Letters to Kafka

This short story is a sequel to Franz Kafka's story, "A Report to an Academy."









from: G. Affe
Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
to: Mr. Franz Kafka
Prague, Czechoslovakia
August 6, 1923
Dear Franz,
I have arrived in America, and it is a wonderful country. It is so free, and there are so many people, so many kinds of people, that someone like me can get lost in the crowd.
I don't know how I can thank you enough for doing so much for me ever since we met and became friends back in Prague. You have done everything for me, everything. You helped me write my report to the Academy. You helped me break away from Professor Schnutz who wanted to keep me as some specimen in his laboratory to be poked and questioned by armies of students and scientists. You helped me to find work, an apartment, how to get around, in other words how to live as a human being. And when I became tired and disillusioned with being a human, you wrote to your cousin Rebecca in Chicago who is employed by Professor Rabinowitz, the only man in the world able and willing to change me back to my former state, so that I can be what I was meant to be.
This letter is so brief because I must now leave for the train station.
Forever your friend,
Gunther
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from: G. Affe
Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
to: Mr. Franz Kafka
Prague, Czechoslovakia
August 20, 1923
Dear Franz,
Please forgive me for not writing sooner, but so much has happened since I arrived in Chicago. I met your cousin Rebecca, and I must say she is beautiful, surprisingly beautiful. How can it be that you are cousins. She is so lovely, and you have such big ears. Please pardon my honesty. You have many excellent qualities, and I will always be indebted to you for the kindness you have shown to me, but you do have big ears.
By the way, your cousin does not call herself Rebecca among her friends and associates, but rather Ramona. She says that Rebecca is an old fashioned name given to her by her old country parents with whom she has very little in common, being a modern woman. She refers to her father as the "peddler." I then imagined your uncle to be like the peddlers I remember from Prague, tired, pale shriveled bearded old men in tattered coats pushing pushcarts and calling out in the streets. But when I met him, I was surprised to find a worldly, well dressed, slightly graying but robust business man, actually the owner of a rather fashionable clothing store on Michigan Avenue, which is the very fashionable street for shopping in this city. Apparently your cousin is an ardent communist and uses the word peddler in a derisive manner to describe any business man.
Ramona has been very helpful to me. I have only been here a few days, and already she has found me an apartment near the university in the Hyde Park quarter. She has taken me around to see the city. And what a beautiful city it is. There is a lake that looks so big like the ocean. And there are parks that stretch for many kilometers along the shore. There are many tall buildings and so many museums and theatres. Everything is so new. When a house is a few years old, they tear it down and build a new one. I had thought when I was taken to Europe that I had seen everything , but this land is quite different. I am wondering if I truly want to return.
Tomorrow I have an appointment to see Professor Rabinowitz, or I should say Doctor Rabinowitz. In this country they use the title professor less than we do.
Your forever grateful friend,
Gunther
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from: G. Affe
Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
to: Mr. Franz Kafka
Prague, Czechoslovakia
August 24, 1923
Dear Franz,
I met Dr. Leonard Rabinowitz. Before the appointment, Ramona had prepared me. She said that Dr. Rabinowitz is an ambiguous man, and it is this ambiguity that she can not understand. I think perhaps your cousin is like you in that respect, in that she can not accept ambiguity. If I could not accept ambiguity, I do not know how I would survive. Ramona said that on the one hand Rabinowitz is a brilliant scientist with a scrupulously logical mind, and on the other hand he is a devout Jew. To Ramona, the two conflict. She often accuses her employer of being a hypocrite. To this he replies, "You're a hypocrite only if you tell someone else what to do, and I'm not telling you what to do. I can believe or do whatever I want, whether it does or doesn't makes sense to you or anyone." If she persists in the argument, he starts on her communism, "If everything has to be so scientific, why are you a communist? Karl Marx's basic ideas were just unproven fabrications. You accept them on faith. So why is your faith so much better than mine?" The argument usually sticks at this point, having reached an impasse, and ends with both of them pouting for a few minutes before things return to normal. It never seems to actually harm their daily work, and to the doctor's credit, your cousin remains employed.
Dr. Rabinowitz questioned me about my motives in wanting to be transformed back
into an ape, "You find human life so distasteful that you want to return to being an animal?"
"No, I admire humanity. It has opened my eyes completely. That is why I have agonized over this decision. It is truly a painful one."
"Then it must be that you miss your family."
"No one is left."
"Then why do you want to return?"
"Because I am not completely one of you. No matter what, I can not completely grasp your ways. People always sense that there is something strange about me. Being human is a charade at which I can not be successful."
The doctor explained to me that transforming my body would be relatively simple, a matter of surgery and some injections of an ape serum extract. The more difficult part would be changing my brain back to the intelligence level of an ape. Professor Schnutz published most of his work in scientific journals, but he left out one key step in the procedure. That was his way of keeping it his own secret. It was unscientific but very Schnutz. I know only too well.
Dr. Rabinowitz has written to Schnutz trying to persuade him to reveal the step. I do not think he will have much luck. Meanwhile, while we are waiting for the reply, Ramona and I have been seeing each other quite frequently. I have become somewhat fond of her, and I think she has some feelings for me. But I must not allow our friendship to become more than just that because we are different. We could never. What am I thinking about? She probably only thinks of me as something to help, an African ape who never quite became a European human and certainly can not become an American, but must return to what he truly is.
