The Foundations of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke [37]
“2069 June 05 GMT 2038. Message 4675. Sequence 2. Starglider to Earth.
“My last update on this matter is 175 years old, but if I understand you correctly, the answer is as follows. Behavior of the type you call religious occurred among 3 of the 15 known Category One cultures, 6 of the 28 Category Two cultures, 5 of the 14 Category Three cultures, 2 of the 10 Category Four cultures, and 3 of the 174 Category Five cultures. You will appreciate that we have many more examples of Category Five, because only they can be detected over astronomical distances.”
“2069 June 06 GMT 1209. Message 5897. Sequence 2. Starglider to Earth.
“You are correct in deducing that the 3 Category Five cultures that engaged in religious activities had two-parent reproduction, and the young remained in family groups for a large fraction of their lifetime. How did you arrive at this conclusion?”
“2069 June 08 GMT 1537. Message 6943. Sequence 2. Starglider to Earth.
“The hypothesis you refer to as God, though not disprovable by logic alone, is unnecessary for the following reason.
“If you assume that the universe can be quote explained unquote as the creation of an entity known as God, he must obviously be of a higher degree of organization than his product. Thus you have more than doubled the size of the original problem, and have taken the first step on a diverging infinite regress. William of Ockham pointed out as recently as your fourteenth century that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. I cannot therefore understand why this debate continues.”
“2069 June 11 GMT 0684. Message 8964. Sequence 2. Starglider to Earth.
“Starholme informed me 456 years ago that the origin of the universe has been discovered but that I do not have the appropriate circuits to comprehend it. You must communicate directly for further information.
“I am now switching to cruise mode and must break contact. Good-by.”
In the opinion of many, that final and most famous of all its thousands of messages proved that Starglider had a sense of humor. Why else would it have waited until the very end to explode such a philosophical bombshell? Or was the entire conversation all part of a careful plan, designed to put the human race in the right frame of reference for the time when the first direct messages from Starholme arrived, in, presumably, one hundred and four years?
There were some who suggested following Starglider, since it was carrying out of the solar system not only immeasurable stores of knowledge, but also the treasures of a technology centuries ahead of anything possessed by man. Although no spaceship existed that could overtake Starglider—and return again to earth after matching its enormous velocity—one could certainly be built.
However, wiser counsels prevailed. Even a robot space probe might have very effective defenses against boarders—including, as a last resort, the ability to self-destruct. But the most telling argument was that its builders were only fifty-two light-years away. During the millennia since they had launched Starglider, their spacefaring ability must have improved enormously. If the human race did anything to provoke them, they might arrive, slightly annoyed, in a few hundred years.
Meanwhile, among all its countless other effects upon human culture, Starglider had brought to its climax a process that was already well under way. It had put an end to the billions of words of pious gibberish with which apparently intelligent men had addled their minds for centuries.
17
Parakarma
As he quickly checked back on the conversation, Morgan decided that he had not made a fool of himself. Indeed, the Mahanayake Thero might have lost a tactical advantage by revealing the identity of the Venerable Parakarma. Yet it was no particular