Chapter 356: Multi-Denominational Religious Interview

Monday, June 4, 2007 (Continued)

The three religions' priests arrived in convoy a few minutes after 2pm, escorted by police and filmed by several film crews. They exited their vehicles, all dressed in their various types of regalia, as such people do. Led by the Catholics, they marched regally to our front gate, clearly expecting to have it thrown open before them.

There was a problem though, as there were five Catholic priests. The gate didn't open, thrown or otherwise. The collective group of priests came to a stop in front of the gate, where one of our guards spoke to them through the bars, "We were told to let delegations of three through. Are two of you staying outside?"

The Catholic Bishop answered, "It is important that we all examine the boy."

"Please wait while I call the house for instructions."

The priests didn't have much choice about waiting, considering they were on the wrong side of an un-thrown, locked gate.

I'd seen the arrival in a radio blob, so I took the intercom call. I was tempted to reduce the Catholic quota to two, but that was probably too mean and perhaps also too much like what Archangel Michael would've done, so instead I told our guard, "Delegations of three only. Two of the Catholics have to remain outside. If they can't decide quickly, open the pedestrian gate and let the Muslims and Jews in. When the Catholics finally get their arrogance under control, you can let three of them in. Remember a CNN camera is allowed in too."

"Yes. He's already introduced himself."

The guard took the news back to the priests, where it wasn't received with good grace. His Grace explained to the guard that the four other Catholic priests were all specialists in different areas of Catholic theology and they all had to examine me to rule on whether I was legitimate or not. The Bishop told our guard to call me back and explain this to me.

Our guard already had a good clue what my attitude would be from my saying "When the Catholics finally get their arrogance under control", so he moved sideways to the pedestrian gate, opened it, and invited, "The Muslims and Jews can enter. When the Catholic delegation is down to three, they may enter." The guard raised his voice to call, "Gage, you can come too," he being the CNN cameraman.

The Muslims and Jews had no hesitation in coming forward and through the gate. Gage came running too. The Catholics had a hurried conference, with the Bishop indicating which two priests were to remain behind. Three Catholics followed Gage through the gate.

An ABC cameraman tried to join the group, telling our guard, "ABC got a call inviting us to provide a cameraman today."

Our guard told him, "Get lost."

We'd thought that it would look too suspicious to the more religiously stupid public if we drove the priests out of sight into the tunnel to take the elevator up, because only evil people go underground. The Idiots would probably think that we were possessing the priests with demons, or some such other crap. The walk from the gate up to the Adults' House would be too difficult for unfit, old men, so we had three electric carts ready to take priests and several security guards up to the house. Gage leaped on the back of the Catholic cart, probably hoping to record some interesting conversation. The carts made their way up one of our paths.

Our security had erected a metal detector 'doorway' in the Adults' House's foyer. All the clerics were invited to pass through it, and with all the gewgaws some of them were wearing, and were forced to divest, getting a clean reading from them took several minutes. They were important personages in their churches, and a couple of them weren't pleased to be treated with suspicion, so you can imagine how they reacted when the next stage was to pat them down. Paul responded to their anger with, "People who proudly identify themselves as being of the same faiths as you have called for Mark's death." He let them draw their own conclusions from that.

Meanwhile, Gage got a more thorough patting down and search, including his camera being carefully examined. I noticed that he didn't get his camera back until processing all the others had finished, so he hadn't been able to film our being impolite to them.

Everyone gathered in the living room, where my family and I were already waiting for them. Several of the security guards joined us, just in case. During the introductions, the Catholic bishop took the opportunity to immediately insist that it was important that the two priests left behind at the gate join us.

I answered, "Important to you perhaps, but not to me. We invited equal numbers of each of your religions to be fair. Your wanting special treatment is lowering my opinion of you."

"We're not asking for an unfair preference, but to be allowed to perform the tests that are necessary to examine your claims."

"Why does it take five of you to perform the tests?"

