Read On God: An Uncommon Conversation for Free Online

terms of our experience, they don’t make much sense. Our experience is that everything in life is more or less shaded. On certain days, certain things are better; certain of our acts give us more pleasure than on others.
    Sometimes evil acts—what we see as evil acts if we believe in Revelation—give us pleasure that we find ungodly, devilish. Yet acts that we think are evil may have been inspired by God, who decides, “This poor wretch is going to expire unless there’s a breakout. This poor soul has to do something unpleasant before it can feel any life again.” In this sense, God’s compassion can also be present in an ugly or even an evil act.
    Never forget Frederick Engels’s immortal three words: “Quantity changes quality.” Petty evil is one thing. Massive evil is another. I’d never use an argument like this to arrive at a justification of Hitler or Stalin. They embodied massive evil.
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    Considering your belief in various states of grace and the idea of dying in a state of grace, it seems to me that if there’s any pathway to formal religion open in your mind, it’s to Catholicism.
    I probably do feel more connection to elements of Catholicism than to any of the other formal religions. But that’s as far as it goes. I was talking once with a Catholic theologian who said, “Well, so much of what you say seems Catholic.”
    I said, “Yes, but I could never be a Catholic.”
    He asked, “Why? Would it be the transubstantiation in the Mass?”
    I said, “No. I could believe that. Why can’t God be present in a wafer? That would not bother me. Why can’t wine become the blood of Christ? I wouldn’t believe it in a hurry, but that wouldn’t keep me from becoming a Catholic.”
    So we went through various hurdles and obstacles, and finally he asked again, “Why, then, can’t you be a Catholic?”
    â€œBecause,” I said, “I don’t believe in the omnipotence of God.”
    And he said, “In that case, I can understand why you’re not a Catholic.”
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    All right. Let’s return one more time to reincarnation. I feel that you have more to say on that.
    Yes. One matter we’ve not gotten into is my supposition that the atom bomb, the concentration camps, and the gulags were mighty efforts by the Devil to foul up reincarnation, to choke off the subtlety of the divine judgment within reincarnation. I hope I’ve suggested the delicate dispositions of God, the care with which the question is asked: “What shall I do with this soul?” That is at the core of reincarnation—delicate, responsible, artful,
deliberate
judgment. If the process is overloaded, it can break down.
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    So mass slaughter fouls up the divine bureaucracy?
    Contemplate the mess in eternity when so many human creatures were being slaughtered at once and en masse.
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    Not if you can go back to an omnipotent God. Most people believe God can handle anything and everything
    No, God’s energies are also limited. Everything I say is based on such a premise. We may live in a universe that is expanding, but there is not always endless energy available. No. No.
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    Are you saying that the Devil does have a purchase on the process of reincarnation?
    Through marring it, mainly. Or overloading it.
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    It was Herman Melville who said—in a line I could never forget—when he was, if I recall, writing
Moby-Dick.
He said, “Lord, when shall we stop growing?” In your theological belief, there’s a paradox, to me at least, in that on the one hand, growth is something you’re always seeking, and it is the summum bonum—
    Not all growth is good.
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    But