Officially finished the first part. Sorry it's taking me so long - it's the end of the semester so it's been pretty busy.
Really enjoying it. Some great humor and strong commentary about/against organized religion and its domination of "knowledge" throughout history.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
You really think it is against?Quoting megladon8 (view post)
I don't think it really takes a stance, but, instead, it presents the facts and lets the reader make up his own mind. I bet that, because I have a much more positive attitude towards religion than you do, I don't quite see it as being "against" religion, but rather, it is just showing how some things are. I think it treats its characters with too much respect and admiration to simply be a rant against the powers that be.
Yes I think it's pretty cynical so far.
Especially the part where Francis is deciphering the blueprint, and decides that he doesn't like the look of the lettering, so he would scatter it all over the page in a symmetrical fashion to make it more appealing.
I thought this was quite a strong parallel to scriptures which have been translated hundreds and hundreds of times, yet people still look at them as absolute fact. So it's commenting on how there is no way that these religious scriptures are even close to what they were or were originally intended to be.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
I didn't read an ounce of cynicism in the entire book. Everything seems very genuine and fair.
I look at the passage you brought up as an example of Francis injecting a bit of his own soul into his work as an artist might do on a painting, all done in an act of love and reverence for the original subject.
And it has be proven, rather profoundly, that the scriptures we have today in our religious texts are remarkably similar to what the original authors wrote. The translations are often times even more accurate than what we find in more modern translations of literature. I am sure Barty can give more concrete examples - he should be reading this book!
But I don't think this was the point of Brother Francis' story. He was expressing his God-given artistic soul, and celebrating his love for his calling. I think it is quite beautiful and endearing, and not cynical at all.
I actually expected Miller to take a more cynical approach to the narrative, but I was shocked to find that it wasn't, at all. In many ways, the characters reminded me of the stuff I have read written by Father Thomas Merton in his book The Seven Storey Mountain.
I guess perhaps my own personal beliefs and not-so-good opinion of religion taints my view a bit.
I have to say, though, that this is one of those things where it just depends who you talk to.
Both you and Barty are religious people, so of course you're going to have faith in the texts and their accuracy, and you're more likely to accept positive looks rather than negative ones.
I have a very hard time believing that the Bible is written now the same way it was written 1000 years ago.
I also have a big problem with it being taken in a literal context, but that's a whole other can of worms.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
Well, it's not really a matter of belief, but more of what scholars have discovered - both secular and religious. Now, exactly when the books were written, or by whom, might be up for debate, but the quality of the translations has largely been proven to be sound.
But,the legitimacy of what was originally written is, of course, the biggest debate of all, and this is where belief and faith come in!
I am one who also believes that a lot of all religious texts should not be read or interpreted literally, or at least one needs to filter what one reads through the world view of the time it was written, and then apply the core message to the time of the days. I think that any lasting religion needs to have an amount of fluidity, and needs to remain applicable in the here and now, thus extending itself into the future. To do so, we must filter what has been written through the times of today.
In some ways, I think that ACL touches upon this topic, and I really enjoyed this aspect. But what I enjoy most about ACL is the amount of respect and reverence Miller pays to his central characters. I can tell that he really respects these guys, and really wanted to get to the crux of the ridiculous and unnecessary battle between science and religion.
It's like the central theme of a book I once read - (I believe it was Carl Sagan's Contact).
There's a part in the book where a character questions the ongoing "war" between science and religion, because both of them have the same goal - the search for truth.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
I really need to read Contact, I love the film.
I think that science and religion are both important, and for me, I need them both to feel complete. They both strive to ask and answer different questions, and they are in no way mutually exclusive ideologies. Science asks, "who, what, when and where?" and religion asks, "why?"
I will never understand the deep schism between the two when extremes are brought into the equation. Like Dr. Francis Collins, who wrote the book The Language of God, every new discovery in science only further bolsters my faith in a God who created the universe in a way that his creation can understand it. God gave us minds to solve these problems, he made us inquisitive, and blessed us with intelligence. It makes me sad when religious people discredit scientific discover, and equally sad with the secular world belittles the power and importance of religion.
Oh I completely agree, and while it pisses me off greatly when religious "emtremists" (or whatever you want to call them) push religion in my face and try to make me feel bad for not being a religious person, it is equally aggravating when scientists do this same thing to religious people.
It just happens to be that I wasn't raised in a religious family and I have never found religion to do much for me, personally.
