Monday, 5 April 2021

Anderson And Wells On Religion

It is Easter so the Archbishop of Canterbury proclaims "Christ is risen!" I acknowledge this proclamation as a powerful myth but not as a historical claim. I cannot join the Archbishop in his proclamation because it is generally understood in a literal sense whereas I am able to participate in Buddhist or Pagan rituals where belief is not an issue.

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, Dominic Flandry funds Fr. Axor's research. Axor studies Ancient relics, hoping to find evidence of an extraterrestrial Divine Incarnation. It is generally beneficial first that relics are studied and secondly that there is dialogue as to their significance.

In HG Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come, the One World-State, aiming to control all education, kills the Pope, martyrs an officiating priest, suppresses several religious observances in India and closes all kosher slaughter-houses as well as the chief holy places in Mecca.

No, Wells, that is not the way either to challenge traditional beliefs or to establish world peace and harmony! Attitudes to religion change as society changes. Change society, yes; force religious changes, no. Wells looks to:

"...an aggressive order of religiously devoted men and women who will try out and establish and impose a new pattern of living upon our race."
-HG Wells, The Shape Of Things To Come (London, 1974), p. 493.

- whereas I look to our race to find new ways to live and, as part of this, to resist any attempted impositions by aggressive minorities.

An sf writer imagines a technological innovation, then asks how it would affect society. Wells accurately predicted the ways that aircraft would change warfare. In "Kings Who Die," Anderson imagined governments agreeing not to end war but to move it off Earth. Larry Niven imagined that organ transplant technology would make prisons obsolete because electorates would vote to extend the death penalty in order to gain access to transplants from executed criminals. I think that this social change is completely implausible. Sure, some people would want to extend the death penalty but everyone?

Sf writers recognize that technological progress can coexist with social regression:

the Chaos, the Troubles and the Long Night in Anderson's Technic History;
the Second and Third Dark Ages in Anderson's Psychotechnic History;
the "Crazy Years" in Heinlein's Future History Timeline;
Asimov's Fall of the Galactic Empire;
Dark Ages in Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium future history;
the Age of Frustration in BOOK THE FIRST of The Shape Of Things To Come;
the Cold Peace, the Fall of the West and the Empty Years in James Blish's Chronology of Cities In Flight;
"Europe Murdered," "THE FALL OF THE FIRST MEN" and "The Second Dark Age" in Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Men.

11 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

But the Anglican archbishop's declaration of Christ being risen is precisely what makes Christianity different from all other faiths! That is, God Incarnate actually dying on the Cross and rising from the dead was a HISTORICAL event. TREMENDOUS things occurred and radiated from Jerusalem because of that event.

It seems the neo-pagans you know belong to the soft polytheist version, persons who don't seem to actually believe in their "gods." Hard polytheists would have insisted on would be participants in their rites to affirm actual belief in the reality of Odin, Jupiter, etc.

It would have been more accurate to say MAJORITIES of Niven's Known Space electorates voted for that drastic extension of the death penalty. I hope I would have been one of the minority who objected and voted against that bad idea.

Capital punishment for minor traffic violations???? Gads!!!

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

But I think that only a very small minority would ever want to vote for the death penalty for minor traffic offenses.

I think that Pagans in former times would have assumed the literal existence of their gods and would have wanted visitors to pay due respect to the gods but would not have insisted that the visitors in effect assent to a creed. That would have been completely outside their world view. To think that they would do that is, IMO, to project Christian dogmatism back into an earlier period.

Paul.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

Also, I agree that belief in the bodily resurrection as a unique historical event differentiates Christianity from all other faiths/paths but do not agree that there is sufficient evidence to warrant acceptance of that belief. In fact, I argue that the origin of the belief can be accounted for in ways that I have set out elsewhere.

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I hope you will be right, what you said first in your comment above. I am not so optimistic, however. Because foolishness and folly can happen!

I disagree with your second comment, however. The mere fact that pagans outlawed and then at least occasionally persecuted Christians from Nero's time onwards to the Edict of Milan by Constantine and Licinius disproves your view. Christians were literally executed at times for refusing to worship pagan gods. I don't think that would have happened if there had not been SOME hard polytheists.

Ad astra! Sean

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And writers as learned and scholarly as Daniel-Rops, John Meier, and Raymond Brown have defended the historicity of the resurrection of Christ. I don't find the anti-Resurrection argument convincing.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

I don't think that those were "hard polytheists" in the modern sense. Modern hard polytheists accept that gods somehow literally exist but do not insist that everyone else should accept this. They simply subscribe to a (very small) minority view. I did say above that Pagans in former times would have wanted others to pay due respect to the gods. Jews and Christians set themselves apart. I would have argued for tolerating them but no doubt the familiar social processes of intolerance, scapegoating etc predominated and certainly continued when Christians had acquired state power.

Paul.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

But we don't have to mount an anti- argument! The pro-arguers must prove their case. Peter's Pentecost sermon, the foundation statement of Christianity, is thoroughly unconvincing. All that he does is to quote scripture. He doesn't mention an empty tomb, refers to witnesses only once, then only to back up an argument from scripture, and presents no details of who saw what when or where.

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I am sorry, I still disagree. I believe there were pagans in Roman times who still literally believed in their gods. And that some were fanatical enough to kill dissenters.

And that is why Christians don't base their faith only on one witness. Here I have in mind how St. Paul went out his way to search out witnesses to the Resurrection in person. As we see him discussing in 1 Corinthians. And which Anderson thought important enough to mention and quote in "A Chapter of Revelation."

And the Shroud of Turin tells us SOMETHING very strange happened with the body of Christ.

Ad astra! Sean

Nicholas D. Rosen said...

Kaor, Paul an Sean!

Chiming in late about your argument about what polytheists believed, I agree that at least some Greco-Roman or Norse pagans seriously believed in their gods, and they persecuted Christians. But I think that what they demanded of others was primarily orthopraxis, not orthodoxy. You would be minimally acceptable to the Roman state if you sacrificed a little incense to Jupiter and the genius of the imperator; the Romans didn’t demand that you declare a firm belief in Jupiter or claim to have a personal relationship with Mars. A Christian or other eccentric in early tenth century Norway who refused to partake in a major sacrifice, eat the holy meat, and be sprinkled with the hlaut (blood of the sacrificed animals) would have been seriously unpopular, as Anderson showed of King Haakon in MOTHER OF KINGS, and Anderson was basically following the HEIMSKRINGLA. However, I don’t think the sacrifice involved reciting the creed of the Norse Pagan Church, since there wasn’t one. They might have recited tales of the gods on such an occasion, but probably without demanding that all present declare a belief in the literal truth of those tales (even though many present would have held such a belief).

Insisting on belief in a set of doctrines, as opposed to conformity in participating in religious ceremonies, and other proper behavior, is largely a Christian, or at leas5 an Abrahamic, thing.

Best Regards,
Nicholas D. Rosen

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Nicholas,

I could not possibly agree more.

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Nicholas!

Of course I agree with you. What you said was basically how hard polytheists of the Greco-Roman or Nordic types would behave. Humans being what they are, I would still expect some to actually kill Christians, esp. in times of war or plague when many people would be feeling agitated and anxious.

Ad astra! Sean