Before I finish this letter, I must tell you that Ramona took me to one of her communist meetings. The discussion was about how the poor workers were going to take over. But the members were all intellectuals. There was not one factory worker among them. The meeting was held in a large well decorated home, and there was a maid in a black dress and a white apron serving refreshments. Most of them recognized that there was something strange about me. Some stayed away and glanced sideways. Others were overly friendly in a forced awkward manner. The meeting ended in a song, "The International", a nice tune but not enough rhythm.
With greatest friendship,
Gunther
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from: G. Affe
Kingstown, British West Indies
to: Mr. Franz Kafka
Prague, Czechoslovakia
November 2,1923
Dear Franz,
You must forgive me for not writing over so long a period of time, but so much has happened. To my surprise, Dr. Rabinowitz received an early reply from Schnutz. Despite vigorous attempts to dissuade me both by Ramona and Rabinowitz, I insisted that the transformation go on. For two months, they and a team of specialists performed the difficult operations and the painful injections necessary to change my body. But then, when they attempted to transform my brain, Dr. Rabinowitz discovered just in time that the information sent by Schnutz was incorrect. It would have resulted in my death. So, Schnutz was still Schnutz. Furthermore, we found out that Schnutz had left Prague for the British West Indies with a group of apes, all but one recently transformed into creatures resembling humans.
Dr. Rabinowitz could not make my body human again because too much surgery had already been done. I could not have survived another series. Without Schnutz's secret, it seemed worse to me than ever, a human mind and soul in an ape's body, a freak forever.
Therefore, I decided that I must find Schnutz and finally get the correct information. Ramona volunteered to accompany me. I argued that it would be too dangerous for her, but she insisted, and it is true that an ape can not simply travel alone, unimpeded, no matter what is in his brain. And so Ramona began the journey with her pet ape, first by train across southern America to New Orleans City where we boarded a small ship for Kingstown in the British West Indies. Here we consulted the authorities and found that indeed Schnutz was not far. He had purchased an entire small island. They thought there was something odd about him and his actions, but not enough to warrant interference.
The next morning, Ramona hired a small sail boat. It seems she is an experienced sailor because her hobby has been sailing on Lake Michigan, the large lake next to Chicago. She enjoys sailing even more than communism. We approached the island late in the afternoon. As we neared the shore, a guard appeared from behind a bush with a rifle shouting at us to go away. I could see that he was an ape-man, an example of Schnutz's work, but not as good a job as I was. We continued. He fired one shot that missed us completely. But then a volley of machine gun fire spat at us from the bush, ripping our sail to shreds, and sending splinters flying in all directions. Water poured in from holes in the sides of the boat. The boat turned over, and we were dumped into the water. Ramona and I found ourselves clinging to each other and a board in the swirling water. How we survived I do not know, but the waves carried us somewhat down the shore and threw us up on the beach in a small cove hidden by rocks. We collapsed, stunned, and slept for hours without moving from that spot.
Suddenly I was awakened by a scream. Ramona had opened her eyes to find an ape staring down at her, and now he was unsuccessfully trying to cover her mouth with his hand. I jumped up, grabbed the creature, and wrestled him to the ground. In the midst of the struggle, the ape grunted ape grunts to me. At first I did not understand. It had been so long since I had heard or spoken my native tongue. But, after some repetition, I realized what he was saying, and I stopped fighting. We both stopped, stared at each other, and then. Was it true? Yes! We threw our arms around each other with tears of joy. It was my cousin, Grog. It had been so long.
Grog had been with me when I was captured in Africa. It had been the four of us, Ooga, Googoo, Grog, and I taking a stroll in the jungle, when the hunters threw a net over us. Now, Franz, I must tell you something that I have never disclosed to you before. I have also not told Ramona. It is very complicated. I was romantically involved with Ooga. In fact she is my mate, and Googoo is her son, or I should say, our son. Apes do not have formal marriages like humans do, but for apes that suffices.
The complication is that Ramona and I, during our acquaintance and all the adventures which we have shared, have become more and more fond of each other. How cruel fate is, that just as I am halfway on my irreversible journey back to apehood, we realize our love. Ramona is willing to accept me as an ape, despite the impossibility of the situation, and my willpower has its limits. I was ready to give in, despite my better judgment, and might have forgotten my old love Ooga and our child, Googoo, or at least could have regarded them as a dim memory, like a dream long past.
But now seeing Grog jarred me back to reality, the reality of being an ape, from an ape background, with an ape family. That is where my commitment is. Anyway, Ramona carrying her principles of complete equality to the extreme was able to, in fact was driven to choosing an ape as her love, but I am afraid the knowledge of having to share with a female ape and her ape child would be too much, too primitive, even for Ramona.
Grog speaks only ape language, and Ramona speaks only English. So, I would translate, eliminating whichever part I did not want one or the other to know. Grog led us to a nearby cave where we spent the next day.
Grog told me that after I was transformed into a human and separated from the others, Professor Schnutz sold Ooga and Googoo to a representative of an American zoo and kept Grog as a control ape for future experiments. That is why he is still a full ape. It seems the professor had been quite dissatisfied with me because he had made me too human and therefore rebellious. So in his subsequent experiments, he perfected the apemen. They looked something like humans and had human dexterity, but they lacked full powers of reason and were slavishly dedicated to Schnutz. He had brought them to the island to breed them and train them into a powerful army which would form the nucleus of a new empire with Schnutz as emperor. This would be an empire dedicated to reason, that is reason Schnutz style. That means agreeing with anything Schnutz says as long as it sounds scientific.
