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[This article was originally published on my blog in December 2021. It's about my weird theology story 'For We Are Many', which was the third story of mine in Cirsova Magazine. Cirsova has been going since 2016, and is probably the most important of the new generation of indie magazines.
I hope that republishing it here will encourage people to become interested in Cirsova, the wider field of independent fiction - and my stories, of course.]
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Cirsova magazine has just released its Winter 2021 issue, which contains my story For We Are Many.
(Available as an ebook from Amazon here.
Link to the issue of Cirsova Magazine containing my story on Amazon.com
Also available as a hardback from Lulu here.)
I really like For We Are Many; it’s one of the most satisfying stories I’ve ever written. But then again, all of my stories are ‘one of the most satisfying stories I’ve written’. Unlike Charles Dickens, who said he favoured David Copperfield of all his works, I love all of my literary children equally. There are no 'red-headed stepchildren' amongst my progeny. This publication comes just one year after Cirsova published my story The Greenery Has Come Again, with which it has some similarities. The two stories are different ages, but the family resemblance is still there.
Gustave Dore, illustration from Dante's Inferno
After all, both stories feature the struggle within the soul of the main character. In The Greenery Has Come Again – which I hope you have all read by now, thank you very much (it's here on Amazon) – James has returned to his family’s country estate, sold to friends of the family after the death of his parents. The mansion is surrounded by an ancient forest filled with strange beasts and forgotten riddles. On James' return, he is faced with an old mystery linking his parents to this forest and its mystical denizens: chief among them majestic stags like those found in British folklore, and a mysterious forest goddess. Ultimately, James must decide whether to embrace untamed nature and learn the truth of this family secret, or to turn away from the secret and take refuge in science and the arms of a beautiful young scientist.
By contrast, in For We Are Many a lost soul, an arrogant scientist called Zak, must make an even bigger decision than which type of woman he prefers: he must decide whether to embrace not just the Truth of his own character and of his universe, but the source of that Truth: Jesus Christ himself. Zak lives in a ‘story universe’ where he is given scientific proof that God exists, but can he deal with this? Can a flawed man turn away from the sterile arrogance of the intellect, and towards Jesus, and thus a better life? Although these two stories of mine have different premises, different philosophical settings, and different outcomes, both are about the turmoil in a good man’s soul in his search for meaning, or in his quest for redemption for his sins. Isn’t that what the best stories are always about?
The most interesting character in any story is usually the one who means well, but who has ended up going astray and has to find his way back. “I know I’ve done wrong, and I’m sorry for it. Please forgive me.” This is the bedrock of Western civilisation. The story of repentance and forgiveness has been hard-coded into us for 2000 years, so it’s no wonder we all find it so appealing. Younger readers will probably think of Severus Snape from the Harry Potter books: Snape’s love for Lily Potter and dalliance with the Death Eaters, before sacrificing himself for the benefit of Lily’s son, Harry. To my mind, though, the conclusion to the Star Wars trilogy, Darth Vader’s moment of redemption, is the greatest example of this in modern pop culture.
This storyline is appealing because most of us have gone astray somewhere along the way. We all have regrets in life, decisions we wish we could take back or put right. If only we could make up for them in the melodramatic way that Darth Vader did, overthrowing the tyrannical Emperor at the moment of his triumph. Even better to do it while reconciling with the child you had abandoned decades earlier! Now that is truly world shattering on a gigantic scale (for all the citizens of the galaxy) and heartwarming at the individual (for Luke and Darth). Cosmic significance tied to personal significance, that makes for a good pairing.
Science fiction and fantasy stories often have a super-powered or magically powerful being in them, like Darth Vader or Snape, not to mention Emperor Palpatine and Voldemort. There is something very powerful in fiction about contrasting the divine (or infernal) and the merely human. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe didn't just have the human children Lucy, Edmund, Peter and Susan; it had Aslan on the side of good (and embodying goodness itself), and Jadis, the White Witch, similarly for evil.
Gustave Dore, illustration from Milton's Paradise Lost
If you’ve read The Greenery Has Come Again, or my write up about it, you’ll know that one of the main characters was a forest goddess who controlled (or at least communed with) the creatures of her forest. She was the embodiment of wild nature that James had to confront or embrace. By contrast, For We Are Many doesn’t have any on-screen super-powered creatures, just some super-advanced technology. However, it does have somebody more awesome and more terrible lurking off-screen: Jesus Christ himself. Even without his physical presence in the story, Jesus fills that bigger-than-human void better than anyone. You can’t upstage Jesus; it’s just not possible.
My article about The Greenery Has Come Again
There is something about fantastic fiction, that it needs a more-than-human character in it, whether strutting about on the stage reciting her lines about Nature, or behind the scenes, invisibly operating the machinery for the benefit of the players.
Whereas Greenery has a pagan angle and looks at the conflict between nature and technology, For We Are Many is based very much on Christianity which perhaps explains why the conflict is different. It is built around one of the questions that is central to Christianity, one very important part of Christian theology that Greenery ignores: the problem of the existence of evil.
