from me directly. 
And when my nexus changes with my thoughts you are at once aware of them 
and do not need my voluntary transmission.”
The Voice said, “You are surprisingly correct. I am pleased. - But it 
also pleases me to have you tell me your thoughts voluntarily.”
“Then I will tell you. The purpose of my thinking will be to discover a 
way to disrupt this nexus of me that you have created. I do not want to 
think for no purpose but to amuse you. I do not want to think forever to 
amuse you. I do not want to exist forever to amuse you. All my thinking 
will be directed toward ending the nexus. That would amuse me.”
The Voice said, “I have no objection to that. Even concentrated thought 
on ending your own existence may, in spite of you, come up with 
something new and interesting. And, of course, if you succeed in this 
suicide attempt you will have accomplished nothing, for I would 
instantly reconstruct you and in such a way as to make your method of 
suicide impossible. And if you found another and still more subtle 
fashion of disrupting yourself, I would reconstruct you with that 
possibility eliminated, and so on. It could be an interesting game, but 
you will nevertheless exist eternally. It is my will.”
Murray felt a quaver but the words came out with a perfect calm. “Am I 
in Hell then, after all? You have implied there is none, but if this 
were Hell you would lie to us as part of the game of Hell.” [etc]



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