The Reverend Dr. Bobby Denton was an American fundamentalist preacher. Two hours after the launch of the Galactic Spacecraft ship The Whale was canceled indefinitely due to the discovery of chrono-synclastic infundibula surrounding Earth, Denton gave a speech at his Love Crusade in Wheeling, West Virginia. He recounted the story of the Tower of Babel, in which humans attempt to build up to heaven but are prevented by God, who decides to "confound" the language of humans and scatter them across the Earth.[1]
Denton pointed out that space travel is a new attempt to reach the heavens, using the supposedly "universal" language of science. He said that it was clear God once again was preventing humans from trying to reach heaven when they should focus on how to be better neighbors and human beings. God has already given us a spaceship that carries everyone equally, where the air is already breathable,[2] and it never needs fuel. God also gave rules about how to live on this spaceship, not the thousand required for a rocket launch, but a simple Ten Commandments.[3] Denton then did a countdown, going through each of the Commandments, ending with a "blast off" that would take humans not to space, but to Paradise.[4]
He later appeared at the launch of Prometheus-5, carrying astronaut-poet Stony Stevenson deliberately into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum. Denton had recently spent nine days in federal prison for disorderly conduct at the Poor People's March the previous June.[5] At the launch, he gave a similar sermon about space ship Earth and God's ten rules for living there.[6]
Appearances[]
- ↑ The Sirens of Titan, Vonnegut: Novels & Stories 1963-1973, pg. 329.
- ↑ The Sirens of Titan, Vonnegut: Novels & Stories 1963-1973, pg. 330.
- ↑ The Sirens of Titan, Vonnegut: Novels & Stories 1963-1973, pg. 331.
- ↑ The Sirens of Titan, Vonnegut: Novels & Stories 1963-1973, pg. 332.
- ↑ Between Time and Timbuktu, pg. 28.
- ↑ Between Time and Timbuktu, pp. 29-32.