How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph) Note that chapters aren't numbered, so need to be numbered manually, 1 to 14.
Quote #1
Compared with the proliferation of speculative ideas which were triggered off by this problem, medieval scholasticism seemed a model of scientific enlightenment. (2.33)
Medieval scholasticism was devoted to trying to explain or understand the nature of God; it was notoriously confusing and abstruse. Lem suggests that Solaristics (and all science) is similarly involved and meaningless. Science is ridiculous because it's like religion. So, yes, he doesn't have a very high opinion of religion—or at least Kelvin doesn't seem to here.
Quote #2
"Did you try the rope, or the hammer? Or the well-aimed ink-bottle, like Luther? No?" (6.17)
Martin Luther was a monk who lived in the 1500s; he started the Protestant Reformation. He also sometimes saw the devil, and would drive him away by throwing ink bottles at him. You'd think the devil wouldn't be scared of an ink bottle, but then, you wouldn't think an alien ocean would make a simulacra that couldn't get out of its dress. Once you've got miracles happening, it's maybe silly to quibble about the details.
Quote #3
The fact is that in spite of his cautious nature the scrupulous Giese more than once jumped to premature conclusions. Even when on their guard, human beings inevitably theorize. (8.51)
This seems like it applies to science (humans can't help making scientific theories) but it also seems to apply to religion. Humans see things out there, whether gluons or angels or some combination of the two. Glugels? An-ons?
Quote #4
"You are going around in circles to satisfy the curiosity of a power we don't understand and can't control, and she is an aspect, a periodic manifestation of that power." (10.96)
Snow's language here, about powers and aspects and manifestations, seems theological rather than scientific. It's like he's saying, don't let God get you.
Quote #5
"[…] so like my father's, that head, not in its feature but in its expression of old-fashioned wisdom and honesty…" (11.25)
Kelvin here is saying that the picture of researcher Giese's head is similar to Kelvin's father's head. He's ruminating about this while having a semi-mystical experience as his brainwaves are measured, which suggests that the wise, old, honest father here is supposed to suggest the divine father as well. Is God Kelvin's dad? Or is God the big weird ocean? Could God be both at once? (Well, he's God, right? He can do whatever he wants.)
Quote #6
The quest for this key, the philosopher's stone of Solarist studies, had absorbed the time and energy of all kinds of people with little or no scientific training. (11.60)
The philosopher's stone was a mystical alchemical stone that could supposedly convert lead to gold (useful!). Kelvin is comparing the search to harness the Solaris ocean's energy to the search for the philosopher's stone. The stone was also supposed to grant immortality—and of course, the ocean gives Rheya a kind of immortality, or at least a second life. So religion, mysticism, and science are all transmuted into one another.
Quote #7
According to Muntius, Solaristics is the space era's equivalent of religion: faith disguised as science. Contact, the stated aim of Solaristics, is no less vague and obscure than the communion of the saints, or the second coming of the Messiah. (11.67)
Contact with aliens is like contact with God—tricky to pin down. Which makes sense: Have you ever tried to talk to you cat? If that doesn't work, it seems like aliens or God would be even tougher—or at least almost as tough. Meow.
Quote #8
"… Faust in reverse… he's looking for a cure for immortality! He is the last knight of the Holy Contact, the man we need." (12.29)
Faust was a medieval magician who supposedly made a deal with the devil for knowledge and power and immortality (the usual stuff). So Snow is comparing Sartorius to a reverse Faust, trying to give the devil back his deal by getting rid of the miracle visitors.
Quote #9
"Do you happen to know if there was ever a belief in an… imperfect god?" (14.17)
There have actually been beliefs in imperfect gods; there's a Christian philosophy called Gnosticism which has argued that the earth was created by a lesser spirit who didn't get everything right. And Joseph Heller in Catch-22 has a riff where he talks about how if there is a god he seems to be a drooling yokel who has screwed everything up. So Kelvin isn't original here (nor should he be since everything's a copy in Solaris).
Quote #10
Must I go on living here then, among the objects we both had touched, in the air she had breathed? In the name of what? In the hope of her return? I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation. Since she had gone, that was all that remained. I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past. (14.69)
Is Kelvin talking about meeting another Rheya clone? Or is he talking about meeting Rheya in heaven?