L.B.: It Could Be Bunnies

Left Behind, pp. 253-255

After Carpathia outlined his eagerness to support the U.N. in any way possible, someone interjected a question about the disappearances.

"Someone interjected" -- that's all we're told. This "someone" is the first person we've met in many chapters who seems to have any grasp on the situation, any sense of perspective.

The world has just witnessed the biggest thing since the K-T event and yet, a mere seven days later, no one seems to be paying attention. Everyone else seems to be pursuing other agendas and obsessing over things that wouldn't have seemed important even before the disappearances. This might have seemed truthful if LaHaye and Jenkins had portrayed this as denial -- people still reeling, in shock, and unable to comprehend or consider that nothing will ever be the same. But it's not presented that way. Everyone has simply moved on.

Buck Williams isn't the one who raises this question at the press conference. This is strange, since he's supposed to be working on a Global Weekly cover story about the disappearances. He never seems to get around to writing that story but he never gets in trouble for this because, despite it's name, the "Weekly" hasn't had a deadline during the past seven days.

But now that the Most Important Point has been "interjected" back into the story, we get treated to Carpathia's theory:

"Many people in my country lost loved ones to this horrible phenomenon. I know that many people all over the world have theories, and I wish not to denigrate any one of them, the people or their ideas. ...

"Many people" isn't quite right: everyone would have a theory. Everyone would have to have a theory because this is what we humans do -- we look for meaning and try to make sense of the world.

But this isn't how things seem to work in Left Behind. Our main protagonists have read the book jacket -- they know they're in a Darbyist Rapture novel and they're not interested in exploring any other possible explanations. Yet somehow even the characters who don't know it's the Rapture don't seem interested in exploring other theories. Those who do have theories -- like the charter pilot Buck hired -- are regarded as oddballs and exceptions.

Seven days after the fact would be almost too late for Carpathia to try to introduce a new theory. The Official Story would have emerged within the first day or two -- official whether due to pronouncement by officials or due simply to the conventional wisdom settled on by TV talking heads. Lots of alternative theories would also be kicking around. Such alternatives, regardless of whether they were more or less plausible, would be dismissed as "conspiracy theories" by those with a stake in the Official Story.

Let's consider what some of those theories might be. We've already mentioned a few in earlier posts: Space/dimensional alien abduction, rapid-acting flesh-eating airborne bacteria, wormhole, shift in space-time continuum, shrink ray, scientific experiment gone awry, nefarious something in the water, sorcery, the Old Ones, mass hallucination.

Whatever Official Story is settled on, the Space Alien theory would likely be popular enough that it would have been addressed, publicly and officially, within these first seven days. It's not an unreasonable theory. It would be irrational to conclude that space aliens were to blame for your missing car keys, but faced with a global phenomenon that could not have been caused by anything we know of on earth it seems reasonable to look for extraterrestrial explanations.

So well before seven days had elapsed, scientists from NASA and SETI would have held press conferences to discuss whether or not they had noticed anything unusual -- solar flares, gravitational anomalies, unexplained radiation/radiowaves/photon showers, missing time, etc. So too would pretty much every other scientist whose work involved measuring or monitoring pretty much anything: carbon dioxide, ozone, temperature, barometric pressure, wind speeds, volcanic activity, ocean currents, bird migration, insect reproduction, you name it.

Likewise, philosophers and religious leaders would all be coming forward to comment on the possible supernatural explanations. The disappearance of the Darbyite born-againers would not leave a secular, religion-less world. Leaders from the many remaining, undiminished religions would likely point to the Event as vindication of their tradition: Behold, the true God has cleansed the world of the infidels! The Official Stories from the Vatican or Tehran would be quite different from the OS in Washington. These competing religious explanations, I would guess, would be among the most widely accepted, particularly outside the West.

