Silk for calde blog: Wolfe thesis

brunians at brunians.org · 18 Dec 2009, 15:04 · from 2009-December.txt.gz
This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.
From: brunians at brunians.org (brunians at brunians.org)
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:04:16 -0500 (EST)
Subject: (urth) Silk for calde blog: Wolfe thesis
In-Reply-To: <871553.85747.qm at web54406.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
References: <370421.87684.qm at web50705.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
	<3306B551-9B74-41C4-A201-76CE02ADEAF7 at optusnet.com.au>
	<0B1704BE-B464-4041-BCD9-A6D8D8C03055 at io.com>
	<1f7617370909221149h12f31355q8f269b0fef702965 at mail.gmail.com>
	<871553.85747.qm at web54406.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <14135.72.171.0.146.1261148656.squirrel at brunians.org>

Orthodox Christianity (including Catholicism) is Christianity. The forms
of Protestantism are Christianity with various bits sliced off.

Christianity began by being a coherent expression of the common ancient
Worldview with a particular theological slant upon it.


.

> This is pure speculation on my part, as I was raised Protestant, so please
> forgive me if I stereotype.
>
> 1.  SF authors are interested in, um, science.  Science being a logical
> and repeatable method for explaining the universe.  Expanding on that
> idea, many SF authors (Wolfe, for instance) are interested not just in the
> results, but in the nature of logic, rationality, thought, memory, etc.
> 2.  Protestantism has vague boundaries to many of its practitioners.  Ask
> ten Baptists what they believe and you will probably get eleven answers.
> The clergy in Protestant churches are likely to be well-educated, informed
> about and invested in their system of belief, but their parishioners much
> less so (the first two at least).  There is also much less an idea of a
> "clergy lifestyle" - pastors are very free to pursue their own agendas
> outside of their pastoral duties, and opinions vary widely as to what is
> permissible.  Drinking, smoking, dancing, hunting, parties, etc.  Opinions
> vary widely on these topics, even within one denomination.
> 3.  As an earlier poster pointed out, Catholicism has a lot of trappings,
> but I wanted to point out that it also has a more uniform belief system,
> with predefined actions, rituals, etc, and (I think) a clergyman is much
> more likely to have a "clergy lifestyle" across the Catholic church.  So,
> as a symbol a priest has a more universal power and greater accessibility
> than a pastor does, because many of his attributes and attitudes are
> known.  At least their stereotypes are known.
>
> Sorry for rambling and chasing rabbits (I'm really tired), but my main
> point was this: it must appeal to many authors to be able to play two
> systems against each other to see where they are consonant and dissonant.
> This is, I believe, a summary of the proposed thesis.  Because Catholicism
> seems a more defined system than, say, Methodism or Judaism (where it's
> much more likely that believers will pick and choose their doctrines), and
> the priest a more universal symbol, I would think those aspects would
> appeal to an author looking to juxtapose religion with science.
>
> Ok, one more try: Catholicism is much more like a religious science than
> many other religions.  That's all I wanted to add to The Big Dog theory.
>
> The temptation to provide a false dichotomy between religion and science
> often proves too strong for the zealous author.  Too strong for a good
> story, at least.  One theme of Wolfe's that would bear mention in your
> proposed thesis is religion as a humanizing element.  Wolfe is aware of
> the powerful benevolent moral influence of religion as well as the
> terrible things that it can achieve.  Most of the "negative" religion in
> SF that you mention comes from authors who believe (as best I can make
> out) that rationality should be sufficient to conquer our moral problems,
> who discount religion's benevolent influence as trivial at best, and who
> have in their minds a scale with the Inquisition, the Crusades, suicide
> bombers, Mayan sacrifice, etc on one side, and nothing on the other.
>
> Anyway in Wolfe when the priest finds his faith shaken or confirmed, it is
> often this humanizing process - he must confront what about his faith he
> can continue to believe, what he finds truly important, what is worth
> believing, whether he will continue to believe it whether or not there is
> any proof of it, etc.  These are the same questions that we all confront
> about our beliefs if we are to shape them into something worth believing,
> whether or not they are religious.  </sermon>  I also wonder how much of
> Silk's journey is an analog to Wolfe's own - I feel that I can see Wolfe's
> shadow on Silk, as he makes a deliberate choice to believe even when it
> seems foolhardy and dense.  I often feel the same way in my faith so maybe
> I'm just projecting.
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
> To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Sent: Tue, September 22, 2009 12:49:07 PM
> Subject: Re: (urth) Silk for calde blog: Wolfe thesis
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 8:39 AM, Adam Thornton <adam at io.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>
>>Something I'd *really* like to see someone play with is: why is such a
>> large proportion of religion-oriented SF Catholic?
>
> One reason is that Catholicism is the Big Dog of Christianity. There is no
> Protestant sect that comes near Catholicism in terms of total membership;
> thus, if you want to present a generic Christian, a Catholic is the
> logical choice.
>
> In addition, there is a huge and interesting dynamic between Catholicism,
> specifically, and science. Catholicism is the most "rationalistic" of the
> Christian religions, with its theology heavily based on the
> Aristoteleanism of St Thomas Aquinas. Yet Catholicism is -- or was, until
> fundamentalism reared its head and began resenting biology and geology --
> the sect which has the most significant history of conflict with science
> and rationalism (can you say Galileo? I knew you could).
>
> Plus, as Jerry observed below, there is all the nifty colorful baggage
> that comes with Catholicism - though if that's what you're looking for,
> Eastern Orthodoxy is even better.
>
>
>
>>If it reflects the background of the authors, then why are Catholics
>> overrepresented in SF authorship (and, concomitantly, why are there
>> relatively few Jewish SF stories) ?  I mean, just off the top of my head:
>>
>
> Relatively few Jewish SF stories? Heavens, man, what about Asimov's
> "Robot" stories? Those are all basically Talmudic disputation.
>
> There are two excellent anthologies of Jewish SF edited by Jack Dann in
> the '70s, "Wandering Stars" and "More Wandering Stars."
>
>
>
> Where's, for example, the Lutheran SF?  (If I were being snarky I'd ask
> and answer where the Baptist SF was.)  Or even specifically *Protestant*
> Christian SF?
>>
>
> I can't think of any Lutheran SF offhand, but there's an excellent Quaker
> SF novel called "Pennterra" by Judith Moffatt.
>
>
> --
> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
>
>
>
>       _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net