Origin

“For the Romans,” Langdon narrated, “volcanoes were believed to be the home of Vulcan—blacksmith to the gods—who worked in a giant forge beneath the mountain, causing flames to spew out of his chimney.”

Langdon smelled a passing whiff of sulfur, and was amazed at how ingeniously Edmond had transformed Langdon’s lecture into a multisensory experience.

The rumbling of the volcano abruptly stopped. In the silence, crickets began chirping again, and a warm grassy breeze blew across the meadow.

“The ancients invented countless gods,” Langdon’s voice explained, “to explain not only the mysteries of their planet, but also the mysteries of their own bodies.”

Overhead, the twinkling constellations of stars reappeared, now superimposed with line drawings of the various gods they represented.

“Infertility was caused by falling out of favor with the goddess Juno. Love was the result of being targeted by Eros. Epidemics were explained as a punishment sent by Apollo.”

New constellations now lit up along with images of new gods.

“If you’ve read my books,” Langdon’s voice continued, “you will have heard me use the term ‘God of the Gaps.’ That is to say, when the ancients experienced gaps in their understanding of the world around them, they filled those gaps with God.”

The sky filled now with a massive collage of paintings and statues depicting dozens of ancient deities.

“Countless gods filled countless gaps,” Langdon said. “And yet, over the centuries, scientific knowledge increased.” A collage of mathematical and technical symbols flooded the sky overhead. “As the gaps in our understanding of the natural world gradually disappeared, our pantheon of gods began to shrink.”

On the ceiling, the image of Poseidon came to the forefront.

“For example, when we learned that the tides were caused by lunar cycles, Poseidon was no longer necessary, and we banished him as a foolish myth of an unenlightened time.”

The image of Poseidon evaporated in a puff of smoke.

“As you know, the same fate befell all the gods—dying off, one by one, as they outlived their relevance to our evolving intellects.”

Overhead, the images of gods began twinkling out, one by one—gods of thunder, earthquakes, plagues, and on and on.

As the number of images dwindled, Langdon added, “But make no mistake about it. These gods did not ‘go gentle into that good night’; it is a messy process for a culture to abandon its deities. Spiritual beliefs are etched deeply on our psyches at a young age by those we love and trust most—our parents, our teachers, our religious leaders. Therefore, any religious shifts occur over generations, and not without great angst, and often bloodshed.”

The sound of clattering swords and shouting now accompanied the gradual disappearance of the gods, whose images winked out one by one. Finally, the image of a single god remained—an iconic wizened face with a flowing white beard.

“Zeus …,” Langdon declared, his voice powerful. “The god of all gods. The most feared and revered of all the pagan deities. Zeus, more than any other god, resisted his own extinction, mounting a violent battle against the dying of his own light, precisely as had the earlier gods Zeus had replaced.”

On the ceiling flashed images of Stonehenge, the Sumerian cuneiform tablets, and the Great Pyramids of Egypt. Then Zeus’s bust returned.

“Zeus’s followers were so resistant to giving up on their god that the conquering faith of Christianity had no choice but to adopt the face of Zeus as the face of their new God.”

On the ceiling, the bearded bust of Zeus dissolved seamlessly into a fresco of an identical bearded face—that of the Christian God as depicted in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

“Today, we no longer believe in stories like those about Zeus—a boy raised by a goat and given power by one-eyed creatures called Cyclopes. For us, with the benefit of modern thinking, these tales have all been classified as mythology—quaint fictional stories that give us an entertaining glimpse into our superstitious past.”

The ceiling now showed a photo of a dusty library shelf, where leather-bound tomes on ancient mythology languished in the dark beside books on nature worship, Baal, Inana, Osiris, and innumerable early theologies.

“Things are different now!” Langdon’s deep voice declared. “We are the Moderns.”

In the sky, fresh images appeared—crisp and sparkling photographs of space exploration … computer chips … a medical lab … a particle accelerator … soaring jets.

“We are an intellectually evolved and technologically skilled people. We do not believe in giant blacksmiths working under volcanoes or in gods that control the tides or seasons. We are nothing like our ancient ancestors.”

Or are we? Langdon whispered inwardly, mouthing along with the playback.