Goetic interplanetary travel has two features in common with some kinds of hard sf interstellar travel:
the generation of a field that accelerates every molecule simultaneously;
instantaneous communication.
"...the sword, lacking a mouth, spoke by goetic generation of sound waves..." (p. 375)
Should we have asked where Fotherwick-Botts voice came from?
When we were told at school that God spoke to Abraham and Moses, I interpreted that literally, i.e.:
God omnipotently caused air molecules to vibrate;
Abraham or Moses heard, and received instructions from, a disembodied voice.
Would someone standing nearby hear it as well? Later, I realized that God's voice meant a transcendent inspiration, not an audible sound. When I was a Religious Education teacher, the first year pupils' text book on Old Testament stories was called They Heard God's Voice so what did the pupils think? They could be very literal minded:
a picture of the creation of light was an electric bulb;
a picture of a man mediating on a flower was a large flower with a small man in meditation posture on it;
these were not jokes.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
God, BEING God, would not find it impossible to vibrate molecules of air in such a way that sounds would be produced. So I don't think it's that implausible to believe God have "spoken" to Abraham, Moses, or any of the other prophets.
So, yes, Fotherwick-Botts, the sword, could have vibrated air molecules.
Ad astra! Sean
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