{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3477", "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": 3477, "subject": "God in the Machine", "messages": 12, "voices": 11, "first": "2002-10-09T09:32:33+00:00", "last": "2002-10-11T16:18:32+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "DSG20001", "address": "dsg20001 at aol.com" }, "date": "2002-10-09T09:32:33+00:00", "subject": "(urth) God in the Machine", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'd intended to lurk around for (at least) a while longer, since the other \nthoughtful posts on this list are much more interesting to read than my own \nnewbie contribution will be. But the theological chem vs. bio discussion got \nme musing over a few things, so I've thrown caution to the wind. (And since \nI've missed a few of the recent posts, I apologize in advance if any of the \nfollowing is repetitious.)\n\nRoy said:\n\n\"As I have tried to show, chems were never intended to be \"people\" (the term \nused by Rose). \"Clever tools\" comes closer to what Typhon intended them to \nbe. Chems did, however, come to be self aware (though they were always, to be \nsure, self aware) in a manner and to a degree not intended and not provided \nfor by their creators.\"\n\nI found the possible Genesis parallel here particularly interesting. Roy's \ndescription of \"tools\" originally lacking the requisite self-awareness for \nmoral agency sounded very much like a description of Adam and Eve before they \nbecame aware of Good and Evil. \n\nWhich implied, in my mind, that Wolfe's views of God and Typhon might \nactually be similar in some respects. Unless of course one assumes that God, \nbeing both omniscient and omnipotent, _intended_ His creations to acquire \ntheir moral sense by means of their tragic Fall. \n\nBut one is then left to wade through questions about divine predestination \nand the Gnostic doctrine of God as Author of All Things: both Good and Evil \nalike, both obedience and disobedience alike. (I've read elsewhere that Wolfe \nis, or was, very intrigued by Gnostic beliefs.)\n\nWhich in turn raises one of the oldest theological questions regarding \nOriginal Sin: if Adam and Eve weren't moral agents before partaking of the \nfruit of (moral) Knowledge, how might the Fall have resulted from their \nbreaking a moral commandment? Pragmatic human conventions like \"Ignorance is \nno excuse from the law\" presuppose some basic moral agency, after all. (We \ndon't apply such judicial conventions to toddlers, for example.)\n\nIn the context of Wolfe's chems, another question rears up: _whose_ \"tools\" \nhad the chems originally been intended to be? \n\nAt the end of Chapter 7 of LotLS, Silk asks the talus he confronts: \"Don't \nyou fear the immoral gods, my son?\" To which the talus retorts: \"I serve \nScylla!\" \n\nDoes the talus serve a goddess? Or a woman digitized into the mere semblance \nof a goddess? The same questions that apply to chems (sentient beings created \nby humans, in their own image) apply to all the gods in Mainframe as well, \ndon't they? \n\nI'n the James Jordan interview, discussing _There are Doors,_ Wolfe remarks: \n\"Laura is my idea of what a pagan goddess might be who survived into the \nChristian world. One of the places where I probably split off from \nconventional Catholic thinking is that I believe that the gods of paganism \nwere real...Now, if Aphrodite were to survive into the contemporary world, \nwhat would she be like? Well, Laura was a shot at trying to show what she \nmight be like.\" What sort of theological status Wolfe grants such entities \n(Laura doesn't seem like the Christian conception of a demoness), I don't \nknow. But in the context of his invented Mainframe gods, the question seems \nworth speculating about.\n\nAt any rate, if the talus in LotLS is correct, the Whorl's chems weren't \nintended to be the tools of its human \"cargo,\" but of the AIs who supervise \nit. That the gods themselves were the tools of _Typhon_ (who I suppose was a \nkind of man) doesn't simply bring the issue back to Man versus his Objects \nagain, since the human cargo inside the Whorl were likewise Typhon's tools. \n\nRoy also said:\n\n\"I can't tell from the text whether or not Wolfe thought 'the Outsider loves \nthem as persons'.\" \n\nI don't know whether Wolfe agrees with his protagonist on the subject, but \nSilk's words to the talus in LotLS are at least worth mentioning: \"'I don't \nwant to hurt you,' Silk told it. 'It's evil--that means very wrong--to \ndestroy chems, as wrong as it is to destroy bios, and you are very nearly a \nchem.'\" Then, after killing the talus in self-defense, Wolfe says of Silk: \n\"His chant was flat and almost mechanical at first, but as the wonder and \nmagnanimity of divine amnesty filled his mind, his voice grew louder and \nshook with fervor.