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    Richard Dawkins, Antony Flew, and Mother Teresa Go to Heaven: Five Short Stories
    Richard Dawkins, Antony Flew, and Mother Teresa Go to Heaven: Five Short Stories
    Richard Dawkins, Antony Flew, and Mother Teresa Go to Heaven: Five Short Stories
    Ebook84 pages1 hour

    Richard Dawkins, Antony Flew, and Mother Teresa Go to Heaven: Five Short Stories

    By Anthony Horvath

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    About this ebook

    What sounds like the beginning of a very bad joke is actually the title of a collection of short stories by author Anthony Horvath. The stories draws from what is publicly known about three notable persons and places them in the presence of God. Antony Flew famously disputed the existence of such a being, Richard Dawkins- the only one of the three still living- infamously derides the notion, and Mother Teresa wondered at God's absence. In their stories they each get a chance to ask their questions and speak their minds.

    In 2012, two new stories are added in light of the reaction the series has attracted. The author of the stories gives himself the same treatment he gave to the other three people, one on the assumption that atheism is true, and one on the assumption that Christianity is true. An introduction is added and forewords to the two new stories are provided as well.

    Collection contents:

    2012 Introduction
    Readers Guides
    Mother Teresa Goes to Heaven
    Antony Flew Goes to Heaven
    Richard Dawkins Goes to Heaven
    Anthony Horvath Goes to 'Heaven'
    Anthony Horvath Goes to Heaven

    Excerpt from Mother Teresa Goes to Heaven:

    ---

    “It is not enough to save you.”
    Teresa heard the words with horror. She had heard the entire conversation and she trembled throughout it. Each utterance was burned into her mind so deeply that she could recount it accurately in her mind's eye, over and over. She remembered the man’s demeanor before he entered the room: cool, calm, confident. In the quiet conversation between those that remained in the waiting area, it was shared by all that surely this man, of all of them, would go on through the great wooden doors.
    ...
    She recalled the man’s interview in her mind. The chamber doors had been closed, and though it had been silent for a time, the interview escalated so that the whole of the grassy waiting hall could hear both sides of the conversation.
    “I have devoted my life to God!” the man was exclaiming in exasperation.
    “But not your whole life,” came the answer.
    “I have experienced God many times,” the man countered.
    “It is not enough to save you.”

    ------------

    Excerpt from Antony Flew Goes to Heaven

    ---
    When the man opened his eyes the first thing he beheld was a garden. It was the assault on his being that alerted him to this fact. His sensory scouts went out and scoured his surroundings and came back with the report- first from the nostrils: here were delicate scents of flowers and dirt; and then the eyes: there were well ordered paths with ivy crawling up rocky walls; now touch: he realized he was lying on his back with blades of grass tickling his ear and when he flexed his fingers into the earth there was that soft moistness you always associated with good soil; the ears came announcing: birds here, birds there, birds everywhere, and somewhere yet unspotted a fountain, detected by alternating gurgles and tinkling; taste came back disappointed, as it had nothing yet to disclose.
    ...
    He returned to the patch of soft grass that he had been lying when he had first awoken. There seemed nothing else to do. So he sat. ... It was the cool of the day, and suddenly the man knew that he was not alone.

    ---

    Excerpt from Richard Dawkins Goes to Heaven

    ---

    “You know what sounds like ‘hell’ to me?” Richard asked the accompanying angel, a current of sarcasm carrying the question along.
    “I know you’ll tell me,” the angel replied serenely.
    “Heaven. Heaven sounds like hell.”
    ---
    Excerpt from Anthony Horvath Goes to Heaven

    ---

    "Will you forgive this man?"

    LanguageEnglish
    Publisherapgroup
    Release dateMar 9, 2012
    ISBN9781466125155
    Richard Dawkins, Antony Flew, and Mother Teresa Go to Heaven: Five Short Stories
    Author

    Anthony Horvath

    Author, Christian apologist, pro-life advocate, public speaker.

