Religion BTFO

you wouldn't say that if you were married and immortal like a certain religion teaches. Your disposition toward religion is the very reason why you see the world as filthy.

I don't think you really got my metaphor. I'm prepared to accept fault at not making a clearer metaphor. I just don't wanna spend alotta energy on it though

There's a few slightly fedora tier comments but that's all. You can tell he made an effort to avoid saying anything controversial.

Perhaps you should take your own advice. The monitor had blank spots during religious events. There was even a part where people were asking the Overlords to show them whether the resurrection of Jesus happened but they refused.

you're a cunt. stand by what you said.

I'm standing by what I said. The metaphor isn't shit, it's just not as good as it could be. Nice try, retard.

this will be the last time i reply to your shit posts. no. that obviously is not in the book, you're just really really bored. good luck with that

all you do is talk shit. I will drag your bitch face across a motercade if you keep acting like a cunt.

Even if "motercade" was how you spell it, that still doesn't really make sense.

Calm down, friendo.

This has more to do with collective consciousness vs individualism, however the satan metaphor is a very fedoraistic attack on human ignorance, but I never understood if Clarke was personally trying to say that the old humans were in the right for avoiding the demon aliens attempts at turning them into a multi-dimensional cosmic being.

>Its more about wiping the same glass over and over to distract yourself from the fact that your bar is filthy
That's kinda the point the book makes imho: humans are fundamentally and irremediably divided from *something* (the universe? logos? totality?) and their rationality can't grasp this, no matter what they do. To understand this, imo, you have to understand how the observer/observed dichotomy is used in the book: in the first part the Overlords represent the obscure and the unknowable: what they possess is a purely scientific all-knowledge that is observed by the humans, the imperfect beings. In the last part this relationship is inverted and the Overlords are the ones that stand before something that is beyond understanding: the Overlords, in this part, are actually representing mankind looking at itself and failing to "get" their missing part that makes them feel incomplete and prompts them into a endless journey in search of something that they can never find. The Overlords represent mankind's incompleteness, the Overlords as watched by humans in the first part represent the idea that scientific knowledge is what can make us complete. It kinda reminds me of Montale's Meriggiare pallido e assorto. Anyway, back to the original point: it is pro or against religion? I don't know and I think the book escapes such monochromatic interpretations: I think what is trying to say is that we don't have a choice in the matter.
Sorry for the rambling, I'm not sure it makes sense.
Once again, not me.

That's the problem with this book, it sets up all these moralistic and spiritual circumstances of the apocalypse yet takes no effort in establishing any viewpoint or answers. So we are just left with a generic sci-fi book with hollow characters and boring plot with all this extra weight that goes nowhere.

I actually think I hate this fucking book.

I loved it. One of the few sci find books that I genuinely liked along with Solaris and Roadside picnic. As for the "no answer part" I didn't find it a problem: I find value in contemplation itself. To cite Montale again: "non chiederci la parola".

I'm sorta following you here. I mean, we definitely have the same interpretation of the overlords in the first part vs the end of the novel.

I don't think any part of the novel refutes science/promotes religous faith though. The fact that theres an additional "overmind" that is as unknowable to Overlords as they are to humans in the first part of the novel doesn't leave me to believe that the novel is saying "some stuff really is just mystical though!"

I did read that, at the time of publication, clarke really did believe in supernatural type shit, so maybe that is what he was trying to say though. If it is, though, I like this book a lot less...

Yeah but the questions its asking are so huge that if it did answer them, it would probably be more of a YA novel, or pulp fiction type thang

I will contemplate in my freetime or when im writing my own work. If I am reading fiction I want a better sense of drama and emotion and this is what much of sci-fi totally lacks. There are no aesthetic qualities, it's pages are as lifeless and cold as the metal exterior of the silver crafts they fly in.

meh. I'm for the whole Keat's "Negative Capability" but that shit doesn't apply when you have no sense of feeling for what's going on in the book. The only reason why I read to the end was because I wanted to see what the alien's plan was, thats literally it.

>There are no aesthetic qualities, it's pages are as lifeless and cold as the metal exterior of the silver crafts they fly in.
Cold and lifeless metaphor baka desu