Comments for A Thinking Reed

Comment on Close encounters of the religious kind by Brandon

Brandon — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:48:52 +0000

Hi, Lee,

Yes, the Jesuit in the book comes to the conclusion that the aliens are invented by the devil precisely because they are, in their society, so thoroughly rational and decent without any religion; so he ends up exorcising it. I never thought that was a particularly interesting part of the book; the part of the story I found interesting was when one of the aliens was raised among us.

Comment on Close encounters of the religious kind by Camassia

Camassia — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:00:55 +0000

There was such an episode, although of course it wasn’t cast in religious terms; as I recall, Picard’s argument was more or less “if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…” As you may recall from my own blog, however, I don’t really believe in sentient machines even in sci-fi, so the question doesn’t exercise me that much. And in fact the same objection can be made regarding aliens. Star Trek always made its aliens way more human than any reasonable evolutionary probability would allow — in fact, I think there was another TNG episode that retroactively explained this by positing a common origin for all the humanoids. Really alien aliens would not be just like people, only with the religion removed. They would be different in a lot of ways. Meeting them would still be educational, but it’s virtually impossible to predict how.

Comment on Close encounters of the religious kind by Lee

Lee — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:55:34 +0000

Brandon, I’ve actually read Blish’s book but forgot about it till just now. As I recall, there’s a suggestion that the aliens are “children of the devil.”

Camassia, I think the imago issue is an interesting one: the idea that there could be intelligent, rational, humanoid creatures who were nevertheless “imago-less” is intriguing. Does that make it an ineffable something-I-know-not-what without any visible manifestations? (A similar point could be made about intelligent machines, I guess. Does Data bear the imago dei? I seem to recall a Star Trek: TNG episode where Picard had to defend Data’s right to self-determination in court because someone wanted to take him apart for research.)

Comment on Close encounters of the religious kind by Camassia

Camassia — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:03:38 +0000

A few years ago a friend told me about a branch of fan fiction involving Christian missionaries in the Star Trek universe, and though I never actually saw any of it, I started toying with the idea of how I would write that. As I remember it, I settled upon the idea that life forms who responded to the Gospel were called “imagos,” as in imago dei, and those who did not were considered not to be imago dei no matter how smart or how humanoid they were. As you have pointed out elsewhere, there’s no particular reason being created in the image of God refers to intelligence; it’s really not clear from the Bible just what it means.

Comment on Health care reform and Catholic social teaching by Lee

Lee — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:58:13 +0000

Rick, you raise a good point. I’ve always found the notion of subsidiarity to be a bit nebulous. But I do think the narrower point is true: it’s not the same as what conservatives mean by “small government” (e.g., a Nozick-style nightwatchman state).

Greg, thanks for commenting. I’m not sure if you mean to say that repentance and spiritual conversion are substitutes for appropriate legislation and regulation, but if so, I don’t agree. The intractability of sin means that the power of law will be necessary to maintain order and promote the good, at least to some extent. This is the essential truth embedded in the Lutheran idea of the “two kingdoms.”

Comment on Health care reform and Catholic social teaching by Greg M. Johsnon

Greg M. Johsnon — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:00:06 +0000

The problem with liberals is that they turn everything into legislation. You have cases where businessfolk are being a complete arse– such as denying coverage on the basis of failure to disclose the “pre-existing condition” of acne– and liberals turn the exclusive focus on this into an issue of regulation, and not one of calling folks to repentance (yes, in the spiritual sense) from sin. Conservatives are worse, because they hate regulation so much that for every evil and cruel practice under the sun, they’ll become apologists for why it ought be the next sacrament.

I think that you sort of fell into this trap. Conservatives are not acting on any lofty principle here, just whitewashing sin. (Liberals are meanwhile turning spiritual affairs into legislative ones.)

Comment on Close encounters of the religious kind by Brandon

Brandon — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:59:13 +0000

James Blish had a famous science fiction novel, A Case for Conscience, on the puzzle of a race of intelligent aliens with no religion.

Comment on Health care reform and Catholic social teaching by Rick Ritchie

Rick Ritchie — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 03:49:52 +0000

“For the most part, government bodies have operated very much in keeping with the principle of subsidiarity.” (from the article)

I’m not sure how this would be quantified, but I doubt it is true. Unless all it means is that the principle of subsidiarity is kept whenever the level of government involvement pleases the writer. Which tells us more about the attitudes of the writer than about how many intrusions into health care are around us.

Examples of things I would imagine violate the principle of subsidiarity would be include prescription drug laws, the link between insurance and employment, and legal mandates as to levels of care (your choice is often all or nothing), among others.

Comment on The missing element in the US climate change debate by euandus2

euandus2 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:00:41 +0000

Even letting the debate continue, when our species may hang in the balance, says something about us. I argue that there is a certain presumptuousness surrounding our approach to how we are addressing global warming that goes well beyond simply having a short-term perspective. What if the cockroach has a more sustainable position? I recommend the following post: http://euandus3.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/climatic-presumption-what-is-the-forecast/

Comment on Building a better farm animal? by Marvin

Marvin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:43:27 +0000

Good God, does there have to be a technological solution for EVERYTHING?

This is just research labs and land grant universities sniffing around for more troughs to stick their snouts in (a barnyard animal metaphor seems appropriate here).