\" \n\nThe passage seems to confer some measure of spiritual significance on the \ntalus--at least in Silk's rapidly enlightening mind. \n\n(On the other hand, it's worth noting that Silk (or Wolfe, anyway) doesn't \ninvoke the Outsider during the ritual--which he had been doing with bios in \nsimilar circumstances.)\n\nFor myself, I suspect Wolfe sees both chems _and_ bios as slaves: not only \n(on occasion) in relation to each other, but (always) in relation to God. \n\nSt. Paul's Stoical attitude seems to dovetail with Wolfe's here, as in so \nmany ways: \"Slaves, obey your human masters with the reverence, the awe, and \nthe sincerity you owe to Christ. Give your service willingly, doing it for \nthe Lord rather than men. You know that each one, whether slave or free, will \nbe repaid by the Lord for whatever good he does. Masters, act in a similar \nway toward your slaves. Stop threatening them. Remember that you and they \nhave a Master in Heaven who plays no favorites.\" (Ephesians 6: 5-9)\n \nDaniel Goss" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2002-10-09T15:46:37+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) God in the Machine", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Welcome, Daniel Goss.\n\nYou wrote (among other interesting things):" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "the other thoughtful posts on this list are much more interesting to \nread than my own newbie contribution will be. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Oh, I don't know ... you've got some good points here.\n\n(You quoted Roy):" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Chems did, however, come to be self aware (though they were always, to\nbe \nsure, self aware) in a manner and to a degree not intended and not\nprovided \nfor by their creators.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I found the possible Genesis parallel here particularly interesting. Roy's" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "description of \"tools\" originally lacking the requisite self-awareness for" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "moral agency sounded very much like a description of Adam and Eve before\nthey \nbecame aware of Good and Evil. \n\nWhich implied, in my mind, that Wolfe's views of God and Typhon might \nactually be similar in some respects." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Bounce that against the idea that \"demons who pretend to be gods become\nthem\" (or however Wolfe puts it), e.g. that Kypris is becoming (a part \nor aspect of) the Outsider, and you have a very interesting point here \nindeed. Though one then has to decide what one thinks was meant by \ntheir becoming \"aware of Good and Evil\" -- my own interpretation runs \nwith that of Charles Williams, who rephrased it as \"the knowledge of \ngood as evil,\" i.e., that everything in creation is good unless one \nchooses to misperceive it, at which point anything can become evil. \n(As Gandalf puts it: \"Nothing is evil in its beginning ... Sauron himself \nwas not so.\") Evil then has its origins in a failure of perception which \nleads to wrong thoughts, attitudes, and behavior, to misuse of the\nthings and especially the people in the created world. \n\nMany of the statements of bios and chems cited thus far in the dialog \nare easily understood under this rubric: for primary example, the \nvarious ways in which bios, chems, and \"gods\" disdain or worship each \nother as inferiors or superiors, when all are, in the end and in fact, \ncreated beings and so equal as over against the one Creator. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Unless of course one assumes that God, being both omniscient\nand omnipotent, _intended_ His creations to acquire \ntheir moral sense by means of their tragic Fall. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is a common but probably heretical interpretation. A somewhat\nmore \"nuanced\" approach to the same quandary is that God, omniscient,\nknows all true things, but the Fall is not a true thing unless He\nactually creates the world -- this still fails, however, as it seems\nto attribute to God a failure of imagination, of ability to consider\npossibilities. Perhaps best is to say that God, knowing the Fall,\nwould have been able to prevent it, but considered the ways in which\nHe could have done so (which have the common characteristic of His\nin some way overriding the freewill of a creature), or their \nconsequences (such as making the creature into an automaton, which\nwould not be a proper candidate for divine love) to be worse than the\nFall and _its_ consequences ... which, to be sure, from a Christian\n(and so Catholic) perspective He chose to take upon Himself in His\nsecond Person.