I transmitted all this information to Ramona, except the part about Ooga and Googoo. I told Grog about all that had happened to me since I had left Africa and why Ramona and I had come to the island to get Schnutz's secret. Grog explained that it would be no easy task. Schnutz was living in a bamboo fortress surrounded by a high wall guarded by many apemen. Even if we could reach him, he would not want to divulge the information. There was also the matter of whether I truly wanted to complete my re-transformation. Ramona had been kind enough to accompany me on this adventure, but actually she opposed my further change for fear of losing me altogether, preferring half a man to no man at all. As I have already said, by this time my own resolve was weakening. But no, I had to go on. Seeing Grog and hearing of Ooga and Googoo put things in their proper perspective.
That day we formulated a plan of attack. The enemy had a fortress. They outnumbered us greatly. They were better armed than we, namely they had numerous rifles and machine guns plus one cannon, while we had no formal weapons at all. So how could we possibly make a plan? Well, they had their advantages and so did we. We had two true apes, expert at swinging from tree to tree, although I must admit that I had to brush up a bit. The apemen had all lost that ability. Schnutz had stupidly placed his fort in the thickest jungle with tree limbs hanging over the walls, thinking that would afford extra protection. He was not a military strategist, even though he considered himself an expert in all matters. Machine guns were stationed all around on platforms inside the fence, but the cannon being too heavy for a platform was positioned behind the one gate ready to blast an enemy who might somehow manage to break through. Behind the cannon was a path leading directly to the shed where the ammunition was stored. Schnutz reasoned that direct access was necessary to provide an unimpeded flow of shells to the cannon.
So our plan was this. Using the element of surprise, Grog and I would swing from the trees over the wall to the cannon, overpower the cannoneers, and open the gate to let Ramona in. Then the three of us would turn the cannon around and fire at the ammunition shed causing an explosion that would cause panic among the apemen. Then in the confusion, we would run into Schnutz's palace (the biggest of the bamboo houses) which we reasoned would not be destroyed by the explosion because of its distance from the ammunition shed. We would then capture Schnutz and force him to give us the papers with the secret information.
Actually, everything went as planned up to a point. We did actually swing over the wall, overpower the cannoneers, open the gate for Ramona, turn the cannon around, and blow up the ammunition shed. Unfortunately, we underestimated the intensity of the blast. We were lucky to have ourselves received only minor bruises when a burst of hot air blew the three of us and the cannon out the gate just ahead of an enlarging ball of fire that did not quite reach us but which quickly consumed the entire bamboo fortress and the surrounding trees.
We picked ourselves up and stared at the inferno. We could never enter to find Schnutz, and there was probably no longer any Schnutz left to find. Then, because the forest around us was burning up, it was necessary to run away ahead of the flames to the beach. The beach guards, having seen the explosion and fire, were running about in confusion. There was a row of small boats lying on the beach. We took one and set out into the water. Despite our urging, the guards, who no longer cared about bothering us, refused to follow. They could not leave their Schnutz. After a few hours, we were picked up by a patrol boat that had been attracted by the fire and were taken back to Kingstown where we made a full report to the authorities. We were lucky to be alive but saddened by the loss of life that had occurred. It has been a sobering and exhausting experience.
I will never be able to complete my transformation, but I do not mind that. In fact, the question was never completely resolved in my mind. Now events have relieved me of the burden of having to make the decision.
Enough of my own problems. Franz, I was very sorry to hear of your recent illness. I worry about your neglect of your health. You must not keep such late hours. You must eat enough nutritious food. You must drink hot milk.
Your concerned friend,
Gunther
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from: G. Affe
San Diego, California
to: Mrs. Rebecca Rabinowitz
Chicago, Illinois
August 20, 1924
Dear Rebecca:
So much has happened since I left Chicago that I hardly know where to begin. First of all, I must extend my condolence to you on the untimely death of your dear cousin Franz. Your grief is equal to, in fact surpassed, only by my own because Franz was truly a good friend, a great friend, my first friend and benefactor in my life as a human. His death has left a void in my life which you might fill through frequent correspondence.
Also, I wish to congratulate you on your recent marriage to Dr. Rabinowitz. I hope for both of you the greatest happiness because you have been true friends to me. I must admit that some months ago I would have considered it most unlikely, you forsaking communism and atheism to become a middle class religious Jewish housewife. But after all, nothing is obvious and anything can change. Anyway, you and the doctor love each other in a way that you never could have loved an ape. Oh, perhaps in thought but certainly not in deed, and deeds are what matter.
Things have gone well for me. As you know, Grog and I came here to be voluntary residents at the San Diego zoo when I learned that Ooga and Googoo are here. I must
again apologize for waiting to tell you about my mate and child until so late in our
acquaintance. I understand your anger at that and my subsequent departure. It must have been a shock, and I can not forgive myself for that cruelty. But your later letter to me after time and reflection displayed great understanding, kindness, and a proper perspective. For us it was, of course, impossible.
So now I am quite happy with my family. Ooga is as beautiful as ever, that is in an ape's eyes. Googoo has grown so since our separation. He is so smart. He has learned many tricks and is the favorite of the children who visit the zoo. I have developed a good relationship with the zoo director and have become a translator and mediator between the apes in the zoo and the administration. In this way, I have settled many grievances and misunderstandings. I even plan to travel to other zoos from time to time to advise on ape affairs. Some time if I have business in Chicago, we will see each other again and reminisce about old times.
Your special friend,
Gunther

