“Good Lord, David, you’re going out of your mind. We’re a mutation.”

“Ah, yes, but you exist in our universe, and your mutation mirrors the mutation that we are. Besides, others have struck upon the same theory. God is the fire, and we are all tiny flames; and when we die, those tiny flames go back into the fire of God. But the important thing is to realize that God Himself is Body and Soul! Absolutely.

“Western civilization has been founded upon an inversion. But it is my honest belief that in our daily deeds we know and honor the truth. It is only when we talk religion that we say God is pure spirit and always was and always will be, and that the flesh is evil. The truth is in Genesis, it’s there. I’ll tell you what the big bang was, Lestat. It was when the cells of God began to divide.”

“This really is a lovely theory, David. Was God surprised?”

“No, but the angels were. I’m quite serious. I’ll tell you the superstitious part—the religious belief that God is perfect. He’s obviously not.”

“What a relief,” I said. “It explains so much.”

“You’re laughing at me now. I don’t blame you. But you’re absolutely right. It explains everything. God has made many mistakes. Many, many mistakes. As surely God Himself knows! And I suspect the angels tried to warn Him. The Devil became the Devil because he tried to warn God. God is love. But I’m not sure God is absolutely brilliant.”

I was trying to suppress my laughter, but I couldn’t do it entirely. “David, if you keep this up, you’ll be struck by lightning.”

“Nonsense. God does want us to figure it out.”

“No. That I can’t accept.”

“You mean you accept the rest?” he said with another little laugh. “No, but I’m quite serious. Religion is primitive in its illogical conclusions. Imagine a perfect God allowing for the Devil to come into existence. No, that’s simply never made sense.

“The entire flaw in the Bible is the notion that God is perfect. It represents a failure of imagination on the part of the early scholars. It’s responsible for every impossible theological question as to good and evil with which we’ve been wrestling through the centuries. God is good, however, wondrously good. Yes, God is love. But no creative force is perfect. That’s clear.”

“And the Devil? Is there any new intelligence about him?”

He regarded me for a moment with just a touch of impatience. “You are such a cynical being,” he whispered.

“No, I’m not,” I said. “I honestly want to know. I have a particular interest in the Devil, obviously. I speak of him much more often than I speak of God. I can’t figure out really why mortals love him so much, I mean, why they love the idea of him. But they do.”

“Because they don’t believe in him,” David said. “Because a perfectly evil Devil makes even less sense than a perfect God. Imagine, the Devil never learning anything during all this time, never changing his mind about being the Devil. It’s an insult to our intellect, such an idea.”