"Pregnancy is a kind of miracle. Especially so in that it proves that a man and woman can conspire to force God to create a new soul"
About this Quote
Pregnancy gets reframed here as less Hallmark miracle than jailbreak: a biological event dressed up as metaphysical caper. Robert Anton Wilson, professional saboteur of solemn certainties, doesn’t flatter religion so much as needle it. The word “conspire” is the tell. It casts reproduction as a plot against the cosmic order, two ordinary bodies teaming up to corner an omnipotent being into paperwork. If God is truly sovereign, how can humans “force” anything? Wilson’s joke works because it stages that contradiction in a single sentence, turning a cherished piety into a logical prank.
The subtext is classic RAW: reverence is permitted, but only after it survives contact with skepticism. He’s not denying awe; he’s relocating it. The “miracle” isn’t proof of divine tenderness so much as evidence of reality’s weird contractual structure - sex leads to a person, and society retrofits the chain of causality with sanctity. By calling the outcome “a new soul,” Wilson also satirizes the way metaphysics gets smuggled into everyday life. We talk about souls at the exact moment we can’t explain what, precisely, has arrived.
Context matters: Wilson wrote in a late-20th-century America where spiritual language and countercultural irreverence shared the same air. His broader project - from Illuminatus! onward - was to expose how belief systems manufacture authority. Here, the punchline is that the most intimate human act becomes a loophole in theology, a reminder that creation isn’t only a divine prerogative; it’s a recurring human insurgency.
The subtext is classic RAW: reverence is permitted, but only after it survives contact with skepticism. He’s not denying awe; he’s relocating it. The “miracle” isn’t proof of divine tenderness so much as evidence of reality’s weird contractual structure - sex leads to a person, and society retrofits the chain of causality with sanctity. By calling the outcome “a new soul,” Wilson also satirizes the way metaphysics gets smuggled into everyday life. We talk about souls at the exact moment we can’t explain what, precisely, has arrived.
Context matters: Wilson wrote in a late-20th-century America where spiritual language and countercultural irreverence shared the same air. His broader project - from Illuminatus! onward - was to expose how belief systems manufacture authority. Here, the punchline is that the most intimate human act becomes a loophole in theology, a reminder that creation isn’t only a divine prerogative; it’s a recurring human insurgency.
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
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