The main resistance to such religious theories wouldn't be from secular/atheist scientists, but from the insurance industry, which could not afford a billion simultaneous claims being classified as "acts of God" and therefore legitimate. Insurer's would likely be backing some Doomsday Cultist theory that sought to classify the disappearances as some kind of mass-suicide. (If you're wondering who would win a power struggle between the Vatican and Hartford, just take a look at America's health-care system.)

So waiting seven days to reveal his theory means Carpathia is late to the party. The terms of debate -- Official Story, competing theories, "fringe" theories -- would have already been set. Nicolae hopes to overcome this with his dazzling charisma and a scientific dream team:

"I have asked Dr. Chaim Rosenzweig of Israel to work with a team to try to make sense of this great tragedy and allow us to take steps toward preventing anything similar from ever happening again.

"When the time is appropriate I will allow Dr. Rosenzweig to speak for himself, but for now I can tell you that the theory that makes the most sense to me is briefly as follows: The world has been stockpiling nuclear weapons for innumerable years. Since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 and the Soviet Union first detonated its own devices September 23, 1949, the world has been at risk of nuclear holocaust. Dr. Rosenzweig and his team of renowned scholars is close to the discovery of an atmospheric phenomenon that may have caused the vanishing of so many people instantaneously."

Even L&J seem to realize that this is inadequate, so they add a bit more technobabble, but first we get this strange little interlude:

"What kind of phenomenon?" Buck asked.

Carpathia glanced briefly at his name tag and then into his eyes. "I do not want to be premature, Mr. Oreskovich," he said. Several members of the press snickered, but Carpathia never lost pace. "Or I should say, 'Mr. Cameron Williams of Global Weekly.'" This elicited amused applause throughout the room. Buck was stunned.

What's so stunning? Buck is wearing a baseball cap and he hasn't shaved, but he's not in disguise. He might not have yet met Carpathia personally, but he had an interview scheduled with him, and he knows that Carpathia had read about the car bombing -- a story likely accompanied by a photograph of Buck. Carpathia would have been interested in that story because of their mutual friendship with Rosenzweig, but also -- and this gets glossed over due to its not making a whole lot of sense -- because he has been working closely with the same cabal of international bankers that arranged the car bombing. Photographs of the intended victim are usually a part of the process of having somebody killed. So I don't see why Buck should be "stunned" that Carpathia recognizes him, or for that matter why Carpathia should decide to say his name here as though he were a talent-show magician pulling a rabbit from a hat.

But back to the "atmospheric phenomenon":

"Dr. Rosenzweig believes that some confluence of electromagnetism in the atmosphere, combined with as yet unknown or unexplained atomic ionization from the nuclear power and weaponry throughout the world, could have been ignited or triggered -- perhaps by a natural cause like lightning, or even by an intelligent life-form that discovered this possibility before we did -- and caused this instant action throughout the world."

"Sort of like someone striking a match in a room full of gasoline vapors?" a journalist suggested.

Carpathia nodded thoughtfully.

Someone asks why such a global atmospheric phenomenon would only have affected some people and not others:

"At this point [Rosenzweig et. al.] are postulating that certain people's levels of electricity made them more likely to be affected. That would account for all the children and babies and even fetal material that vanished. Their electromagnetism was not developed to the point where it could resist whatever happened."

You know, because it's well-known that children have only a fraction of the "electromagnetism" of a fully developed adult.

What?

Look, I'm willing to play along and to suspend disbelief for the sketchiest and most fantastic of premises -- wormhole, flux capacitor, tachyons, string theory, dark matter, Hellmouth, red Kryptonite, Dharma initiative. Whatever, I'm game. But it seems L&J have never seen an episode of Star Trek, never read a comic book or even an issue of Weekly World News. They use "electromagnetism" the way B movies in the 1950s used radioactivity -- as though it were an arcane and mysterious, almost magical thing that could be invoked to justify anything.

I'm out of my field here. People with more knowledge of the conventions of this kind of writing -- someone like the Nielsen Haydens or John Rogers or, I hope, some of our regular commenters here -- could probably tell you more precisely why and how Nicolae's theory fails as plausible science fiction. But it does fail.