\n\nDragging that question back to the Long Sun, one then asks whether \nTyphon/Pas knew (or could have known) that the chemical persons \nwould turn out to have \"free will,\" \"souls,\" etc., and if so, whether \nhe intended this. The most likely partial answer I can suggest is\nthat, if he did have any inkling of this, he would not have _cared_;\nhis use of Piaton shows clearly his contemptuous approach to such\nservants." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But one is then left to wade through questions about divine \npredestination and the Gnostic doctrine of God as Author of\nAll Things: both Good and Evil alike, both obedience and\ndisobedience alike. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not quite my understanding of Gnosticism -- rather, that there\nis a god, the \"god of this world,\" which is the author of evil,\nmatter, etc., and a higher God, Author of Good, to Whom we are \nto aspire." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Which in turn raises one of the oldest theological questions \nregarding Original Sin: if Adam and Eve weren't moral agents\nbefore partaking of the fruit of (moral) Knowledge, how might\nthe Fall have resulted from their breaking a moral commandment?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Or: if they knew no evil, how could they commit an evil act?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In the context of Wolfe's chems, another question rears up: \n_whose_ \"tools\" had the chems originally been intended to be? " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From what we know of Typhon, everything on the Whorl was, in\nall probability, intended to be his own personal tool and/or\nplaything." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At the end of Chapter 7 of LotLS, Silk asks the talus he \nconfronts: \"Don't you fear the immoral gods, my son?\" To\nwhich the talus retorts: \"I serve Scylla!\" \n\nDoes the talus serve a goddess? Or a woman digitized into the \nmere semblance of a goddess? " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "...yes?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I'n the James Jordan interview, discussing _There are Doors,_ \nWolfe remarks: \"Laura is my idea of what a pagan goddess might\nbe who survived into the Christian world.\" " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "[...]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "What sort of theological status Wolfe grants such entities \n(Laura doesn't seem like the Christian conception of a \ndemoness), I don't know. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "He seems (at least in that novel, as well as the _Soldier_\nbooks) to be taking the position that they are not demons, at\nleast as such -- possibly they are the \"spirits of the middle\nair\" of which the medieval schoolmen spoke, who had served\nneither God nor Satan in the Rebellion. Or possibly he takes \na related position that they are beings native to Earth but \nof a different order than humans -- rational souls with no\nphysical body (and so no vegetable and animal souls), though\nin the case of Laura at least, this seems unlikely. A third\npossibility is that they are something similar to the wizard\nof \"dufflepud island\" in Lewis's VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER,\nwho is actually placed on that island to guide the natives,\nwho are not yet \"ready\" to meet Aslan (==Christ); this fits\nwith the very common idea that other religions, including but\nnot limited to Judaism, were given to humans as \"preparation\"\nfor Christianity ... with the implication that their lingering\nafter Christianity has come is either a mistake or a sin.\n\nStill, the gods of Mainframe are clearly quite different from\nLaura and the various gods Latro meets ... they're \"self-made\"\ngods, man (6) elevating himself to the status of God (3), that\nis, in numerological terms, 666." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy also said:\n\n\"I can't tell from the text whether or not Wolfe thought 'the \nOutsider loves them as persons'.\" \n\nI don't know whether Wolfe agrees with his protagonist on the \nsubject, but Silk's words to the talus in LotLS are at least\nworth mentioning: \"'I don't want to hurt you,' Silk told it.\n'It's evil--that means very wrong--to destroy chems, as wrong\nas it is to destroy bios, and you are very nearly a chem.'\"\nThen, after killing the talus in self-defense, Wolfe says of\nSilk: \"His chant was flat and almost mechanical at first, but\nas the wonder and magnanimity of divine amnesty filled his\nmind, his voice grew louder and shook with fervor.\" \n\nThe passage seems to confer some measure of spiritual \nsignificance on the talus--at least in Silk's rapidly\nenlightening mind. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "...as reported, of course, by Horn, who was not present. But,\nyes, this seems to give at least some credence to the idea that\neven a talus is to some extent an ensouled being; also in favor\nof this is Olivine's special devotion to Quadrifons, who turns \nout to be the Outsider. Quite possibly she also enjoys favor from \nQuadrifons ... but to understand that, we must remember how often\nthe favored of God seem to \"enjoy\" special afflictions: Sts \nTeresa of Avila (Teresa of Jesus)and Therese of Lisieux both \nseem to be at least partial models for Olivine." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "(On the other hand, it's worth noting that Silk (or Wolfe, \nanyway) doesn't invoke the Outsider during the ritual--which \nhe had been doing with bios in similar circumstances.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And, again, we have to remember that this is Horn's reconstruction." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "For myself, I suspect Wolfe sees both chems _and_ bios as \nslaves: not only (on occasion) in relation to each other,\nbut (always) in relation to God. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ultimately, I think, yes. You cite St Paul; I would add to your\ncitation his claim to be a slave to Christ. But first and more\nobviously, Crew, Cargo, and Chems are slaves to Typhon -- slaves,\nin St Paul's terminology, to sin, to the \"god of this world,\"\nthe god of the Whorl.\n\nGreat post, Daniel. Clearly you are deserving of an insectile\ncognomen." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2002-10-09T20:03:01+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) God in the Machine", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Daniel Goss wrote a very thoughtful post; I look forward to more!\n\nI will bravely duck the issue of the logical paradox that gave rise to\nGnosticism, to pursue the Genesis parallel you mention." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I found the possible Genesis parallel here particularly interesting." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Roy's" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "description of \"tools\" originally lacking the requisite self-awareness\nfor\nmoral agency sounded very much like a description of Adam and Eve before\nthey\nbecame aware of Good and Evil.\n\nWhich implied, in my mind, that Wolfe's views of God and Typhon might\nactually be similar in some respects. [snip]" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The parallels of the _Whorl_ with the Garden of Eden are so numerous,\nsomeone must have pointed them out before. But in the event no one has,\nhere is my admittedly irreligious synopsis. It is not intended to give\noffence to anyone's religious sensibilities.\n\nGod (for whatever reason) created the world, filled it up with mountains,\nrivers, flora, fauna, etc. Then He created Man. Not too many of them at\nfirst. He provided all the creature comforts Man needed to live happily\never after. All Man had to do was bow down to Him, don't make waves, and\neverything would be just swell. Oh, and keep his bugger-picking fingers\noff His Tree. But would Man do what he was told? Nah. His just had to\npluck that apple. God was miffed that Man had \"become like one of us\", and\na little worried that His uppity creation wouldn't stop there, but would\nalso \"put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and\nlive for ever\". Being a jealous God, He couldn't stand the thought of\ncompetition, so He kicked Man out of the Garden and said don't come back.\n\nPas (for whatever reason) created the Whorl, filled it up with mountains,\nrivers, flora, fauna, etc. Then he put men on board. Not too many of them\nat first. He provided all the creature comforts Man needed to last the\nduration of the voyage. All Man had to do was bow down to him, don't make\nwaves, and everything would be just swell. Oh, and keep his bugger-picking\nfingers off his Seal. Etc., etc. The details differ, but the result is the\nsame. Pas kicked Man out of the Whorl and said don't come back. Now, the\nanalogy isn't perfect, but the correspondence is too close not to be\ndeliberate." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In the context of Wolfe's chems, another question rears up: _whose_\n\"tools\"\nhad the chems originally been intended to be?\n\nAt the end of Chapter 7 of LotLS, Silk asks the talus he confronts:" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"Don't" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "you fear the immoral gods, my son?\" To which the talus retorts: \"I serve\nScylla!