The Story and Invasion of Mars

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"I will recognize sin," said Father Stone bluntly, "even on Mars" (pg 121). The story of the invasion of Mars continues in this great novel. The longest chapter of the segment that I had to read for this response was mostly about religion. Episcopal priests come to Mars to try to convert the Martians to monotheism. It turns out that the Martians are already beyond sin. Father Peregrine, Father Stone, and some other Episcopal priests head off to Mars. Peregrine wants to convert some natives, while Stone thinks they should concentrate on making the human sinners feel bad about themselves and try to make them feel guilty for their sins. Luckily for the priests and not for the Martians, Peregrine is in charge, so they head off to find some heathens or Martians that don’t really have a concrete faith. Unfortunately, the Martians are mostly dead since past humans have killed them. The priests later find out about a second race of Martians who look like spheres of blue fire. They decide to go and convert these blue spheres instead. Peregrine is convinced that these blue globes are intelligent and have souls, possibly because he likes the color blue, but also because these Martians seem to save his life on three occasions. After Peregrine convinces Stone that the Martians are intelligent, they build a church for the blue spheres. The blue spheres gratefully say thank you, but they don’t accept it. See, they're already holy. So no church for them, instead the humans keep it. Still, even if they haven't converted or saved anyone, the priests feel holier and more complete than when they arrived at Mars. The next chapter discusses the process of remaking a regular Earth-like town on Mars. The settlers are faced with the challenge of constructing everything without the aid of compressed particleboard and Allen wrenches, as Mars is not as technologically advanced as Earth....

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...Christianity and Islam were two of the fastest religions that spread around the globe. It is a pity to see how religion back then still affects us today. Although some groups of Native Americans still conserve their roots, many of their rituals and traditions were lost due to colonization.

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