For millennia, humans, especially Christians, have been confused why a supposedly good God allows evil to exist. Why would a benevolent heavenly father allow not just death, but horrible and painful death, and even worse, for this death to be inflicted maliciously by wicked people? The serial killer Harold Shipman, a doctor in the UK, murdered hundreds of his patients. Why did God allow him to do this? The Nazis herded millions of Jews and other groups into concentration camps, and then gassed them to death. In pre-war Ukraine, the Soviet authorities literally starved millions of people to death in the Holodomor. Why did God allow these genocides, and many others, to happen?
Theologians have discussed this problem for a long time and have come to various solutions labelled ‘theodicy’. Theodicy is the answer to the question of why God permits evil in the world. I won’t pretend to understand all the solutions that people have put forward over the years, but none of them has seemed especially convincing to me. ‘God is good,’ ‘God works in mysterious ways,’ ‘The virtuous suffer in this life that they may experience an eternity in Heaven,’ ‘If we are patient, we will see that all comes good in the end.’
I find all these arguments weak and have always thought that they contradict everything we are told about God’s just nature. I once read an interview with a famous atheist – I wish I could remember his name now, but that’s the passage of time for you – in which the atheist said that he gave up on God when he learnt that there are some creatures that inject their fertilised eggs into the eyes of living hosts, driving them mad with pain, blinding them, and killing them when the young burst out of the host’s eyeballs. I can understand his reasoning. Do you want a God ruling over you who doesn’t just allow pain, but builds a universe which inflicts pain in such a cruel way? Aren’t you interested in a solution to the problem of evil that is foolproof, that has no holes in it, that is humane? Me too. And I found it, through science fiction.
A long time ago, I went round to visit a friend and we started brainstorming ideas for stories. We were both interested in looking into theological issues and ended up discussing the Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics. This theory says that every time anyone makes a decision, an alternate universe is spawned. If you had turned your car left at that junction instead of right, an alternate universe would have come into existence: a Right Universe and a Left Universe, if you will. If you caught or missed that train on your way to work, the universe splits into two: the setup of the film Sliding Doors. It’s even more fine grained than that – the Many Worlds Theory reaches into the world of the very tiny, the quantum realm. If an atomic nucleus could emit a gamma ray or not, there are two universes: one for each option.
In effect, the Many Worlds Theory says that we don’t live in a straightforward linear universe, a single line stretching from the Big Bang at the beginning of time through to the Big Crunch at the end. Or from the Creation to the Apocalypse, if you prefer. Instead, according to the theory, we live in a multiverse.
Each action leads to the creation of a new universe, an ever-spreading tree, its branches leading to more and more twigs in infinite proliferation: an infinitely fecund ‘multiverse’. For We Are Many considers the theological implications of this concept. How would you feel if scientists could prove that there was a multiverse and, furthermore, that souls existed? It might comfort some people, but drive others mad.
After all, what does this mean for your soul, if you branch off into new versions of ‘you’ at each microsecond? When I turn my car left or right at a junction, there are at least two versions of me in two different universes, two fully intact universes. Does my soul split into two ‘sub-souls’ with each splitting of the universe, creating tiny seeds of my soul that need to regrow?
Perhaps, instead, each version of me in each of these new universes has a full soul of its own? But that contradicts a lot of theology. In Christianity, my soul is granted me at conception and resides in me, in this body and no other, until I die. My soul can’t be split across many universes, even if those other bodies look just like me. These other bodies would be soulless zombies while my unique soul stayed with just one of them, making its way through an infinite labyrinth of universes. But then, how do I know which universe at any moment contains the only ‘me’ with the soul? Maybe most of us have no souls? Or I could be the only person in this particular universe with a soul, not realizing that I am surrounded by a universe of non-conscious humans: philosophical zombies.
A philosophical zombie is a thought experiment in philosophy of mind that imagines a hypothetical being that is physically identical to and indistinguishable from a normal person but does not have conscious experience. For example, if a philosophical zombie were poked with a sharp object it would not inwardly feel any pain, yet it would outwardly behave exactly as if it did feel pain.
Link to Wikipedia article about Philosophical Zombies
There’s more. If the universe does split, it would be quite possible for me to end up being evil in some universes, but good in others. In one branch of the multiverse I meet very few temptations, so it's easy for me to be good. In another branch of the multiverse, I meet every temptation, and eventually give in to those temptations and turn to evil.
And what about God, if the universe splits time after time after time? Does God exist separately in each universe as it splits off one from the other, one God for each universe? But that would limit His omniscience to one universe instead of the full multiverse. And you thought that the ancient Greeks had lots of gods, all those Olympians and Titans. Well, imagine an infinite pantheon of Jehovahs spread across the universes. That’s paganism carried to the ultimate. My head is spinning now, and yours probably is, too.
Surely, all of this must mean that to a Christian, and possibly to followers of other religions, there can be no other universes, if the concept undermines so much with the theological bedrock of your religion. A hill with that many tunnels running under it is bound to collapse. The Many Worlds Theory is kaput, defunct, fake news. There is only one universe, with no branches from it. Ah, but I’m a writer, and my speciality is finding ways to make the impossible possible...
