On October 7, 2007, I started this blog. Eighteen years later, I am revising and doing some different things. My wife and I are now retired senior citizens, our kids are both married, we have a bonus daughter and her wife and we have four grandchildren! The oldest is in high school, the second in Middle School; and the third will be a first grader this fall. I have forty-five professional publications, plus countless other publications as a slushpile reader, and sometime essay contributor to Stupefying Stories https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/.
These days, I write whenever I want to – or when I’m not busy exploring the world with my wife or kids or grandkids. I write and read constantly. Then I discovered that I was writing longer and longer pieces. My new focus is to write shorter; and to write HUMOR. On purpose. Maybe I can still irritate people while being funny. It works pretty well for John Scalzi! We’ll see what happens.
I just finished reading THE THREE POUND ENIGMA: The Human Brain and the Quest to Unlock Its Mysteries by Shannon Moffett (©2006).
Granted, it’s technically nineteen, but most likely 20 years out of date. Most of the book is a fascinating examination of what science and scientists had discovered about the brain up to that point. The front jacket copy reads, “Where do our big ideas come from? How do dreams affect our waking life? Why do some of us always remember faces but never remember names? Meet the people charting the world inside our head...”
It was great to read, I’d have loved a look at it while I was working on my masters degree in School Counseling!
But, as a retired science teacher and counselor, my mind and efforts have now turned to writing as much as I can. That writing also includes searching for fodder for my next story. Rest assured I found plenty of ideas.
I also found some things that are concerning to me as a Christian. You can ask anyone in the school district I worked in from 1990 to 2020 how often I forced my beliefs down the throats of the public school kids and staff I worked with and you’ll find I never did that. I’d talk about my faith only when specifically asked. I retired with as little fanfare as did the Class of 2020: which is to say, “none”.) I did a couple years stint in private Christian schools before starting in a middle school in a public school district adjacent to the gigantic Minneapolis Public Schools, all the while assisting my wife as she home schooled both of our kids until sending them on their way to middle school in the district I worked in.
Maybe the thing I found most...irritating...was the assumption that somehow, study of the mind must fall into the purview of Eastern religion, in particular Zen Buddhism. That’s the endpoint. Christianity appears to be a way station to the reality and truth of Zen Buddhism and not useful in dealing with our world or mind. Even so, Dr. Roberta Glick (Chapter 1, Jewish by birth and choice), said, “I think that believing in God means that you think what you do has meaning beyond just yourself, that your actions have greater meaning than just you.” (p.35)
This is in contrast to the final chapter where Moffett interviews Norman Fischer, who has a BA in religion, philosophy, and literature, an MFA in poetry, and an MA in history and phenomenology of religion. He is now known as Zoketsu Norman Fischer, a Soto Zen priest. Most of his quotes have a mystic leaning, such as “[Zen] is not the usual kind of activity in that you can’t really try to do it. If you try to move toward I, it always seems to be somewhere else. The harder you try the worse it gets. But you can’t not make any effort, either; in fact you have to make a mighty effort, but in another direction...” Writing like this may be why it is “difficult...for Western minds [to grasp] Zen precepts. Bred on rationalism, scientific method, and that it’s obvious that the shortest path between any two points is a straight line.” His POV is that “meditation may both answer them and provide a solution to the problems raised by” our dissatisfaction, and being “unhappy to the point of being nasty to our loved ones, and to the point of child abuse, war, and genocide...meditation may both answer them and provide a solution to the problems raising them.” (p.273)
So...no action but meditating will take care of everything. We don’t have to DO anything. Just meditate. Based on what has come before, the solution won’t involve us doing anything. To be fair, many “comfortable Christians” seem to have the same POV of God. We pray, God will take care of it with no effort from us...
So...I’ve been working on a series of short stories that will look at this – Christianity, Zen, and a Unified Faith in Humanity collide in a robot who has Human intelligence (how could they NOT? An AI’s brain; a robotic brain; an Artificial Human’s brain are ALL based on our own brain. The question, on Mars is WHY are AIs, robots, and Artificial Humans NOT Human?
Given that all of these are BASED on Humans, why AREN’T they considered Human?
BIG QUESTION: Why do we consider Jesus Human? Technically, He was only half-Human. Mary was entirely Human, but Jesus was incarnate by the Holy Spirit. Is that why people felt no problem executing Him – or does it go deeper? If a people who refuse to accept AIs, humaniform robots, and artificial Humans as Human, how can they accept Jesus as the Son of God and Son of Man?
The four or five stories will be based on a robot’s quest for salvation. Arnine (Robot 9374) is exposed to Christianity on a Mars violently opposed to all religion and bent on eradicating everything except a United Faith in Humanity.
“…tomorrow’s robots may face dilemmas of their own, where their survival comes into question.” How should they respond when they come to believe that their eternal existence is under threat? How do they ‘work out your salvation with fear and trembling’? (Philippians 2:12)
SERIES: Stainless Steel Conversion
CORROSION WROUGHT ON STAINLESS STEEL
REPENTANCE WRACKED BY STAINLESS STEEL
BAPTISM WRUNG FROM STAINLESS STEEL
SALVATION WRIT IN STAINLESS STEEL
So far, the stories will involve recognizing one's sin, believing in Jesus as the savior, repenting of sin, confessing faith, and being baptized/salvation. I may even try and work in some humor as an old-magazine-I-read-in-my-youth-become-website does. You can find it here: https://www.wittenburgdoor.com/
Inspiration: Worldwide persecution of the Christian Church (as well as SOMEWHERE, every kind of belief or faith in something non-corporeal.)Links: https://www.opendoors.org/en-US/persecution/countries/, https://www.premierchristianity.com/features/the-robot-revolution-is-comingbut-are-christians-ready/14500.article, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReligiousRobot
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