From: Dan Parmenter <dan@lec.com>
Subject: (urth) God and the Lizard People
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 15:27:39 

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.

Lex Shellac


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