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      Book preview

      Richard Dawkins, Antony Flew, and Mother Teresa Go to Heaven - Anthony Horvath

      Richard Dawkins, Antony Flew, and Mother Teresa Go to Heaven

      FIVE Short Stories

      By Anthony Horvath

      Smashwords Edition

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Copyright Anthony Horvath 2012. All Rights Reserved

      Published by Athanatos Publishing Group

      Website: www.athanatosministries.org

      Cover by Julius Broqueza.

      Table of Contents

      Reader's Guides

      Mother Teresa Goes to Heaven

      Dr. Flew Goes to Heaven

      Richard Dawkins Goes to Heaven

      Anthony Horvath Goes to Dirt [originally, Anthony Horvath Goes to Heaven]

      Anthony Horvath Goes to Heaven

      Introductory notice placed in the 2011 edition:

      The following three stories were composed over a two year period with nary a thought that they might some day form a collection. They were often prompted by something that the author read or perhaps a conversation he was involved in and the story was fired off in an hour or so of imaginative fury, distributed casually amongst friends, and left to sit. The digital book revolution now makes it possible to cheaply and easily make them available; their publication became inevitable. Enjoy!

      2012 Introduction:

      Since these stories were made available a great deal has happened in response to them. Notably, a certain PZ Myers got a hold of them, and from there it just got weird. This edition has been updated to reflect some of these developments, but there is no point in responding to some of the issues that were raised.

      For example, some critics found the stories unpolished. Really? Perhaps fired off in an hour or so of imaginative fury, distributed casually amongst friends, and left to sit would have led you to suspect as much. Maybe?

      Or another example. Myers himself says, it's rather appalling that the guy took two years to write such fluff.

      It shouldn't have been difficult to understand from my 2011 introduction exactly what the truth was, that in fact each story was written on its own, independently, basically on a whim. Myer's got it wrong on the very first sentence he read in the introduction, which should give some hint as to the weight the rest of his criticisms should be given.

      In the red-mist rage of the atheistic readers of these stories, any stick to beat me with was acceptable. Most of the criticisms—and yes, even threats to find me and do me physical harm— were not based on anything that could be called Reason. And how could they be? Most of the reactions came from their reading of PZ Myer's interpretation of the stories and not their own reading of the stories. Like so many 'free-thinkers' I've encountered, their thinking actually was someone else's. Whenever someone relies wholly on another, not only for their information, but for their opinion, they are on thin ice. So much rests on the quality of the person rendering their opinion in the first place.

      Ironically, when I asked my hostile and abusive critics if they've actually read the stories themselves, not only did many of them admit they hadn't, but they actually believed that they didn't need to before making assertions that they wanted me to take seriously and address.

      In some sense, they can be forgiven for this. PZ Myers had made a fairly large chunk of my stories available on his website. In regards to the Richard Dawkins story, in particular, Mr. Myers has violated US Copyright law, and stands in violation of that law to this date. After repeated requests to take down the extended quotation—which amounts to nearly half the story—the quotation remains. It is on his head.

      Even so, there is still the first half of the story these critics hadn't read. And many of the challenges made to the items in that story and the other two would have fallen away if the stories had been read in full. But alas, only 1 critic out of 50 bothered to so inform themselves, and instead relied completely on the abilities of Mr. Myers.

      Of course, reading something and understanding it are too very different things. Mr. Myers read the stories, but he got them wrong. Very wrong. So wrong, I wondered if I had actually written them in Spanish or Pig Latin or Chicken Scratch. I checked; they are written in English.

      In order to react to what is actually written, one must also apply basic principles of interpretation to make sure you got that right, too. Much of the response to these stories from Myers on down seem to come, not from the text, but from a bad attitude and some kind of weird, intentional illiteracy. Perhaps this is an example of post-modern interpretation at work. I belong to a different school of thought, where the author, and not the reader, determines the meaning of the text.

      Hoping that others belong to the same school of thought, once the stories 'hit the fan,' I worked to make reader's guides available for each story. These were posted on my blog, and if anyone had bothered to work through them whilst reading the stories, they would have relieved themselves of many misunderstandings. (These reader's guides are included in this updated edition.)

      For example, the idea that atheists alone were being singled out would have been laid to rest from a reading of the Mother Teresa story,

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