Neal Stephenson Quote
All people have religions. It's like we have religion receptors built into ourbrain cells, or something, and we'll latch onto anything that'll fill that nichefor us. Now, religion used to be essentially viral -- a piece of informationthat replicated inside the human mind, jumping from one person to the next.That's the way it used to be, and unfortunately, that's the way it's headedright now. But there have been several efforts to deliver us from the hands ofprimitive, irrational religion. The first was made by someone named Enki aboutfour thousand years ago. The second was made by Hebrew scholars in the eighthcentury B.C., driven out of their homeland by the invasion of Sargon II, buteventually it just devolved into empty legalism. Another attempt was made byJesus -- that one was hijacked by viral influences within fifty days of hisdeath. The virus was suppressed by the Catholic Church, but we're in the middleof a big epidemic that started in Kansas in 1900 and has been gathering momentumever since.Do you believe in God or not? Hiro says. First things first.Definitely.Do you believe in Jesus?Yes. But not in the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus.How can you be a Christian without believing in that?I would say, Juanita says, how can you be a Christian with it? Anyone whotakes the trouble to study the gospels can see that the bodily resurrection is amyth that was tacked onto the real story several years after the real historieswere written. It's so National Enquirer-esque, don't you think?
All people have religions. It's like we have religion receptors built into ourbrain cells, or something, and we'll latch onto anything that'll fill that nichefor us. Now, religion used to be essentially viral -- a piece of informationthat replicated inside the human mind, jumping from one person to the next.That's the way it used to be, and unfortunately, that's the way it's headedright now. But there have been several efforts to deliver us from the hands ofprimitive, irrational religion. The first was made by someone named Enki aboutfour thousand years ago. The second was made by Hebrew scholars in the eighthcentury B.C., driven out of their homeland by the invasion of Sargon II, buteventually it just devolved into empty legalism. Another attempt was made byJesus -- that one was hijacked by viral influences within fifty days of hisdeath. The virus was suppressed by the Catholic Church, but we're in the middleof a big epidemic that started in Kansas in 1900 and has been gathering momentumever since.Do you believe in God or not? Hiro says. First things first.Definitely.Do you believe in Jesus?Yes. But not in the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus.How can you be a Christian without believing in that?I would say, Juanita says, how can you be a Christian with it? Anyone whotakes the trouble to study the gospels can see that the bodily resurrection is amyth that was tacked onto the real story several years after the real historieswere written. It's so National Enquirer-esque, don't you think?
Related Quotes
About Neal Stephenson
Stephenson's work explores mathematics, cryptography, linguistics, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes nonfiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired. He has written novels with his uncle, George Jewsbury ("J. Frederick George"), under the collective pseudonym Stephen Bury.
Stephenson has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (founded by Jeff Bezos) developing a spacecraft and a space launch system, and also co-founded the Subutai Corporation, whose first offering is the interactive fiction project The Mongoliad. He was Magic Leap's Chief Futurist from 2014 to 2020.