Library: Humor: Fundamentalists

Fundamentalists

Bryan Hayward

"Aaaahhhh, shit!" Satan shouted as she returned home from a party at Olympus. Her son, the preadolescent Yahweh, had destroyed her project. To her trained eye, it was in shambles. She began a tirade any mother would be familiar with.

"I go a few dimensions away for a few millenia, and you take it as license to run amok! What gives you the incredible idea you can mess with my projects without my permission! Well, the time of judgement is upon you! You're grounded for the next 2 eons. And I don't want you to show your face to me for the next millenia, or I might do something I will regret!"

Yahweh realized he had really done it this time and that discretion is the better part of valor. He fled. Satan looked at the project with a critical eye, trying to best figure out how to fix it. She sighed, and began mumbling to herself:

"Let's see - several interventions - how damn clumsy! Self-revelation to only a few - simply malicious - I will have to add another eon for that. Doesn't he realize that fosters fanaticism and intolerance? Direct interference in the subjects' attempts at observation - How is a subject supposed to learn like that? It encourages superstition and fear. Hmmm, playing favorites - another good way to get the poor subjects to kill one another, especially by telling them some sort of evil enemy is siding with those not favored! The rest of the staff is going to feel swell about that. I hope Dionysus isn't too pissed about how Yahweh perverted sex. I thought it was one of Di's better inventions. I do hope Hera understands it wasn't *me* who made women the heavy for the subjects' suffering. Arrrgh. How to fix it? Yes, yes. A final wave of fundamentalism - mm, hm. Discredit religion for good. It will work, but it won't be fun for all those atheists. A pity, they were on the right track, too. That is good news. At least I can report that the design specs were good. A much greater than expected number of atheists, agnostics, and apathetics, considering how badly Yahweh has interfered. Yeah, a qualified success. But look at all those fundies. Gack! It will take some doing to discredit them - so damn many! But lower than expected. Whew! This is going to be painful. But how else am I going to deprogram an entire species?"

Thus spoke Satan as she settled in to repair her nearly wrecked project.

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