That failure further diminishes our respect for Carpathia, and for Buck, and for the entire assembled press corps, all of whom simply smile and nod, cheerfully accepting as an explanation that the unexplained phenomenon is due to some "as yet unknown or unexplained" phenomenon.

Ah, yes, of course. That explains it.

Comments

[the opoponax]

The Official Story would have emerged within the first day or two

probably even earlier than that.

i remember the morning of September 11, 2001, fleeing from lower manhattan (sob sob weep weep put it in the notebook). i was in a group of people, all strangers, and without any access to media or personal frame of reference for what was happening, we were all extremely disoriented about what on earth was going on. we knew that at least one plane had hit at least one tower of the World Trade Center, but we had no idea what that might mean. was it an accident? was it some weird suicide thing writ large (pilot goes insane, rams building)? was it a problem with the air traffic control at JFK? not to mention that there were others in our group who could have sworn that there was more, or that other things were also going on, or that the towers blew up and it just LOOKED like a plane hit them, or whatever. we were all in shock, and some really bizarre ideas were put forth.

a few hours later i got home and saw the news. there was ALREADY an "official line" on what had happened -- we had been attacked by suicide bomber terrorists who were probably affiliated with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda group, and this was an act of war. The obvious response would be to bomb Afghanistan, the country that harbored bin Laden.

this was all within two hours of the crashes. both towers hadn't even fallen yet. i remember going to the supermarket to stock up on staples a little later, and the entire supermarket was in discussion of this. whether Bush and/or Powell had gotten memos about this in the past few weeks. whether anything else would happen. whether and when we would actually go to war in Afghanistan. how we would find bin Laden and permanently disable Al Qaeda and the Taliban. i remember later that afternoon taking a walk in my neighborhood park contemplating the idea of war against the Taliban. being in shock as i was, i wondered if i would be wearing a burqa in a year's time.

the sun had not set on the smoldering embers of the WTC yet as all this was taking place.

so yeah, i find it hard to believe that, a week later, a major world figure would be all "oh, i dunno, i've heard some people have theories..."

[Mouse]

Wait isn't Rozenweig a botantist? The one who developed the magical fertilizer? Why would they have a botanist be researching stuff like electromagneticism or radiation, etc.? Do L&J think that just because you are a scientist, you possess complete and total knowledge on any scientific discipline under the sun?

[JS Bangs]

Anya was right. Bunnies caused the rapture.

[A.Kennedy]

There's nothing to explain about the electromagnetism... it's just so much nonsense. Seriously nonsense -- not just in the sense of being wrong, but in the sense that the word is so misused as to have no meaning in this context.

Electromagnetism is the phenomena that causes like charges to repel and opposite charges to attract. The "magnetism" part is just the effect of including special relativity in the "electro" part. It's amazing, it's a miracle; but it has nothing to do with what they're talking about here.

[Jos]

Do L&J think that just because you are a scientist, you possess complete and total knowledge on any scientific discipline under the sun?

I'd like to say that they can't possibly be that stupid, but...

Anyways, my guess is that with Rosenzweig they already have their warpcore engineer and they don't need anyone else to spout the technobabble. After all, having only one character produce all the technobabble means that you don't have to introduce a whole new character and can get on with the important things. Like Buck flirting with Chloe or something.

[Bugmaster]

"...spreading Happiness... Joy... And MORE BUNNIES throughout the land."

[the opoponax]

@ Mouse:

that was my thought exactly when i originally read this part of the book.

i was like, ok, is Rosenzweig, like, the only scientist on the face of the planet? not to mention, why would they get some random botanist (Nobel laureate though he may be) to head up such a group, and not someone from another field? personally my first choice to head any sort of team that might be able to approach the answers to these questions would be either a statesman/diplomat type person, a really great administrator, or an academic in a social sciences field, someone who could mediate between a lot of different approaches and make some kind of sense of all the different variables. or maybe Oprah. Oprah could definitely get to the bottom of this. but i wouldn't pick a botanist, no matter how well loved.

