POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: MINING THE ASTEROIDS Part 8 – Faith in God and the Exploitation of the Riches of the Asteroids (literally, “star, like”…)

Initially, I started this series because of the 2021 World Science Fiction Convention, DisCON which I WOULD have been attending in person if I felt safe enough to do so in person AND it hadn’t been changed to the week before the Christmas Holidays…HOWEVER, as time passed, I knew that this was a subject I was going to explore because it interests me…So, I’m going to make this an occasional feature of my blog – maybe even of Stupefying Stories if the CyberPunkMaster gives me a thumbs up…

OK…a thought occurred to me, but it’s going to take me several paragraphs to get there, and some people won’t like where I end up…

Take this article from 2016, where none other than Neil deGrasse Tyson predicts that the first TRILLIONaire on Earth will come out of asteroid mining. (https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/neil-degrasse-tyson-says-space-ventures-will-spawn-first-trillionaire-n352271).

Another writer predicts that the only way we’ll be able to mine the asteroid will be the drive of religious minorities of EVERY stripe – the way Europeans invaded North America in the first place.

The Harvard International Review, in an April 2022 article notes, “Notably, the Tel Aviv researchers also predicted that within this struggle, developing countries would be significantly affected because they heavily rely on mineral exports and do not have the resources to build their own asteroid mining operations.” The article concludes, “While this is a necessary debate moving forward, it is imperative that such conversations not only involve countries with significant abilities to enter space and conduct asteroid mining operations but also those who stand to bear the brunt of its negative economic impacts. It is high time to bring all countries to the asteroid mining table.”

So…let’s speculate. Using an ANALOG article by Raymund Eich (I already referenced it in Asteroid Mining #5 here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2022/06/slice-of-pie-mining-asteroids-part-5.html ) and the quotes from above, I want to look more closely at how asteroid mining by religious groups would look.

How about the most obvious? The British, Spanish, Russian, Italian, Dutch, Norse, Portuguese, and French grabbed the “kindest land”, leaving California, the Patagonian Desert in South America, the Northwest Territories from California north to Alaska, and the northern Great Plains for later. (Even today, the Great Plains is technically “uninhabited” (“The Great Plains includes portions of 10 states (Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas) plus parts of three Canadian Provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta) and occupies the central third of the land mass of the United States. The area covered is roughly 2,900,000 km2. There are currently 6.2 million inhabitants of the Great Plains giving a population density of 2.1 persons/km2.” (https://www.britannica.com/place/Great-Plains/Study-and-exploration) The US was settled by several groups of religious dissidents: Indigenous religions remained, and adding to the mix were Judaism, Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Congregationalist, German Pietist, Lutheran, Methodist, Quaker, Puritans, natural religion, Protestant Rationalism, and non-conformist Protestants.

“Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of 1,564,116 square kilometers, with a population of just 3.3 million, making it the world's most sparsely populated sovereign nation. Calculations show that this works out to 2.1 persons/km2.” (Mongolia, Wikipedia) Mongolian shamanism has been widely practiced throughout the history of what is now Mongolia, with similar beliefs being common among the nomads of central Asia. Half of the population are Buddhist, most of the rest are no religion (or shamanist), and there is a smattering of Islam, Shamanism, and Christianity.

The predominant religious populations in Canada were initially French Latin Rite Roman Catholics, primarily Jesuits who were dedicated to converting the Natives. Protestants of the Lutheran variety moved in, as well as Congregationalists, Baptists, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Methodists.

All of this to say, that invading colonialists from Europe or from China had a profound effect on the industrialization of four immense continents (North and South America, Europe, and Asia) that they claimed that their authority was either sacred or secular – it apparently didn’t matter which. Africa has a similar mix of religion as Europe, Asia, and North and South America and is the birthplace of at least three of them. India is the birthplace of the third-largest belief-system on Earth: Hinduism. It is dharma, a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. Referred to as Eternal Dharma, this refers to the idea that its origins lie beyond human history, as revealed in the Hindu texts.

So – as various religions had a hand in creating every society on Earth, so it seems logical that they would ALSO have a hand in creating societies in space. In a short story I wrote, I completely missed this aspect when I assumed that prison inmates would have no religion. When the opposite may be true. Two of the most influential African Americans during the Civil Rights era came from deep faith backgrounds – Malcolm Little became a convert to Islam, and that faith a vehicle for change in the United States as well as the rest of the world. “In 1934, the Baptist World Alliance sent Reverend King Sr. on a multinational trip, including to Berlin for the meeting of the Congress of the BWA, [visiting] sites in Germany associated with the Reformation leader, Martin Luther. While there…they issued a resolution: ‘This Congress deplores and condemns as a violation of the law of God the Heavenly Father, all racial animosity, and every form of oppression or unfair discrimination toward the Jews, toward coloured people, or toward subject races in any part of the world.’…King Sr. changed his name to Martin Luther King, and his 5 year old son's name to Martin Luther King Jr.”

Religion, faith even in Humanity, is a potent driver of change. The faithful, finding the Earth growing more restrictive of their beliefs – and please reflect carefully before you exclaim that I must be crazy (and if you equate faith with a certain demagogue, then you’re not thinking deeply enough). If you are a person of faith, you know what I mean.

But what does this mean for me NOW?

If governments don’t move soon, religions will eventually populate the skies the way they populated the landmasses of Earth. What does that mean, “MAGA Conservatives raining down from space?” Hmmm…that has interesting story potential, but they need to remember that there are other religions on Earth (I would even say that there are people for whom science is a religion (religion: (it may only be the third meaning, BUT it's here, “a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance”. As a science teacher for 41 years (and a summer school science teacher who uses science in his classes), I KNOW what science is. My major was in biology, but included training in geology (physical and historical), physics, chemistry, mathematics, philosophy, and education; fairly broad swaths of Human thinking. I happen to be a Christian as well – with a variety of friends who don’t think like I do, and for whom I am immensely thankful and have no trouble asking questions.

What would the “religious skies” look like? Many non-religious people automatically think that religions would tear each other apart and soon they’d be all gone. Evidence to the contrary – which I tried to show about – differences in faith hasn’t ALWAYS been an automatic “hate sentence” and mass slaughter of people with different beliefs. Don’t get me wrong, is HAS happened. But, the blame has to go around to ALL systems of belief, not just the one you dislike most – and it would be best to include philosophies her as well. Communism, which is intentionally and vehemently NOT religious, has fostered plenty of hatred for those who believe differently, as well as promoting ethnic hatred…

So, where will these refugees go?

Where they’ve always gone: as far from their persecutors as possible.

Today’s Links: https://hir.harvard.edu/economics-of-the-stars/
Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asteroid_close_approaches_to_Earth, https://www.pharostribune.com/news/local_news/article_7fcd3ea5-3c14-533f-a8d5-9bf629922f34.html, https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/04/29/like-asteroid-mining-be-careful-what-you-wish-for/, https://www.nps.gov/wrbr/learn/historyculture/theroadtothefirstflight.htm, https://hackaday.com/2019/03/27/extraterrestrial-excavation-digging-holes-on-other-worlds/, https://www.planetary.org/space-missions/every-small-worlds-mission, https://www.spacesettlement.com/asteroid-mining.html
Image: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/A2D5/production/_114558614_hls-eva-apr2020.jpg