Mutual Incomprehension

"The Problem of Pain."

Arrach, the young female Ythrian, has been lost at sea. Miscommunications multiply. First, Arrach's father, Enherrian, assures her mother, Whell, that Arrach would have fought well and given God honour. Peter Berg wonders whether this means that Arrach prayed and confessed while drowning. It does not. Berg does murmur that Arrach is in heaven but must say this in Anglic, not in Planha. Christians cannot know where anyone has gone in the hereafter, especially not members of another species. In any case, Enherrian thinks that Arrach cannot be anywhere since she is dead. When Berg starts to ask about Arrach's spirit, Enherrian interrupts that that spirit:

"'Will be remembered in pride.'" (p. 122)

- and returns to his work. When Olga Berg completes her husband's question as to belief in spirits outliving bodies, Enherrian expresses incomprehension and closes the conversation not with words but with posture and plumage. They really are at cross-purposes here.

Berg reflects:

"How sorry I feel for these my friends, who don't know they will meet their beloved afresh!" (p. 122)

Sorry, Pete. You do not know that. You only believe it. But, even if there is a hereafter, it has got to be a big place. How do you know that you and Olga will survive in the same "mansion"?

And what is Berg's argument for survival? He continues:

"They will, regardless. It makes no sense that God, Who created what is because in His goodness he wished to share existence, would shape a soul only to break it and throw it away." (ibid.)

Assuming God's existence, it makes sense that He will do whatever He sees as best. If a human life is finite in time, with a beginning, a middle and an end, does this mean that it is broken and thrown away? This is wish fulfilment disguised as reasoning.