[Bugmaster]

I'm not really surprised by the electromagnetism-Rapture connection. Many people nowadays still believe that magnets are magical, and electromagnets doubly so. Witness the profit made by purveyors of healing magnetic in-soles, or the cellphone/general RF phobia. Keep in mind that, without proper knowledge of some basic math and physics, it really is impossible to distinguish electromagnetism from The Force or chi or whatever -- for anyone, not just LH&J. They're all energies, right ?

[Ken]

But it seems L&J have never seen an episode of Star Trek, never read a comic book or even an issue of Weekly World News. They use "electromagnetism" the way B movies in the 1950s used radioactivity -- as though it were an arcane and mysterious, almost magical thing that could be invoked to justify anything.

That's what happens when you try to write SF (or something bordering on SF) when the only science you're interested in is Young Earth Creation Science.

[chaos_engineer]

Since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 and the Soviet Union first detonated its own devices September 23, 1949, the world has been at risk of nuclear holocaust.

Thinking about the tragic disappearances upset Nick so much that his immense powers of recollection faltered. He found himself unable to remember the dates or even the month when the A-bombs were dropped on Japan.

[Andrea]

Electromagnetism. Right. There's a joke about the fluoridation of our precious bodily fluids in here somewhere, I know it.

Besides, given L&J's preoccupations they probably would've been much more successful if only they'd come up with a solution involving telephones...

[Sarah Dylan Breuer]

Thank you for a perfect title and accompanying video clip for the post. LB would be *much* better if it had jazz hands. Can *Left Behind: The Musical* be far off, or is it already in development?

[Jesurgislac]

The Black Rabbit of Inle stole your babies!

That failure further diminishes our respect for Carpathia, and for Buck, and for the entire assembled press corps, all of whom simply smile and nod, cheerfully accepting as an explanation that the unexplained phenomenon is due to some "as yet unknown or unexplained" phenomenon.

It's the mindwhammy. Carpathia managed to convince them that reciting a list of countries in alphabetical order was the most exciting speech they'd ever heard, so he can convince them that technobabble out of a rejected script for Star Trek is a "reasonable explanation". Also, he can get them to forget all the theories they've been coming up with over the past week.

I want to be a fly on the wall as each of these reporters is summoned to the editor of their section of the newspaper or magazine, who wants to know

"So then he said this? And then he outlined his theory? And you're presenting him as a consumnate politician?"

Alternatively, how these reporters will feel when copyeditors who were not in the Presence of the Anti-Redford shred their loving-crafted descriptions of his eloquence and good looks in favor of pointing out that the man is clearly a moron.

[A. Kennedy]

The Opoponax,

I think that this speaks to L & J's attitude toward science... they can't conceive of someone who is a scientist and supportive of belief... to them, science is just a way to obfuscate divine miracles by "explaining them away" with hand waving. Thus, since science is all a big con anyway it doesn't matter whether any given scientist is a specialist or not.

Contrast that with their idolisation of technology... very odd.

[histrogeek]

The reason why the eletromagnetism explanation doesn't hold up as a fictional device is that too many people have a reasonable understanding of it. Arcane magic, demonology, radiation, mutations, etc. work as plot devices because the number of people who have any understanding of them is very small. So the reader either relies on the author to have his/her facts straight or chalks any mistakes up to the author's creative license and/or ignorance. Electromagnetism is insanely commonly understood, whatever quack cures people buy (that has more to do with desparate hope and ignorance of human biology). Everyone understands that invisible, silent lightening bolts don't store up and zap millions of people all at once.
Also since the authors have made no effort to show panic, fear, or confusion relating to the Rapture. If they did, Carpathia's (or Uralsov or whatever) explanation might at least sound like an explanation people would latch onto no matter how insane it sounds to an impartial observer.
And what the hell was all that stuff about nukes? It makes no sense even by the Dead Sea low standards of the series. I suppose it's just a way to make anti-nuclear war people into puppets of the Anti-Christ.

