In In The Days Of The Comet, after the change, the narrator's mother tells him that she still believes that there is a Hell. However, she never did believe that anyone went there! He is pleased that she has reached this theological accommodation.
Changes of attitude would solve a lot of problems. Thus, when two young girls swearing blood-sisterhood each grant the other a veto over the other's boyfriends or partners, all that is necessary is that each girl later resolves not to exercise this veto.
Think about the problems that would simply end if every Merseian one day woke up to realize that they could share the galaxy with all other rational species. As it happens, the Merseians eventually fail to conquer the galaxy in any case so they would have been better advised to invest their energies in some other cause. If any deity had been capable of directing the Merseians' evolution and history in such a way that their motivations were less aggressive when they first encountered humanity but that deity had failed to do this, then s/he would have been morally responsible for the emergence of the supremacist ideology of the Roidhunate.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I have to disagree with what Wells had some of his characters saying IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET. While I don't want anyone to be in Hell, I have to keep in mind Our Lord's firm warning that Hell is real and it is possible for anyone to choose to go there.
Your third paragraph: I agree.
I only wish the Merseians of the Roidhunate in Anderson's Terran Empire stories had a change of heart and decided they did not want to destroy the Empire and treat all non-Merseians as inferior beings. Since I believe there is only one God and He revealed Himself thru the Jews and then Jesus Christ, I have to call the Merseian concept of "The God" imperfect and flawed. That, they thought of God more or less a racist Merseian. So, I argue it was the Merseians own choice, not any wish of The God, to become aggressive racialists.
What that means is that I think it's likely that most intelligent races had Fallen and that one consequence would be acquiring erroneous ideas about God. Indeed, I recall Fr. Axor saying something very similar in Chapter 1 of THE GAME OF EMPIRE. That is, he noticed that some non human religions curiously resembled Christianity (albeit, without an Incarnation of Christ).
Sean
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