But I have the utmost respect for those who find answers in religion, no matter what one they choose to follow.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
So sorry it's taking me so long to get through this book. Now that I'm done school and not riding the bus 3 hours a day, I haven't been reading nearly as much.
I am just past the halfway point now. I am nearly done part 2, and they have just lit the light bulb for the first time, creating "the brightest light seen in thousands of years".
The character of the old hermit Benjamin is great. Almost a Yoda-like character. Maybe even a bit of what Obi-Wan was like in A New Hope - the old man living the hills, who some people suspect is using magic.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
I bought this at Barnes & Noble with my gift card today because my library was excruciatingly slow getting it for me. Bought The Stars My Destination as well.
Coolness. Let me know when you plan on starting the Bester book. I want to re-read this soon.
Finally finished!!
It's a toss-up between the first and third parts for my "favorite", though I really enjoyed the whole book.
More in-depth thoughts to come.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
The third part is pretty amazing.
It was an incredible back-and-forth between different sets of moral guidelines.
I know who I personally agree with - I happen to be of the mind that if someone is going to die, and they are in horrible, agonizing pain, and THEY choose to end it all, they should be allowed that dignity.
However, this issue is such a slippery slope. Many people have different thresholds for pain, so where do we draw the line? And who has presidence over who? Can someone be euthanized because their marriage split up and they have horrible depression? I personally think no, but then that person may claim that their mental anguish is just as great (or greater) than someone else's physical pain.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
a review by Braden Adam
Religion has never really worked for me, and that quite often taints the way I interpret films and books with religious themes. Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s “A Canticle for Liebowitz” is a science fiction novel told in three parts, all of which are steeped in religious allegory and commentary. Each of the three parts takes place in a different time and place in a post-apocalyptic America, and each piece functions as a piece of a puzzle which eventually explains what happened to the world.
The first part, “Fiat Homo”, deals with a group of monks living in a new dark age - they translate books and various pieces of written information from the times before the apocalypse, thinking that everything they find has some kind of deep religious meaning. The main character is Brother Francis, a young, naive, artistically talented man who begins the story in a desert wasteland. Through the aid of a mysterious wanderer, Francis finds a bomb shelter buried under the sand, and within this shelter he finds an ancient blueprint, which - for the rest of the story - it becomes his job to copy. While copying the blueprint onto a skin, he decides that he does not like the way the lettering on the blueprint is printed all over the diagram, and (since he cannot speak or read English), he decides it would be a more attractive piece of work if he were to strategically place the writing around the edges of his copy. Much of the story - and this work by Francis - says a lot about the monks of centuries past who would mindlessly copy “knowledge”, never really paying mind to what they were copying. It is also quite a commentary on the idea that religious scriptures appear the same way they were hundreds (or thousands) of years ago. To think that these scriptures have retained the same stories, wording and meanings throughout these many years seems at least a tad ludicrous.
The second part of the book, “Fiat Lux”, deals even more with these keepers of knowledge - monks who call themselves “bookleggers”. In this middle chapter, a dire conflict is brewing between different clans of people, while this group of monks is divided within itself. A few of the more liberal and forward-thinking monks have managed to build a giant contraption capable of giving off light thousands of times brighter than any candle - ie, a lightbulb. But some of the other monks see this advancement as un-Godly, and as one more step towards a repeat of humanity’s own demise. When the rest of the book is read, it’s poetic and prophetic and has a nice “we’re doomed to repeat our own mistakes” message in it.
The third and final part of the book is titled “Fiat Voluntas Tua”, and deals with the world even farther into the future when man is back to a technological state around where it was when the book was written back in 1959. The entire world has declared nuclear armaments illegal, but in their infinite wisdom, the government decides that since we can’t have nuclear weapons on Earth, what we’ll do is develop a space program so that we can build nuclear weapons in space! It’s darkly funny, but at the same time quite depressing because it doesn’t seem like something too far out of reach for the governments of our own Earth.
The third part of the book is definitely the best and most powerful, as it is the only one to really evoke emotions past a feeling of pity for these people who seem so ignorant of their own stupidity. While the decision by the government to create nuclear weapons in spite of the knowledge they have of the world’s past is frustrating, there are events here that are downright angering. The main event I speak of is an argument between a religious man and a medic, as they try to decide the best course of action to take with a woman and her daughter who have lost their whole family, and are both in horrendous pain due to burns which will eventually kill them. The religious man believes that they should be left alone to pray and to beg God for forgiveness for the sins of their lives, so that perhaps they can earn their way into heaven when they die. The medic, however, believes the only humane thing to do is to euthanize them, sparing them from the pain and misery of their last few hours.