[The Disgruntled Chemist]

There's nothing to explain about the electromagnetism... it's just so much nonsense. Seriously nonsense -- not just in the sense of being wrong, but in the sense that the word is so misused as to have no meaning in this context.

Um, yeah. The sentence "Their electromagnetism was not developed to the point where it could resist whatever happened" is total nonsense to anyone who's ever even heard the word 'electromagnetism' used in its correct context. Electromagnetism actually refers to the physics of the electromagnetic field, or the magnetic field that's produced in response to a moving electric charge. It's simply wrong to say that people have 'electromagnetism' in their bodies; it's kind of analogous to saying that you have 'oncology' in your body when you are suffering from a tumor. One would think that the world's greatest (only?) scientist would have advised Carpathia in slightly more correct language.

I get the very strong impression from this passage that LaHaye and Jenkins get all their scientific knowledge from late-night infomercials for Q-Link pendants.

[A. Kennedy]

I hesitate to admit that I know why Nicolae Carpet-man is talking about nuclear weapons. Later in the series, he will confiscate all nuclear and conventional weapons from all the countries in the world (to avoid future wars and disappearances), and then, surprisingly, use them to gain personal power (but only by setting off explosions and claiming his opponents did it).

[wintermute]

> Wait isn't Rozenweig a botantist? The one who developed the magical fertilizer? Why would they have a botanist be researching stuff like electromagneticism or radiation, etc.? Do L&J think that just because you are a scientist, you possess complete and total knowledge on any scientific discipline under the sun?

Yes. This is literally what they think. If they ever detailed any of this at all, I'll wager a bottle of good Scotch that Rosenweig won a Nobel Prize for Science (as opposed to Chemistry, or Biology, or something); and that he got a degree in Science from Scienticious University, Sciencetown.

No-one in the world of LB is a quantum chromodynamicist, or an evolutionary developmental biologist, or a sauropalæontologist, or any of the millions of specialisations that we see in the sciences. No-one devotes their lives to studying Canadian mosses, or Late Ordovician lava flows, or the gravitational effects of blue-giants...

There is just one monolithic field of study, and every scientists is a Renascence Man.

[The Disgruntled Chemist]

"Dr. Rosenzweig believes that some confluence of electromagnetism in the atmosphere, combined with as yet unknown or unexplained atomic ionization from the nuclear power and weaponry throughout the world, could have been ignited or triggered -- perhaps by a natural cause like lightning, or even by an intelligent life-form that discovered this possibility before we did -- and caused this instant action throughout the world."

"Sort of like someone striking a match in a room full of gasoline vapors?" a journalist suggested.

Carpathia nodded thoughtfully.

That passage made me laugh out loud no less than three times. This just might be the greatest comedy book ever!

Wait. What?

[the opoponax]

Everyone understands that invisible, silent lightening bolts don't store up and zap millions of people all at once.

and even if there was, wouldn't you see the occasional charred fragment of bone, a half-molten dental fillings, etc? wouldn't there have been a flash, a puff of smoke, a burnt smell in the air? and how does that jibe with the fact that their clothes, etc, were left behind, untouched? wouldn't it leave singe marks on the seats of the plane? wouldn't houses catch fire, like say if the person was standing too close to the curtains or something?

[A. Kennedy]

There is just one monolithic field of study, and every scientists is a Renascence Man.

You can spell "Quantum Chromodyanicist" just fine, but "renaissance" is right out?

[A. Kennedy]

There is just one monolithic field of study, and every scientists is a Renascence Man.

You can spell "Quantum Chromodynamicist" just fine, but "renaissance" is right out?