"Because there are many different types of tests..." He started listing all the different types of tests, throwing out polysyllabic words one after the other. All sounded impressive, religious and nonsensical. If you can imagine a bunch of VERY highly educated medical professors discussing the state of the art in their specialist subject, what the Bishop was saying was as incomprehensible as that. It was a never-ending stream of polysyllabic jargon.

#14: <Good grief! How can they take their religious crap so seriously that they put so much effort into inventing so much nonsense?>

#22: <I bet some of them have devoted years of their lives learning what is obviously self-important, self-delusional crap. What a stupid waste of effort.>

#17: <They haven't got anything better to do, and it doubtless gives them an elevated sense of self-importance.>

#18: <Too elevated. Do we really need them here?>

#1: <I'd like to kick them out for their arrogance too. Their tests - whatever they are - will be meaningless crap, but the public would be reassured if they could see them performed.>

#4: <He's STILL listing types of tests! How many weeks of our life does he think we're going to let him waste?>

I let the Bishop get to the end of his list, then I said, "If it takes you that long just to list the types of tests, I imagine the tests themselves will take a very long time?"

"They're VERY important. What you're claiming is the greatest religious event for 2,000 years..."

I interrupted, "The EVENT was certainly of great religious significance, but I am not. If you saw Jesus walking on water, would you want to spend hours examining the water? I'm a teenage boy of no personal religious significance. I don't go to church, or to anti-church for those of you who think I'm Evil Incarnate. I invited you here for a little casual chat. It was arrogantly presumptuous and incorrect of you to assume that I would waste God knows how many hours or days of my time for the sake of your unscientific tests. I have no interest whatsoever in having a religious role. I've got my final school exams starting in one week and I'm terribly behind in my studying. For the last year I've spent too much time lying around doing nothing..."

"You don't understand. You..."

"YOU don't understand! You are in my home and you do NOT lay down the rules for what I must or must not do. If you continue to misbehave so arrogantly and impolitely, I'll ask our guards to eject you from the property. You may think your fancy robes, gewgaws of office, and deluded self-importance give you the right to judge me, but your judgments mean nothing to me. God personally sent me an angel to care for me, so I'm assuming that I've already passed every religious test that I need to. Unless you're so arrogant that you think your tests are more important than God's?"

He wasn't going to give up so easily, "We've yet to determine whether your guardian came from God."

"I'm perfectly willing to discuss other logical possibilities with you, but I am NOT willing to put up with your arrogant belief that you can march in here and treat me however you wish. Even God and His angels weren't as arrogantly demanding as you are, and I know what that makes me think about you.

^-- It was best to change the subject, so I said, "Before we start the discussion, my parents want the cameraman to record something for them."

Mom and Dad described the cheek-swab tests, showed the results, and stated that there was no doubt that Ron's body now contained Mark's DNA.

Mom added, "You'll see that the test gives the gender of our child as a male, so it can't have come from Carol or Donna. Steven and I have only ever had one son, who was Mark."

Dad had a comment that amused me, "Ron was nearly three and a half years older than Mark. If he'd been our baby, Fely and I would've been seventeen when she gave birth to him. She wouldn't even let me hold her hand until we were seniors. Either Fely and I had a Black child in 11th grade without either of us doing ANY of the essential earlier activities or noticing her pregnancy, or God has done what the email said, and has changed Ron's DNA into Mark's."

As there was no reporter, there were no obvious or silly questions. One of the rabbis asked, "Have you done a direct comparison between an old sample of Mark's genes and a sample from Ron's body now?"

#16: <That's a smart, intelligently worded question. I'm surprised and impressed.>

Mom answered, "The paternity and maternity tests were the quickest and easiest to do. The Government kidnapped Mark a year and a half ago and we've moved house since then, so it's difficult for us to find old samples."

The rabbi asked, "Wouldn't Homeland Security or the CIA have blood samples from all the tests they did on Mark?"

