A black cat in a dark cellar at midnight.

I’m sure most free thinkers have heard or read the quote attributed to Robert A. Heinlein, an awarding winning Science Fiction writer who, in one of his novels, said that theology is like looking for a black cat in a cellar at midnight where there is none.

As an aside, I never did understand how someone could get a university degree in Theology. That, to me, is like getting a degree in the study of unicorns. What is there to study?

Anyway I was curious about the quote and wanted to find the book that it came from. The quote is from Heinlein’s “JOB: A Comedy of Justice” written in 1984. Here is the entire paragraph containing that famous quote.

A character named “Jerry” is talking….

“Alec, I wish I could go along with you. It would be comforting, the world being what it is today. But I can’t see proof in the dreams of long-dead prophets; you can read anything into them. Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn’t there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything. Oh, my church too – but at least mine is honestly pantheistic. Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything – just give him time to rationalize it. Forgive me for being blunt.”

In addition to the quote most often cited another part of this particular paragraph that caught my attention. It was the part about the Trinity. Heinlein nailed it when saying that believing in a monotheism doesn’t make sense in light of the Trinity. No matter how you slice it it makes no sense or nonsense. But when does religion make sense?

Later in the book one other paragraph caught my eye.

Satan/Lucifer is talking….

“You never played marbles with Him (God). Alec, ‘justice’ is not a divine concept; it is a human illusion. The very basis of the Judeo-Christian code is injustice, the scapegoat system. The scapegoat sacrifice runs all through the Old Testament, then it reaches its height in the New Testament with the notion of the Martyred Redeemer. How can justice possibly be served by loading your sins on another? Whether it be a lamb having its throat cut ritually, or a Messiah nailed to a cross and ‘dying for your sins.’ Someone should tell all of Yahweh’s followers, Jews and Christians, that there is no such thing as a free lunch.”

“How can justice be served by loading your sins on another?” That is the crux of the Atonement (scapegoat) explanation that Christians try so hard to explain to non-believers. They themselves don’t understand that justice just doesn’t work that way. Only the guilty must pay the price for their sin or crime and not someone else. But again Christians don’t get it. They are too busy taking a bath in the blood of the crucified Jesus. Hallelujah!