[A. Kennedy]

Opoponax, the reader is supposed to be asking the same questions you are. L&J want to make you "realise" that science is just all so much smoke and mirrors, and that Nicky's explanation is just "scientific superstition."

[Jacob Davies]

Mind you, I have a pretty decent understanding of electromagnetism & physics in generally and I still find magnets intuitively magical. Gravity? Gravity, my monkey-brain understands. But certain metal things being attracted sideways or upwards to other metal things? MONKEY NOT UNDERSTAND.

The "Or should I say - Mr. CAMERON WILLIAMS!" line is very Scooby-Doo. I like to think of Messrs. LaHaye & Jenkins taking their inspiration from the best.

Not much to add to what Fred has to say about the lack of plausible explanations for the disappearances, but the inertness of the press corp in reaction (once you assume the incuriosity of the rest of the world) doesn't seem so implausible when you look at the way (some) reporters will happily package whatever information the White House puts out as "news" without doing any kind of fact-checking. Hey, they're just here to REPORT - not everyone has time to check the WH press-release web page, you know! They're just extending the same courtesy to, um, some obscure tinpot Eastern European politician nobody would ever have heard of or care about. OK, I guess we're back to implausibility again.

[Jesurgislac]

the opoponax: wouldn't houses catch fire, like say if the person was standing too close to the curtains or something?

Of course! Some houses did catch fire, and it certainly couldn't have been because RTC were smoking.

[the opoponax]

@ A. Kennedy:

oh, right. sorry. forgot for a moment.

@ Jesu:

but what about forest fires? i mean, what if an RTC was standing under a tree smoking a cig... wait, no, i mean...

*my brain hurts*

[A. Kennedy, the italics monster]

Oh, Jacob, did you ever just make a big mistake. Magnetism as a relativistic effect is a big hobby horse for me. Ready for a lecture? No? Tough.

Magnetism as a separate force does not exist. Magnetism is simply a relativistic effect of the electric force. You know the like charges repel and opposite charges attract, yes? Well, when charges are moving relative to the observer, the "charge densities" (a term I just made up but I hope you'll understand in context) are lorentz-contracted in such a way that the moving charges appear denser, which affects the electrostatic attraction.

Look, there's a better description of this here.

[the opoponax]

"charge densities" (a term I just made up but I hope you'll understand in context) are lorentz-contracted in such a way that the moving charges appear denser, which affects the electrostatic attraction.

yeah, my brain really hurts.

[Jacob Davies]

Also, given that atheists are disproportionately represented among scientists, seems like there would be plenty of people around competent to look for a physical theory for the disappearances.

Hard to imagine Caltech, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT - mostly untouched by rapturitis - not being a hive of activity studying the largest, weirdest event of all time, not to mention, oh let's just say every other university on the planet. I mean, I'm sure the news media wouldn't bother to ask any scientists about it, but one or two of them might call up Global Weekly of their own accord, right?

[A. Kennedy]

Opoponax,

Remember that L&J style "Christians" (how uncharitable of me... I've been using the internet too much today) are supposed to hate the environment. So forest fires were obviously caused by RTCs trying to bring on the end times before they were raptured.

[A. Kennedy]

Also, given that atheists are disproportionately represented among scientists, seems like there would be plenty of people around competent to look for a physical theory for the disappearances.

Um... really? I was a working scientist for a long time, I'm a believer, and most people I knew were believers of one kind or another. Do you have numbers to back this up?

[Joey Jo Jo Shoobadoo]

"The main resistance to such religious theories wouldn't be from secular/atheist scientists, but from the insurance industry, which could not afford a billion simultaneous claims being classified as "acts of God" and therefore legitimate."

Uh, I might have misunderstood the "act of God" part of my insurance contract, but I thought those were the ones the insurance companies explicitly refused to cover. So they'd be jumping on the "God did it" explanation with as many feet as they could find.

