Today Tristan was asking me about Transformers again. This pleases me because this is the list of the things that I am somewhat expert in (no particular order):

• Transformers
• C/C++
• Star Trek
• Perl
• Doctor Who
• Photography
• Thursday Next
• Never Being Confused

Anyway, he was asking me about where the Transformers came from and I told him about Primus and Unicron, the gods of the Transformers. This is sort of how it went:

me: Primus and Unicron are the gods of the Transformers. Primus created the transformers to battle the evil Unicron.
Tristnan: Did Unicron create the Decepticons to fight the Autobots?
me: No, Primus created both the Autobots and the Decepticons
Tristan: Why did he create them just to fight each other?

I really love the questions that Tristan asks. Now, granted we are talking about a mythology that nobody believes in, but you could easily recreate this exact same conversation using a number of “real” religions that I can think of, and this is exactly the sort of abstract thinking that should be applied to the subject.