Re: If god exists, what created god?

Paul Schlyter (pausch@electra.saaf.se)
28 Apr 1995 09:30:41 +0200

In article <ifjed.647.2F97F074@nmsua.nmsu.edu>,
Jack Davis <ifjed@nmsua.nmsu.edu> wrote:
>In article <D7CnAD.5Lu@cunews.carleton.ca> gsenecha@chat.carleton.ca (Greggory Senechal) writes:
>>From: gsenecha@chat.carleton.ca (Greggory Senechal)
>>Subject: Re: If god exists, what created god?
>>Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 19:54:13 GMT
>
>>Matel created God, and they still hold the patent on it/him/her.
>
>>As an interesting aside, with the advent of the digitised Bible, you
>>can now perform a "search and replace" on the Bible and make yourself
>>God. Then print out a bunch of copies and keep them in "nuclear
>>proof" containers, so that after the great nuclear holocaust,
>>survivors will find the texts and build new religions worshiping you.
>>There's a book about this... I think it's called _A Canticle For
>>Leibowitz_... author's name escapes me.
>
>I've often heard of this book, but I never knew what it was about. Great
>idea!

In the beginning of the book, right after the holocaust, it's a grand
crime being an intellectual or seeking knowledge -- the slogan all over
the world among the survivors is: "I'm a simpleton, I'm a simpleton...".

Among these people the cult of S:t Leibowitz appears. Leibowitz was an
ordinary engineer before the holocaust, but by these monks he is perceived
as being a saint with supernatural knowledge. Whatever remains are found
after him are preserved carefully and painstakingly copied manually,
including blueprints which the monks spend many days copying by hand,
starting with a white paper and a blue pen. They complain that it would
have been easier if the blueprints had been drawn in blue on white,
instead of the other way around, but since S:t Leibowitz did it this way,
it's best to do the same, the monks think, and continue to full in large
areas of their papers with blkue -- all by hand.

Later in the book, the former monks have become scientists, and are
re-disocovering much of what was known before the holocaust. A new
modern technological society is born -- and at the very end of the
book the late Leibowitz followers (which now are a scientific institution)
try to escape the earth in a spacecraft since there's just been another
holocaust....

-- 

----------------------------------------------------------------

Paul Schlyter,  Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)

Nybrogatan 75 A,  S-114 40 Stockholm,  SWEDEN

e-mail:  pausch@saaf.se       paul.schlyter@ausys.se