I don't believe I've ever updated twice in one day, but I need to get this crap down before I forget it.

In the process of commenting to Viv's blog, I remembered a conversation an old coworker and I had regarding religion. He told me about this guy named Matthew Alper who wrote a book called The "God" Part of the Brain. The premise of the book is that spirituality is a biological imperitive, a behavior that is as hard-wired into our genes as a cat marking its territory. And as I always do when I replay old conversations, I think of responses that I wish I had said at the time.

In this case, my response might have been, "You make spirituality sound like a psychological condition, a neurological imbalance. One that can be corrected. That's a very interesting position to take, don't you think?"

At that point, the right side of my brain took a look at the crap my left side was coming up with, and went Pop! Ding! Whir.

What if someone tried that? Tried to cure humanity of religion?

Flashes of The Giver danced with Brave New World and this Russian novel from the early 1900's whose name I cannot recall at this time. It started with an accident. Some chemical company in Texas got too friendly with a hurricane, and subtly altered the water supply in Oklahoma. It took some time, but eventually it was noticed that virtually everyone in the affected area no longer believed in God. Neurochemists and psychologists study the event, and, after much testing, divine what happened and more importantly, how to replicate it. Time passes, then there is a vaccine available. A Freedom from Religion amendment passes, which makes the vaccine available at no cost to any who desire it. It quickly becomes a requirement of citizenship. People who persist in their beliefs become shunned, a threat to the stability of society. The FBI maintains a list of such individuals, labeling them possible subversives.

Then the vaccine is weaponized. And pointed at Israel. Then the rest of the Middle East. Then India, who points something back.

Oops. No more USA.

Not that we all go up in smoke, but a rather prominent delta city becomes ever burning bright, and the country disintegrates from there. It'd already been on the way to do so, once local political meetings took up the social function churches once provided, and that fracturing of national identity breaks us from a two party system to a multiple party system based partly on geography. The blast that eliminated most of the centripetal politicians and any clear line of succession merely completed the shattering, not caused it.

I'm not sure if this is a novel, a collection of short stories, or just one with the events I just outlined in the distant background. I'm going to have to think about it more.