From: "Andy Robertson" 
Subject: Re: (urth) Smart Robots
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 17:51:32 +0100

----- Original Message -----
From: "James Jordan" 
> >hartshorn wrote:
> >
> > >I won't comment on the Pharasees/Saducsees debate, but I will note one
> >other thing about Wolfe.   Apparently machines - computer, Taloses,
> >Solders and chems - are themselves to be redemeed, and become children of
God.
>
> Roy wrote:
>
> >First of all, redeemed from what, exactly? Original Sin?


To be redeemed AND BECOME CHILDREN OF GOD.    Please.

To be subject to the Fortunate Fault is a blessing, not a curse.

You may argue that robots can't do this, but in the Lupiverse they can.

And this undercuts Nutrias probable smooth arguments about Robot as symbolic
of different sorts of people.

It's not just that these robots are marginally human.   It is that they have
the same spiritual status as people.   They  are outrageously, flamboyantly,
human - irrational, emotional, lovable, ridiculous.

Wolfe is saying something by this, perhaps that the Spirit is immanent in
matter and only needs a very little permission to stand up in the image of
god.


    hartshorn




--