D'you Know How Embarrassing It

Gradually, At Various Points In Our Childhoods, We Discover Different Forms Of Conviction. There's The Rock-hard Certainty Of Personal Experience ("i Put My Finger In The Fire And It Hurt,"), Which Is Probably The Earliest Kind We Learn. Then There's The Logically Convincing, Which We Probably Come To First Through Maths, In The Context Of Pythagoras's Theorem Or Something Similar, And Which, If We First Encounter It At Exactly The Right Moment, Bursts On Our Minds Like Sunrise With The Whole Universe Playing A Great Chord Of C Major.

I Have Stolen Ideas From Every Book I Have Ever Read.

As For What It's Against - The Story Is Against Those Who Pervert And Misuse Religion, Or Any Other Kind Of Doctrine With A Holy Book And A Priesthood And An Apparatus Of Power That Wields Unchallengeable Authority, In Order To Dominate And Suppress Human Freedoms.

One Moment Several Things Are Possible, The Next Moment Only One Happens, And The Rest Don't Exist. Except That Other Worlds Have Sprung Into Being, On Which The Did Happen.

Religion Begins In Story. Yes, It Does, Because Religion Is An Attempt To Make Sense Of What Is Incomprehensible To Us, What Is Inexplicable, What Is Awe-inspiring, What Is Frightening, What Moves Us To Great Wonder, And So On. That Is The Religious Impulse, And It Is Part Of Our Psychological Makeup -- Of Everyone's Psychological Makeup.