The Education of a Non-Believer-The Final Phase 143
bathhouse, that's fine with me. You go in with your
candle and find it. Then when you have it, you tell me
and we'll take the next step."
"You mean sort of practice how to do it?"
"Once you've got it, you'll be doing it automatically.
It's like anything else in life-exercise, practice, drilling.
This is the kind of practice your churches should have
been teaching you when you were a child ."
"Let me bring up an important point here, Rama. You
remember Moses talking to Jehovah and telling him in
the sixth commandment that having sex without mar
riage was a sin? According to that commandment, then,
we committed a sin against God last night and are both
going to hell for it, aren't we?"
"I guess that's what they teach you in this miserable
world of yours."
"Well, that's what I've learned from religion my whole
life. I don't know why you've chosen me to write this
book for you, I don't feel worthy of it. I'm a sinner."
"Well, what can I tell you?"
"Can you try to make some sense out of this paradox
that has created hang-ups about sex in lots of people on
this planet. Every religion in the world tells you that
fornication is bad."
"Okay, I guess what you're telling me is that if I speak
in the name of Jesus, the Christ, that if I speak in the
name of the same God of Moses, how is it we could have
sinned and yet be good in the eyes of God?"
"Good girl!" I said making fun of her.
"The ten commandments were given to Moses at a
time when Jewish people had been slaves for ages. When
those people came out of slavery, they were wild, like
animals, with no conception of law and order. They were
people without discipline, without cause. They had lost
all hope. Therefore, Jehovah, the cosmonaut, decided to
give them the ten commandments as a way of enforcing
some laws and respect. In no way does Moses write