\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Interesting slip you made there. \"Immoral\" indeed! " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Does the talus serve a goddess? Or a woman digitized into the mere\nsemblance\nof a goddess? The same questions that apply to chems (sentient beings\ncreated\nby humans, in their own image) apply to all the gods in Mainframe as\nwell,\ndon't they?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A talus is made to serve its 'owner'. Presumably Scylla possessed the\ntalus just as she had Chenille, and compelled its devotion. The gods of\nMainframe are not gods in a classical sense, not like Aphrodite or even\nLaura; they are tied to Mainframe. Erase them from Mainframe and they\ncease to exist. The small parts they split off from themselves via\npossession are just partial file copies, and when the host dies that piece\ndies. But the death of one of those pieces does not harm the original, so\nlong as the original master file remains intact in Mainframe. Pieces of a\ngod that reintegrate with the original supplement the original with any\nnew data, rather like a PDA docking with a desktop computer.\n\nThe original gods of Mainframe were just copies of data obtained when Pas\n& Co. were scanned. This introduces another theological problem, the\nexistence of the \"soul\" of the scanned human and the \"spirit\" of the copy.\nWhich is the real deal? Which Scylla will answer to the Outsider? Both? If\nboth, then, in theory (and I'm sure Dan'l will correct me if I'm wrong\n), one could be \"saved\" and the other \"damned\". I refuse to think about\nit.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at cox.net" }, "date": "2002-10-09T20:33:30+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) God in the Machine", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " Some interesting stuff here, but I have to correct one item before \nI leave the country for 3 weeks. The notion that the fall of Adam was a \ngood thing since apart from it he would not have acquired a moral sense \nwill not stand up to the way the Biblical writers use the \nphrase \"knowledge of good and evil.\" The idea of a \"felicitious fall\" is \nan old heresy in Christendom, though an important piece of Mormon theology.\n There are two ways to understand Genesis 2-3. The traditional one \nis that Adam would learn the differences between good and evil by \ninteracting with the forbidden fruit either way. By rejecting it, he would \nlearn about good and evil, but from the side of choosing the good. By \neating it, he would learn about good and evil, but from the side of \nchoosing the evil.\n This is a decent notion, and probably has truth to it. BUT, the \nfact is that the phrase \"knowledge of good and evil\" in the Bible means \n\"knowledge of how to pass judgments\" not \"moral knowledge.\" This emerges \nfrom Genesis, where God SEES and pronounces things GOOD (or before Eve was \nmade, in Genesis 2, \"it is NOT GOOD for the man to be alone\"). Let me refer \nyou to the following passages that show the meaning of the phrase (you can \nlook them up):\n Seeing (Adam's eyes were opened): Jeremiah 32:18-19; Psalm 11:4; \nEzekiel 5:11; etc.\n Knowledge of good and evil: 1 Kings 3:9; 2 Samuel 14:17; 2 Samuel \n19:27; Deuteronomy 1:39 (children are not mature enough to make judicial \npronouncements); Hebrews 5:13-14; Genesis 31:24.\n Adam began as a \"child\" (naked), not yet mature enough to make \njudicial pronouncements. That was something he would grow into over time. \nBut he was expected to know moral right from moral wrong, and nothing \nindicates that he didn't.\n Now, this is all a bit off the point, since Wolfe is not a \npractising theologian, and probably has not studied out this phrase. But as \nan orthodox Catholic, Wolfe is not going to believe that it was necessary \nfor Adam to eat the forbidden fruit in order to acquire a knowledge of \nright and wrong. Whatever he might do with Genesis 2, it won't be that.\n\nPatera Nutricious" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 04:32 AM 10/9/2002, you wrote:\nI'd intended to lurk around for (at least) a while longer, since the other\nthoughtful posts on this list are much more interesting to read than my own\nnewbie contribution will be. But the theological chem vs. bio discussion got\nme musing over a few things, so I've thrown caution to the wind. (And since\nI've missed a few of the recent posts, I apologize in advance if any of the\nfollowing is repetitious.)\n\nRoy said:\n\n\"As I have tried to show, chems were never intended to be \"people\" (the term\nused by Rose). \"Clever tools\" comes closer to what Typhon intended them to\nbe. Chems did, however, come to be self aware (though they were always, to be\nsure, self aware) in a manner and to a degree not intended and not provided\nfor by their creators.