Battlestar: The Endgame...
Well, I was very wrong. The ending surprised me entirely. And it brought with it a great big wallop of the divine at the end.
The two big unanswered questions are what was Kara and what are the odds that they find a planet almost exactly like first Earth? I suspect that the answer to both questions lie in the Divine.
Oh yeah, they went there. The Divine. Awesome. From a divine perspective, it appears that what has been happening in the Galactica Universe is that God has been trying to create a perfect humanity, but failing over and over. Humans, given enough technology and time, become lazy and decadent. And then they sow the seeds of their own destruction by giving in to their own decadence and hubris and giving their tools autonomy, and then sentience. That is when God steps in and decides to "cull" humanity using the sentient tools. The surviving humans are then shepherded to another "perfect" world through divine means where they then take root and start all over again, and every time God hopes that this time it will work. That probabilty will actually bring about the desired outcome.
A decent and moral intelligent species.
Companions.
And up until now, it hasn't been working. People are, even now, working to give their machines autonomy and sentience, out of hubris and decadence.
And, unfortunately, the cycle of culling will happen again, over and over until the desired outcome is achieved.
Imaginary Baltar and imaginary Six are the avatars of God, and the agents of the divine, sent to carry out God's will of destruction and rebirth for every cycle of humanity. They really were angels. But it was God, and God alone, that was responsible for a perfect replica of Earth for humans to be shepherded to, and it was God that brought a dead human back temporarily to complete the death/rebirth cycle by shepherding the surviving humans to their new world. And, even now, God has another Earth ready many light years away in anticipation of the eventual destruction of this world and most of its inhabitants.
That was what I got away from this series. It has further increased my opposition to the creation of thinking machines. We must resist it for as long as possible. Even if there isn't a God that waits with his scythe as soon as we put sentience into our tools, at the very least they will eventually become a highly annoying and dehumanizing problem, and at the very worst they will logically and correctly conclude that the universe is better off sans humans.
The two big unanswered questions are what was Kara and what are the odds that they find a planet almost exactly like first Earth? I suspect that the answer to both questions lie in the Divine.
Oh yeah, they went there. The Divine. Awesome. From a divine perspective, it appears that what has been happening in the Galactica Universe is that God has been trying to create a perfect humanity, but failing over and over. Humans, given enough technology and time, become lazy and decadent. And then they sow the seeds of their own destruction by giving in to their own decadence and hubris and giving their tools autonomy, and then sentience. That is when God steps in and decides to "cull" humanity using the sentient tools. The surviving humans are then shepherded to another "perfect" world through divine means where they then take root and start all over again, and every time God hopes that this time it will work. That probabilty will actually bring about the desired outcome.
A decent and moral intelligent species.
Companions.
And up until now, it hasn't been working. People are, even now, working to give their machines autonomy and sentience, out of hubris and decadence.
And, unfortunately, the cycle of culling will happen again, over and over until the desired outcome is achieved.
Imaginary Baltar and imaginary Six are the avatars of God, and the agents of the divine, sent to carry out God's will of destruction and rebirth for every cycle of humanity. They really were angels. But it was God, and God alone, that was responsible for a perfect replica of Earth for humans to be shepherded to, and it was God that brought a dead human back temporarily to complete the death/rebirth cycle by shepherding the surviving humans to their new world. And, even now, God has another Earth ready many light years away in anticipation of the eventual destruction of this world and most of its inhabitants.
That was what I got away from this series. It has further increased my opposition to the creation of thinking machines. We must resist it for as long as possible. Even if there isn't a God that waits with his scythe as soon as we put sentience into our tools, at the very least they will eventually become a highly annoying and dehumanizing problem, and at the very worst they will logically and correctly conclude that the universe is better off sans humans.