I have always found this issue deeply troubling, because I cannot for the life of me understand why someone - religious or not - would ever want to subject another to the pain and indignity of that much paralyzing suffering. If a person is going to die, and is in such terrible agony that they are not really “living” anyways, it should not be someone else’s decision that they must simply “wait and pray”, nor should they condemn that person if they decide to end their suffering. But of course this issue poses quite a slippery slope - at what point does the “cut off” occur, where one no longer qualifies for euthanasia? And since people are all different and all have differing pain thresholds, where can we draw the line and say that someone’s suffering is greater than another’s? I suppose that in the end this is an issue without an answer (or at least not an easy one), but I don’t believe that the answer posed by religion is appropriate in any way.
While I have spent most of my time focusing on the third part of the book, I don’t want to dismiss the other two. The second was the weakest for me - as many middle sections of stories often are, because they function as a transition between “beginning” and “end” - but that is not to say it is not good. The whole book is a very well written piece of philosophical, theological science fiction. But while some other readers have said they found the book to be in support of religious beliefs and of the idea of organized religion, I found it to be a scathing commentary on the “fire and brimstone” beliefs of most religious institutions.
This is why I find religions such as Buddhism or Taoism to be much more appealing than pretty much any sect of Christianity. I still consider myself an agnostic, but this book has definitely helped me to strengthen my beliefs that a religion based around a vengeful God who is so unforgiving and dismissive of anything other than His own way could not possibly be the right path to take.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
We had starships in 1959?
Finished it today. Good stuff, if a bit uneven and there are passages I haven't fully digested (Rachel, wtf?)
I was giddy at noticing the sly allusion to R.U.R. by Karel Capek (author of the best. book. ever., War With the Newts.
:PWe had starships in 1959?
I meant generally speaking, their technology was closer to 1950s than it was in either other part of the book.
Hmm...never even heard of that book.
*looks on Amazon*
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
It's a darkly comic satire of racism, fascism and a dozen other societal ills involving sentient newts than end up taking over the world.
I had been absolutely foaming at the mouth to find it since I read the synopsis and I literally squealed and jumped three feet in the air when I found for a quarter at my yearly God-send of a book sale, so I have no little bias towards it.
"'[Newts] have no sex appeal. And therefore they have no souls.' - Mae West"
I see you liked that Mignola book; thoughts? I've been meaning to read it since I'm such a Hellboy fanboy.
It's wonderful - I'll be writing a full review of it soon.
But I will say that it kept building throughout and by the final section I was getting ready a for a real disappointment because I felt like they wouldn't find a satisfactory way to conclude it all.
Luckily I was wrong. The ending is wonderful.
Mignola's sparse artwork is atmospheric as always.
And as I've said a few times before, it's like a Bava gothic horror put onto the written page. Have you ever seen Black Sunday? It's similar to that in atmosphere.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
Nicely written review meg, even though I passionately disagree with you conclusion on religion and your opinion of the Christian God. But nicely written. Although, I think you really missed the meaning of the copying part in part one. He made things prettier because it was such a holy object to him. He didn't change the meaning, or what it meant spiritually to the monks. Remember, they thought they were dealing with a spiritual relic, one that benefited the soul.
Out of pure reverence and awe for the blue print, he wanted to inject part of his God given artistic soul into his menial task. That's powerful, and quite positive. It was showing what a deeply spiritual and affected person this monk was. He wasn't making changes just because, but he was adding part of his artist's soul to the project, without malice, and without the desire to trick future readers. His motives were pure.
Also, I think if you did a little study into the historical accuracy of translated religious texts, you will surprised at what you find.
You really felt pity for these characters because of "their stupidity"? I don't recall anyone being stupid. Being stupid means lacking in intellect, and most of these characters were anything but stupid. The may have been ignorant relative to what we supposedly know today, but in context of the narrative they were passionate, brave, most of them moral, and curious about the physical and spiritual side of humanity.
I agree his motives were pure, but it doesn't change the overall meaning of this text, in my opinion.
I'm sure the motives were pure for those who transcribed biblical passages and religious texts - but that does not mean that they are necessarily accurate.
How can it be proven that the texts that we (as humans of any religion) take as being accurate really are so? How do we know something like this didn't happen in the past? To Francis, he was still copying the blueprint accurately, and he would have told others that he was doing it with meticulous accuracy. But the simple truth is, he wasn't.
