Sunday, December 19, 2010

Works Cited

This God embodied a single idea (he had no other wishes or concerns): he forbade extramarital sex. He was therefore a rather comical God, but let's not laugh at Alice for that. Of the Ten Commandments Moses gave to the people, fully nine didn't endanger her soul at all; she didn't feel like killing or not honoring her father, or coveting her neighbor's wife; only one commandment she felt to be not self-evident and therefore posed a genuine challenge: the famous seventh, which forbids fornication. In order to practice, show, and prove her religious faith, she had to devote her entire attention to this single commandment. And so out of a vague, diffuse, and abstract God, she created a God who was specific, comprehensible, and concrete: God Antifornicator.

Milan Kundera, Eduard and God