(no subject) The Urth list — 7 messages, 5 voices, 16 Dec 2010 https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5830 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. ============================================================================== Lee Berman — 16 Dec 2010, 17:46 > > As mentioned elsewhere, to describe Jesus as "enlightened and > > possessed by the Outsider" would be hideously incorrect theology. > > However, such a description might well address the problem of His > > having an analogue in the Briahtic universe. > But is it not exactly the interpretation that would spring to the mind of an > augur in Silk's hideously incorrect religion? > Dan'l- Yes, I believe that is correct. It could be. I can see the validity of this possible view. For me, the problem becomes that when Silk was, in that split-second, enlightened by The Outsider, we now have to accept that the enlightenment was not Universal Truth but instead a culturally-relative, ethnically corrupted version of the Truth so that Silk could understand it. It could be argued that Silk received Universal Truth but he has to translate it into culturally relevant forms when he preaches so that the locals can understand it. This doesn't seem quite so bad but it still suggests the approval of a corrupted message. We might wonder- how DOES Gene Wolfe feel about culturally adapted versions of Christianity? Is it okay to throw in a Christmas tree and Santa for the Germanics? Mother Mary worship for the Latin American people. Witchcraft and call and response singing for the Africans? He might approve. I dunno. But I remain unconvinced that our God and Jesus Christ make any appearances in the Sun series. I'd need either more direct Christian references (call it a crucifix, not a "rood"=rod) or fewer monsters and demons. That's really the crux (heh) of it, for me. The Sun series is all about what the universe would be like with no Christ. Answer- We'd really have pagan gods ruling us, vampires among us, foul, predatory monsters in the oceans, ghouls and human sacrifice and a lot of other nasty stuff that we Earthlings, blessedly, (mostly) only have in legends. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ David Stockhoff — 16 Dec 2010, 17:57 in reply to Lee Berman Possibly. That seems a bit literal to me. One could go further and speculate that such a universe is the one we would experience, because we would create it ... because that is what we perceive, being creatures of superstition with no higher wisdom to guide us. At best, we'd be dupes in someone else's idea of progress, even if it helps us in the long run. > On 12/16/2010 12:46 PM, Lee Berman wrote: > That's really the crux (heh) of it, for me. The Sun series is all about what the universe would > be like with no Christ. Answer- We'd really have pagan gods ruling us, vampires among us, foul, > predatory monsters in the oceans, ghouls and human sacrifice and a lot of other nasty stuff that > we Earthlings, blessedly, (mostly) only have in legends. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Matthew Weber — 16 Dec 2010, 18:03 in reply to Lee Berman > On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 9:46 AM, Lee Berman wrote: > > > But I remain unconvinced that our God and Jesus Christ make any appearances > in the Sun series. > I'd need either more direct Christian references (call it a crucifix, not a > "rood"=rod) or fewer > monsters and demons. I would think that "rood" is used primarily to refer to a cross, or the Cross. The sense in which it means "rod" or "staff" is even more obscure than the Christian one. I have to confess that the assumption I sometimes see at work here, that Wolfe always takes the longest way possible around everything, baffles and bemuses me. Using the word "rood" to signify a cross or crucifix is a way of distancing the phenomenon; if he merely said "cross" or "crucifix" it would seem very cozily Christian to us. But the BotNS is set in a far future in which Christianity may be only a distant, mythic memory--or perhaps it's a distant past in which Christianity has not yet appeared. So calling it a rood rather than a crucifix or cross renders it intelligible and retains a slight whiff of Christianity (as a survival of long ago?) without suggesting that the denizens of Urth practice what we understand to be the Christian faith. -- Matt + Let each man pass his days in that wherein his skill is greatest. Sextus Propertius (54 B.C.