Popular Culture Review Volume 30, Number 1, Winter 2019 | Page 35

Popular Culture Review 30.1
the apocalyptic writings of John . People disappointed at the failure of the Second Coming to occur during their lifetime lost faith in the promise of God . John ’ s writings deal with crises of both history and faith . Thus , Chiang ’ s stories are similar to John ’ s writings in that they deal with the disillusionment and failure of faith and religion .
Before discussing the stories , it may behoove us to consider the definitions of faith , religion , and belief . Although we may feel we know what these words mean , and may even think they are synonymous , the distinctions among them are of importance to this essay . As John Bishop states , “... at its most general , ‘ faith ’ means the same as ‘ trust ’.” Greg Popcak defines faith more narrowly , asserting that faith “ is merely the innate drive to search for meaning , purpose and significance .” Religion , at its most basic , can be defined as a specific form of human activity as a means of achieving spiritual or material improvement . However , this form of human activity is often cultural because it is a system of behaviors and praxes uniting a community . Belief , according to Eric Schwitzgebel , refers “ to the attitude we have , roughly , whenever we take something to be the case or regard it as true .” Interestingly , many define faith as belief without proof . Although many use these three terms interchangeably , Chiang employs them in specific ways in his stories .
In the “ Tower of Babylon ,” Chiang uses the biblical story of the tower of Babel as his premise . His focus is not on God ’ s creation of various languages as punishment for defying Him , but on humanity ’ s desire “ to see what lay beyond [ the earth ’ s ] borders , all the rest of Yahweh ’ s creation ” ( 5-6 ). This story juxtaposes science with faith and religion as the Babylonians are building the tower so they can break into the vault of heaven . They desire knowledge about their world , but also desire knowledge about God , believing that the tower will
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