Bleeding Fiction

The essay link appears to be down.

Without being able to read it, some questions - are you speaking of the metaphorical merger of man and the divine, i.e. Joseph Campbell's final synthesis of the hero? Or a less abstract, more physical reordering of human existence according to new parameters for conciousness? Because any speculation outside the metaphor is dubious at best, crazy at most interesting.

Societally, we are already moving toward a post-faith culture, in which God IS the machine and humans are at the controls. But that is more cultural commentary than progressive visionary psuedo-science, which is what you seem to describe. All in all you need to post more details about what you're thinking...

Uh... that is... dude.

Hhm. The link works just fine for me, both from home and work. Might've been a temporary hiccough in the site's host; give it another go.

But to answer your question, I'm thinking metaphorically, of course, but I'm not thinking of metaphor. My brain's running closer to, as you put it, a "physical reordering of human existence" (though I would add-in "and mental/psychic" after the physical - and by "psychic" I mean "of the psyche").

But I think I should clarify that I'm not thinking of this specifically in terms of science fiction. Not that religion doesn't have it's place there, but I'm more concerned, at this point, with bringing the concepts of the Singularity and Transhumanism into more modern fiction. If you need to slap a genre on it call it "urban fantasy," but my ideas are running more towards Tim Powers or the surrealist fiction of Borges or Meryink than Charles de Lint.

At the same time, science fiction is essentially societal (it usually falls to either the scale of "social commentary on today's world" or "predictions for where the world is headed"). A strong part of the question behind the Singularity, at least as it concerns IA, is where the line gets drawn between man and machine and who's really at the controls. For my own science fiction, I'm just talking about integrating that with the afore-mentioned questions on where God resides (what is sacred) in the (post-)modern and future world.

Ok, having read the article, my only comment is this: Consider for the moment the absurdity of trying to predict the actions, motivations, and thought processes of an entity that is, by definition, so much smarter than yourself as to defy and possibly undo your very existence. Round robin, round robin, the essay is about God and/or gods. It's the Bible in reverse.

Hey, that's pretty cool.

Well, let's break it down by genre. We could say, for example, that horror is the genre wherein the characters are incapable of such predictions (or capable only to a lesser degree). Witness the works of Lovecraft as the extreme example; you have entities that are utterly alien to the human mind-scape and if you survive your confrontation with them with your sanity intact (which is admittedly doubtful) it's really by the sheerest bit of luck or explotation of a strange circumstance (i.e. War of the Worlds. "Oh, the martians are vulnerable to the common cold!").

Move on to fantasy where through pluck/luck, innate goodness and the discovery and use of certain plot coupons the hero is able to triumph over impossible odds.

Science fiction has, at times, taken both of the tacks above and has also just not resolved the issue at all.

Then, of course, there's the reverse, wherein the story isn't man coming up against gods so much as it is the gods as the focus of the tale. This is the domain of the super hero comics, though some handle it better than others.

My point being just that authors in every genre have found ways - and often plausible ways - to overcome the absurdity you're talking about.

Actually, come to think of it, it's incredibly human - trying to second-guess God.