We Agnostics (Continue)
 
J: (p. 51, par. 2) 'Some of the contemporaries of Columbus thought a round earth
preposterous.'
About five hundred years ago, people that lived in Europe were trying to find some fast route to get from Europe to what they called the East Indies. In the East Indies they had found gold, silk, spices, tea and many other things, and they really wanted it bad. But the only way you could get there was by land. Only way you had to go was on foot, horseback, camelback, elephantback, or something.
It took literally years to make the trip. They wanted to get there faster and bring that stuff back more. They were trying to find a new fast route to get there but they didn't know of any way to go except by land. Because they knew that if you tried to sail there that you would snail out to the edge of the earth, and you would sail right off edge of this sucker, because the world was flat. Everybody believed that the world was flat. They believed that if you sailed out there so far, you'd go down and that would be the end of it.
I don't really know why they believed that, I assume that people would sail out there and not come back so they assumed they sailed off of the edge of it. Everybody believed that you couldn't go there by sea. They couldn't find a faster route to go. (See Transcriber's note on "Columbus.")
Here comes a guy named Columbus, along Joe and I believe Columbus ought to be our man. We believe he's alcoholic. (laughter) We believe he ought to be A.A. 's main man. Because Columbus had all the traits. Columbus said, well, I believe the world is round. You got to be a strong, bullheaded, stubborn guy to believe in the face of everything
else, against all the rest of the world, to believe differently.
He said, I believe the world is round. Another reason we think he's alcoholic is because he said, I believe I could get East by sailing West. (laughter) If that ain't a drunk statement, I never heard one before. He said, I believe if I sail straight West, I could come to the East Indies.
They said, Columbus, you crazy as hell. (laughter) They said if you sail out there West you're going to sail off the edge of this sucker and you're not ever going to come back. He dared to believe differently. Columbus did a few things that resulted in changing the belief of all the rest of the world. There are other reasons we think he's alcoholic. Joe?
J: I think we really have to look at this and see why Bill used these illustrations, it's probably one of the greatest illustrations in our time to really see what Columbus did. He changed the world. He changed the geography of the world, the economics of the world. He changed the lives of every body on the face of this earth, probably since that time.
The way he did it. He was big enough to believe different. See, whatever you believe you're going to become. Whatever you believe you're going to become. So, the only way you can change is to believe different. If you believe different, you'll become something different.
Columbus, like Charlie said was an alcoholic, because it had to take a hardheaded, self-cantered alcoholic to believe against the whole world. He changed the world because he believed the truth and they believed a lie. And he had to be an alcoholic because the story clearly illustrates, it says, when he left, he didn't know where he was going. That's a drunk. (laughter)
When he got there he didn't know where he was. (laughter) And when he got back, he didn't know where he had been. (laughter) But what really makes him an alcoholic was: a woman financed the whole trip. <laughter)
(End of Side A of Tape 4)
(Transcriber's note: Educated people of Columbus' time knew it was round. Eratosthenes, the ancient Greek, had even determined its circumference to within a few miles. They objected to his voyage, because they knew the earth was so big. They calculated, rightly as it turned out, that his trip to the far east would take too long for his supplies to last. They didn't imagine that North and South America might be there. This is just another example of fixed ideas.)
(Transcriber's note: The strict agnostic believes that he can't know if God exists or not. In practice, few people can maintain the relentlessly rigorous and disciplined skepticism this requires. Joe and Charlie describe what most of us were really like.)
(Begin Side B of Tape 4)
J: And he did die in jail. (laughter) But he was big enough to believe different. He said, I believe the world is round. So he believed this, and not only did that, he made a decision. He took the actions. When he came back--we can use this as a principle of success, or failure, which we've been using it all our lives. We can use it either way, you can use it for yourself or against yourself. The first thing you've got to do is believe. That belief is not in itself going to change anything. Belief is before.
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