"The fact that you have--and cannot live without--a spirit is demonstrated by the fact that we can duplicate your material body, but it can not live no matter how perfect the copy. Man cannot duplicate a spirit, only God. You argue that your transporter does not move the spirit. Well, neither does a bicycle or a starship move the spirit when it moves the body. The spirit just acts where the body is. If the body goes to Rome, the spirit acts in Rome. If the body stays here and a perfect copy goes to Rome, the body here lives on, but the copy cannot live for lack of a spirit."
         "Of course, there is no evidence of this spirit's existence," reminded the Captain.
         "But it does explain the established facts. It explains why you must send the man himself and not just a copy."
         "Well, that is only one explanation," the captain countered. "Science will find the real one eventually. Until then, I suppose religion will always try to attempt to explain what man cannot understand. Admit it. We are past the days when ignorant people would believe in a virgin birth or that wine could be transformed into blood and yet have every appearance of still being wine.
         "Which day would that have been?" the Pope asked.
         "What?" The Captain was unsure which part of his argument the Pope did not understand.
         "What day was it that a people who lived close to the land would not understand a virgin birth to be a miracle?  Or that the transformation of a few loaves and fishes into thousands was a marvel? Do we know any better than they? What do we know, Captain?"
         "We know those things are impossible."
         "No, they knew such things were impossible. They were sensible enough to know a miracle when they saw one. It is not they who were fooled, but we. Here we sit in this marvel of technology, a holodeck. Is this a real chair I am sitting on?"
        "Probably," the Captain said. "If the computer anticipates prolonged human contact with a physical object, it will replicate a real physical chair."
         "How about the next table over?" the Pope asked.
         "No, that table is only a hologram, composed of coherent light. An optical illusion."
         "And if I reach across . . ." said the Pope as he grasped the edge of the table and shook it. "Is it real now?"
         "No, the program uses tractor beams to set up a force field. Your hand can't tell the difference."

 

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