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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, November 11, 1998
IT IS WRITTEN, that the ubiquitous Internet has come along at the right time in Earth's troubled history. Years ago, Guttenberg printed and popularized the Bible, breaking ground that the Holy Roman Church fell through. Today, the Internet has brought more information to more people than any press in history, breaking ground that churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques of the free and not-so-free world will one fine day also fall through.
We are not doomsayers. We have high hopes for you, the innocent adults of Earth, and that is why we have established this Web site in the first place.
Literally, the planet "rocks" on the brink of annihilation. Yet, as long as the now-outgoing Heads of Management had control of your hearts and minds--indoctrinating and intoxicating you with Judeo-Christian heresies--legally, Galactic Olympian Deities, Inc., did not have a remedy. By law, I'm sure you will appreciate, it cannot intervene in the affairs of a legally constituted sovereign authority, i.e., its subsidiary, Earth, nor go above any of the Three Heads of Management, in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, the 2nd Person of the Holy Trinity, to make you aware of the threat to your beautiful planet, nor the threat to your very sanity and continued existence on Earth or anywhere else. You are aware, are you not, that your behavior lately--though, some of Zeus' critics would argue, not lately, but for "ages"--has bordered on madness. But the Immortal kept his word to the Lord and would not intervene. Why? The CEO of Earth is not unlike The Office of the Independent Council, OIC ("The Prosecutor" or "The Persecutor," if you like) in the United States of America. Not unlike the Grand Inquisitor, during those unhappy days of the Inquisition in Spain in the Middle Ages, and, to be fair, elsewhere at other times), his powers are broad and whimsical, if not mad. The Executive may fire Him, the Lord, but he may not micro-manage Him, not legally, not politically.
However, the Outgoing Head, taking His cue from the Radical, Rotten, Religious, Republican Right and various other bizarre organizations, suggested to Zeus that a miracle of some magnitude might work. On good Authority, we tell you now, the grateful dead at the Lowest Circles of Thought in Dante's Inferno argued that it ought to scare the daylights out of you, to bring you once-and-for-all shaking and trembling to your bruised, knobby knees, and, thereby, in so doing, to "demonstrate" to you the profound seriousness of your petty, arrogant, destructive behavior. The Board, however, declined the offer. To be perfectly frank, it scoffed at the misguided Angel who brought it and sent Him packing. It had had enough of Mystery, Superstition, and Fear. Correctly, we think, it argued that such a theatrical display would certainly have convinced you that "supernatural powers" had a critical but loving Eye on you, but they also feared that that very demonstration would have kept you bouncing about in a 2nd Dark Age or a rubber room for the next millennium, believing in god-knows-what. Besides, the Board, not long after the Angel left, thought it ought to look more closely at your Religions and numerous organizations of faith and came back to the Rotunda at the Jupiter Hilton in profound shock. It found such a hodge-podge of organized religions on Earth, it did not think that a "miracle" in any one of them, say, in the Russian Orthodox Church, could substantially influence any of the others, say, one targeted at the Anglican Church, or one targeted at the confusing mix of Protestant Churches, or, what would be a prodigious waste of time, at the Holy Roman Catholic Church, with its scrupulous tests to determine if a miracle were a miracle, i.e., were "genuine" or not, as if the very definition of the term -- "contrary to Nature" -- were not in itself sufficient to discredit the concept as contradictory and absurd. The Board would have none of it. The Lord acquiesced, pocketed His "miracles," but did nothing to alert you. Nothing. That did it. That sealed His Fate.
In the end, CEO Zeus had no choice. He voted with the Galactic Board. He threw his considerable weight behind their pleadings, their arguments, and thus began the series of events that have brought us here.
