Imagine………The year is 2050, Mars has been Terra-formed and now the surface is similar to that of Earth. Through nano-technology, rivers, oceans, wooded mountains, vast grassy plains, rainforests and deserts have been created and an atmosphere constituted to mimic the temperature on earth.
It is the fabled Eden re-visited.
Intelligent machines, made in the image of humans, are transported to the Red planet. They mirror our conscious awareness, sentience, intellect, survival and procreational instincts, with comparable emotional status of mind. They are given no information as to how they happened to be there. We have made them immortal. Other sentient machines made of the same components, capable of the basic emotional response, but lacking the capacity for higher thought, are also placed on the planet. Food and shelter are abundant and all the machines live in harmony.
We can observe any part of our creation at anytime. If we wish, we have the power to intervene on their behalf.
We ask them not to eat of the fruits of a certain tree. This is the tree of knowledge, which will give them greater information about themselves and everything else. Without any comprehension of the outcome, they disobey this request from something or someone whom they cannot understand.
Imagine……..Would we react by taking away their immortality, making the female machines suffer the pain of childbirth and acting towards them in the manner of a spoilt and malicious tyrant? Would we make their world a dangerous place of fear and death with the universal price for the survival of the differing machines reduce to eating or being eaten?
When their numbers increased we are unhappy and disagree with their reaction to the harsh treatment we have meted out. We drown all but a few. All the women and children (including the unborn) and all the other animal-like machines are treated in the same brutal manner. We wreak havoc on Mars because we are annoyed. We know they feel as we do. We know this event frightens them out of their minds and then they are dead.
The lowest form of morality on this Earth would not inflict such treatment upon the thinking, feeling creatures that it had created, least of all would an “all loving god”. Having the power to make life difficult for our creation is no excuse for doing so. Even a Hitler personality would decline to behave in such a manner.
Imagine……..The Red planet eventually de-floods and, for the next few thousand years, we watch as the machines slowly develop societies, slaughtering each other along the way, because they think that is what we want.
Although we are “all powerful” we do not intervene on a personal or global level, even when we see the horrors that are taking place. Instead, we impregnate a “virgin” of one of the smaller races.
On having the child, half Martian and half Human, we decide to allow it to be sacrificed, explaining that this will somehow atone for the “original sin” of Martiananity in the eating from the tree of knowledge. We have blamed all future Martians for the first eating of the fruit and now we expect the killing of this hybrid to somehow make amends.
This kind of morality, where an innocent victim can take the rap for “crimes” not committed by them, where brutal death can expiate those “crimes”, and where we are still in need of “salvation”, is well below the level of even infantile thinking. To amplify this morally repugnant behaviour, we then, in remembrance of this deed, insist that the Martians regularly eat and drink the imaginary flesh and blood of the dead hybrid in its memory.
So fearful are the Martians of us, they slavishly obey. They have a right to be fearful because they see that we are precocious, evil, unjust and vengeful. So as not to upset the hybrid and its originator, they convince themselves, at the deepest level, that it is not fear they are expressing, but love. Very sadly the premise for this love is that if you love the bully, it will not hurt you. Through fear, we have at last brought the Martians to heel. And we watch with interest as that contorted thinking slowly permeates and destroys them and their world.
Imagine…….. The above conduct is way beyond even the wildest imagination of humans. Our self-made ethical and moral standards could only conclude that this scenario is the work of super-madness.
If humans had created a species on Mars as depicted, and we had the ability to alleviate all pain and suffering, then that is what we would do. It goes against everything that is good, to be hateful, vengeful and spiteful towards creatures that are helpless to combat us. In fact, authorship of such evil could only be claimed by another mythical creature, the Devil.
Parody is a way of escaping the influencing connotations of what is being copied. Self-evident conclusions become less certain and a story-line can take on a different and opposite moral from the one intended.
The Bible myths, because they have their roots in the ignorance of antiquity, have gained generational credibility well beyond reasonable acceptance. These stories come from an age when ignorance ruled ignorance and, to even consider these tales maybe of some relevance today, is an admission of a lack of understanding for the rise and continuing rise of the human race. Even though many religious people do not take all Bible stories as literal truth, especially those in the Old Testament, the sentiments are accepted as having moral relevance and force.
God did not write the Bible nor did he inspire such writing. Of all the books ever written, it ranks high on the list of those that have harmed humanity the most. This would not be so if it were read and understood as it is written. The Bible is a primitive attempt at an historical document, but as soon as it is called the work of God, it becomes a book of rules where anything and everything has authority, whether justified in reality or not – and more often not.
Humans have only two courses of action in regard to all religiously inspired writings. Totally accept their real status as just thoughts from long ago or admit to being I ROBOT of the brainwashed kind.
By David Nicholls