5
" Go on, my dear," urges the snake. " Take one. Hear it? 'Pluck me,' it's saying. That big, shiny red one. 'Pluck me, pluck me now and pluck me hard.' You know you want to." , clever girl, " expressly forbids us to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge." ?" Eve folds her arms schoolgirlishly. " God expressly forbade it. Adam said." The snake grins through his fangs, admiring Eve's playacting. " God is a nice enough chap in His way. I daresay He means well. But between you and The Tree of Knowledge, He is terribly insecure." " Insecure? He made the entire bloody universe! He's omnipotent." " Exactly! Almost neurotic, isn't it? All this worshiping, morning, noon, and night. It's 'Oh Praise Him, Oh Praise Him, Oh Praise the Everlassssting Lord.' I don't call that omnipotent. I call it pathetic. Most independent authorities agree that God has never sufficiently credited the work of virtual particles in the creation of the universssse. He raises you and Adam on this diet of myths while all the really interesting information is locked up in these juicy apples. Seven days? Give me a break. "
12
" The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the former, and yet it is the former that moves one of the most useful men the human race has yet produced: the scientific investigator. What actually urges him on is not some brummagem idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes. "
― H.L. Mencken , A Mencken Chrestomathy