Ted Chiang does love to explore the counter-factual with empathy and openness where he somehow manages to take himself out of the story in the admirable Virginia Wolfe sense. The OP misses the biting critique hidden in these tales. For example Omphalos, Hell Is the Absence of God, and Tower of Babylon, can all be read as a devastating critique of religion. They all clearly articulate what the world would be like if certain religious beliefs were true. Since those worlds are nothing like our own, the beliefs are false. There is a strong element of cosmic horror in each of these stories that implicitly make a strong case that we are quite fortunate that our religions do not accurately describe nature.

Exhalation is one of my favorites. There is profound lesson about the nature of the mind, expressed simply as a sequence of discovery by a lone scientist in a very alien world. But the world is an idealized, simplified version of our own with much simpler source of work in the physics sense. I very much wanted to know more about the nature of that world, and for the people there to find a way out of their apocalyptic predicament. But that story, like it's world, is hermetically sealed perfection. The fate of our own universe is the same, but with more steps in the energy cycle and a longer timeline. The silence bounding that story is a beautiful choice, one that makes it a real jewel.

I think you are spot on. What makes Chiang remarkable is that he never just builds a clever world and then leaves it at that. The counterfactuals are always put under pressure until their human consequences show through. That is why the religious stories work so well. He does not mock belief from the outside, he imagines a world where belief is literally true and then forces us to face the consequences. The horror comes from taking doctrines at face value and discovering that they are not comforting at all.

Exhalation is a good example of the same method applied to physics. The narrator dissects himself and his world with patient clarity, and in the process he reveals the same fragility that we face. The beauty of the story is that it does not rage against entropy or wrap it up in metaphors. It accepts the facts of decline and finds meaning in understanding them. That is why it feels sealed and perfect, as you say. The restraint is what gives it emotional weight.

Showing that flat earth beliefs or YEC are false is hardly a devastating critique of religion per se.

His own explanation of Hell is The Absence of God seems to suggest otherwise too. "He also said that the novelette examines the role of faith in religion, and suggests that if God undeniably existed, then faith would no longer be applicable."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_Is_the_Absence_of_God#Bac...

I didn’t really take Tower of Babylon as a “devastating critique of religion”, (or the other stories for that matter).

SPOILERS

In the story they successfully build a tower to the base of heaven and breakthrough, only to find themselves to have looped back to Earth. The implication I took from this is that heaven and earth are one and the same. This isn’t necessarily a refutation of religion or God, and in fact aligns with many religious beliefs. I wouldn’t even see it as “cosmic horror” or something that implies “we are quite fortunate that our religions do not accurately describe nature”.

Then again, the nuance in Chiang’s stories that allows for very different, but reasonable interpretations is one of the things that makes him enjoyable.

I think OP was incorrect in writing, "thermodynamics appear to work differently", in Exhalation.

I think the thermodynamics works the same and you've nailed it by describing it as hermetically sealed perfection. It's a simpler world where a self-aware being can see and almost feel the march of entropy and their own brief existence being part of that.

Thank you for the valuable and constructive comment!

I just didn't feel like discussing the satire angle was very interesting! In the article:

> In Omphalos, Young Earth Creationism is empirically true2. Astronomers can only see light from stars 6,000 light-years away. Fossilized trees have centers with no rings. The first God-created humans lack belly buttons. The scientists in that story keep discovering multiple independent lines of evidence that converge on creationism: because in that universe, they're simply correct.

I think this section makes it very clear that in one sense, it's a clear satire of religion, or at least Creationism (implied: we do not see this, so it's implausible we're in a YE Creationist world). I didn't think it was worth spelling it out. Also overall I thought anti-religious satire in fiction is fairly common (I remember reading Candide in high school, and Pullman around the same time or a little earlier) and far from what makes Chiang special.

Agree with your thoughts on Exhalation. I hope they make it out, but also completely understand why Chiang ended the story where he did.

Calling Hell is the Absence of God a critique of religion misses the point. Chiang isn’t saying “religion is false.” He imagines a world where God’s existence and Heaven and Hell are undeniable, and shows that even certainty doesn’t solve the problem of suffering or the struggle for meaning. The story critiques the idea that proof would make faith easier, not religion itself.