Arthur C. Clarke: Do aliens dream
of anthropomorphic gods?
"I suspect that religion is a necessary evil in the childhood of our particular species. And that's one of the interesting things about contact with other intelligences: we could see what role, if any, religion plays in their development. I think that religion may be some random by-product of mammalian reproduction. If that's true, would non-mammalian aliens have a religion?"
-- Arthur C. Clarke, in a 1999 interview with Free Inquiry magazine
"I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be interpreted as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism."
-- Albert Einstein
Edward Rothstein addresses the currently fashionable science vs. religion debate in a New York Times "appraisal" of the late Arthur C. Clarke's work ("For Clarke, Issues of Faith, but Tackled Scientifically"):
“Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral” were the instructions left by Arthur C. Clarke, who died on Wednesday at the age of 90. This may not have surprised anyone who knew that this science-fiction writer, fabulist, fantasist and deep-sea diver had long seen religion as a symptom of humanity’s “infancy,” something to be outgrown and overcome.You can sense where Rothstein is heading when he detects "fervor" in Clarke's funeral instructions. "Fervor"? Really? Seems to me that Clarke is simply leaving specific instructions about he wants. And why shouldn't he want his funeral to accurately reflect his beliefs? Rothstein tries a little too hard to create a dialectic between science and faith, claiming that "religion suffuses Mr. Clarke’s realm." But I think he confuses mystery with mysticism in "2001."But his fervor is still jarring [...]
Stanley Kubrick’s film of Mr. Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” for example — a project developed with the author — is haunting not for its sci-fi imaginings of artificial intelligence and space-station engineering but for its evocation of humanity’s origins and its vision of a transcendent future embodied in a human fetus poised in space [...], a moment of transcendence in which some destiny is fulfilled, some possibility opened up.... a new evolutionary stage, inspiring as much horror as awe.
(And at the risk of sounding fervent, I should point out that, although I read some of Clarke's books as a teenager, I'm not familiar enough with his body of work to talk about more than his film collaboration with Kubrick, which was probably the closest thing to a religious revelation in my young life until I saw "Nashville" seven years later.)
Let me back up (a few millennia): The "Dawn of Man" section is a condensed metaphor for evolution, focusing on the primates' discovery of tools -- bones as weapons, crude extensions of their own bodies (and crude resurrections of the skeletons of the dead). Cut to the distant future and we see the same thing, only now the bones have developed into higher technologies (including orbital nuclear weapons) -- not only embellishments of the body (the arms and hands of the space pods) but of the brain (HAL 9000).
It would be stretching it to characterize the black monolith, the symbolic catalyst for mankind's "character arc" in "2001," as a god or an agent of god. In the movie's terms it's a signaling device placed on earth by an advanced alien civilization (Clarke's original short story was called "The Sentinel") -- and a pointed reminder that humans do not occupy a privileged place in the universe, certainly not at the center or the top of any religious diagram of Creation. The monolith may function as a nudge in the evolutionary process, but it's not the manifestation of Divine Will or predestination.
(But can we tell the difference? Only recently have neuroscientists found that stimulation of a certain part of the brain brings on the kind of revelatory visions that people describe variously as religious epiphanies, out-of-body or near-death experiences... or accounts of being kidnapped by aliens. Likely they're all expressions of the same biological processes.)
Rothstein writes:
For all his acclaimed forecasting ability, though, it is unclear whether Mr. Clarke knew precisely what he saw in that future. There is something cold in his vision, particularly when he imagines the evolutionary transformation of humanity. He leaves behind all the things that we recognize and know, and he doesn’t provide much guidance for how to live within the world we recognize and know. In that sense his work has little to do with religion.Is Rothstein is trying to conflate "magic" with "religion" here? Does he think Clarke was? Is science-fiction that does not "provide much guidance for how to live within the world we recognize" necessarily "cold"?But overall religion is unavoidable. Mr. Clarke famously — and accurately — said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Perhaps any sufficiently sophisticated science fiction, at least in his case, is nearly indistinguishable from religion.
Richard Dawkins addresses the same Clarke quote about "magic" (his Third Law of prediction) in "The God Delusion":
The miracles wrought by our technology would have seemed to the ancients no less remarkable than the tales of Moses parting the waters, or Jesus walking upon them. The aliens of our SETI signal would be to us like gods, just as missionaries were treated as gods (and exploited the undeserved honour to the hilt) when they turned up in Stone Age cultures bearing guns, telescopes, matches, and almanacs predicting eclipses to the second.Kubrick has described "the God concept" in "2001" in terms similar to Clarke and Dawkins. From an Playboy interview:In what sense, then, would the most advanced SETI aliens not be gods? In what sense would they be superhuman but not supernatural? In a very important sense, which goes to the heart of this book. The crucial difference between gods and god-like extraterrestrials lies not in their properties but their provenance. Entities that are complex enough be intelligent are products of an evolutionary process. No matter how god-like they may seem when we encounter them, they didn't start that way.
