pcarini

I Know More Than God.  Transcript, with stage directions.
Video is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qymoktf0wY
"Stage Directions" are embedded in the script, at the time they happened, surrounded by /* */ characters.

(sound of throat clearing)

/* theatrical, god-type voice */:
In the beginning there WAS light, /* white frame */ light so hot nothing else could exist but the void grew faster than the light and that was good.  And out of the light came the tiny /* atom */ heralds of what was to come, as small to an apple as an apple is to your spherical world.  For I tell you light /* E=mc2 */can become solid, and the solid can become light.  Take heed for I tell you what no man /* Einstein */ yet knows.  /* blue blob / animation */ And the heralds waited in the light for their time. And 400 millennia later, when it could be so, so it was.  And these things I will call atoms fell together.  And I tell you, children of the light, in the void great clouds of atoms formed.  Pulled by mutual attraction.  Forced to become one, growing in size, gaining mass until at the center of the clouds there came a new light.  As atoms of the first and simplest kind were forced together to become atoms of the second kind.  And behold the first star was born.

Soon there were many stars, swirling by the hundreds of thousands of millions.  /* spiral galaxy */ Floating in islands like discs, each island separate, and racing apart.  /* many galaxies */ And the islands themselves shall be numbered in the hundreds of thousands of millions.  And some of the stars /* red star */ were small and burned slow and dim and long.  And some were giant and burned /* blue star */ bright blue and fast, making atoms of the second, third, fourth .../* many atom pictures */ up to the twenty-sixth kind, until they could burn no more.  And then they die a powerful death, /* nebula/nova */ building up atoms to the ninety-second kind and beyond.  Which they spread, along with abundant blinding light, like seeds back into the void, disturbing the stillness of the surrounding atomic clouds, giving birth to countless stars in their wake.

But these new stars draw around them disc shaped cloaks /* blue object with 'flares' from its poles */ of the ninety-two types of atoms, the ashes and the seeds of the first giant stars. /* Beta Pictoris */ And the heavier elements fell towards the new stars and over millions /* dust cloud */ of years there formed worlds of rock and metals to encircle the sun. /* planet */ And away from the star worlds of vapor and ice were formed, /* Jupiter */ circling more slowly in accord to their greater distance from the sun.  And nine thousand million years later, after the beginning, /* molten, rocky planet */ around one star, one rocky metallic world, ninety-two types of atoms /* volcano, lightning, chemistry */ danced to the tune of the light and the lightning, while mountains fell from the sky.  This place would be called earth.

/* molecule 3D rendering */
And for half a billion years the dance went on, atoms joining in ways forbidden by the heat inside the stars where they were made, but inevitable where the magnet is mightier than the fire.  /* DNA molecule */ And by the law of the magnet and the lodestone one chain of many atoms begat other chains of identical form.  And the chains spread through the waters, /* water + double helix */ filling them, growing in size and complexity, taking unto them to the poisonous clouds and vapors that hung over world, and giving back the air. /* Earth */ And the sky of the Earth, now clear of falling mountains, turned blue.

/* hand */
And four thousand millions years later still you stand here, yearning to know how you came to be.  But if you have the mind to ask the question, /* zoom in on star */ you have the mind to find the answer.  Look to the light of the world, see how they dance.  From this and only from this will you find the answers that will lead you /* galaxy */ to the knowing.  And one day you will make better eyes from the sand, and look out into the night, and you will see wonders, things hidden until then, but keep looking and thinking with better eyes and clearer thoughts, and knowledge will come to you.  /* pan across stars to galaxy */ You will see the island discs of countless millions of suns, stretching back into infinity.  But be not afraid, see my creation, the jewels of millions of suns, stars of blinding light, holes of darkness that hold back the light, the clouds of atoms from which you came.  And it is all yours if you can work as one.  /* another galaxy */ I can give you no more than all that is.
/* end god voice */

