He opened his argument by declaring that the human race owed its very existence to folly, for without it no man would submit to lifelong monogamy and no woman to the trials of motherhood. Bravery was foolish; so were men who pursued learning; and so, he added slyly, were theologians, whom he mocked for defending the absurdity of original sin, for spreading the myth that “our Saviour was conceived in the Virgin’s womb,” for presuming, during holy communion, to “demonstrate, in the consecrated wafer… how one body can be in several places at the same time, and how Christ’s body in heaven differs
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