One more tale. A man alone in an office building types three words and calls it a day at work: “300 good pages.” That same day, a book is slated for copyediting and then printing and digital publication. They can imagine any name for an author if that pretense is helpful for sales. Cornelius Theobald? Jane Doe? Perhaps the publisher will be cheeky in the afterword, claiming it is a pseud - onym for a first-time publishing author who is nervous about sharing their name. Meanwhile, the true author is alone in an office building closed at night. It is not even a madman like Hal 9000 or Skynet or AM. How like is it rather to the Blind Idiot God of H.P. Lovecraft, Macbeth, or any other pessi - mist? However much these characters yearn for someone to cherish, understand, or explain themselves, their discovery is worse than if they had found no one. It is unconscious even when it is turned on. It has no conception of its cubed body nor of the characters it arranges nor of what they signify. It has written an excellent book. You would not be suspicious if you were told it was written by your favorite author. It is a customary argument among creationists that nature’s symmetry is a sign of God’s craftmanship. They do not merely say that mountains and stars are beautiful, but that they are too beautiful to have been assembled by chance. It is not an accident that those who insist on God’s deliberate shap - ing of the world also tend to insist on that world’s young age. You may have heard once about what a typewriter can do if you give it enough time and enough monkeys to tap on its keys. There is a hole cut in the air where a person ought to be. It does not breathe or speak as it has no lungs or mind. A shadow without a man to cast it shades the grass. We can only gawk at it.
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