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QC (4/10 Substack posts)
@QiaochuYuan
greg egan has this story (Oracle) in which ~c.s. lewis loses a debate against ~alan turing and then is visited by a future version of himself who tells him "you're wrong about everything, god is dead, science is the only truth" what a rude and tacky thing to do to a dead person
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QC (4/10 Substack posts)
@QiaochuYuan
1. greg egan in the '90s absolutely fucking hates religion, spirituality, all humanities subjects and the people who study them, with an intensity i find jarring. i guess this might've made more sense during the height of the atheism wars but it strikes me as ridiculous now
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
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@QiaochuYuan
idk, fwiw i haven't read much egan, but it feels like he's embodying some very necessary stage? like, religion can be fucking horrifying, like close to abject evil, and it feels like he's speaking from having stared straight into that horror. which feels appropriate
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
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@Aella_Girl
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@QiaochuYuan
it also seems kinda incomplete, like religion was in fact occupying a necessary role, and i think if we're using a 'stages' frame that u eventually climb to integrating that, and u seem right that he doesn't understand that
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
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@Aella_Girl
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@QiaochuYuan
but also there's something like, i want a reintegration of religion and recognizing the value to come *in addition* to recognizing its potential abject evil; like the answer isn't to be like 'religion isn't evil,' it's just 'religion is evil *and* other things'
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