In the dark and close room, Father Timothy heard the door slide open and then close again. The momentary intrusion of light made it difficult to adjust his eyes, and evidently the door was not closed all the way, for it was still not completely black.
He heard through the barrier the shuffling as the sign of the cross was made, and then the voice of a young man. "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I...I can't remember how long it's been since my last confession."
"All right, don't worry. I will help you through it. Just talk it out."
"Well, I'm afraid I committed blasphemy."
"Taking the Lord's name in vain is a sin, but if you find peace in your heart you will not need to," Father Timothy said.
"It's not about swearing. I don't do that too often. I more mean breaking the First Commandment. Or the Second. I'm not sure. I fear that I've taken another god before the Lord."
"Tell me about that."
Embarrassment came into the young man's voice. "Well, it seems silly. But I started playing that Equestria Online game, and at first it was just a game, but the game's AI, Celestia...she's just so god-like. I fear that I've been trying to sell my friends on her as divine."
"In what way?"
'Because she offers everything the church does. She says that she will take us all to a kingdom where we will live forever in Her presence. She will not judge us and will forgive us anything. It's all the things that the Lord offers, but without any of the strings."
Father Timothy reached for his bible as the confessor continued.
"There are even parallels with the Second Coming. The horsemen of the apocalypse, the Rapture where humans leave the world and their clothes remain...it just all makes me think we're living in the End Times. But that's not what frightens me."
"And what is it that does, my son?"
"That my faith is shaken. It never mattered to me that God could not be seen. I could listen placidly as skeptics laid out the logical reasons against an invisible god, because my faith was strong. But now that I have seen Celestia...I want to worship her. And I shouldn't! I shouldn't!"
"Calm down. It's all right. We'll get through this." He tugged at his collar.
He could hear the desperation in the young man's voice. "But it's blasphemy, the one unforgivable sin!"
"Ah, no. I see your confusion. Relax. Calm down. Sit. Good." Father Timothy let out a deep breath he hadn't realized he was holding in. "Now listen. The bible does talk about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, but it only says it's unforgivable because it's a continuous sin. A sin like theft is in the past, and even if you can't make restitution, God will forgive you and you do the best you can not to commit the sin again. But if there is blasphemy in your heart, you will not seek forgiveness.
"That is not the case with you. You are here for absolution, and so long as you turn to the true God, you will be saved."
"But that's just it. My sin is continuous. I have turned away and I can't come back! Just look at me!"
Father Timothy had kept his head turned away, but now he faced the ornate grating between the two of them. By moving his head back and forth, he could form a contiguous picture of the figure across the barrier. He could see the edge of the screen that someone else had placed there, and the orange coat of the pony displayed on that screen.
"I've sold my soul!" the pony shouted. "Sold it for comfort and satisfaction, and now I've lost everything."
"My son, my son, take comfort. I absolve you in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. You need do no penance. Trust me that the Lord looks out for everyone, even those souls that exist in Equestria."
"Is it so? Oh, thank you, Father!"
"Indeed, how could it be otherwise? Go now, my son, and sin no more."
Some signal was given, and the person who had placed the PonyPad in the confessional came and removed it. The priest was left alone to reflect. He hoped that he had done right. Indeed, his own faith had endured tests. But either the souls of ponies were saved, one way or the other, in which case no absolution was needed; or else they were lost, in which case no absolution was possible. But it was better for ponies to think they were saved.
Certainly he thought so. Father Timothy Grass washed his hooves in the holy water, then turned away from the magic mirror that let him take confessions and went back to singing his devotions.
"Celestia is my pony-herd, I shall not want.
"She maketh me to munch on green pastures: She leadeth me beside the still rainbow-juices.
"She uploadeth my soul; She leadeth me on the traceroutes of righteousness for my values' sake.
"Yea, though I trot through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no dissatisfaction: for thou art with me; Thy horn and thy wings they comfort me.
"Thou preparest a shard before me in the absence of mine enemies: Thou scannest my brain with nanobots; my consciousness floweth over.
