From dust thou art

70% water, 30% dust; which is to say, less than a third of us is truly us. Or to put it another way, most of us is the fluid principle, the divine principle, the leaven, the magic ingredient that fashions Adam from dirt. (The spirit of God moved over the waters--but the spirit of God was also the waters. And we can be precise: the spirit of God was 70% water, 30% dust.)

What does Palmer Eldritch tell us? 'I mean, after all: you have to consider we're only made out of dust. That's admittedly not much to go on and we shouldn't forget that. But even considering, I mean, it's a sort of bad beginning, we're not doing too bad.'

Or to put it another way: 'If I were called in, to construct a religion ...'