Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 64: Line 163 (1145)

 Come from nothing.

* * * * * * * * * *

Sure, sure. Come from "nothing". If we regard light as nothing then this statement makes sense. And isn't that the essence of the religious experience? If we disregard, or remain ignorant, of the things which cause the thing to happen, then we witness God at work. We see a miracle. We see the rabbit appear from an empty hat and we gasp and yell, "Praise God!" We see an endless supply of handkerchiefs come from the robes of the Bishop and we shout, "Hallelujah!" We see the sun disappear in the middle of the day and we cower in fear and repent our sins.
    Or we don't and we realize that the only thing to come from nothing is nothing. There's always an explanation. Unless you're Soy Rakelson in 1988 and you're trying to show all of your friends how stupid they are by not believing in God with a bunch of tricks you learned from C. S. Lewis. Although, really, his biggest trick was "Nothing comes from nothing! Therefore, God!" which is what I've been trying to explain away with the same trick! Soy could just never get a handle on the whole "Nothing comes from nothing, therefore something we just currently don't understand about reality." It's weird to go straight to God when you don't know the answer to something since God works differently than every other answer we have to questions. Our answers always play by reality's rules. And if we don't know the rules yet, we figure we'll learn them at some point. But God is like playing The Game of Life and when you need to pay your taxes, you just grab some money out of the Monopoly box.

Chapter 1: Section 4: Page 32: Line 146 (518)

 He had a careful look around the table, estimating the level of Scriptural awareness.

* * * * * * * * * *

Have I mentioned my high school friend Soy Rakelson on this blog yet? Because this is the kind of thing he would have done during a late night game of Warhammer, especially if he were the Game Master. He'd drop a Biblical reference and then nod his head (maybe while rubbing his chin) as he panned around the heathen group at the table, waiting to see if anybody would pick up on it. Then if somebody did reply in a way that showed they understood the reference, he'd say, "Very good, X" where "X" was that person's last name. If it wasn't Roy . . . I'm sorry, I meant Soy! . . . who made the Biblical reference but one of the other ungodly people at the table, he'd be absolutely flabbergasted that they would know anything at all about The Bible. Even though he knew we were all English and Literature majors and what good is an English Lit major without an abundant knowledge of scripture?! You're going to miss 90% of all the references and thematic elements of the text!