Mom opened her mouth to answer, but I quickly NP'd it shut, gently so it wouldn't show on film. Just the touch was enough to make Mom pause. I answered instead, "They SURE took enough samples from me, so they should have. If the DHS or CIA have got samples, it'd be great if they sent one to our family doctor so he can get it tested for being identical to my current genes. His address is on the form Mom's holding. Read it out again please, Mom."

Mom did so, while I crossed my fingers, hoping that some junior level lab technician would send the requested sample. Both our first and second settlement agreements with the Government required them to destroy all medical samples, so if they provided a blood sample it'd be a $216 billion gift to us. [Unfortunately they didn't send any such gift. The one time in my life I really wanted the Government to be incompetent, and they let me down!]

Dad said, "We did keep Mark's clothes when we moved, so maybe when Ron's body changes enough to wear them, Mark might find old hairs we could get tested."

I think Mom had realized what I'd hoped for, because she answered, "I thought of that before. Mark had short, indistinct hair so they'd be difficult to find, and then it'd be difficult to be sure we'd gotten one of his. We'd have to search out several samples, some of which would probably belong to other people so would confuse the issue. It was much quicker and easier just to test for Mark's current body's maternity and paternity."

Julia added, "Besides, we aren't going to be unpacking Mark's old clothes."

I asked, "Why not? The email said I should get my old body back."

"They're WAY out of fashion, Mark. You'll need an ENTIRELY new set of clothes."

"{Groan}. I have to go shopping with you AGAIN!"

"Me, Carol, and Ava when she's better. It'll give Ava something to look forward to, to speed her recovery."

I almost said, "Please don't make me go to Rocky's again!" but doing that on national TV would be a cruel thing to do to Rocky and Nigel. They're not really bad guys, and not just because they're not really guys. Instead I said, "In terms of the DNA tests, let's hope the DHS or CIA come up with an old blood sample. In terms of the clothes shopping, I wonder if God would mind sending Ron back for that day."

Julia laughed, then corrected me, "It's going to take FAR longer than a single day. You need new EVERYTHING!"

"God help me! I hope the Guardian Angel comes to my rescue, because that sounds like Hell to me."

My joke about God sending Ron back for the day, and my last comments, would likely offend some people, but I wanted to teach people to stop being so sanctimonious about the resurrection. The sooner they stop treating it as a big deal, and ideally forget all about it, the better. I also wanted to make myself come across as an ordinary teenager: "There's nothing happening here folks. Move along."

We had pre-resurrection samples from my body stored with two labs. We didn't want to mention those publicly because there was too much chance that some people would react badly, especially if they thought I might have been immortal. In which case, God knows what some idiots would do to get hold of my sperm. Nor did we want the CIA to get hold of any of my samples either. Preferring to keep those samples secret, we'll use them for before-and-after genetic verification only if it seems that the world doesn't accept that I am Mark, or if one of the labs divulges the samples' existence.

To get the stupid religious meeting underway, I said, "Let's get the religious meeting underway. When we invited you here, through CNN, we didn't specify a purpose. I'm curious to know why each of you came here, what you're expecting or hoping to achieve, etc. You start," I indicated the Catholic priest nearest to my left, "and we'll go clockwise around the room."

The first priest had come to help his bishop perform the tests necessary to examine the veracity of my claim to have been resurrected and having been in God's presence. I was far too smart to ask how he intended to do those things.

Next was the bishop who was here to oversee the tests.

I said, "Hang on a moment. You're here to 'OVERSEE the tests'. Aren't you intending to perform any of the tests yourself?"

"No. The training required to administer them is unusual and specialized."

"You left two testers at the gate because you didn't want to give up your seat to one of them. That's good to know. From now on I'll treat your church's tests as less important than I think your ego is."

The bishop was not amused, which meant he had a pretty good idea of how important I thought his ego was. He wasn't dumb enough to argue about how important he was though.

The next priest echoed the first one.