I will say that the God concept is at the heart of "2001" but not any traditional, anthropomorphic image of God. I don't believe in any of Earth's monotheistic religions, but I do believe that one can construct an intriguing scientific definition of God, once you accept the fact that there are approximately 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone, that each star is a life-giving sun and that there are approximately 100 billion galaxies in just the visible universe. Given a planet in a stable orbit, not too hot and not too cold, and given a few billion years of chance chemical reactions created by the interaction of a sun's energy on the planet's chemicals, it's fairly certain that life in one form or another will eventually emerge. It's reasonable to assume that there must be, in fact, countless billions of such planets where biological life has arisen, and the odds of some proportion of such life developing intelligence are high.Let's give Clarke the last word here. From the Free Inquiry interview:Now, the sun is by no means an old star, and its planets are mere children in cosmic age, so it seems likely that there are billions of planets in the universe not only where intelligent life is on a lower scale than man but other billions where it is approximately equal and others still where it is hundreds of thousands of millions of years in advance of us. When you think of the giant technological strides that man has made in a few millennia—less than a microsecond in the chronology of the universe—can you imagine the evolutionary development that much older life forms have taken? They may have progressed from biological species, which are fragile shells for the mind at best, into immortal machine entities—and then, over innumerable eons, they could emerge from the chrysalis of matter transformed into beings of pure energy and spirit. Their potentialities would be limitless and their intelligence ungraspable by humans.
FI: If religion does indeed represent an immature stage of humanity, do you see any prospects for humanity growing up?And from the last page of Clarke's novel, "2001" (released in conjunction with the film):Clarke: Yes, there is the possibility that humankind can outgrown its infantile tendencies, as I suggested in "Childhood's End." But it is amazing how childishly gullible humans are. There are, for example, so many different religions -- each of them claiming to have the truth, each saying that their truths are clearly superior to the truths of others -- how can someone possibly take any of them seriously? I mean, that's insane....
FI: Do you see any value at all in the various religions?
Clarke: Though I sometimes call myself a crypto-Buddhist, Buddhism is not a religion. Of those around at the moment, Islam is the only one that has any appeal to me. But, of course, Islam has been tainted by other influences. The Muslims are behaving like Christians, I'm afraid.
FI: What appeals to you in Islam?
Clarke: Historically, Islam had a great deal of tolerance for other views and offered the world its priceless wisdom in the form of astronomy and algebra. And, as you know, Islam helped rescue Western civilization from the Dark Ages by preserving classical texts and transmitting them to the West. We, on the other hand, burned the library at Alexandria. If Islam hadn't fallen into internecine warfare and had gone on to conquer the rest of Europe, we'd have avoided a thousand years of Christian barbarism.
There before him, a glittering toy no Star-Child could resist, floated the planet Earth with all its peoples.He had returned in time. Down there on that crowded globe, the alarms would be flashing across the radar screens, the great tracking telescopes would be searching the skies -- and history as men knew it would be drawing to a close.
... He put forth his will, and the circling megatons flowered in a silent detonation that brought a brief, false dawn to half the sleeping globe.
Then he waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next.
But he would think of something.
Comments
Due to Kubrick's use of ''Also Spoke Zarathustra'. I've always thought that the Star-Child is what Nietzsche cals the Ubermensch.
A quote from Also Spoke Zarathustra :
But tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion could
not do? Why hath the preying lion still to become a child?
Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a
self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea.
Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea unto
life: ITS OWN will, willeth now the spirit; HIS OWN world winneth the
world's outcast.
Posted by: Gab | March 20, 2008 08:41 PM
I loved ur article Jim :)
Posted by: carlos | March 20, 2008 09:12 PM
Kubrick's take:
The God concept is at the heart of this film. It's unavoidable that it would be, once you believe that the universe is seething with advanced forms of intelligent life. Just think about it for a moment. There are a hundred billion stars in the galaxy and a hundred billion galaxies in the visible universe. Each star is a sun, like our own, probably with planets around them. The evolution of life, it is widely believed, comes as an inevitable consequence of a certain amount of time on a planet in a stable orbit which is not too hot or too cold. First comes chemical evolution -- chance rearrangements of basic matter, then biological evolution.
Think of the kind of life that may have evolved on those planets over the millennia, and think, too, what relatively giant technological strides man has made on earth in the six thousand years of his recorded civilization -- a period that is less than a single grain of sand in the cosmic hourglass. At a time when man's distant evolutionary ancestors were just crawling out of the primordial ooze, there must have been civilizations in the universe sending out their starships to explore the farthest reaches of the cosmos and conquering all the secrets of nature. Such cosmic intelligences, growing in knowledge over the aeons, would be as far removed from man as we are from the ants. They could be in instantaneous telepathic communication throughout the universe; they might have achieved total mastery over matter so that they can telekinetically transport themselves instantly across billions of light years of space; in their ultimate form they might shed the corporeal shell entirely and exist as a disembodied immortal consciousness throughout the universe.
