Contact across the Solar System

Beliefs

The two had run-ins with people with a variety of beliefs, both physically and online.

Like Christian fundamentalists who sometimes made themselves very obnoxious as they pushed their beliefs.

Kalna once responded to one fundie with "I actually have a lot of respect for Jesus Christ. I think that he was a reincarnation of a spiritual adept."

He was taken aback by Kalna's assertion, and he stammered "Jesus said that he was the Son of God. Are you calling him a liar?"

"Of course not. He could have been honestly mistaken. Like when he said that he'd return very soon."

That was rather hard for him to take, something that Kalna telepathically sensed.

She tried to be reassuring. "Even the best of us make mistakes," she said.

He responded "If you are right, then we are doomed to oblivion."

"You don't need to feel bad. We don't completely die. We get reincarnated. I remember some of my past lives."

That attempt at reassurance failed miserably. He muttered something about how she is a total kook, he said "You will go to Hell," and he stomped off.

Another fundie once denounced "works-based religions," saying that salvation can only come by way of the blood of Jesus Christ.

After she got past the blood bit, Kalna was baffled by that, because it went against what she'd been taught since she was a little girl. "What could possibly be wrong with doing good things?" she asked.

He responded that salvation is God's choice, not ours, and that we cannot buy salvation.

She decided not to push the issue, since he was evidently happy to believe that Jesus Christ's execution was punishment for his sins. Including a bizarre and baffling kind of sin: original sin.

For her part, Ilmuth was once having a discussion about some scientific issues with a graduate student in a cafe when he confessed that he was an atheist. "But I'm not a Madalyn Murray O'Hair type", he quickly protested.

"What about her?" asked Ilmuth.

He then described what a jerk she was.

Ilmuth then quizzed him about his beliefs, and he conceded that he could also be called an agnostic. He made an analogy with Bertrand Russell's interplanetary teapot, and she smiled at the thought of tracking down a teapot in interplanetary space.

In return, he quizzed her about her beliefs, and he couldn't be sure whether she was a deist, a pantheist, a New-Ager, a believer in the Star Wars Force, or a mishmash of several of these. But they both believed in the importance of natural law as opposed to arbitrary miracles, they both considered anthropomorphic gods silly, and Ilmuth told the graduate student how she appreciates that he had dedicated his life to understanding natural laws -- it was almost a spiritual quest.

Their conversation drifted to the subject of death, and she quizzed him about that also. He said that he expected his consciousness to end at the death of his body, though with a lack of fear of death that she found remarkable. "You are very brave", she said, explaining that she expected to be reincarnated.

He asked why we don't have lots of memories of our past lives, and she conceded that we do indeed lose something with the death of each body.

Then he said "You're one of the nicest religious believers I've ever met."

"Thank you," responded Ilmuth, with a big smile.

"You showed a lot of respect for my beliefs."

"How?"