"And people don't worry that they're in Hell instead?"

"No one goes to Hell until they reach the age of reason. A just God wouldn't put a baby who didn't even have time to do anything into Hell."

"...a just God wouldn't curse a planet with infertility. How do people use that reasoning?"

"When something good happens, it's because God is just and loves us. When something bad happens, it's because God has a plan and he works in mysterious ways."

Sadrin makes a face.

"I know! It's totally unfalsifiable!"

"It's blatantly so. How many people have noticed this?"

"Most of Europe is atheist, so is China. I think in Scandinavia people are more likely to believe in fairies than God-- I don't know what 'fairies' is translating as-- Australia and Canada and Cascadia are pretty atheist too. My guess is that maybe like half of the world doesn't have a religion? China is really big."

"Uh, 'fairies' is translating as a species from a fantasy novel that lives under couches and cleans in exchange for fruit. Why didn't anyone but you mention this?"

"Close enough. Because they think God exists, and because if you tell the aliens that God doesn't exist in front of an Eye you are going to disappear. Atheism isn't illegal exactly but the Eyes aren't going to put up with us messing up first contact."

"But they didn't even mention that other people don't think so! When I was explaining pollution, I mentioned hyposensitives and they're mentally ill!"

"I guess you didn't ask enough questions about Cascadia? They mentioned Catholics and Muslims, I'm pretty sure..."

"But they just said they were wrong about God, not -" She trails off.

"Gilead lies to people a lot to get them to believe. Our entire school system is full of lies about everything-- history and science and literature and, and math--"

"Math???"

"We don't teach about infinities because only God is infinite."

"How do the people setting this up explain to themselves why they have to lie about things?"

"I, uh, don't really want to go into presuppositionalism-- for one thing it's really dumb-- but they don't think they're lying."

"I'm a little worried this is - above my pay grade - I need to go to Governor Avalor or at least Secretary Bar with it -"

"You can bring them in if you want to, the only reason I started with you was because you were the Amentan I had access to."

"Okay. Do you know, uh, anyone else we should be talking to on your end...?"

"There's a couple of other atheists I know who write science fiction, but I'm not sure that's what you mean? Probably you should meet some Cascadians or Europeans or Canadians or something but I have no idea how to get you in touch with their embassies, I'm just an SF writer..."

"And I don't think we can move the door."

"And we can't understand each others' languages outside of here anyway. --You do know the Gileadites want to convert you, right?"

"Avalor told me they were speculating that, uh, Amentan theologians were discovering how God wanted us to worship him?"