AGNOSTIC'S PRAYER
Insofar as I may be heard by
anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you
[the dead person] be forgiven for
anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely,
if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible
benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask
that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in
such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my
capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not
be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as
much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some
way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen. – Roger Zelazny, Creatures of
Light and Darkness
Creed of St. Euthanasia
(Commonly called the Atheneum Creed)
I believe in man, maker of himself and inventor of all science. And in myself,
his manifestation, and captain of my psyche; and that I should not suffer
anything painful or unpleasant.
And in a vague, evolving deity, the future-begotten child of man; conceived by
the spirit of progress, born of emergent variants; who shall kick down the
ladder by which he rose and tell history to go to hell.
Who shall some day take off from earth and be jet-propelled into the heavens;
and sit exalted above all worlds, man the master almighty.
And I believe in the spirit of progress, who spake by Shaw and the Fabians; and
in a modern, administrative, ethical, and social organization; in the isolation
of saints, the treatment of complexes, joy through health, and destruction of
the body by cremation (with music while it burns), and then I’ve had it.
-
Dorothy L. Sayers, 1954.
“If once we [devils] can
produce our perfect work-the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but
veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls "Forces" while denying
the existence of "spirits"-then the end of the war will be in sight.”
- C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
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