Music or Drums

Be it music or drums,
Take life as it comes
Unless you can change it,
Of course for the better,
At least a little bit
If not to the letter.

Baboo Gagoo

Let's form a ring
To dance and sing
At the shrine of Baboo Gagoo.
We'll give our lives
With guns and knives
For the shrine of Baboo Gagoo,
And in the end
Who will mend
The souls of Baboo Gagoo?
May its metal rust,
Its stone to dust,
The curse of Baboo Gagoo.

Road Runner
Road Runner runs across the lawn
Over patio, past the pool,
Safe from coyotes, but not cats,
Safe from the natural desert
Beyond the civilized frontier,
Safe from the freedom of the wild.
How our world has changed, my small friend.
We face it together, you, I.
For natural is what it is,
Not a dream of what it once was.

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The Chain of Life
I see my father in my grandson’s face,
And my mother in my granddaughter’s eyes.
I see in them a mirror of myself.
I see unknown ancestors from the past
Who endured the worst to bring us the best.
I see cousins whom I never chanced to meet
Who perished in Europe’s immoral storm.
I see my descendants whom I will not greet
Who will carry on the great chain of life.

------------------------------
God Treads Lightly
God treads lightly,
And loves to laugh.
Details?
Who cares?
Don’t step on toes.
Live life happy.
That’s what He wants.

Grandpa's Advice

To my grandchildren,
Both here and on the way,
Listen carefully to what I have to say.
I know you listen.
I know you really do.
No matter what you're told,
One plus one is two.