Then there were the three Muslims. They also had a boss, again the one sitting in the middle. Their attitude was much more acceptable though; they admitted they were unsure what recent events meant, and had come hoping for some answers or insights.

The first Jew said, "I came because I thought it'd be interesting and fun."

"That's an unexpected comment. Where's all the religious profundity?"

"I can do that too, but I thought you'd respond better to my first answer." He wasn't the same Jew that'd asked about the genetic testing, so that made two smart Jews so far. They were running circumcisions around the Catholics.

With only a light sarcastic tone, I said, "Thinking about it from my point of view; that's an unusual approach this afternoon."

The middle Jew informed us that he was a scholar of ancient Israel and was particular interested in what he could learn from me and the Guardian Angel.

I told him, "I think you're likely to be sadly disappointed today, but we'll see what happens later."

I nodded to the third, genetics-aware, Jew, who said, "I trained as a scientist before I became a rabbi. We thought that might provide a useful perspective."

"More useful than some others, I suspect."

^-- To the group, I said, "Before we start our discussion proper, I'll mention that I'm allowing an hour for this conversation. It could very easily be shorter if I lose interest or suffer too much rudeness, but if it's proving useful, then it should last that long. Possibly even longer if I'm enjoying myself. I'm envisaging the first half hour being a free-form discussion during which you can get a feel for me. Then in the second half hour, each delegation can have ten minutes to say whatever they wish, within reason. I hope that's acceptable to everyone?"

One of the Catholic priests said, "One hour isn't long enough to perform the tests we need to make."

"In that case you've got a problem, because you're only going to get ten minutes of my undivided attention. It's your problem though, not mine. I couldn't care less whether or not you have time to do your tests. My family and I know who and what I am, and that's perfectly fine for us.

^-- "To start the discussion off, the bishop raised a logical possibility a few minutes ago: that the Guardian Angel that's looking after me might not have come from God. That would necessarily mean that Archangel Michael and the unnamed angel both lied, because they both said that the Guardian Angel was being sent by God. I find it hard to imagine that an angel of God could lie, so presumably the bishop was implying that God may not be involved in my experience at all. Being interested in science I'd like to believe that aliens exist, but I can't imagine that they'd be able to return a year-long dead human's mind and soul to a body. I will freely admit to not having an extensive religious knowledge, but to me, 'God did it' seems to be the only logical explanation. What other possibilities are there? Bishop, you raised the subject, so you go first." And so the discussion started.

The discussion was, as a whole, three things:

1. A load of crap.

2. A Public Relations con job.

3. A good test of my ability to control my temper, sarcasm and boredom.

I couldn't tell them anything about hardly any of the things they most wanted to know about. According to my Angel Plan's strategy, I had no memory of God or my death and had only a few seconds in the company of an angel, but somehow the talking never stopped. Normally I'm the verbose one (you might've noticed that by now), but the nine preachers were certainly no slouches in the mouth-flapping department.

They wanted the see the Guardian Angel and got the usual disappointing no-show.

They wanted to know whether I could perform miracles, to which I said, "I can breathe. To me, that's a miracle. But if you mean am I divine, then the answer is no."

This was the main point that I wanted to stress in the interview, and I did stress it many times. I wanted the world to think I was not the tiniest bit divine. I was merely the luckiest of the twenty four names on Jonathon's list. I'd made that harder for myself by the crap I'd written about God being interested in my advanced soul, but claiming that had been irresistible as it would let me get away with all sorts of bullshit while being able to float above any criticism for any of my behaviors. Given that most of the things I enjoy doing are disapproved of by the all-too-easily morally outraged religious sourpusses, I expected to use the "God approves of my soul" excuse many times. I repeated many versions of: "My body was better than many other people's, as was my mind and apparently my soul, but there's nothing divine about any of them. They were just better than most other people's. For all I know, the CIA has already killed several other people who were just as gifted as me." Logic doesn't work on religious nutcases, so I also used more effective ways of convincing them, such as hugging Julia while talking about her and Ava being my simultaneous lovers. That was so WRONG I couldn't possibly be divine.

