Subject: (urth) God and the Lizard People

From: Dan Parmenter <dan at lec.com>
Date: Wed, 02 Jun 1999 15:27:39 +0000

> SPOILERS for CASE OF CONSCIENCE here.

> A.  There is no God.
> B.  The alien race is an illusion of Satan designed to deceive humanity.
> C.  God exists, but his relationship to this alien race is something
>     we don't understand.
> 
> Everyone in the book seems to think A and B are the only two
> possibilities.  No one even considers C.  C seems so obvious and B so
> far-fetched that I was unable to believe in the characters or their
> debates.

To bring your thoughts in line with my earlier post, perhaps
hypothesis "C" is essentially Lewis's Space Trilogy.

I admit that the story is somewhat contrived, but in the context of
the experience of reading it, I have to say that it is compelling.
It's also got some great dynamics between the priest/biologist and his
"hard science" colleague with his contempt for religion and biology.
I think that Blish conveys the protaganist's thought process very
well (damn, I can't remember any of the characters' names!).

> Which reminds me of another question I have about Wolfe's Catholicism. 
> There's a statement of his which gets quoted frequently, something like
> "I'm a practicing Catholic, but that probably tells you less about what I
> believe than you think."  I wonder if he meant that he's not entirely
> orthodox in his beliefs, or that most people's ideas about what orthodox
> Catholics believe are wrong.

I take this statement to be Wolfe's defense against those who would
dismiss him and his views out of hand, simply because he's a
Catholic.  Maybe it's a subtle way of saying that he's pro-choice.

Lex Shellac

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

---

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 11:42:29 +0000

WARNING: SPOILERS for Blish's CASE OF CONSCIENCE and Lewis's SPACE TRILOGY

On Wed, 2 Jun 1999, Dan Parmenter wrote:

> From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>

> hypothesis "C" is essentially Lewis's Space Trilogy.

I don't think that really fits.  Lewis's aliens wouldn't have caused
Blish's characters any problems because they were sinless and aware of and
in communion with God, which is what Christians might expect of an
unfallen race.  

Once Ransom gets past the initial communication barrier (definitely by the
time of Perelandra) he understands the aliens' relationship to God
pretty well.  The other characters only misunderstand because their
rejection of Christianity prevents them from even considering the alien
religion might be congruent with Christianity.

Blish's problem is that the aliens seem totally unaware of God, yet also
show no signs of the sin which has caused a breach between us and our
creator.  But I can think of lots of explanations I would think would be
more convincing to the characters than the Satanic Illusion theory.  Maybe
the aliens have no souls, and glorify God as do stars, stones, and
animals.  Maybe they have rejected God in some way that we don't recognize
as sinful and their salvation has not yet been accomplished.  Maybe their
experience of God is so alien that they cannot communicate it to us.

Is there any precedent in Church history of the Church deciding that some
particular bit of evidence that seemed contrary to the faith was an
illusion?  Has anyone ever tried exorcizing the fossil record? 

-Rostrum

---

From: Alex David Groce <adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu>
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 13:34:41 +0000

On Jun 2,  3:27pm, Dan Parmenter wrote:
> Subject: (urth) God and the Lizard People

	I seem to recall somewhere else where Wolfe says almost the same thing
(this quote is from the ACROSS THE WOUNDED GALAXIES interview, I think) but in
such a way as to imply that he simply means most people don't know much about
what Catholics think--something like "I don't think priests walk on water or
anything like that."
-- 
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu)
Senior (Computer Science/Multidisciplinary Studies in Technology & Fiction)
'98-99 NCSU AITP Student Chapter President
608 Charleston Road, Apt. 1E (919)-233-7366
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce