“Well, let me tell you.” I took a big sip of beer and cleared my throat, trying to recall a few lectures I’d heard on the topic not long ago. “So,” I began. “A long time ago there was this big guy in a big castle who called himself the king. He ruled over thousands of people who all lived in misery and squalor. And because they had nothing, they tended to steal from the only place there was anything worth stealing from, which was the king’s castle. Naturally, the king had spent a fortune on hired guards, but they weren’t doing a very good job, occasionally even stealing from the king themselves.
“Then one day a magician caught the king’s ear. The magician suggested another way of preventing the people from stealing from the king, without needing any guards. Greedy as the king was, he agreed to try the magician’s method.
“First he got the people’s attention by performing magic tricks for them, much like magicians do nowadays, but which the primitive people took at face value, making them think that this guy actually had magical powers.
“Then he told them, ‘The being that granted me these powers is called God. God is all-powerful, all-seeing, and he has sent me here to tell you that you must obey the king. You must always do what the king says and never steal from him. And if you don’t do as the king says, God’s punishment will be severe! And this is how the ‘magic man’ scared the shit out of all the people.”
The pub was beginning to get quite crowded and noisy. “To enforce the word of God,” I continued in a louder voice, “a large and powerful building was constructed called the church and the magician became its priest. The church came with rules. No more stealing, no more killing, no more fucking around—God said so.
“Well, the laws worked for a while, but eventually there was a famine and the people went back to stealing from the king. To appease them, the priest then invited them to the church and told them, ‘You too shall one day live in a big castle and have feasts beyond your wildest dreams.’ And when the people asked him when, he said, ‘Right after you kick the bucket.’ Because then you went to heaven, where everything was fine forever. And the people ate up his bullshit story because it made it seem as though their suffering was worthwhile in the end.
“And so, they slaved and suffered and even went to war for the king. All in the name of a God created out of a desire for power and embodied in fear and false promises. And the priest? He got paid and lived comfortably. And this, my dear Martin, is essentially how all religions were formed.”
Although Martin seemed to be quite mesmerized by my story, as expected, he still asked, “Okay, but how do you know that’s the way it happened?”
“How do I know that’s the way it happened? Because in the bible it says that Moses cast a staff before the Pharaoh and the staff became a snake. But did you know that if you take a certain type of snake and squeeze an area behind its neck it becomes rigid like a stick?”
“Can’t say I did, no.”
“It also says that Moses put his staff into the water and the water turned into wine. But do you think that’s what really happened or did he simply use a hollow bamboo tube with a red dye in it? Which one do you think is more plausible?”
“The second option I guess.”
“And then it says that Moses talked to God through a burning bush on top of a mountain.” I shook my head in disbelief. “Although I doubt this ever happened, for argument’s sake let’s say it did. Firstly, you can get oxygen-deprived on top of a mountain and it is quite normal to start hallucinating. And secondly, if there was indeed a ‘burning bush’, it was probably just a will-o’-the-wisp, a natural phenomenon in nature which happens through chemoluminescence. So Moses was ultimately little more than a magician or a hallucinating fool. And in fact, there are people like him even today. Magicians who engage in trickery, thinking they have actual magical powers—or at least they tell the public they do. Like the spoon-bending Uri Geller, for instance.”
“Who’s that?”
“Just a charlatan.”
“What’s that?”
“Never mind. However, I’m sure you’ve heard about the Virgin Mary statute in India which ‘miraculously’ wept?”
“Yeah, I think I heard about that somewhere.”
“But did you know that when this occurrence was investigated by a skeptic, it turned out that the water dripping off its face came simply from bad plumbing? Of course, that didn’t stop thousands of people from praying before it and kissing its dirty feet.”
Martin squinted his eyes and tilted his head. “You sure about that?”
“Yes, Martin, I’m sure. All so-called miracles are based on trickery or misunderstanding. Or they’re just flat-out lies. For instance, did you know that the flood story from the bible was plagiarized from the oldest known story called The Epic of Gilgamesh? Which, believe it or not, I’ve actually read.
“But regardless of all that, precisely how I know all this is beside the point since we’re talking about ancient history, man. You can’t really prove anything in ancient history unless you use carbon dating and stuff like that, which you clearly can’t for the things I’m talking about. So you’ve gotta ask yourself, what makes sense?
“Now, the story I’ve told you may have various inaccuracies, but considering everything I know about humanity, the gist of it makes perfect sense to me. I mean, how else do you think they controlled all those people? By fooling them of course. Which is precisely what religion was designed for. It’s the oldest scam in the book. The king had everything he wanted, you see, and he wanted to keep it that way. Which he did, through violence, manipulation, and lies. Just like it is done today. And he was helped along by the priest.”
“If you say so,” Martin said sheepishly.
“I do say so, Martin. I say that the first king was nothing but a gangster, and the first priest was a fucking phony. And, as a philosopher once put it, man will never be free until the last king is strangled by the entrails of the last priest.”
Not that he’d be free even then, I thought. At least, not from himself.
6
Martin didn’t have much to say after my monologue. It was possible that what I had said had depressed him, or that he simply didn’t understand it, both of which were normal responses for me. In either case, I might as well have been talking to a brick wall.
It was about nine in the evening and I was tired of his company. “I’m gonna leave,” I told him, downing my beer. “See you. Maybe.”
I went to the counter and paid for my drinks.
After exiting the bar, I walked the rain-slicked cobblestone streets of Old Town for a while, smoking cigarettes. Eventually, I found myself near a bar called Nowhere, which I had often visited. As the rain was getting worse, I decided to enter. A red light illuminated the steps leading down to its front door. It was like descending into hell.
The bar was underground and had massive stone arches. It had probably been used as a storage room for grain a long time ago. For some reason, I had always liked the place. Perhaps because it reminded me of a catacomb.
When I walked towards the old wooden bar counter, I saw a bartender with a familiar face. He had curly hair and glasses and I recalled him telling me once that he was an art student. Considering he was still working there, it seemed art didn’t pay much. Unless of course you drew triangles or circles and had somehow gotten a millionaire’s patronage.
I sat down on a bar stool at the counter and ordered a Bloody Mary. The bartender didn’t recognize me. Or he pretended he didn’t.
The wall behind him where the liquor bottles were lined up was mirrored. After he served me my drink, I looked at my face in the mirror. It wasn’t an unattractive one. But neither was it a happy one. In fact, the longer I stared at it, the more I could see the torment writ upon it. Or perhaps I was imagining it? Thoughts colored reality, someone had once said. And while that was true, so did reality color thoughts.