\"\n\nI found the possible Genesis parallel here particularly interesting. Roy's\ndescription of \"tools\" originally lacking the requisite self-awareness for\nmoral agency sounded very much like a description of Adam and Eve before they\nbecame aware of Good and Evil.\n\nWhich implied, in my mind, that Wolfe's views of God and Typhon might\nactually be similar in some respects. Unless of course one assumes that God,\nbeing both omniscient and omnipotent, _intended_ His creations to acquire\ntheir moral sense by means of their tragic Fall.\n\nBut one is then left to wade through questions about divine predestination\nand the Gnostic doctrine of God as Author of All Things: both Good and Evil\nalike, both obedience and disobedience alike. (I've read elsewhere that Wolfe\nis, or was, very intrigued by Gnostic beliefs.)\n\nWhich in turn raises one of the oldest theological questions regarding\nOriginal Sin: if Adam and Eve weren't moral agents before partaking of the\nfruit of (moral) Knowledge, how might the Fall have resulted from their\nbreaking a moral commandment? Pragmatic human conventions like \"Ignorance is\nno excuse from the law\" presuppose some basic moral agency, after all. (We\ndon't apply such judicial conventions to toddlers, for example.)\n\nIn the context of Wolfe's chems, another question rears up: _whose_ \"tools\"\nhad the chems originally been intended to be?\n\nAt the end of Chapter 7 of LotLS, Silk asks the talus he confronts: \"Don't\nyou fear the immoral gods, my son?\" To which the talus retorts: \"I serve\nScylla!\"\n\nDoes the talus serve a goddess? Or a woman digitized into the mere semblance\nof a goddess? The same questions that apply to chems (sentient beings created\nby humans, in their own image) apply to all the gods in Mainframe as well,\ndon't they?\n\nI'n the James Jordan interview, discussing _There are Doors,_ Wolfe remarks:\n\"Laura is my idea of what a pagan goddess might be who survived into the\nChristian world. One of the places where I probably split off from\nconventional Catholic thinking is that I believe that the gods of paganism\nwere real...Now, if Aphrodite were to survive into the contemporary world,\nwhat would she be like? Well, Laura was a shot at trying to show what she\nmight be like.\" What sort of theological status Wolfe grants such entities\n(Laura doesn't seem like the Christian conception of a demoness), I don't\nknow. But in the context of his invented Mainframe gods, the question seems\nworth speculating about.\n\nAt any rate, if the talus in LotLS is correct, the Whorl's chems weren't\nintended to be the tools of its human \"cargo,\" but of the AIs who supervise\nit. That the gods themselves were the tools of _Typhon_ (who I suppose was a\nkind of man) doesn't simply bring the issue back to Man versus his Objects\nagain, since the human cargo inside the Whorl were likewise Typhon's tools.\n\nRoy also said:\n\n\"I can't tell from the text whether or not Wolfe thought 'the Outsider loves\nthem as persons'.\"\n\nI don't know whether Wolfe agrees with his protagonist on the subject, but\nSilk's words to the talus in LotLS are at least worth mentioning: \"'I don't\nwant to hurt you,' Silk told it. 'It's evil--that means very wrong--to\ndestroy chems, as wrong as it is to destroy bios, and you are very nearly a\nchem.'\" Then, after killing the talus in self-defense, Wolfe says of Silk:\n\"His chant was flat and almost mechanical at first, but as the wonder and\nmagnanimity of divine amnesty filled his mind, his voice grew louder and\nshook with fervor.\"\n\nThe passage seems to confer some measure of spiritual significance on the\ntalus--at least in Silk's rapidly enlightening mind.\n\n(On the other hand, it's worth noting that Silk (or Wolfe, anyway) doesn't\ninvoke the Outsider during the ritual--which he had been doing with bios in\nsimilar circumstances.)\n\nFor myself, I suspect Wolfe sees both chems _and_ bios as slaves: not only\n(on occasion) in relation to each other, but (always) in relation to God.\n\nSt. Paul's Stoical attitude seems to dovetail with Wolfe's here, as in so\nmany ways: \"Slaves, obey your human masters with the reverence, the awe, and\nthe sincerity you owe to Christ. Give your service willingly, doing it for\nthe Lord rather than men. You know that each one, whether slave or free, will\nbe repaid by the Lord for whatever good he does. Masters, act in a similar\nway toward your slaves. Stop threatening them. Remember that you and they\nhave a Master in Heaven who plays no favorites.