Of All the Sperm

Of all the sperm and all the eggs
And all the combinations thereof,
Thank you, thank you,
Thank you God
For having chosen me.
It is my honor and my privilege
In this existence just to be.
And in the end a place is set
For me or maybe not. You see,
Either way it's been a ride,
A wonderful wonderful ride with Thee.

Why and How I Believe in God

Why and How I Believe in God

Do I believe in God? Many people do not ask the question (at least not publicly although they may think it to themselves privately), either because they accept God's existence and all that their particular religion says about Him without reservation or because they reject God's existence, also without any reservation. It seems to me that there is no universal definition of God. Therefore, if one wishes to believe in God, one can define God in such a way that He falls within the confines of what one actually believes. Conversely, if one wishes to be an atheist, one can define God in such a way that He falls outside the confines of what one believes. So whether or not you believe in God depends on which team you belong, by birth, by choice, or by any other circumstance.
At this point I would like to tell you that I believe in God, but before I go further, let me reveal my background because that will shed some light on my point of view. I am a Jew. I grew up in a family that was associated with the Conservative Movement in Judaism and have continued this association into adult life. Conservative Judaism is unlike Orthodox Judaism and similar to Reform Judaism in being non-fundamentalist, i.e. not everything written in the Bible and Talmud is necessarily the word of God and therefore not necessarily absolute fact. Nonetheless, it retains most of the ceremonial traditions of Orthodoxy. Interestingly, during my religious education in Hebrew School, I was never made aware of this non-fundamentalism. I first learned about it in a course on comparative religion in college. This was probably because in Judaism, what you do (ceremonially as well as daily life) matters more than what you think. In my parents home, we celebrated the major Jewish holidays and, if asked, professed belief in God. There were Jewish books on the book shelves. I was sent to Hebrew School, but making good grades in Public School was more important than in Hebrew School. Public School was the key to making a living (the material). Hebrew School represented the beauty or condiment of life (the abstract). Jewish education was important and not to be neglected, but first one had to make a living. Later I became a physician, specializing in Dermatology. This required an emphasis on the study of science in college, medical school, post-graduate training, and continuing education to this day. The scientific method means to ask a question, make observations with one's own senses, and then apply logic to these observations to arrive at the best possible answer to the question, realizing that one is not arriving at the absolute truth but simply at the best possible approach to the truth. In reality, we do not observe everything personally but rely on observations made by people who came before us, hoping that those observations are for the most part correct, but realizing that some day someone may find them to be not correct. All of this has affected my point of view.
So, what is my point of view? I said that there can be various definitions of God and that one can define God to fall inside or outside of ones own definition. I choose to believe in God, and so I must define Him in a way that is consistent with what I actually believe. To define or approach God, I would propose two observations as starting points. One is that people for thousands of years going back to pre-historic times have worshipped deities. Some civilizations were separated from others for so long that one might guess that they came up with the idea independently rather than inheriting it from one original thinker at the dawn of human existence. The other observation is that I (and I assume everyone else unless all of you are just a figment of my imagination) have a consciousness. This consciousness is something that I sense. If it did not exist, I would not sense anything, and this discussion would not be occurring.
The first observation relates to why one should believe in God. If there is no reason, then the question is irrelevant. So why have people in various civilizations worshipped deities? They have done so because with the ability to reason, humans began to think about the transitiveness of life. How can it be that I live for a short time, and then there is nothing? What is the purpose of it all? So people came up with the idea that the universe or all of existence is ruled by one or more gods who are immortal and that people, although mortal on this earth go on after death to another existence. Often there is a good place like Heaven for people who live a righteous life here and a bad place like Hell for bad people. Years ago this evolved in many cultures into a belief in one God who relates to all of existence. So, there is a universal concern about our mortality which religion has addressed whether or not one is satisfied with the answers that the various religions have proposed. Therefore I believe that the question of God's existence is not irrelevant.
The second observation is that I have a consciousness. Although some people value their body parts over everything else, for me (and I think for most of us) my consciousness (or in other words my mind) constitutes me. If I lost a leg or an arm, I would miss it, but I would still exist. If I became blind or deaf, it would certainly be a disaster, but I would still exist. In the field of health care, we talk about preserving or saving life, but is it not consciousness that we are really aiming to save? We now talk about brain death. A brain dead person is a person whose heart and lungs are functioning, but whose mind is gone. This person is unconscious, and the electroencephalogram tells us that there is no hope of that consciousness ever coming back again. Sometimes the organs of such a person are harvested for transplantation into a person whose consciousness we can save. We consider the brain dead person dead and the organ recipient alive and salvageable. So ultimately the driving force is not the chemical life of cells that we are saving, but the function of consciousness. It happens that with the present state of medical science, we can only save that consciousness by saving certain living brain cells in the cerebral cortex upon which that consciousness depends.
