Free Jumpers by Tom Stoppard Page B

atheism.
    ARCHIE : It’s always been a mystery to me why religious faith and atheism should be thought of as opposing attitudes.
    GEORGE : Always?
    ARCHIE : It just occurred to me.
    GEORGE : It occurred to you that belief in God and the conviction that God doesn’t exist amount to much the same thing?
    ARCHIE : It gains from careful phrasing. Religious faith and atheism differ mainly about God; about Man they are in accord: Man is the highest form of life, he has duties he has rights, etcetera, and it is usually better to be kind than cruel. Even if there is some inscrutable divinity behind it all, our condition for good or ill is apparently determined by our choice of actions, and choosing seems to be a genuine human possibility. Indeed, it is surely religious zeal rather than atheism which is historically notorious in the fortunes of mankind.
    GEORGE : I’m not at all sure that the God of religious observance is the object of my faith. Do you suppose it would be presumptuous to coin a deity?
    ARCHIE : I don’t see the point. If he caught on, you’d kill for him, too. (
Suddenly remembering
.) Ah!—I knew there was something!—McFee’s dead.
    GEORGE : What?!!
    ARCHIE : Shot himself this morning, in the park, in a plastic bag.
    GEORGE : My God! Why?
    ARCHIE : It’s hard to say. He was always tidy.
    GEORGE : But to shoot himself…
    ARCHIE : Oh, he could be very violent, you know… In fact we had a furious row last night—perhaps the Inspector had asked you about that…?
    GEORGE : No…
    ARCHIE : It was a purely trivial matter. He took offence at my description of Edinburgh as the Reykjavik of the South.
( GEORGE
is not listening
.)
    GEORGE :… Where did he find the despair…? I thought the whole
point
of denying the Absolute was to reduce the scale, instantly, to the inconsequential behaviour of inconsequential animals; that nothing could ever be that important…
    ARCHIE : Including, I suppose, death…. It’s an interesting view of atheism, as a sort of
crutch
for those who can’t bear the reality of God…
    GEORGE (
still away
): I wonder if McFee was afraid of death?
And if he was, what was it that he would have been afraid of: surely not the chemical change in the material that was his body. I suppose he would have said, as so many do, that it is only the dying he feared, yes, the physical process of giving out. But it’s not the dying with me—one knows about pain. It’s
death
that I’m afraid of. (
Pause
.)
    ARCHIE : Incidentally, since his paper has of course been circulated to everyone, it must remain the basis of the symposium.
    GEORGE : Yes, indeed, I have spent weeks preparing my commentary on it.
    ARCHIE : We shall begin with a two-minute silence. That will give me a chance to prepare mine.
    GEORGE : You will be replying, Vice-Chancellor?
    ARCHIE : At such short notice I don’t see who else could stand in. I’ll relinquish the chair, of course, and we’ll get a new chairman, someone of good standing; he won’t have to know much philosophy. Just enough for a tribute to Duncan.
    GEORGE : Poor Duncan… I like to think he’ll be there in spirit.
    ARCHIE : If only to make sure the materialistic argument is properly represented.
    DOTTY (
off
): Darling!
(
Both men respond automatically, and both halt and look at each other
.)

    GEORGE : How do I know? You’re the doctor.
    ARCHIE : That’s true.
( ARCHIE
moves out of the Study
, GEORGE
with him; into the Hall
.)
I naturally try to get her to open up, but one can’t assume she tells me everything, or even that it’s the truth.
    GEORGE : Well, I don’t know what’s the matter with her. She’s like a cat on hot bricks, and doesn’t emerge from her room. All she says is, she’s all right in bed.
    ARCHIE : Yes, well there’s something in that.
    GEORGE (
restraining his going; edgily
): What exactly do you do in