/* Einstein */
Now, if I'd read this or Einstein had read in any holy book, written one or two thousand years ago before modern science, I think we would have both been deeply moved.  What you've just heard contains approximately /* 'Check the sidebar' */ forty scientifically accurate descriptions of how the universe came to be.  In a very short space, just five minutes, if the Koran /* Koran */ had said anything like Einstein and I would be Muslim.  If the Bible /* Bible */ had said anything like this we would have been Bible-thumping Christians, but that is not the case.  Do not be fooled by the odd poetic line in a religious book that bears some vague resemblance to reality.  Look for details, always keep in mind the question, /* ? key */ "why is there not more detail?".  Why am I not told /* solar system */ about the planets and the countless galaxies /* galaxies */, unknown at the time.  Why am I not about a single galaxy? /* milky way */  Why am I not told that the sun is just an ordinary star? /* close-up sun */ Why is there nothing about atoms /* periodic table */ and atomic elements, or how planets and stars actually formed?

No details about the order of events /* big bang diagram */ and the timescales involved.  Nothing about the evolution of DNA.  /* ? key */ Why is there nothing that couldn't be seen by the naked eye /* lightning */ at the time the books were written?  How could that be?  When a verse /* bible verse */ says something half correct, don't ask what god meant, look at what the sentence actually says.  If it isn't half accurate, it's more than half wrong.  Can God be half wrong?  These are thick books, there should be hundreds of pages of indisputable, factually accurate, detailed description.  There is not.  God should've known what no human being knew.  /* Far side comic */ God could've shown us that he knew how the universe was made long before we did.  But he failed.  Utterly.  To my mind an omnipotent god does not and can not fail.

/* Monty Python God */ I wrote my version of Genesis in about half an hour, using language and concepts that were around long before the holy books were written.  The word atom, meaning indivisible, /* Democritus */ was used by Democritus to describe tiny particles of matter four-hundred years before Christ.  /* Magnetic field */ Magnetism was also known to the Greeks, because of the attractive /* Thales */ properties of amber, as observed by Thales, six-hundred years before Christ.  /* amber, feathers */ The word electron came from the Greek word for amber.  /* Socrates */ Socrates spoke of the lodestone having the ability not only to attract iron rings, /* lodestone / paperclip */ but also to impart the power of attraction to the rings themselves.  And the term lodestone came from a /* magnetic field */ Cretan shepherd who, several centuries beforehand, found his crook attracted to the ground by what he subsequently dug up, a piece of magnetite, a type of iron ore.  Lode, from lodestone means lead, /* lodestone / paperclip */ or attract.  So you see language and concepts required to describe much /* galaxies */ of creation all existed long before the books claiming to have been written by god.  But the words and concepts and details that could have convinced every modern scientist of the miraculous nature of either the Koran or the Bible simply aren't in the books.  God could have convinced any knowledgeable modern person of his existence.  If god had written anything like my version of Genesis, every great scientist of the modern era would probably believe.  But he didn't, and they don't.  How could it be that the creator doesn't seem to know as much about the creation as I do?  How could it be that I could go back in time and write a more convincing opening to the Bible or the Koran?  Judging from the Bible's Genesis and the Koran, with all of its duplications of both good and bad science, which came from the Greeks, God just doesn't know very much about creation.  /* ? key */ And that is what I, and you, should find impossible to believe.  If you have a creator, he, she, it, or they know infinitely more than yours truly.  The God of the Bible, and Allah of the Koran, do not.

/* presenter */: With so many souls at stake, and so much pain at stake, I really need you to convince me that you're real.  Tell me something that only a god could know.
/* God */: You are made of dust.
/* presenter */: Is that it?
/* God */: You are made of water.
/* presenter */: Well make your mind up.
/* God(unsure) */: You are made of clay?
/* presenter */: You seem to be a bit confused.  Okay, okay, um.. give me something with numbers in it.
/* God */: I made the world in seven days.
/* presenter */: No you didn't.  Why didn't you say something like ... it takes a blink of an eye for light to travel to the moon, but it takes several years for light to travel to the stars?
/* God */: Umm, I forgot.
/* presenter */: Does that seem very impressive?
/* God */: Uh, silly me.
/* presenter */: Exactly.
/* black screen */
/* voice */: ummm