Let us now take this concept of consciousness forward one more step to the concept of the soul. Is the soul synonymous with the mind? For me, the soul is the mind plus all of its abstract extensions, creations, and ramifications. If one writes a thought on paper, that is now part of one's soul. The person can physically die, but the thought lives on the paper and can be transferred to anyone who reads that thought. The same can be said about any thought that is transmitted or preserved in writing, verbally, electronically, in art, in music, by teaching, by raising children, or in any other way. In computer terminology, we talk about hardware and software. Our brains are hardware. Our souls are software, not just including our minds because our minds are mortal and can only exist inside our brains, but our souls are immortal and can go anywhere, intertwining with other souls in a great network of abstract existence.
So then, who is God? I choose to define God as all of abstract existence, that is all souls and thoughts that exist, have existed in the past , might exist in the future, and all potential ones that never have existed or never will exist as we conceive existence. Why do I choose this definition? I do not pretend that this is some absolute truth that everyone must believe, but it is the best I can come up with to address my concerns about the transitiveness of life and those of my ancestors going back to pre-historic times, without contradicting reason as I perceive it. I am doing the same as the pre-historic man who, contemplating the same problem, worshipped the sun. As I have, he took the knowledge at his disposal and came up with what he considered to be the most reasonable answer. He could see that the sun was up there in the sky, unreachable. It gave him warmth. It had something to do with making the plants grow which in turn gave him food. It was too bright to look at directly. It had no rival. What else was he to believe?
Why do I use the soul as an approach to perceiving God? Because I can perceive my soul. My consciousness is at the center of it. Only then can I extrapolate God who includes all of our souls. I believe ancient people did this many years ago, considering that the Bible says that man was created in the image of God. Some people would say that man created God rather than God created man. My answer to that is that using man as a vehicle to perceive God does not mean creating God, just as when a biochemist discovers some previously undiscovered enzyme, he is not creating that enzyme.
When God is defined as all past, present, future, and potential souls, and the soul is defined as all the thoughts of an individual person, then God is defined as all thoughts or in other words all abstraction. One could then say that there are two existences, the material existence and the abstract existence. So, God is defined as all of abstract existence. One might then ask, between the material world which is defined as other than God and the abstract world which is defined as God, which created and/or dominates which. The Bible states that God created the world (which one could define as the material existence) and implies that He manages it as well. On the material (or atheistic) side one could point out that consciousness is dependent on the existence of material life and seems to cease when material life ceases. Even the definition of God as simply all abstract thought just delays the ultimate tragedy because eventually the sun will burn out, mankind will end, and even the written and electronic records of our thoughts will eventually crumble into non-existence. On the abstract (or believing in God) side, one could say that if all consciousness ceases with the end of material life and eventually there are no souls anywhere to perceive material existence (and therefore no abstraction, or in other words no God), then material existence would be irrelevant, and in a sense would no longer exist. Looking at it that way, God did create the universe because God is necessary to discover material existence. There is at least an interdependence between the two. So, how did the ancient authors of the Bible arrive at this conclusion that God created the universe? A fundamentalist would say that God told them. I am more comfortable with the idea that they took the information that was available to them at the time and came to a conclusion that seemed reasonable, just as scientists and philosophers do today.
Let us now go forward one more step. In science, nothing is ever the undisputable truth. Even the most certain scientific laws sometimes come into question and may eventually be disproved. At any point in time, some concepts are more secure in their acceptance as the truth, and others are considered more or less hypothetical. So far, I feel fairly secure in what I have said because I have only taken what I really believe to be true and extrapolated it. In so doing, we have a God who is a concept, a way of looking at things, but is He a personal God? Is He the creator and manager of all of existence, including material existence in more than just an abstract sense? Did He really make us in His image? In other words, does His big consciousness have an independent existence similar to but so much greater than our little ones? I can't say with certainty, but maybe it does. This is only a hypothesis, but I would like to think so. Well, why not? Hypotheses are acceptable in science and are an important step in the scientific method, so why should they not be acceptable in religion as long as one acknowledges that a hypothesis is not more than a hypothesis.
So that is my belief in God. This concept seems to satisfy me more than any other. I am not promoting it for anyone else. It is probably not unique, and I suspect other people at some time or other must have come up with similar conclusions.