Standard Wolfean Riddle

Jeff Wilson · 16 Aug 2010, 17:05 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:05:16 -0500
Subject: (urth) Standard Wolfean Riddle
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W5497A07FE8CCA10102DCD2CF9B0 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W5497A07FE8CCA10102DCD2CF9B0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <4C696FCC.2080109 at io.com>

On 8/16/2010 7:56 AM, Lee Berman wrote:
>
>
>> James Wynn: "What happened to Christianity in on Urth?" Answer: There
>> was a Catholic Church and there were saints, but there was no Jesus.
>> Urth is in a gnostic iteration of Briah and Severian is its Christ.
>
> This is essentially my view also. I'm not sure if I would have included
> the Catholic Church on Urth, but Dorcas does mention a "rood".
>
> I think it is an interesting thought experiment to consider what the
> Catholic Church would be like without any Jesus. Perhaps Wolfe also.
>
>> From a Christian perspective I find it pretty depressing to think that
> after tens of thousands of years of Christ influence Earth would
> turn out as bleak as Urth.

I thought about this after the "recent" DR WHO episode, "Gridlock." 
IIRC, the old show dodged comments on earthly religion, but the new show 
refers to it fairly often, and in this episode, humans and cat people 
are shown following Christianity in the year 5 Billion and change, 
singing hymns together in their grid-locked flying cars on a planet in 
the Magellanic Cloud IIRC.

I was not able to decide if this was a pro-Christian statement, that the 
faith would endure for billions of years and become omnipresent in he 
galaxies, or anti-Christian in the implied lack of a Second Coming. 
Another episode later in the season has the Dr traveling to the bitter 
end of time only to find that the only other surviving time lord is The 
Master, who has exploited the last humans' naive wish to take a 
spaceship to heaven into becoming his own form of Daleks.

So perhaps Urth is merely post-Rapture, and the bleakness is due to the 
selection for people who didn't have faith.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
IEEE Student Chapter Blog at
< http://ieeetamut.org >

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