Harari condenses, whereas speculative fiction writers expand, futurological projections.
In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, the Terran Empire combines social order and technological power on a vast interstellar scale.
Are religion and science both about truth, albeit about different kinds or aspects of truth? No. According to Harari, religion is about (social) order and science is about (technological) power. Thus, both should be epitomized by the Terran Empire? We are not told whether the Empire has an established church (see Terran Naval Funeral Services) although it seems to be an entirely secularist regime.
I am pleased that Harari (i) understands Buddhism and (ii) recognizes "spirituality" as a kind of search for truth that can bring individuals into conflict with religious authorities and their social orders: the Buddha, Jesus and Luther. Also, spiritual seekers, sometimes inadvertently, found new religions. Anderson shows us spiritual and religious ferment in one part of the Empire, on Aeneas. A new religion could have been started, but a destructive jihadist one.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
The impression I got from reading the stories about the Terran Empire was that it had no established state religion, nothing like the Anglican or Lutheran state churches of the UK and Scandinavia. But I did get the impression that the personal choice of faith of most humans in the leading echelons of the Empire was Christianity. And many of the most prominent of the human colonized planets within the Imperial sphere were Christian in faith (such as Aeneas, Dennitza, and Nyanza. Some, like Dayan, were Jewish.
And we both know of how quite a large number of non-humans were attracted to various Terran religions and philosophies, such as Christianity and Buddhism. We see two Wodenites, one of whom was a Buddhist and the other a Jerusalem Catholic priest.
Sean
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