In Peru in 1985, when I knew that the game was up and I was dying and it led to nothing, no paradise, just eternal emptiness, I never once thought to turn back to the God of my childhood. If for one moment I had thought that some omniscient being might be looking down upon me and offer a helping hand I would have stopped moving instantly, gotten rid of the pain and the effort, and waited to be helped. And I would have died. In fact it was probably one of the most powerful and saddest things that I learned in those awful days in Peru. For me there was no God.
-- Joe Simpson, The Beckoning Silence