Once you begin discussing such possibilities, you realize that the religious implications are inevitable, because all the essential attributes of such extraterrestrial intelligences are the attributes we give to God. What we're really dealing with here is, in fact, a scientific definition of God. And if these beings of pure intelligence ever did intervene in the affairs of man, so far removed would their powers be from our own understanding. How would a sentient ant view the foot that crushes his anthill -- as the action of another being on a higher evolutionary scale than itself? Or as the divinely terrible intercession of God?
In any case, 2001 was blessed by the Pope and screened at the Vatican in the year 2001. It's on their top ten list of viewing for the faithful at #8. My hunch is, no matter the misgivings they might have over details in the film, overall they consider a film like it it useful.
As Kubrick said:
If 2001 has stirred your emotions, your subconscious, your mythological yearnings, then it has succeeded.
As to Clarke, well Childhood's End with it's devil bodied Overlords was praised by C.S. Lewis. And one odd exception from his books I can think of is the "Cosmo Christers" from Rendezvous with Rama, where a new church of Christianity is founded for the space age. The lone Cosmo Christer among the secular space crew performs the key heroic act in the novel, based on his faith that he's following God's intention.
Posted by: Dan | March 20, 2008 10:44 PM
Dan: Thanks for those thoughts. No question the "God concept" is at the center of "2001." God, however, is not. (And humans are not at the center of the universe.) Kubrick's (and Clarke's) concept of god is closer to Einstein's -- awe at the mysteries of the universe:
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
Likewise, "2001" is interested in how the human mind attempts to grasp what is "beyond the infinite" -- to us, anyway. I've added another related quote from Kubrick above to expand on the ideas you mention.
You're quite right about the Vatican reaction to "2001," but (until recently, at least) the Roman Catholic Church has not had the problems with the concept of evolution that some Protestant (and fundamentalist) sects have.
Posted by: jim emerson | March 20, 2008 11:16 PM
Brilliant, wonderful essay, Jim.
It would be interesting to hear what your friend Julia Sweeney makes of this topic...
Posted by: Ali Arikan | March 21, 2008 12:02 AM
Man built a machine god. A man in a machine body held up a dying man before the machine god, asking the god to save him. When the god refused, the man shed his machine body in an act like birth. And then he killed the machine god.
You've been reading your McLuhan, I see. Talking about technology as extensions of its users.
Watch "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite" with Pink Floyd's "Echoes." They compliment each other really well. In fact, when I see scenes from the sequence, Pink Floyd's music is what I hear in my head. (Actually, I've watched 2001 A Pink Floyd Odysseey more times than the regular film. It's great to watch men walking on the moon to "The Narrow Way Part 3.")
Posted by: Raymond Ogilvie | March 21, 2008 12:33 AM
I'd recommend that you read Rendezvous with Rama sometime if you haven't, I think Clarke is a little clearer in it about what he was getting at with the monoliths. Once again you have a dark mysterious geometric object (an enormous hollow cylinder instead of a slab) "Rama" that comes out of nowhere, with no communication, and with its makers nowhere to be seen. The space crew that lands on it gets inside and reacts with awe as its vast interior bewilders them as wonder after wonder is unveiled. But through it all Rama remains a complete enigma, and the authorities on the outside wonder if it isn't a threat. The Cosmo Christian doesn't think Rama is "God", but he does become inspired to think that it is a tool of God. Similarly other members of the crew domesticates and processes Rama in ways they can understand with seasons, namesakes, history and myths.
Without giving more away, here's a couple passages that I think sums it up:
"The flare guttered and died; the moment of revelation was over. But Norton knew that as long as he lived these images would be burned in his mind. Whatever discoveries the future might bring, they could never erase this first impression. And history could never take from him the privilege of being the first of all mankind to gaze upon the works of an alien civilization."
"...he felt that he had left his youth down there on the curving Central Plain, among mysteries and wonders now receding inexorably beyond the reach of man."
Posted by: Dan | March 21, 2008 12:58 AM
I love the alternative route that evolution is hinted at having taken in Rama. The whole "Ramans do everything in threes" thing was brilliant (inspired, no doubt, by HG Wells, to some degree at least).
Posted by: Ali Arikan | March 21, 2008 01:43 AM
I've always wondered what fans of the film thought of the novel. For instance, the novel makes clear that the monoliths are from extraterrestrials interested in fostering intelligence. Hence why that ancestor of man is able to use tools after the appearance and disappearance of the slabs (and their apparent toying with the brains of those creatures.) The novel contains an extended sequence in which those pre-men are able to fend of a cougar like creature.
