Reason?

Question And Answer, CHAPTER IX.

Thornton the Martian Dissenter offers to discuss religion on reasonable terms like any other subject but the viewpoint character, Lorenzen, declines on the ground that they would never agree which Thornton interprets as:

"'You mean you would never listen.'" (p. 73)

I would give Thornton his chance to speak reasonably and hopefully he would not be like street Evangelicals who:

are unable speak except on the assumption that their belief is true, thus are unable to engage in dialogue with anyone else;

ask us to change our belief by an act of will, which is impossible;

expect us to accept an absurd and grotesque belief.

Meanwhile, like Cavor and Bedford in The First Men In The Moon, these human explorers are surrounded by aliens with whom they can barely communicate and whose thoughts and intentions are completely unknown, a potentially nightmarish situation.