RUR Religion Quotes

God had to work with knives and bearskins. Man has factories. So man has surpassed God, and doesn't need Him anymore. Or so Domin thinks. At the end it seems like God may have a grasp of modern technology after all…

Nana thinks that the robots are against God. As evidence, she says that robots don't bear young, and that everything of God's is supposed to bear young. The play seems to agree, insofar as the robots seem to stop people from having kids by some mystical method. But of course not all people have children, and some people are even unable to have children. Does that mean that they're an offense against God? Is religion mostly about procreation? That's the case in R.U.R., but it's not clear that Christian theologians would agree.

Alquist also believes, like Nana, that the robots are against God, though he focuses on labor (making stuff) rather than on labor (having babies). Again, though, you have to wonder whether religion is really supposed to be about work and babies rather than about, say, loving one another or treating each other right.

Souls are usually thought of as good things. Then, again, if you're a ruler, you don't necessarily want your servants to be human beings with desires and concerns and possible thoughts. What makes humans human is often nasty. But at the same time, there's something nasty about those with power being upset that their workers are human.

Nana doesn't just dislike robots; she thinks it's blasphemous to invent anything, or use any tools. Any progress is evil in her eyes. Taken to an extreme, this seems like it means that humans shouldn't try to help each other, since that would be blasphemously trying to improve the world. Nana's vision of religion seems somewhat untrustworthy, though she's probably right that God disapproves of building robots that destroy the world.

This is probably supposed to be somewhat funny. Nana's over-the-top warnings of apocalypse, and Hallemeier's distress that she's still alive and burbling, would most likely get some laughs in a theater. Nana, and religion in general, are presented as amusing and a joke—but then again, the play does sometimes seem to believe in God, and to believe that the robots violate God's plan.

Alquist seems to think the stars were put there for people, and should just be put out if people aren't there. This seems like a bit of hubris. Does God care for people more than anything in the universe? The play seems to think He cares about robots just as much.

This is the play's fullest discussion of what it means to have a soul, and it's not exactly super-clear. To have a soul, it seems, is to have something speaking in you from outside. Is that something God? A conscience? A glitch in the program? Usually you think of the soul as the self, but here it's presented as something outside the self, a kind of ghost that's snuck into the computer.

Alquist is soliloquizing—again. Here he's speaking to all the dead humans, and wondering why he can't hear them speaking to him from the afterlife. We know why he can't hear them speaking to him from the afterlife. It's because he isn't listening and he won't shut up.

In the Bible, the sixth day is when God created humans. Alquist is comparing that to the moment when Helena and Primus discover love. The creation of humanity—and especially of Adam and Eve—is directly linked to Primus and Helena, who will go on to populate the world… somehow, even though robots can't actually reproduce. But that's why you need God for the miracle. Or else you need Alquist to develop the formula for life—one or the other.