Adolescence's Beginning

Why yes, that is a slap at Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End; dumbass sets out to try and write an atheist answer to Lewis' space trilogy and it just ends up being about emanationist pantheism, with shades of Fyodorov's Cosmism and De Chardin's Process Theology. I'm curious to know if anyone who calls himself an atheist really knows what the word means.

And to think, that "I write like" thing has the gall to give me this:

I write like
Arthur Clarke

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

Them's fightin' words, ya hairdressin' lil Java program. I write like Tony Hillerman.

Clarke may have invented the thing I get my teevee shows from, but that doesn't change the fact he was a philosophical illiterate and a shallow-skulled, self-righteous twit with a Pollyanna view of human destiny that bordered on the Hegelian.

Or take his "Apes or Angels" thing. In brief, Clarke theorized that what we call "human" represents a brief period between being an animal and some woowoo "ascension" crap, so we're very unlikely to encounter other species at a stage of development comparable to our own, but either in the stage before it or the stage after it.

Only guess what? Clarke was an insect. Provably, viz Heinlein. What I mean is, Clarke may have known a thing or two about space (oh hell, the man was a demigod, credit where it's due), but his understanding of evolution, especially human evolution, is the same pop-sci BS any man on the English street circa 1960 could give you. For God's sake, even TV Tropes knows there's no such thing as EvolutionaryLevels, but apparently nobody told Clarke.

Now, in terms of technological capabilities he's probably right, though I'll point out (gleefully, indeed I am dancing on his grave in spirit) that only one civilization on the Earth had Christianity, and Christendom is the only civilization to make several of the scientific advances necessary to the kind of technological progress Clarke talks about.

This post isn't all going to be a rant about Clarke, though (I know, I'm surprised too). See, this fact—that only Christendom could've created a space-capable civilization—has interesting implications for science fiction. It's certainly one answer to the Fermi paradox: the aliens haven't ever contacted us because they're quite literally benighted heathens. But what do you do if you still want to have spacefaring aliens, since we know nobody develops science without Christianity? And this isn't a thing where Buddhism is a substitute; Buddhists did develop egalitarianism and feminism, but they didn't develop science.

Although I just said Christendom mostly developed science because they couldn't do magic, there's actually another factor. Christians developed science because they're not allowed to hate the material world, and there are thousands of dead Cathars who might like a word with anyone who says otherwise. And that's why the Buddhists didn't develop science; what do they care about the tire-pressure on the Wheel of Suffering? That's also, to an extent, why not as much came of Buddhist egalitarianism and feminism—precisely because Buddhism is less worldly than Christianity, "Buddhist" countries usually based their laws on systems like Confucianism, unfortunately for the common people.

Anyway, you'd need, specifically, an Incarnational religion to develop science. I'm not sure which aspects are necessary, but certainly mere pantheism can't pull it off, or the Stoics would've. Islam, you say? Well, the only real thing they did with all that astronomical knowledge was figure out when Ramadan started; besides, after Averroes got the wrong answer to the question of reason's place in religion, the Islamic world basically decided everything is completely arbitrary, the will of God alone. That's not conducive to scientific advancement. They were okay at medicine but the West surpassed them by the 1400s, and in terms of what we think of as practical technology—manufacturing and agriculture—they were centuries behind the West, again because they had slaves.

Interesting, though, huh? Just like how you'll have to figure out your aliens' biology and economics, you've got to work out their theology. You can't avoid the question, because it determines whether they'll even show up.

Interestingly, theology is considered the queen of the sciences.