Luaine disparages Terrans who accept the cybercosm:
"...they choose to obey. They are worshipers, as in ancient times. The name of their god is Teramind." (p. 231)
She expresses standard secularist opposition to theism. Since the cybercosm apex, the Teramind, is self-conscious, could a text be narrated from its point of view? It would be a maturer deity than, e.g., Odin or the Three of Ys.
There is also a subtler comparison of the Teramind with God:
"Always suspicious, the Selenarchs had never found it reasonable that the cybercosm would withhold observations simply because they were enigmatic. If the great equation proved in need of amendment, what harm in that? Or.... what promise, which the Teramind did not want humans to know of, lest they became like it?" (p. 237)
See Gen 3:22. "...lest they become like it..." is an indirect Biblical reference. (Also, I think that the plural pronoun, "...like one of Us...," in Gen 3:22 shows the polytheist origins of Genesis.)
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I can see how the Teramind (which makes me think of it, in addition, as the TERRAmind) might be thought of as a god or God. And there's Anderson's story "Goat Song," in which the AI called SUM claimed divine honors.
And, yes, the Teramind did not want humans running free and wild, independent of it. And your comments about Genesis reminded me of how the inspired editors of that book, probably during the Babylonian Exile, recast and remolded several Mesopotamian myths or legends as the forms used to teach revealed truths about God and man in ways that would be comprehensible to the Jews of that time.
And that "us" God is sometimes shown as using could refer just as well to either the "royal plural" or a hint of the revelation to come of the Trinity.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think that the Trinity doctrine originated because the Fourth Gospel deified and the Son and personified the Spirit yet remained monotheist. Hence, three divine persons, one God, Trinity. There was no earlier hint of that doctrine.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I disagree with that argument. I find plenty of evidence in the Synoptic Gospels that makes sense only because of the revelation of the Trinity. Moreover, commentators have found hints of the Trinity in the OT. Some think the vision Isaiah was given of God in Isaiah 6 was that of the pre-Incarnate Logos, Christ himself. What we see in John's Gospel is simply a clearer explication of what the rest of the Bible and Christian tradition teaches.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment