Daniel Quinn

Anyone who thinks the Church is open to new ideas is living in a dreamworld.

The premise of the Taker story is the world belongs to man.... The premise of the Leaver story is man belongs to the world.

“Now, the way the Zeugen imagined it, the gods have a special knowledge that enables them to rule the world. The knowledge includes the knowledge of who should live and who should die, but it embraces much more than that.This is the general knowledge the gods employ in every choice they make. What the Zeugen perceived is this, that every choice the gods make is good for one creature but evil for another, and if you think about it, it really can’t be otherwise. If the quail goes out to hunt and the gods send it a grasshopper, then this is good for the quail but evil for the grasshopper. And if the fox goes out to hunt, and the gods send it a quail, then this is good for the fox but evil for the quail. And vice versa, of course.If the fox goes out to hunt, and the gods withhold the quail, then this is good for the quail but evil for the fox. Do you see what I mean?”

“Of course.”

Adam wasn’t the progenitor of our race, he was the progenitor of our culture.

In spite of everything he said, I felt sure he was showing us that our population explosion is a social problem, like, say, crime or race schism. I failed to hear him say that our population explosion is a biological problem, that if we pursue a policy that would be fatal for any species, then it will fatal for us in exactly the same way. We can’t will it to be otherwise. We can’t say, “Well, yes, our civilization is built on an evolutionarily unstable strategy but we can make it work anyhow, because we’re humans.” The world will not make an exception for us. And of course what the Church teaches is that God will make an exception for us. God will let us behave in a way that would be fatal for any other species, will somehow “fix it” so we can live in a way that is in a very real sense of self-eliminating. That is like expecting God to make our airplanes fly even if they’re aerodynamically incapable of flight.

Any culture will become an obscenity when blown up into a universal world culture to which all must belong.

The world was not made for any one species.

Increasing food production to feed an increased population results in yet another increase in population. Obviously it has to have this result, and to predict any other is simply to indulge in biological and mathematical fantasies.

So, this is the Taker vision: The world was made for Man, and Man was made to conquer and rule it.

Atterley’s message seemed difficult to summarize and was typically characterized as “mind-boggling” by those who were favorably impressed and as “incomprehensible” by those who weren’t.

“Always has been my guiding principle for forty years to say ‘Never trust a Christian.’ Not once has ever Christian given me reason to change.”

“Would the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God have sent his only-begotten son to save those beetles and their household mites, Jared?”

“No.”

“But the god of this place has as great a care for them as for any other creature in the world. This is why I knew you could benefit from seeing those beetles yesterday. Those beetles are a manifestation of the gods’ unending abundance and a sign to be read by those who have eyes to read. I wanted you to see how the gods lavish care without stint on every thing: no less upon a beetle whose supreme achievement is burying a mouse than upon the brain of Einstein, no less upon a mite whose favorite dish is a fly’s egg than upon the eye of Michelangelo.”