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The sacred allegiance of our contemporaries to denary fixed
ratios and percentages, to denary centuries and millenniums, in
short, to the denary system, illustrates once more that it
is not always easy to differentiate the well-founded and the
arbitrary, or the rational and the irrational, or the natural
and the supernatural. Yet, granted that there is, indeed, a
fuzzy border between the two, there are those who stand very
clearly on this side of that border and those who stand, even
more clearly, on the other side.
When it is everyone's right to take any position whatsoever
this is precisely the reason that we, too, have such a right;
a right wholly or partially denied us in the numerous countries
where the state is misused as an instrument of monotheist
oppression, discrimination, indoctrination and/or propaganda. It
is precisely the reason that no-one who supports or permits such
abuse, or is co-responsible for it, should have the nerve to
call any of the stories here collected "offensive". Offensive is
it not to be treated as a person, as an equal citizen, because
the state chooses one's
denomination, or that of one's children.
This is blasphemy: blasphemy against justice.
More than our citizenship is at stake here, for we must also be
concerned about what is being sold as truth worldwide and on a large scale.
People's
personhood may demand deep respect, but
not so their juggling with statements of belief where the truth is known
to be different, or where it is only appropriate to be silent, or only
candid to admit that one does not know.
The liar as liar or the supernaturalist as supernaturalist is not the
person as person.
Therefore we do not insult supernaturalists as persons so long as we
recognize their personal rights, so long as they recognize ours.
One does not insult a person by pouring scorn on and ridiculing a lie,
however much the liar may feel insulted.
The unkind remark is directed at the lie, not at the person, who, as a
person, is free to lie and invited not to lie.
"Why should we care about what is believed or said by millions and
officially propagated?" some may ask.
We should, for where anything can pass for true and respectable
under a religious flag, there anything can, in the long
run, pass for scientific and humane; there anything can, in the
long run, pass for relevant and just; there anything can, in the
long run, pass for moderate and good.
We should, if we care for those values which return again and
again in the several tales of this book as the natural
alternatives to supernaturalism, exclusivism and extremism:
truth,
relevance or
inclusiveness and
neutrality, equality or moderation.
They are the fundamental values of
the DNI (the
Denomination of
Neutral-Inclusivity), a
normative doctrine that asserts the primacy of value over authority,
godly or otherwise.
Four years ago
the author published the
Model of Neutral-Inclusivity
in which the DNI was introduced for the first time. Everyone
interested in the author's opinions, as distinct from
those of the characters in
Six Warlocks, is referred to this
predominantly philosophical work of nonfiction.
Reading and studying the Model (a book almost ten times the size of the
present one) will be the more rewarding because, rather than an
attack on what is wrong or bad, it is first and foremost a
defense of what is right and good.
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