Books like Ship of Fools

spoilers aheadlast week my mom and i had a conversation about God that devolved into an unpleasant argument, with mom saying some things that i found to be ludicrous beyond belief and with me responding with comments that were condescending and offensive. last week i read a book called Ship of Fools; it is a dark and grim science fiction narrative about a colony ship trying to find a new home, written in a polished and straightforward style, and it is has one major concern: the question of evil in a universe created by God. my mom used to be an "existentialist" who eschewed organized religion and it has only been in the past few years that she's found Jesus; her newly found faith has helped her enormously through some tough times. the crew and the passengers on the colony ship Argonos are at different places in their faith, believers & non-believers & those who don't give a crap about such things, all put together in one place, all trying to find something to help them make sense of their lives, to cope.when mom and i talk about God it will ofen lead to talking about why God allows evil to exist, why children have to suffer, what "Evil" actually is... all that fairly typical stuff, conversations that end with an uncomfortable and probably typical dearth of answers and lack of resolution. a survey team from the Argonos explores a new planet they name "Antioch" and there they discover an old colony and the bodies of the colonists - terribly tortured and murdered men, women, and children hung up on hooks; full of horror and confusion and despair, the surveyors flee back to the Argonos. in our conversation last week, mom wanted to talk about Satan, about a revelation she had had about Evil and its origin - she comes from a perspective that sees Evil as a tangible thing, a purely evil angel that falls from the sky or a purely evil human that walks upon the earth; i see evil as something more intangible, as a choice that can be made or as a situation that is allowed to continue or to even exist in the first place. after their horrific experience on Antioch, the Argonos comes across an unsettling abandoned alien ship; strange things happen during and after the exploration of this ship - a contagious feeling of free-floating anomie and depression, even more widespread feelings of dread and loss of faith, attempted murder, suicide, death... are all these things the result of human failing - or something more tangible, some dire threat from within the ship, some unearthly influence?mom follows this televangelist named Joyce Meyer who she connects with due to a shared history of childhood trauma and a shared desire to move past that trauma in order to become empowered, enlightened women who can be defined by their strength; i see Meyer as a study in typical hypocritical excess, using the name and word of God to line her own pockets - although i will acknowledge that there is some truth and some beauty in some of the things she says, even in some of her actions. on the Argonos there is a bishop, a corrupt man and man who secretly has no faith, and yet this character - the novel's "villain", i suppose - is just as often right as he is wrong - in the end he assesses evil as a tangible thing and urges the ship to flee that evil; the other characters, including our hero, have deep doubts about such a thing as "tangible evil" - they see no logic or science in it, and so they rationalize actions that lead them closer to that evil and closer to their own doom.a few days later when i called my mom back to apologize for my harsh words and my sarcastic ridicule, i was inspired to read her a part of Ship of Fools, one that was all about God and "Free Will" and why bad things are allowed to happen; in that passage, a sympathetic clergywoman outlines a key part of her faith: the idea that bad things happen and evil exists simply because God has endowed humanity with Free Will, to choose as they see fit and to react in their own ways to the awful things that the world puts before them - and so to stop these bad things from happening or to somehow make people choose to do good would be to take away that gift of independence and of self-determination... my mom listened to all of this and was satisfied with what she heard, and called the author a "soldier of God". at the end of Ship of Fools, the protagonist and most of the crew and passengers of the Argonos flee their ship to establish a new home on Antioch; our hero remains a resolute atheist, denying the existence of God and of any afterlife, yet somehow finding the idea of something intangible and powerful - a higher power? - to be present in the memory of his love (the clergywoman), in the ability to share and cooperate with others in a new colony that will be built, in the basic concept of hope in what the future may hold, for him as an individual, but more importantly, for him as a part of a larger whole, a community... i would say that this character is my own version of a soldier of God.