Shadowmagick: October 2011

“Humans cause evil by wanting to triumph over evil in the quest for immortality”
Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death.

When I discovered the writings of Ernest Becker, I knew that I had found the deep core of why I had written The A-Men trilogy (The A-Men, The A-Men Return and Forever A-Men).

In the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is the question of how to explain evil if there exists a deity that is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient. Some philosophers have claimed that the existences of such a god and of evil are logically incompatible or unlikely. Some responses include the arguments that true free will cannot exist without the possibility of evil, that humans cannot understand God, that suffering is necessary for spiritual growth or evil is the consequence of a fallen world. Others contend that God is not omnibenevolent.

For D’Alessandro (and others…) pursuit of immortality, Forever A-Men is the revealing of his master plan, and of why he does evil in the name of science and progress. As the speaker at the opening of the novel says:
“Forget all that you have heard about supreme deities being omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent. You see, I can make a rock so big I can’t even lift it, but while I have the ability to do absolutely anything where I am, I can do absolutely nothing where you are. Even though I transcend the physical universe, I still work through its physical laws. I have the power to perform acts of moral goodness, to make whatever I command to be morally good, yet still evil persists.
“Still the one named Maleore persists.
“The fly in God’s ointment.
“So what is the last truth? It is this: everything that has a beginning has an end. Even me. I stand within this sacred point in space-time at which the rules of ordinary physics do not apply. It has been my life-dream to reach this place, yet when I did I achieved not singularity, but duality. And the two must become one. So unless you listen, understand and act on what I have to tell you, that time will be soon. That future will be the present. That present will be past. That past will create the future.
“Ah, the crippling humiliation of being ineffable and still having to get peasants to do my bidding.
“So don’t ignore this message. These days it’s excruciatingly difficult to get anyone even to listen to me, let alone remember or act on what I say. And no one ever, never ever writes it down.
“I am the message in the machine. I am the Amen.”