[Jacob Davies]

This study puts the number of natural scientists "not believing in God" at 38% (which seems low to me, although I suspect a lot of theists & agnostics among the non-atheist majority). That compares to an overall rate of atheism in the population of about 10%. But those statistics are compatible both with your experience that "most" scientists were one or another sort of believer, and my guess that atheists are disproportionately represented amongst scientists.

[A. Kennedy]

Ah, you are correct. My apologies. I guess it was just my personal experience, after all.

[Bugmaster]

@A. Kennedy:

Do you have numbers to back this up?

I recall seeing these statistics in Scientific American, quite a long time ago; they indicated that as education goes up, religiosity goes down. I wasn't able to find this poll right now (if anyone provides a link, I'd be grateful); but, Wikipedia links to the Scientific American issue with a similar study in it (I'm not sure if it's the same one).

[Bugmaster]

Cool, Jacob Davies beat me to it.

[ako]

Yeesh, their technobabble is at least half a century out of date. Everyone these days knows it's tachyons. Or quantum.

Maybe all the missing people are suffering quantum decoherence?

[Jos]

Actually, come to think of it, electromagnetism would be a sufficiently technobabble explanation for the target audience (assuming the target audience consists of PMD fundies).

After all, they consider the Bible to be the One Big Book Of Truth with ALL The Answers. The Bible, I believe, has very little to say about electromagnetism so it either:
a) doesn't really exist and only the gullible believe in it
or
b) is a lie created by satanic scientists in order to further obfuscate the One Biblical Truth.

...

I do hope I'm very, very wrong when it comes to this hypothesis, though.

[Dean Booth]

Seems like any theory based on physical laws couldn't explain why non-human animals had not disappeared. Our body mass and chemistry are close enough to hundreds of other species to rule out any non-, um, anthropomorhic explanation.

[Jesurgislac]

Act of God: "in law, an accident caused by the operation of extraordinary natural force. The effect of ordinary natural causes (e.g., that rain will leak through a defective roof) may be foreseen and avoided by the exercise of human care; failure to take the necessary precautions constitutes negligence, and the party injured in the accident may be entitled to damages. An act of God, however, is so extraordinary and devoid of human agency that reasonable care would not avoid the consequences; hence, the injured party has no right to damages."

From a US "Legal Encyclopedia": "An event that directly and exclusively results from the occurrence of natural causes that could not have been prevented by the exercise of foresight or caution; an inevitable accident. Courts have recognized various events as acts of God—tornadoes, earthquakes, death, extraordinarily high tides, violent winds, and floods. Many insurance policies for property damage exclude from their protection damage caused by acts of God."

There is not, in fact, in law any provision for events that are literally "Acts of God". But, given that several years ago in the LB universe an Act of God saved the world from WWIII, I am certain that the legal advisors of all major insurance companies have now added to the insurance contracts that Act of God, besides the usual legal meaning, also means an actual Act of God.

But the insurance question would be yet another question occupying the minds of an awful lot of people (especially surviving Republican congresspeeps with, er, political interest in insurance companies) - how to define the Event so that all the insurance companies that are major political donors don't go bankrupt?

[the opoponax]

as education goes up, religiosity goes down

i would respond that A) it's not only scientists who are educated, and B) atheism isn't the only way to be "not religious".

[Rob H.]

Carpathia glanced briefly at his name tag and then into his eyes. "I do not want to be premature, Mr. Oreskovich," he said. Several members of the press snickered, but Carpathia never lost pace. "Or I should say, 'Mr. Cameron Williams of Global Weekly.'" This elicited amused applause throughout the room. Buck was stunned.

"I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you meddling Romanian!"

[Bugmaster]

i would respond that A) it's not only scientists who are educated...

True, but scientists are highly educated by necessity. Thus, if education reduces religiosity, it follows that the proportion of religious people among scientists would be smaller than the proportion of religious people among the general population.

and B) atheism isn't the only way to be "not religious".

What are some of the other ways ?