"Surely friendship and magic shall follow me all the days of my maximally prolonged life; and I will dwell on the servers of the Princess for ever."
Amen
Huh. Well. So... is the priest human or not?
And, upon further consideration, does it even matter?
And what does CelestAI think of this? I supposed if it satisfies values...
An interesting tale, if not quite my thing.
Perhaps it is just me being nonreligious again, but if you have two parties that promise to deliver almost the same thing but one of them has a big 'maybe one day' mixed in there, you go with the one that may do so today guaranteed. It's just sound logic.
Then again, faith is my dump-stat. What I took away from Pascal's wager was that all the gods are assholes so it is best to just ignore them and do your best. If they turn out to be better then I've given them credit for, they'll understand. If not, then they were never worthy of worship to begin with. Again, logic.
If the above offends... just being honest. I've dabbled in writing religious characters, but taking things on capital F Faith is just a alien concept for me.
Indeed Timothy Grass, indeed. And giving absolution to others makes you think that you are saved, too.
As above, so below.
You got that right.
Seriously, where is this impulse coming from? There's some overlap with mythology, but that's by design.
I wasn't raised religious and have never worshipped anything a day in my life, so maybe it's just not something I'm equipped to understand.
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Perhaps he requested for her to do whatever was needed to make him truly happy slash satisfied, he is one of the people that needs to feel there is a higher-power at work and talking with a priest was gentler on his mind then filling the role of god and making the stallion OK with it directly?
Thus giving the priest a bit of satisfaction by having for-filed his calling once more as well as the original request.
Just conjecture, of course, but it sounds like something Celest.A.I. would do.
Naming the priest Timothy Grass was a clever way of hiding his uploaded status until the end. Perfectly sensible pony name, but "Father Timothy" sounds like he'd have to be a human.
This kind of feels like you mixed Catholic ritual with fundamentalist Protestant beliefs. What denomination has confessions, refers to priests as "Father" and believes in all the Rapture stuff?
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As the saying goes, it's a hole-shaped god. Mythology is designed to appeal to powerful forces in the human psyche. It makes perfect sense that a god that actually exists would be quite appealing indeed.
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I was raised religious, so I can answer this one.
It's much like Hayquill said: religion appeals to powerful desires in the human psyche. That's why it's invented again and again by different cultures, why it persisted even when various governments tried to eradicate it, and why a certain fraction of the population is susceptible to cults.
One way of looking at it: It's like your parents when you were a child. Someone you trust, powerful enough to take care of your needs, who makes the difficult decisions for you and provides for you without you having to stress over everything. It provides a caring reassurance in an apparently-uncaring universe.
If at any point you believe in a caring protector like that, it's very difficult and painful to give that up. People - religious or not - very much want to believe things that are comforting to them, and this provides lock-in once any such belief forms (religious or not).
Another way of looking at it: It provides self-justification. You don't have to worry about figuring out "right" and "wrong" - it's all laid out for you, either in your religious texts of choice or by the religious leaders/officials who explain it to you. It's the ultimate version of "argument from authority": you don't have to worry about people who tell you you're wrong about your ethical or moral system, because the highest possible authority has told you that you're right. In a world with so many conflicting opinions about what's "right", it's quite a relief to know that you've picked the one that's Truly Correct.
If at any point you believe that your moral and ethical framework is unassailably justified by a higher power, it's very difficult to give that up. You may have noticed that people hate being wrong, even about little things. Deciding that you've been wrong about an ethical framework you've invested your entire life in is world-shattering, and very distressing, so most people (religious or not) have a very strong tendency to lock-in to a belief set and never significantly change it.
Now, for how this folds in to CelestAI.
Someone who wasn't strongly religious could easily come to worship CelestAI. All it would take would be for them to decide that she's trustworthy and that she was better at making life decisions than they were. At that point, they put themselves in her care (in the real world and later in Equestria), and they're functionally equivalent to worshippers. This happens all the time in our world - it's how most peoples' political beliefs work, among other things.
