The Foundations of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke [28]
Sigmund Freud
New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1932
“Of course man made God in his own image; but what was the alternative? Just as a real understanding of geology was impossible until we were able to study other worlds besides earth, so a valid theology must await contact with extraterrestrial intelligences. There can be no such subject as comparative religion as long as we study only the religions of man.”
El Hadj Mohammed ben Selim
Professor of Comparative Religion
Inaugural Address, Brigham Young University, 1998
“We must await, not without anxiety, the answers to the following questions: (a) what, if any, are the religious concepts of entities with zero, one, two, or more than two ‘parents’; (b) is religious belief found only among organisms that have close contact with their direct progenitors during their formative years?“
If we find that religion occurs exclusively among intelligent analogs of apes, dolphins, elephants, dogs, etc., but not among extraterrestrial computers, termites, fish, turtles, or social amoebae, we may have to draw some painful conclusions. . . . Perhaps both love and religion can arise only among mammals, and for much the same reasons. This is also suggested by a study of their pathologies. Anyone who doubts the connection between religious fanaticism and perversion should take a long, hard look at the Malleus maleficarum or Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun.”
Ibid.
“Dr. Charles Willis’s notorious remark (Hawaii, 1970) that ‘religion is a by-product of malnutrition’ is not, in itself, much more helpful than Gregory Bateson’s somewhat indelicate one-syllable refutation. What Dr. Willis apparently meant was: (1) the hallucinations caused by voluntary or involuntary starvation are readily interpreted as religious visions; (2) hunger in this life encourages belief in a compensatory afterlife, as a, perhaps essential, psychological survival mechanism . . . .
“It is indeed one of the ironies of fate that research into the so-called consciousness-expanding drugs proved that they did exactly the opposite, by leading to the detection of the naturally occurring ‘apothetic’ chemicals in the brain. The discovery that the most devout adherent of any faith could be converted to any other by a judicious dose of 2-4-7 ortho-para-theosamine was, perhaps, the most devastating blow ever received by religion.
“Until, of course, the advent of Starglider. . . .”
R. Gabor
The Pharmacological Basis of Religion
Miskatonic University Press, 2069
12
Starglider
Something of the sort had been expected for a hundred years, and there had been many false alarms. Yet when it finally happened, mankind was taken by surprise.
The radio signal from the direction of Alpha Centauri was so powerful that it was first detected as interference on normal commercial circuits. This was highly embarrassing to all the radio astronomers, who for so many decades had been seeking intelligent messages from space, especially because they had long ago dismissed the triple system of Alpha, Beta, and Proxima Centauri from serious consideration.
At once, every radio telescope that could scan the Southern Hemisphere was focused upon Centaurus. Within hours, a still more sensational discovery was made. The signal was not coming from the Centaurus system at all—but from a point half a degree away. And it was moving.
That was the first hint of the truth. When it was confirmed, all the normal business of mankind came to a halt.
The power of the signal was no longer surprising. Its source was already well inside the solar system, and moving sunward at six hundred kilometers a second. The long-awaited, long-feared visitors from space had arrived at last. . . .
Yet