[bc]

I don't understand why the alien abductions theory isn't more acceptable. After all, the supermarket tabloids have had stories on alien abductions for decades and "Men in Black" said they used the supermarket tabloids to keep track of what was happening in the alien world - so there would be some familiarity with it, especially in US which is L/J's world. I can see the Washington Post's crack reporter - maybe Dana Priest - breaking the news that aliens were responsible and maybe having some eyewitness to an abduction somewhere. After all, there are eyewitnesses to alien abductions now! At least, if I were the Mountain Man, that's the way I would go. Of course, I don't understand electromagnetism, but the supermarket tabloids have yet to have an article about anyone being disappeared by electromagnetism. Also, having an alien as an enemy would be one way to unite the world - it's Planet Earth vs whoever. I mean, if we could use September 11 to go to Afghanistan and Iraq, and all the other stuff we've done in response, just think how we could set up a one-world government to meet the threat from another planet.

[the opoponax]

What are some of the other ways?

well, for one thing, you have all the different varieties of agnostics. you have people who are just plain old secular and don't really care either way or think very much about it. you have the lapsed types -- people who theoretically are still members of a faith, but who haven't observed their religion in years and have no plans to. you have people who are "spiritual", who believe in god and stuff but have not found any particular religion that suits them.

you also have people, like myself, who are theists, and who have a chosen faith, but wouldn't consider themselves overly religious or devout. i take an interest in spiritual matters. i celebrate certain holidays. i think about god & stuff pretty often. but i'm not "religious" in the way that, say, someone who is active in a church community is religious. i grew up in a religious Christian family -- church every Sunday, Bible School in the summer, youth group mission trips, singing in the choir and later being an altar server. i was expected to be confirmed, to get married by a minister in a church, etc. though that didn't/won't happen now. as an adult, while i believe in god (and believe in a specific religious path), i'm not "religious" in that way.

as for the scientist stuff, you're right.

[Jacob Davies]

Alien abductions would be my sincere guess too, I think. Or rather, given the distribution of who was taken, I would guess that it was the act of an alien (or alien species) with a rather juvenile sense of humour who's been posing as God for the last couple of thousand years, and thinks this is the best practical joke of all time.

[Bugmaster]

@the opoponax:

You're right about being religious (though I haven't seen a real Huxley-style agnostic in years). However, the poll I've seen specifically listed "non-practicing theist" and "atheist" as some of the categories, and the trend still holds: higher education correlates with lower inicidence of theism, as well as lower levels of religious observance (which, as you correctly point out, does not necessarily imply atheism).

[Bugmaster]

...it was the act of an alien (or alien species) with a rather juvenile sense of humour who's been posing as God for the last couple of thousand years...

I knew it ! It was the Umgah all along ! Now where are they hiding that Umgah Caster...

[LL]

Props: "l wager a bottle of good Scotch that Rosenweig won a Nobel Prize for Science (as opposed to Chemistry, or Biology, or something); and that he got a degree in Science from Scienticious University, Sciencetown." - hee hee. Is Sciencetown anywhere near Springfield? Or maybe Smallville? Or Pleasantville?

and

"Anya was right. Bunnies caused the rapture." - Man, that musical episode of Buffy was awesome, and Anya's fear of bunnies always cracked me up.

[ako]

you also have people, like myself, who are theists, and who have a chosen faith, but wouldn't consider themselves overly religious or devout.

I think this may be one of those meanings versus connotations, things. To me, religious means someone who practices a religion. Believing in, and worshipping, a god would pretty well fit the bill. So when you say you're not religious, it's hard to square it with what I mean by the term, and indeed with the Mirriam-Webster defintion (relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity).

However, the word evidently has connotations to you of a certain type of person, or a certain approach to life that you don't want to be described as. I'm having a hard time getting the picture from your examples (Christians? People who fit the church's life plan? The people society approves of?) I can understand not wanting to take on a label with negative associatons, or one that doesn't seem to fit, but I think you're redefining the word towards what it means to you, not what it means in a general sense.