This is something, though, that I don't think is really worth arguing or discussing - it's one of those unsolvable issues of faith.
Someone with religious conviction will of course say that the texts are accurate because they have faith in their beliefs and their religion.
Whereas someone like me who is admittedly a pessimistic, bitter fart sees this as being pretty much impossible.
I admit here that I used the wrong word.
I felt pity for their ignorance.
They were not stupid, simply ignorant of the mistakes they were repeating in their dire crusade to not repeat the mistakes of the past.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
It's not unsolvable, nor is it an issue of faith. Historians, both secular and religious, have looked at the earliest known copies of religious texts, written in the earliest known languages, and then compared them to modern day translations, and, for the most part, the translations are accurate. This goes for many of the world's known religions. The reasons are quite simple: to those who passed down the knowledge, both orally and written, the original source was so important that the utmost care was taken to preserve it's meaning, context, and prose. This is not an issue of faith. Faith comes in when you decided to believe the message of the texts.
I know that what I read in the Tao, the Bible, the Torah, or the Koran is as close as possible to the original source (often times even more accurate than some fictional literature and novels that have been translated), this has been proven, faith enters the picture when I decide to believe or not to believe the spiritual message of what has been written.
Like all things people do, Francis filtered things through his own humanity. While some of the details may have changed, or been embellished upon, the message, the heart, and the soul of the piece remained the same. This is what is important.
This is the great thing about the world's righteous religions. God, or the gods, do not ask us to be robots - we are given free will, we are blessed with desires of creativity, the desire to create. To deny these desires is to spit in the face of he/she that bestowed them upon us. Francis was celebrating his spirituality and his humanity when he undertook the blue print project. All things that are to survive must evolve, or become adaptable to new times, new cultures, and new people, and so long as the core message remains the same then there is no harm in this.
This is something I disagree with.
I think it's wonderful when people do feel this way about their religion, but I think the "fire and brimstone" view of strict Catholicism, for example, does pretty much ask for people to be robots if they want to go to Heaven.
While I admit it is a gross generalization, the old joke/saying about Catholicism, "if it feels good, stop immediately", has more bearing than it's given credit for.
Going to a Catholic high school was pretty ridiculous to me - and the only reason I went to that school is because it was my only choice...it was the only high school in town. There were Muslim kids in my class who, like me, had no other choice but to attend a Catholic high school, and they were forced to go to mass and to attend the religious ceremonies, eat the body of Christ, etc. We even had a teacher who told the class that Jews were "heathens".
But we're getting way off topic here.
I just want to say, D, that I'm glad we can have a rational, positive discussion regarding this book and these issues.
Knowing and respecting that you are a religious person yourself, I was very nervous to post my review because I was afraid that my comments and conclusions may offend or bother you, and that is the last thing I'd want.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
But here you are looking man-made dogmatic law in lieu of spirituality. Many of the "rules" man has made to form his various religions are not taken from the original spiritual sources, but are, rather, political in nature. Catholicism, in my estimation, is not an accurate representation of the teachings of Jesus Christ. Jesus came to free, not to condemn, and yet much of the Catholic religion is all about condemnation. Talk about missing the forest for the trees. However, there are some wonderful things about the religion, namely, a lot of the art and music it inspired.
I don't look at religion as the man-made institutions, but, rather, I view it as going back to the source of the original teachers and what they were trying to accomplish. I think you are looking at the negatives of religious institutions to form your arguments that religion itself is bad, and I would not disagree with you if I viewed religion in this light. Man has screwed up many things, both secularly and spiritually.
So basically what we have is a problem of semantics. I think you would agree that spirituality is a good thing. If more people followed the golden rules of love, compassion, peace, and understanding taught by many of the prophets and originators of the worlds' religions, I think we can agree that things would be better. However, the negative aspects of man-made rules and law, coupled with our own selfish desires, have thus tainted some of the good. Perhaps I am just able to look past the bad and see more of the good.
In a lot of ways, I think this was the point of Canticle. Notice how it dealt more with personal testimonies and narratives, and shied away from painting a broad picture of religion. It focused on the spiritual and physical journeys of a few key characters in the midst of an evolving society and religion.
I think that this conversation we are having proves one thing: A Canticle for Liebowitz is good literature. That a mere "science fiction" or genre book could spark this level of passionate and respectful discussion is a testament to its power as a work of fiction.
I appreciate your POV, and I respect it, and I am glad that this book could allow us to talk about these things.
Posting Permissions
forum
Reply With Quote