Posted by: abe | March 21, 2008 02:54 AM
I've always been fascinated by this concept. 2001 is one of my favorite films AND one of my favorite books.
The [7th grade version] of the concepts Clarke and Kubrick raise can also be found in Michael Crichton's "Sphere" (the novel).
Posted by: Lee Krempel | March 21, 2008 06:34 AM
With all of this talk about religion and Clarke, it is worth linking to one of his most famous short stories: "The Nine Billion Names of God."
http://lucis.net/stuff/clarke/9billion_clarke.html
It's a short read and a guaranteed mind-blower. Plus, it deals with religion and science--in this case Tibetan Buddhism and computers--directly.
I’ll say no more. Enjoy!
Posted by: Joe J. | March 21, 2008 08:22 AM
To Dan:
Don't know if you have read "Rama Revealed", the final book in the Rama series.
(The following is a spoiler to those who haven't read it yet)
It does turn out that Rama is the tool of God. Though this God is not God in the theological sense but sort of a muddled up version of a scientific and theological God, an omnipotent intelligence who is responsible for creating the universe. So, not sure what Clarke was trying to say there unless his co-author, Gentry Lee, was behind that.
(End spoiler)
And to those interested in movies: According to IMDB, Rendezvous with Rama is going to be a movie in 2009 with David Fincher set to direct and Morgan Freeman the only cast member so far. I smell a mess coming!
Posted by: Darth Vader | March 21, 2008 08:38 AM
I'd choke back a sardonic laugh every time one of my church leaders/members would use a quote from Einstein in their talks/sermons that made it sound like the physicist was religious. Misappropriation.
I've been reading Harold Bloom lately. I don't think he asks the question outright, but he certainly precipitated the thought: what/who am I more in awe of? Nature, Elohim, God, Yahweh, the Lord of Hosts, the Yahwist, Jesus, Paul or Joel Osteen?
Or are all of them (save the last three, and I'm kidding about Osteen), as I think this article is saying, anthropomorphic explanations of the first?
Either way, I definitely find more awe in Nature than the bluenosed moralizing of most religious institutions.
Posted by: sam | March 21, 2008 10:12 AM
One of the most enjoyable and thought-provoking pieces I've read all year. Great job, Jim.
Posted by: Brandon Colvin | March 21, 2008 04:21 PM
Darth Vader: No, I haven't read the other books.
David Fincher is an interesting choice. He's obviously very accomplished in special effects and cinematography, but I don't know if he can lighten up both literally and figuratively. To make RwR into some kind of dark, moody picture would be all wrong, unfortunately that seems to be the style of just about every science fiction movie made since Minority Report. It's hard to imagine they'd have the guts to make a Sci-Fi film with no plot, no violence, and no death (with the exception of the first chapter, but that's bound to be thrown out after all the asteroid movies that have came out since), the last one I can remember like that was Brian De Palma's Mission to Mars, but considering how badly it was received, it may be the reason why there hasn't been a traditional Sci-Fi movie made since.
Posted by: Dan | March 21, 2008 10:44 PM
The Rama film adaptation's been brewing for a number of years. If it does finally get made, I'd be surprised if they went dark and moody and violent.
Morgan Freeman's production company is, I think, still supposed to be producing it, and the few quotes I've seen from him about it over the years make it seem like they'd be going for more of a sense of wonder/intellectual adventure sort of thing.
Here's a quote from Freeman in 2003:
"The bugaboo there is the script ... A picture like this, that is written by Arthur C. Clarke, the problem is trying to get someone to understand what it is ... These things, they always want to make it into an action film ... So you've got to cowboy it up a little bit. You can't do it with this. And we've been having trouble getting someone to see the science aspect of this, the exploratory aspects of it, rather than the blood and guts and stuff."
(source: http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue308/news.html)
I really hope this does finally get made, and I'd really like to see Fincher direct, especially after seeing what he did with "Zodiac."
Posted by: Stew Fyfe | March 22, 2008 05:56 PM
Geoff Pevere in the Toronto Star wrote an interesting article comparing Clarke's and Kubrick's differing interpretations of 2001 -
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/349535
Posted by: Nathan | March 24, 2008 02:54 PM
Very interesting post.
It's shocking to read Clarke having blamed Christians for burning the Great Library at Alexandria.
Presumably he drew this from Gibbon, who wrote with an eye to rehabilitating Western attitudes towards Islam.
Many historians, however, now believe that the Library suffered much destruction during Ceasar's occupation, then more at the time of the conversion of Alexandria to Christianity, and a final destruction with the Calipahte conquest of Alexandria.
I understand the urge to blame the Christian church alone, but it's a truly unfortunate distortion from a great man whose work I admire.
Posted by: Terry Anastassiou | March 24, 2008 03:30 PM