\" (Ephesians 6: 5-9)\n\nDaniel Goss\n\n\n--" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at hotpop.com" }, "date": "2002-10-09T21:33:07+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) God in the Machine", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "First Roy drew a rather oppugnant comparison between the Lord's\nparticipation in events of the Fall of Man and those of Pas in the Whorl,\nthen Patera Nutria (Coypu) opined:\nNow, this is all a bit off the point, since Wolfe is not a practicing\ntheologian, and probably has not studied out this phrase. But as an orthodox\nCatholic, Wolfe is not going to believe that it was necessary for Adam to\neat the forbidden fruit in order to acquire a knowledge of right and wrong.\nWhatever he might do with Genesis 2, it won't be that.\n------------------------------------\n\nI'll set aside Roy's summary of God's motivations in Genesis 2 except to say\nit is about the worst spin I could imagine.\n\nSpeaking of which, the thing not to forget about Pas of the Long Sun is that\nhe is similar to God (the Outsider) only in the sense of that he is a\nblasphemy of Him. The same is true with the similarity between the Garden\nand the Whorl. The Whorl is no paradise - especially by the time they leave.\nPas doesn't remove the people from the Whorl because they broke his seal. In\nfact, the chems (who broke the seal with impunity) are the one group who\nseems not to leave the Whorl (although I admit I'm still not completely\nversed in the Short Sun books so maybe they do). Actually, in leaving, the\npeople are fulfilling Pas' plan! It's Echidna and her brood who want to keep\nthem there. Quetzal (who definitely does parallel the Serpent) is a booster\nof Pas' plan because he wants to lead everyone to Green (yikes!). So in this\nGenesis story God and the Devil are hand-in-hand.\n\nI'm not saying that the there aren't parallels between Genesis 2 and the\nBotLS, but the parallels are always turned upside down or (worse) sideways.\nThis is a blasphemy of Genesis 2. I can't begin to derive from this story\nWolfe's personal theories on the Fall.\n\nStill, whatever he thinks of it, I don't think it's ever safe to say what\nWolfe would or would not believe. Wolfe's perspective has always seemed to\nplace him in the \"free-thinking\" category (in my mind anyway). I personally\nnominate him as the\nmost-likely-believing-Christian-to-have-a-flakey-theological-theory.\n\n-- Crush" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2002-10-10T04:32:43+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) God in the Machine", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I wrote, twice no less:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "bugger-picking fingers" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That should have been \"booger-picking\", alas. My mistake. Sheesh.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "matthew.malthouse", "address": "matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk" }, "date": "2002-10-10T10:37:49+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) God in the Machine", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 09/10/2002 21:33:30 James Jordan wrote:\n Some interesting stuff here, but I have to correct one item\nbefore\nI leave the country for 3 weeks. The notion that the fall of Adam was a\ngood thing since apart from it he would not have acquired a moral sense\nwill not stand up to the way the Biblical writers use the\nphrase \"knowledge of good and evil.\" The idea of a \"felicitious fall\" is\nan old heresy in Christendom, though an important piece of Mormon\ntheology." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And a persistant one:\n\n Adam lay ybounden,\n Bounden in a bond,\n Foure thousand winter\n Thought he nat to lang;\n And alle was for an apple,\n An apple that he tok,\n As clerkës finden\n Wretten in hires bok.\n\n Ne had one apple taken been,\n The apple taken been,\n Ne had never Our Lady\n A been Heavenes Queen.\n Blessèd be the time\n That apple takèn was.\n Therefore we moun singen:\n Deo gratias!\n\nThat's 15th Century.\n\n\n\nMatthew" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2002-10-10T16:42:28+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) God in the Machine", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Re: Garden of Eden:\n\nIf Whorl=Garden and Pas=God, then Outsider=???\n\nRE: knowledge of good and evil:\n\n'Knowledge' here should be read as (if you know Spanish) 'conocer' rather\nthan 'saber' (to be familiar with vs. to be aware of). I know a lot about\nBill Clinton, but I don't know him. The same Hebrew word is used later in\nGenesis to say Adam knew his wife Eve and she gave birth.\n\nSo Adam and Eve (presumably) knew the difference between good and evil,\nbut they had not had experience with (knowledge of) good and evil.