And so it goes with God.

Piscine Molitor, “known to all as Pi,” Patel’s discussions and ponderings on the subject of religion truly struck me while I was reading this book, not only because of the simple, beautiful, prose in which they were written, but also in the sheer honesty of Pi’s first-person narration. What struck his parents, his religious figures, and his peers as strange or unnatural, Pi explained in very few words that which made perfect sense to him. When he is confronted about his infatuation with all three religions, as a teenager, Pi cannot understand why there is a problem. Why can’t a person worship three separate religions? “I just want to love God!” he blurts out, trying to appease a furious imam, priest, and pandit. Before entering a long account of how he exactly came to be a practicing Muslim, Christian, and Hindu, the novel cuts to the author’s point of view, of him sitting in Pi’s home absorbing the motley assortment of religious paraphernalia decorating his living room. The Hindu god, Ganesha, on the mantle, an Islamic prayer mat rolled up in a corner, and a Bible on Pi’s nightstand, yet nothing seems out of place. Somehow, there is harmony between these three different, and often conflicting, religions in this one dwelling.
The ending of the book, as well, only tries to reiterate Pi’s emphasis on the fact that stories and the use of one’s imagination are coping mechanisms for humans, so that they are able to be satisfied with the lives they lead. But Pi has chosen what he considers “the better story.” Why settle for the “dry, yeastless factuality,” when one can have the “better story,” filled with elaboration and exaggeration, and ample usage by one’s imagination. Isn’t that the story that most would rather listen to? While being interviewed for a report on the sinking of the ship he was traveling on, his elaborate story is cast aside as fiction by two skeptical Japanese officials. They demand the real story, and no less. So Pi tells them a story, one where the animals with whom he originally embarked upon this journey with were, in fact, human survivors of the sinking cargo ship. There was the maternal orangutan, now played by Pi’s own mother; the vicious, disgusting hyena became a cowardly, beastly French cook who was on the ship; the majestic zebra, a beautiful Chinese sailor; and the Bengal tiger, now Pi Patel. This story strikes the two Japanese officials as gruesome, disgusting, immoral, and downright revolting, but one that makes more sense than that of a teenager stranded on a lifeboat for 227 days with a Bengal tiger. The Japanese officials seem pleased that they now have, in their minds, a concrete story to report back to their supervisors at the Maritime Department. Yet, as they are leaving, Pi asks them which of his two stories they liked better. Thinking about it, they reply that they enjoyed the first one better. “And so it goes with God.” replies Pi with a knowing smile. Sometimes, for one’s own sake, it is rewarding and more fulfilling to believe the crazier version of a story, even if it doesn’t have some of its facts straight. (534)


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And as a side note, since this is a blog and it doesn’t waste any paper to put this here, I have decided to include this passage I quite enjoy by Carl Sagan, as I feel that it is relevant to Pi’s discussion about religion in the book. Hopefully, someone else might enjoy it as I have.

The Dragon In My Garage
by Carl Sagan

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle--but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floates in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."

And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.

The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility.

Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative-- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons--to say nothing about invisible ones--you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages--but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence"--no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it--is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.