"'Way back before space travel, the Church decided Jesus came only to Earth, to man. If other intelligent races need salvation - and obviously a lot of them do! - God will have made His suitable arrangements for them.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Problem of Pain" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 103-134 AT p. 110.
Yet, in The Game Of Empire, Axor, a Wodenite, has converted to Christianity. Although Axor seeks for evidence of an extrasolar Incarnation, he does not believe that God has made any suitable arrangements for his own planet, Woden.
However, nothing is more certain that that Christian denominations will continue to disagree in future!
Similarly, in "Margin of Profit" and "Hiding Place," the Federated Brotherhood of Spacefarers represents Solar Spice & Liquors employees whereas, in Mirkheim, the relevant trade union for SSL is the United Technicians.
However, nothing is more certain than that trade unions will continue to merge and change their names. I joined NALGO which merged with NUPE and COHSE to become UNISON.
In the Technic History, human beings venture into the galaxy, taking churches, companies and unions with them. We know them.
As Poul said through van Rijn, I approve of unions as long as they stay "honestly greedy".
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that they tend to prioritize protecting incompetence, and restraining innovation, and their leaders (exemplia gratia the teacher's unions here) tend to get wild political hairs up their backsides.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
ReplyDeletePaul: Exactly, whichever church Peter Berg belonged to decided Christianity belonged only to mankind. However, the Roman/Jerusalem Catholic Church took a more universalistic view of the matter, deciding God wanted all who so chose, humans and non-humans, to become Christians. And that seems to be how Catholic theologians who took an interest in this are leaning to.
Mr. Stirling: I agree, unions are tolerable as long as they are content to be "honest greedy."
Ditto, what you said in your second sentence! Many US unions are corrupt and have a bad history of violence and extortion, with some being controlled by organized crime. And the infamous teachers are dominated by insane leftists who have wrecked American public schools and dragging the Democrats more and more to the hard left.
Ad astra! Sean