\n\n-Rostrum" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "tom", "address": "tom at bitterman.net" }, "date": "2002-10-10T17:22:29+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) God in the Machine", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Michael Straight writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Re: Garden of Eden:\n\nIf Whorl=Garden and Pas=God, then Outsider=???" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Actually, the whole thing plays out as an almost perfect parallel\nto some Gnostic cosmologies:\n\nWhorl = Garden\nPas+family = Aeons\nOutsider = true God\ninhumi = evil spirits\n\nEven the cylinder shape with the people inside is a nice inversion\nof the real world.\n\nOf course, there are a lot of different Gnosticisms. YMMV." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Josh Geller", "address": "dclxvi at dclxvi.best.vwh.net" }, "date": "2002-10-10T17:22:37+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) God in the Machine", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thu, 10 Oct 2002, tom wrote:\nMichael Straight writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Re: Garden of Eden:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "If Whorl=Garden and Pas=God, then Outsider=???" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Actually, the whole thing plays out as an almost perfect parallel\nto some Gnostic cosmologies:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Whorl = Garden\nPas+family = Aeons\nOutsider = true God\ninhumi = evil spirits" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Even the cylinder shape with the people inside is a nice inversion\nof the real world." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Of course, there are a lot of different Gnosticisms. YMMV." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Orthodox Christianity is one of them.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alice K. Turner", "address": "aturner6 at nyc.rr.com" }, "date": "2002-10-11T02:42:32+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) God in the Machine", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From Matthew:\nAnd a persistant one:\n\n Adam lay ybounden,\n Bounden in a bond,\n\n[snip]\n\nA perfectly lovely old lay. I was lucky enough to hear this sung as a round\nonce by the Princeton Glee Club with some extraordinarily high and pure male\nvoices. My eyes tear, just remembering.\n\nMeanwhile, Crush, I perfectly agree with you that Typhon is consciously\npresented in LS as the Demiurge, the false god who believes (both sincerely\nand cynically, in the modern way) that he is the only creator god of the\nWhorl. And the Outsider is (if not a hallucination!) the true god. And in\nSS, angels (archons)=Neighbors (Of course Zak and the gang are also angels),\ninhumi=demons (with the only excuse for all the histrionics at the end\nbeing an anti-Origen slant that demons cannot be saved, which I deplore\ncritically but understand as fitting into orthodoxy), all that, yadda,\nyadda. I am truly sorry that Wolfe could not find a Sophia figure--Scylla in\nno way cuts it despite all that last-book sentimentality about her poor\nlittle real self--but I do not think he is a real Gnostic; he is once again\ntoo orthodox to dwell on such a powerful heresy. Not to mention being a\nlittle weak with female characters, as has been noted. Also, technically it\nwould have been awkward; I doubt that Wolfe had such a vast contraption in\nmind when, working his way through these series, he first conceived of\nTyphon as a false god.\n\n-alga" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jerry Friedman", "address": "jerry_friedman at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2002-10-11T16:18:32+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) God in the Machine", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- Michael Straight wrote:\n\nRe: Garden of Eden:\n\nIf Whorl=Garden and Pas=God, then Outsider=???\n\nRE: knowledge of good and evil:\n\n'Knowledge' here should be read as (if you know Spanish) 'conocer'\nrather\nthan 'saber' (to be familiar with vs. to be aware of). I know a lot\nabout\nBill Clinton, but I don't know him. The same Hebrew word is used later\nin\nGenesis to say Adam knew his wife Eve and she gave birth.\n\nSo Adam and Eve (presumably) knew the difference between good and evil,\nbut they had not had experience with (knowledge of) good and evil." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Just as a clarification: I don't remember any such distinction existing\nin Hebrew. The verb lada`at (root yd`)is used for both factual\nknowledge and familiarity. Of course, this is consistent with the\npossibility that conocer/connaitre may be the correct interpretation\nin this passage, or a useful one for modern Christians (and Jews and\nMuslims?)." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Jerry Friedman" } ] } ] }