{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1971",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1971,
    "subject": "Great chain of beans, theo-idiocy and all that",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-11-22T00:19:24+00:00",
    "last": "1999-11-22T00:19:24+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0497@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "David Duffy",
        "address": "davidd at qimr.edu.au"
      },
      "date": "1999-11-22T00:19:24+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Great chain of beans, theo-idiocy and all that",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I've commented before on what I thought of as a medieval (Christian) world\nview in Wolfe, in that the pain and suffering in this antechamber to\neternity is really not that important, it's your attitude while suffering.\nIf you regard the drowning of Urth as an unethical and inefficient use of\npower, then you must feel the same about the earlier Flood.  Severian has\nto have a belief that this is the only way to do things correctly in the\nlong run, even if he doesn't understand why.  Wrt miracles and technology,\nseveral people have already made the point that the actual mechanism for\nthe workings of providence is not important (ObSF one might compare Frank\nHerbert's _The Godmakers_ which has the same mechanism for miraculous\npowers).  And finally, I think that for a long time, there was room in\nChristian theology/natural philosophy for heirarchies of beings between\nthe level of humans and angels -- one might look to djinns in Islam (who\nof course can choose to be good Muslims) for a comparison.  This comes\nback to the ``reality'' of the Greek gods, the imperfection of the\nheirodules etc. I push all these points because I think they influenced\nthe design of this particular universe we're discussing.\n\nDavid Duffy.                                                       ,-_|\\\n| email: davidD at qimr.edu.au  ph: INT+61+7+3362-0217 fax: -0101    /     *\n| Epidemiology Unit, The Queensland Institute of Medical Research \\_,-._/\n| 300 Herston Rd, Brisbane, Queensland 4029, Australia                 v "
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}