-A.D. 2), Elegies, II, i, 46 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ David Stockhoff — 16 Dec 2010, 18:09 in reply to Matthew Weber Just like the Sign of Addition. Is it a past survival or a future one? I was going to mention to Lee the other day that his theory reminded me of Childhood's End, where an advanced race of benign red devils comes to rule us and prepare us for some Enlightenment that always struck me as on the level of meeting God. > On 12/16/2010 1:03 PM, Matthew Weber wrote: > > > On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 9:46 AM, Lee Berman > wrote: > > > > But I remain unconvinced that our God and Jesus Christ make any > appearances in the Sun series. > I'd need either more direct Christian references (call it a > crucifix, not a "rood"=rod) or fewer > monsters and demons. > > > I would think that "rood" is used primarily to refer to a cross, or > the Cross. The sense in which it means "rod" or "staff" is even more > obscure than the Christian one. > > I have to confess that the assumption I sometimes see at work here, > that Wolfe always takes the longest way possible around everything, > baffles and bemuses me. Using the word "rood" to signify a cross or > crucifix is a way of distancing the phenomenon; if he merely said > "cross" or "crucifix" it would seem very cozily Christian to us. But > the BotNS is set in a far future in which Christianity may be only a > distant, mythic memory--or perhaps it's a distant past in which > Christianity has not yet appeared. So calling it a rood rather than a > crucifix or cross renders it intelligible and retains a slight whiff > of Christianity (as a survival of long ago?) without suggesting that > the denizens of Urth practice what we understand to be the Christian > faith. > > -- > Matt + > > Let each man pass his days in that wherein his skill is greatest. > Sextus Propertius (54 B.C.-A.D. 2), Elegies, II, i, 46 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Son of Witz — 16 Dec 2010, 18:53 in reply to Matthew Weber > On Dec 16, 2010, at 10:03 AM, Matthew Weber wrote: > > > On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 9:46 AM, Lee Berman wrote: > > > But I remain unconvinced that our God and Jesus Christ make any appearances in the Sun series. > I'd need either more direct Christian references (call it a crucifix, not a "rood"=rod) or fewer > monsters and demons. > > > I would think that "rood" is used primarily to refer to a cross, or the Cross. The sense in which it means "rod" or "staff" is even more obscure than the Christian one. > > I have to confess that the assumption I sometimes see at work here, that Wolfe always takes the longest way possible around everything, baffles and bemuses me. Using the word "rood" to signify a cross or crucifix is a way of distancing the phenomenon; if he merely said "cross" or "crucifix" it would seem very cozily Christian to us. But the BotNS is set in a far future in which Christianity may be only a distant, mythic memory--or perhaps it's a distant past in which Christianity has not yet appeared. So calling it a rood rather than a crucifix or cross renders it intelligible and retains a slight whiff of Christianity (as a survival of long ago?) without suggesting that the denizens of Urth practice what we understand to be the Christian faith. > > -- > Matt + Thanks for that. I completely agree about the distance obscuration. I think Wolfe is tricksy, but I think people mistrust him too much. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jeff Wilson — 17 Dec 2010, 01:15 in reply to David Stockhoff > On 12/16/2010 12:09 PM, David Stockhoff wrote: > Just like the Sign of Addition. > > Is it a past survival or a future one? I was going to mention to Lee the > other day that his theory reminded me of Childhood's End, where an > advanced race of benign red devils comes to rule us and prepare us for > some Enlightenment that always struck me as on the level of meeting God. The black devils sorta kinda parallel the Yesodis but the resemblance is probably due to the plots' descent from Teilhard de Chardin and being compressed to near-novel length. -- Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ David Stockhoff — 17 Dec 2010, 01:32 in reply to Jeff Wilson Jeff, you made me google him. Thanks. Some crazy stuff here: Having reached the limit of its organized complexity , the collective Christ mankind?will make a leap to a higher degree of *singularity* by dying and delegating all of its universe-orchestrating power to the *single* survivor, who will be automatically promoted to the rank of Christ personal ..... > On 12/16/2010 8:15 PM, Jeff Wilson wrote: > On 12/16/2010 12:09 PM, David Stockhoff wrote: > > Just like the Sign of Addition. > > > > Is it a past survival or a future one? I was going to mention to Lee the > > other day that his theory reminded me of Childhood's End, where an > > advanced race of benign red devils comes to rule us and prepare us for > > some Enlightenment that always struck me as on the level of meeting God. > The black devils sorta kinda parallel the Yesodis but the resemblance > is probably due to the plots' descent from Teilhard de Chardin and > being compressed to near-novel length. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------