My biblical knowledge is patchy and I'd been surprised two days ago by an interviewee's comment on TV that I was the third resurrected person. I knew the bible claimed Jesus Christ had been resurrected, but I didn't know of anyone else. The interviewee helpfully named the guy as "Lazarus". I'd previously thought that was some mythical guy who was rumored to live forever, but I googled him. According to the Gospel of Luke, Lazarus and his family were friends of Jesus. Lazarus got sick and Jesus deliberately didn't visit the family until four days after Lazarus had died, whereupon Jesus turned up and resurrected him. The bible is quite clear that it was a deliberate PR exercise by Jesus to impress people more than they'd be by a simple healing of a sick person. If I'd been Lazarus or either of his two sisters, I would have been pretty pissed off at Jesus for putting the family through so much grief just for a PR stunt, but that's beside the point. It was a very useful example for me because it was clear that Lazarus wasn't of any particular significance himself. He was apparently a nice guy, but nothing more than that. Thus I could present myself as a modern-day version of Lazarus since Archangel Michael's offer to prove his divinity by performing a resurrection had also clearly been a PR exercise. Lazarus' and my experiences were very similar in several respects: both were done to manipulate the public, were unnecessary, and were fictional. I several times truthfully stated, "I'm not divine, just like Lazarus wasn't."

There were many theological questions, especially from the Catholics and Muslims. Most of which I answered with variations on, "I haven't got a clue what the question means, let alone what the answer could be. Can't you use plain English?"

Sometimes they seemed to use plain English, only it wasn't, which led to periods of confusion. The only slightly humorous example of that was my making the mistake of thinking "Millenium" meant a period of a thousand years. Apparently - for religious folks - it's yet another word for The Apocalypse, Armageddon, The End Of The World, The End of Time, Eschaton, Judgement Day, The Rapture, The Second Coming, The Final Battle, etc. (Christians have a fixation on the issue). So my answering, "We've just had it" when asked about the Millenium caused them a few moments of considerable consternation. It served them right.

Other questions were simply pointless, like, "Do you know what this means, [some unintelligible words in another language]."

The third time they did that style of question on me, my sarcasm got away on me, "I'm hoping it means 'Pretty girls should wear very short miniskirts this summer.' Honestly, why do you waste time asking me silly questions like that? The Corvallis education system doesn't include Ancient Babylonian or whatever the heck that language was."

"God might've put knowledge in your soul that you're not aware of."

"And God might've put that knowledge into the soul of one of Donna's horses. God MIGHT'VE done God knows how many billions of different things. I have it on pretty mediocre authority that He works in mysterious ways, so good luck on your guessing what He might've done. Since I was resurrected, I haven't found a single piece of unexpected knowledge, so I think you're barking up the wrong tree looking for Ancient Babylonian and whatever else you might think of. It's your interview time that you're wasting, but my advice is to use it to ask me questions about what He did do."

Another approach the Catholics tried was to give me a type of moral dilemma scenario and ask me what I'd do.

"I'm not going to play that game. First, you've presented a difficult scenario with many options that seem equally bad, so at least 75% of the viewing audience are going to disagree with whatever I choose. Second, I've effectively got four parents, because Vanessa and Prof don't hesitate to speak up when they think I need it - and Vanessa's an ethicist, for goodness sake - so I'm certainly not lacking for moral guidance. Like every other teenage boy, I think I get far too much moral guidance. Third, God deemed me worthy of resurrection, and that's all the moral approval I need."

"The purpose of the test is to find out if your moral framework has been corrupted..."

"If it has been, I am VERY SURE that my mother will let me know! She's always been far too good at catching me out, and I doubt if she lost that skill while I was dead."

I refused to play their moral dilemma scenario game, so they were forced to drop it.

The Muslims asked me several questions that I didn't understand the significance of. Most likely they were to do with things from the Koran, about which I knew as close to nothing as made no difference, and what little I did know is what I had picked up reading about angels, which apparently don't feature much in the Koran. [[Angels are actually very important in Islamic theology, but their role is simple so they're not discussed much.]] They also asked me, "What do you think of the Arab-Israeli Conflict?"

"I haven't got a clue. I don't know what started it, what keeps it going, what the aims of the various groups are, or even who the various groups are. The only thing I know is that it's a terrible mess, which is hardly a useful comment. It's a pity Archangel Michael didn't go over there and sort it out, because it badly needs that."

"What should the angel have done?"

"Stopped the conflict and made everybody happy. How he could've done that, I haven't got a clue. There's no point in asking me about issues like that, because I have no more knowledge than any other teenage, American boy."

"What is your opinion of the Iraq situation?"

#23: <Here's an idea. Let's answer REALLY strongly anti-our Government, and then tonight we'll crash the UAV right next to our house and claim the Government was trying to kill us with it. We'll sue them for the $216 billion, they'll be in the shit for apparently trying to kill us, and we'll get rid of the UAV. Like killing three birds with one bird.>

#14: <I like it!>

#All: <Agreed.>

"Now THAT issue I do have an opinion about. Not for any divine reason. My reason is the exact opposite of divine, because it's all about our Government. My family and I have had extensive and repeated dealings with our Government, and we've learned three truths about it: It's unbelievably criminal, unbelievably arrogant, and unbelievably irresponsible.

^-- "The Government criminally kidnapped me, repeatedly lying about having me in custody because it arrogantly couldn't care less about mistreating and lying to its citizens. And then it tried to deny responsibility for my abduction and death. The CIA duped the Army into criminally attacking our home, somehow arrogantly believing they could get away with it. They screwed up and tried to avoid responsibility by blaming a rogue CIA agent even though it was a full-scale CIA operation with the NSA's cooperation. The FBI has been criminally spying on my family, in arrogant breach of the legal agreement the Government signed. When their surveillance van was discovered they invented a pathetic excuse to deny responsibility. Their camera team was discovered, and they again lied to deny responsibility. I could give you several more examples, including lies from our very dishonest President, but they're all the same. Our Government is criminal, arrogant and irresponsible.

^-- "With regard to Iraq, just as the Government has with my family, it criminally concocted false reasons to invade another country. Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 and it didn't have a single Weapon of Mass Destruction, let alone enough of them to be a threat to America. I'll point out that we know from Fort Dodge that our government DOES develop its own WMDs in breach of international treaties that it has signed, making that another example of its criminal and arrogant irresponsibility. Although I don't think anything the Government has done is more arrogant than invading an innocent country and thinking we'd be welcomed with open arms and everything would be sunshine and roses. What an unmitigated disaster that's turned out to be.

^-- "Lastly, the Government is unbelievably irresponsible. As soon as they learned that there were no WMDs and Iraq was unconnected to 9/11, America should have IMMEDIATELY pulled out of Iraq and PROFUSELY apologized. Got down on its knees and BEGGED for forgiveness from the Iraqi people for invading their country. And while our politicians were at it, they should've apologized profusely to the United Nations for lying to it so many times. We should've given Iraq a couple of hundred billion dollars in reparations, fired every single person in America - including the President - who'd caused us to go to war with an INNOCENT country, tried to criminally convict everyone responsible, and done everything else that anyone could think of to make good for our unbelievably criminal war of unprovoked aggression.

^-- "When I make a mistake and do something wrong, my parents insist that I own up to it and make good as fast and thoroughly as I can. They've told me a thousand times that it's the ONLY responsible thing to do and an absolutely essential part of growing into a good adult. The Government has a GREAT deal more power than I do, which means it has a great deal more responsibility, but it absolutely refuses to accept ANY responsibility WHATSOEVER for its crimes, continually lying to avoid taking responsibility for their disasters.