Power of Parables

I have always been a fan of Douglas Adams' novels - my personal favourite being the first Dirk Gently book. At the same time, I have a burgeoning fascination for his potential contributions to non-fiction. I do not mean to suggest that Adams, like Isaac Asimov, wrote copious amounts of academic treatises. I mean rather that his value as an author can also be seen in how he informs the "big questions" - yes, even the big question: 'of life, the universe and everything'. For the time being, I will point to one, powerful example that readers of Adams' posthumously published The Salmon of Doubt may be familiar with:

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. 

"The Parable of the Puddle", as I shall call it, is ostensively a warning about the hubris of thinking that the world was made to suit us. Yet it is also a story about human genesis, of creation by happenstance. Finally, it is a profoundly hopeful story - Adams shows his gratitude for what is a most unlikely state of affairs and his fond wish not to let it go to waste. 

It is in light of this humanist dimension that the parable transcends traditional disagreements between atheists and theists. One could be forgiven for overlooking the entirely accidental way in which the puddle, and by extension human beings, comes to exist. But even if one overlooks this, the parable is not likely to antagonise religious believers. Certainly not in the way that others have done—through "rational" argument.