Earlier, pressing its case behind the scenes, so to speak, the Board had argued long and hard to Zeus' blind eyes and deaf ears to bring about fundamental change on Earth. The Lord Jesus Christ could not hope for a better ally than Zeus, who, lending his support to the Nazarene, resisted with his whole heart and with his whole mind and with his whole body. He wanted Him to succeed. But in two thousand years, he had had a change of heart, too. He wanted you to shun Mystery, the Supernatural, and Religion, too, if it were fanatical or murderous; clearly, he argued with the Lord, these Ideas or Ideals had had their day, and they hadn't worked. He wanted you to embrace Reason, yes; he wanted you to have access to the Truth, yes; but he wanted it to be the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god. Regrettably, to achieve that end, the only legal remedy left to the Immortal god, to the Board, to the Galactic Corporation, was for the Entity to accept the Lord's resignation.
But what does the Internet have to do with this short history? Simple. There is so much "bullshit," I think you call it, published on the Internet, that to separate sense from nonsense, truth from lies, everybody has to have a good "crap detector." That's what one of your best, or, at least, one of your favorite, American authors called it, and it is appropriate here. Everybody has to be on his or her toes. O.K.? Nobody at Galactic Inc. or at this Web site is going to paint a rainbow and toss it into the sky or splash it across your screen or across every computer screen in the world--it'd be called a virus anyway, wouldn't it?--or burn any bushes to convince you or even just to tell you that "this" is from the mouth of god, or from the horse's mouth, or that it is the Word, the Logos, and have you doubt or yawn and say, "So what?"
Yes, it will be out there, as one of your TV drama-series has so aptly put it, "The Truth is Out There," but you will have to find it, sorting through the hype, the fantasy, the flubs, the lies, the perversions; in short, the crap, as Ernest Hemingway said. You alone will have to choose.
Nobody here is going to descend from Holy High Heaven to resurrect the dead, though it takes nothing to do it. Nobody is going to turn one loaf of bread and one fish into a substantial meal for a multitude, though if we did it, it would leave no work for you to do. Nobody is going to "Save the whales." Nope. None of that. We are not do-gooders. We are "the Gang" that owns the Galaxy; we always have. We shoot from the hip; we take no prisoners; we tell you straight up and down, up front; we pull no punches. The truth is out there, plain and simple--yes, it is at the Galactic Olympian Deities, Inc., World Wide Web site--though it is elsewhere, too.
We do not want you to believe us, god forbid. Belief, the brother of arrogance, has gotten you into this ungodly mess, where "soldiers" of one faith bomb the faithful in their homes in Ireland, in their barracks in Saudi Arabia, in the streets of Jerusalem, in the American embassies of Kenya and Tanzania. Where, you ask? On another continent, on the other side of the world, where you slaughter more native Africans than you do Americans. You, the faithful! Show us your logic? Are Africans expendable to terrorists? Are Africans expendable to your Terrorist God? If your naked atrocities were not so stupid, they would be perverse. Unfortunately, to be perverse, you must have a smidgen of intelligence, not just hatred and a fat bank account.Not the "cover" of Faith to soothe your ignorance of time, love, and history.
We can tell you this much: Zeus shot off a sharp memo to the Board. He said he hates it, this thing you do with guns and bombs; the Board hates it, too. That should be enough, you would think. We're getting this dope from the Immortal, you understand, the Olympian who really is the god of Thunder. What does he want of you? What do we want of you? We want you to see, to become aware, finally, to fully and tolerantly understand where your beliefs have come from and how -- how you have gotten yourselves and your innocent children into this fine mess. If that is asking too much, then it is asking too much. Anyway, you will think what you will. You will do what you will. The choice is yours.
If the upshot of this Internet adventure is that you conceive of one true Internet Church, or one true Internet faith or religion, then we have failed. If you conceive of many, then we have failed miserably.
Yet, if there is time, there is hope.
Today, with fresh, rational leadership, provided by Benj. Franklin, American, acting-CEO of Earth, the Internet will make it possible for GOD Inc. to reach billions of cyber-junkies and X-File aficionados at once.
Copyright © Domenic Corsaro 1998
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