I may have written about this before.

I’m doing it again because it’s so darn clever.

Yay! Freewill!

Imagine you’re waiting in line at the bank.

There is a noise coming from inside the vault.

It sounds like a monkey banging on a piano.

The bank manager opens the vault.

Inside, there is a piano and a monkey.

…and some monkey poop.

You ask the manager, “Why did you put a monkey and a piano in the vault?”

“That monkey wasn’t in there when I closed the vault!”, he responds indignantly.

“Can anyone else open the vault?”, you query.

“No.”

The security video reveals nothing.

The alarms have not been tripped.

“This is a miracle”, you exclaim.

The bank manager, a free-thinking, rational atheist is indignant.

“There is a perfectly rational explanation.”

“The monkey sneaked into the safe sometime when it was open yesterday.”

You agree that must be what happened.

You ask how the piano got inside the vault but the manager doesn’t respond.

He’s busy calling animal control to come and capture the monkey.

Then he calls a furniture company to remove the piano.

He makes a thorough search of the vault.

Finds no more animals or musical instruments.

He checks the integrity of the structure.

It is sound.

He closes and locks the vault.

The next morning, you’re in line again.

(You have a lot of banking needs.)

There is music coming from inside the vault.

A flawless, beautiful piano concerto.

The bank manager anxiously opens the vault.

The music stops.

Inside there is a monkey and a piano.

…and more poop.

…presumed to be from the monkey.

“That monkey played the piano”, you exclaim.

“Nonsense” the manager replies. “Monkeys can’t play piano.”

He offers a complicated explanation involving dark matter, evolution and quarks.

He tells you that your superstitions are unhelpful.

You close your accounts and move your business to another bank.

Later, a circus magician claims he conjured the monkey and piano into the vault with magic.

He explains that he hypnotized the monkey and taught it to play piano.

He refuses to repeat the trick.

So the free-thinking, rational, atheist bank Manger writes on his blog…

…there was no monkey or piano in the vault.