Scylla, Oreb and transmigrational chain yanking

Jeff Wilson · 24 Apr 2002, 00:40 · from urth-v0204.mbox · original

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: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Scylla, Oreb and transmigrational chain yanking
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 19:40:49 -0500
Message-ID: <urth-v0204-778 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0204/778.txt.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

>      From:=20
>           "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net>
=20
> hartshorn wrote:
>=20
> >I won't comment on the Pharasees/Saducsees debate, but I will note one
> other
> >thing about Wolfe.   Apparently machines - computer, Taloses, Solders and
> >chems - are themselves to be redemeed, and become children of God.
>=20
> I know you are presenting what seems to be Wolfe's viewpoint, not your ow=
n.
>=20
> First of all, redeemed from what, exactly? Original Sin? For a Christian =
who
> subscribes to that doctrine (as all, I assume, must; otherwise what need =
of
> a "Savior"?), that's a rather queer notion.=20

	There's sin learned from others, Unoriginal Sin. :) Seriously, it's
generally accepted among all but the most reactionary Christians that
Jesus' sacrifice redeemed everyone from original sin, both retroactively
and for all generations to come. So, innocent babies do not go to hell
if they die before being baptised or otherwise "cleansed" of sin.=20

> I mean, the progeny of Eve, even
> unto the nth generation, cut off from the Tree of Life and cursed to live=
 by
> the sweat of their brows, are all doomed by the nature of their flesh--the
> perils and temptations and foibles attendant upon it--to live out their
> lives as best they may, then to die. After death they are to be judged, a=
nd
> rewarded or punished eternally, according to how well they acquitted
> themselves while alive and in the flesh. That flesh is subject, by
> definition, directly to Lust and Gluttony and, indirectly, to others of t=
he
> Deadly Sins. It is very hard, if not impossible, to "sin" in any way that=
 is
> not reducible, ultimately, to the animal nature of the species.

	In the same way, most Christians other than the crustiest
fundamentalists will consider yielding to lust and gluttony to be sinful
because/if the person chooses to indulge when they know better.=20
=20
> For a non-corporeal entity (never mind where the "soul" came from) to be
> held to the same standards as one of flesh and blood, strikes me as, well=
, .
> . . unfair, to say the least. It's easy to be a "saint" when it can't be
> helped. Has your PC ever lusted after an iMac? Have you ever known a robot
> who spent the rent money on wine, women, and the horses? Where is the vir=
tue
> of resisting temptations one isn't even subject to?

Salvation's not about cultivating virtue, it's about refraining from
harming yourself and others. There are plenty of precedent for the
behavior (or imagined behavior) of nonhuman beings being held up as an
example of virtuous conduct worth of emulation; the various animal
species that mate for life, the work ethic and community spirit of the
beaver, a lion's courage, the indomitability of the bear.=20
=20
> Look at Hammerstone; he had his basic, factory-issue value system changed=
 by
> an ignorant priest with a screwdriver! Talk about an epiphany! Did that
> augur save that Iron Man's soul with his meddling, or doom him to hell wh=
en
> he got some wires crossed?

possibly, would he have had time to realize the difference between right
and wrong?

--=20
Jeff Wilson
How Am I Posting? 1-800-555-6789
"If your SecOp can see you, so can the enemy." -Cpt Law


--=20

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net