From: "Alex David Groce" <adgroce@eos.ncsu.edu>
Subject: Re: (urth) God and the Lizard People
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1999 13:34:41 

On Jun 2,  3:27pm, Dan Parmenter wrote:
> Subject: (urth) God and the Lizard People
> From: Michael Straight <straight@email.unc.edu>
> 
> > SPOILERS for CASE OF CONSCIENCE here.
> 
> > A.  There is no God.
> > B.  The alien race is an illusion of Satan designed to deceive humanity.
> > C.  God exists, but his relationship to this alien race is something
> >     we don't understand.
> > 
> > Everyone in the book seems to think A and B are the only two
> > possibilities.  No one even considers C.  C seems so obvious and B so
> > far-fetched that I was unable to believe in the characters or their
> > debates.
> 
> To bring your thoughts in line with my earlier post, perhaps
> hypothesis "C" is essentially Lewis's Space Trilogy.
> 
> I admit that the story is somewhat contrived, but in the context of
> the experience of reading it, I have to say that it is compelling.
> It's also got some great dynamics between the priest/biologist and his
> "hard science" colleague with his contempt for religion and biology.
> I think that Blish conveys the protaganist's thought process very
> well (damn, I can't remember any of the characters' names!).
> 
> > Which reminds me of another question I have about Wolfe's Catholicism. 
> > There's a statement of his which gets quoted frequently, something like
> > "I'm a practicing Catholic, but that probably tells you less about what I
> > believe than you think."  I wonder if he meant that he's not entirely
> > orthodox in his beliefs, or that most people's ideas about what orthodox
> > Catholics believe are wrong.
> 
> I take this statement to be Wolfe's defense against those who would
> dismiss him and his views out of hand, simply because he's a
> Catholic.  Maybe it's a subtle way of saying that he's pro-choice.

	I seem to recall somewhere else where Wolfe says almost the same thing
(this quote is from the ACROSS THE WOUNDED GALAXIES interview, I think) but in
such a way as to imply that he simply means most people don't know much about
what Catholics think--something like "I don't think priests walk on water or
anything like that."
-- 
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (adgroce@eos.ncsu.edu)
Senior (Computer Science/Multidisciplinary Studies in Technology & Fiction)
'98-99 NCSU AITP Student Chapter President
608 Charleston Road, Apt. 1E (919)-233-7366
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/