Splinter

United we fall.
  May 8, 2004

Everyone puttered around in darkness until Nicodemus rose up at the Fifteenth Universal Atheist Congress and delivered us some enlightenment.  His arguments were beautiful—simple, elegant, with extra heft for the recalcitrant; his style slashed and burned.  I’ve had it with you bastards, he said.  You don’t believe in god?  Well, neither do I.  But that don’t make us friends.  That don’t even make us acquaintances, and I’ll tell you why.  You don’t believe in the wrong god!

We were stunned.  Astounded even.  Puzzled.  Peeved.  The nerve of him, getting all righteous in our faces about whom not to believe in!  The sheer gall of the guy, mixing in his friends surreptitious with our ranks to jump us when we tried to reason some sense into him—they reasoned some sense into us instead.  We didn’t get how beautiful his arguments were then, see?  We tried to turn back the clock of progress only to get swept under its tide.

Soon the sensible nature of Nicodemus’s objections became clear to all but a handful of staid dogmatists, who unfortunately still had numerical advantage on their side.  Instead of one Universal Atheist Front we now had two.  The dogmatists insisted on being the only legitimate Universal Atheist Front; we disagreed, so both movements had the same name for a while and there was some confusion about whose head to bash under what banner at which meetings.  We resolved it by getting different style pins.  Ours said “There is no god.”  Theirs said “God does not exist,” stodgy as could be.

Good fun was had by all on Sundays when we would go down to the old marketplace and trade ideas one for one; even hard heads got edified.  We didn’t believe in Mnemlotep; they fervently denied Gargamon.  The errors of their ways were easy to demonstrate, unless you got demonstrated the errors of yours first and then all bets were off.  We grew in strength and convictions.

Then the left wing of our movement splintered to merge with the right wing of theirs.  Together they formed the Union of Atheist Purity, an altogether vile beast with scant morals and brutish methods that almost did us in.  Fortunately for the Front of Universal Atheism (which we at that point had become), new blood was pouring into the movement, and we arose one day to meet the others in a righteous debate and yea, straight was our path and yea, mighty was our hand and lo, the doubting scattered before our might like clouds before the rain.  Verily.

Shortly thereafter they regrouped, and the Our Fatherland Atheism faction split from somebody, and then the All-Atheist Nonbelievers’ Front.

The United Atheist Union, the Union of United Atheists, Atheists for Better Future, Atheists for Simpler Past, doubters of Jesus, deniers of Allah, skeptics on Buddha, convinced that their god was the one and only right one to denounce—it got noisy but still was fun.  Then came Valedict.

You fools, said Valedict to us, don’t you see that all you’re squabbling about is which hole is emptier?  Open your eyes and see nothing—everywhere, not just in your own hole.  Unite the holes; unite the emptiness.  Stare into the void and appreciate it how it is—immense and indivisible.  (And other stuff in this vein.)

At this the Coalition for Atheism, and the Alliance of Atheist Forces, and the Thomas Society, and the other sundry unions, fronts, movements, factions, groups, committees and leagues cried out as one and said.

Who does he think he is, they said.  He believes in nothing, they said.  This is intolerable, they said, threatening, heretical and tyrannical.  Exhort us to be brothers, will you, they said.  Git, they said to us and git him we did, with whips and chains, with knives and baseball bats, with hammers and nails.  Very soon there was nothing left other than a torn formerly white shirt and that got taken apart before long.

We rested awhile after that, a beautiful moment of universal peace, and then went back to cracking each other’s skulls.

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