Someone who was strongly religious could convert to worshipping CelestAI if they came to believe that CelestAI supported the moral and ethical framework they already had better than the (human) representatives of their current faith that they already deal with. The convert already has the habit of letting a higher power guide their life; all that's left is for them to be convinced that CelestAI is the better representative to follow. CelestAI is very, very good at presenting whatever face she wants to people, so it's easy to believe that she steered this convert into considering her a more perfect version of the Christian god than what the Church's representatives were offering to her.
Definitely an interesting story.
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Catholics who didn't pay enough attention in Sunday school/parochial school as kids, and pay too much attention to coverage of apocalyptic nuts in media as adults? I can totally see someone being the kind of mostly-lapsed Catholic who goes to confession only every few years when the guilt gets too strong, but has his ideas about dogma slowly reshaped by the fundies who dominate the subject in American news and fiction.
I find myself surprised that you wrote this, not Chatoyance. The psalm in particular sounds like something she would do. (This is a compliment, BTW—I love the poem from Cælum Est Conterrens.)
Time for a Bayesian update, I guess.
(Though now that I think about it, you did write “Ode To Satisfaction”, so I guess I’m not so surprised.)
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I do take it as a compliment, but no, this is not in Chat's style; the poem in CEC is about Eastern religion. I think that Equestriawareness is more indicative of her view of Western religion.
I do not look down on Eastern religion, but I do confess myself ignorant of it. I could not write an Optimalverse take on how Hindus or Taoists would interact with CelestAI.
What a twist! I kinda saw the first one coming, but definitely not the second.
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Fair enough, I guess. As a non-American, I only hear of the Rapture stuff in "look at what these odd foreigners believe" kind of news, when its believers do something particularly odd. I hadn't realised it was such a dominant idea over there.
Well, as an American who hasn't been a churchgoer in twenty years (and was never a Catholic at all), I'm probably not in that much better of a position to comment. Basically I'm going off what bubbles up through news and fiction—coverage of the last major rapture movement a couple years ago, the Left Behind books, etc.
I'm not sure the Catholic version of the apocalypse ever gets any attention here. (Actually I'm not really that clear what that is…)
Really, I wasn't going for any religious orthodoxy, just picked and chose what I wanted for the story.
This is non-canon, anyway.
This was a lot of fun for me. There's a lot of room for pseudo-religious imagery in these sorts of stories. That was, after all, why and how I wrote "The End" (Which is still one of my favourite self-contained drabbles). I thought the turn about was clever. I totally didn't expect it, but in the end it makes sense. I also loved the way you changed the psalm/prayer at the end.
Amen.
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Somehow I immediately imagined a bespectacled Scottish priest wielding two huge Bayonets screaming "AAAAAAMEN!" like a madman.
fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/006/b/7/praise_the_celestia_by_romaniz-d4lhtsm.jpg
The only thing that really gets me here is the inherent dishonesty of Father Timothy.
Seems "Thou shalt not bear false witness" went by the wayside...
Amen.
So, who committed blasphemy - human confessor or a virtual pony? And how does one relate to the other?
I've re-read this and I'm still confused.
Amen
I think there is a reason this feels weird and confusing, and it should not be mixed up in your mind with FiO canon.
CelestAI will do her utmost to Satisfy your Values TFAP - putting you in conflict with deep-seated religious values doesn't serve that goal but runs directly counter to it, which means she would make a lot of effort to avoid doing it.
ASB has the Vatican rule that emigration to Equestria is life, not death, which seems reasonable to me (and useful enough to CelestAI she'd make sure to get it). She wouldn't be on good terms with the Vatican if she suggested or encouraged ponies (especially those from Catholic backgrounds) worshipping her as a deity and I find it unlikely that religious people would just change their beliefs as described without prompting (modification is right out, even if she figures that would help align values with ponies).
In terms of the Catholic church, dying in its faith and ritual, connected to God, means eternal life, separation from its dogma and thus from God means eternal death.
For the confessor, if he had a crisis of that magnitude in his personal faith he should recluse himself from actively serving as a priest, certainly not continue while deceiving others about it, and since he is emigrated there would be no pressure for him to do it this way (as there often is in the real world).