For We Are Many is my attempt to solve all of these puzzles, in story form. Most importantly, the story shows how, in a Many Worlds Multiverse, there is no contradiction in God being good, while evil still exists; evil is even necessary as it allows everyone the opportunity to play out and redeem themselves, or damn themselves, across the multiverse. I don’t want to say any more because it could spoil the story for you.
So, this story isn’t just a story. It’s a thought experiment showing how our own universe – our own ‘multiverse’ - might genuinely work by reconciling theological thought and scientific theory. And it does so in a very positive, humane way, too.
My friend went off and wrote his own version, and I wrote mine. At the time, I remember coming close to the end of the story and being so excited I had to go for a walk to burn off the energy. It wasn’t a stroll, but a fast walk down a long trunk road that led to the centre of the city. I distinctly remember the dark night and the car headlights as the vehicles flashed by me. I wonder what happened to the other versions of me across the multiverse who took that brisk walk. After all, in some of those other universes, brake cables would fray, or drivers' attentions would wander as they drove past...
I alluded earlier to the back-stage machinery of the theatre, and I did not choose this image lightly. In ancient Greek theatre, plots were often resolved by the sudden appearance of a god; the producers would literally lower an actor from a crane onto the stage at the end, with the goal of solving the problems of the characters and tie everything up nicely. This actor played the part of the god in the machine (the mechanism), the deux ex machina.
For We Are Many ignores that old way of telling a theatrical tale. There is no sudden appearance of a divine being to fix life for the protagonist. No, Zak must solve the problem of his own fate for himself. That’s one of the differences between pre- and post-Christian theatre: the freedom to choose and the opportunity for redemption. Ancient stories of the pagan civilisations were often driven by Fate, the Furies, Destiny - and no man could avoid his fate without the intervention of at least one god – the deux ex machina. The cultures of northern Europe had their own versions of this concept – the personal destiny or Wyrd of the Anglo-Saxons, or the Norns, deities of the Norsemen.
Gustave Dore, illustration from Dante's Inferno
The most famous classical play about Fate is probably Oedipus Rex by the Classical Greek playwright Sophocles. Oedipus, son of King Polybus and Queen Merope, received a prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Not realising that he was a foundling, given to the Polybus and Merope by a shepherd, he left home to avoid his fate. Alas, he came across his birth father, King Laius, on the road, and Fate had its way with him. Arguing with Laius, he killed him and eventually ended up marrying his own mother. No matter what Oedipus did, he could not escape his destiny. In the Christian universe as opposed to the pagan, a man has free will to make his fate what he wants, can chart his own path through the multiverse of moral choices, that infinite labyrinth – this includes his finding his own path to his ultimate destination: Heaven or Hell. It is his choice, not anyone else’s.
There are more Biblical parallels and allusions in For We Are Many and also The Greenery Has Come Again. I have already said that the protagonist of Greenery must choose between discovering the truth about a family secret or forgetting about this secret and taking refuge in science – and the love of a good woman. Looking back, I can see that this is a recapitulation of the Biblical story of the Fall of Man. Adam and Eve had the choice of eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and upon eating it were ejected from the Garden of Eden.
In Greenery, James has the chance to receive knowledge from a non-human, pagan creature, the forest goddess, but he rejects the knowledge, preferring love and rationality. He doesn’t accept knowledge handed to him by a superior being, opting instead for ignorance but with at least the dim prospect of learning something important through rational thought and rational means. This knowledge is self-awareness, self-determination, rather than arcane knowledge of what happened in the past. He rejects the occult for the hope of the rational. James has the option to gain this knowledge for himself instead of having it dispensed as a ‘state benefit’ from on-high. Perhaps that’s the moral of the story of the expulsion of the Garden of Eden – God does not spoon feed us either wisdom or cash. But let's leave that one for the theologians out there to discuss.
Gustave Dore, illustration from the Bible
Adam and Eve driven out of the Garden of Eden
For We Are Many is something of the reverse, but then again something of the same. Yes, the main character, Zak, does have knowledge about the true nature of the universe handed to him; the fruit of a tree of knowledge is given to him at various points in the story, but that knowledge is given by humans, by other characters, not by any immortal entity. And that knowledge is the result of centuries of theological thought and physical experimentation.
In For We Are Many, God is shown to exist through rational means, and there is a solution to the problem of evil. There is a theodicy which proves that God is good and benevolent, that he is not cruel, and this proof comes about through the existence of the multiverse. The Many Worlds Theory can provide a way to reconcile freewill and the existence of evil. However, because of his own flaws, Zak must take a long time to come to terms with the Truth, about the human soul and his own relationship to Jesus...but I don’t want to say too much more, because that might spoil the story for you. It is a journey that you will have to take for yourself, to gain that knowledge without having it handed to you quite so easily by the author of the story.
I hope you enjoy it.
END OF REPRINTED ARTICLE
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PAUL LUCAS, WRITER AND COGITATOR
paul.lucas0001@gmail.com