Religious ideas in science fiction

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Overview of religious themes in science fiction

Science fiction (SF) works often present explanations, commentary or use religious themes to convey a broader message. The use of religious themes in the SF genre varies from simple refutations of religion as primitive or unscientific, to creative explanations and new insights into religious experience and beliefs as a way of gaining new perspectives to the human condition (e.g. gods as aliens, prophets as time travelers, metaphysical or prophetic vision gained through technological means, etc. ).The genre of science fiction with respect to the religious thematic schemes can be seen as an open system that can unpack and/or deconstruct (oftentimes in a postmodern sense) traditionally closed religious works for example, the relationship between the closed and limited nature of the creation story of Genesis in opposition to the open and expansive nature of the film The Matrix.

As an exploratory medium, SF rarely takes religion at face value by simply accepting or rejecting it. As with many topics in SF, when religious themes are presented they tend to be investigated very deeply. The reader is invited to step outside the conventional understanding of the subject and consider wider possibilities that are often relevant to everyday human experience.Since the genre of SF often deals with humanity’s understanding of itself in the face of great technological and social change -- most SF grapples with questions of a spiritual or religious nature. Consequently the significance of religious themes in SF cannot be understated.

In addition to considering theological or philosophical or ideologies directly or indirectly from a religious context, some fiction deals with these topics as portraying real religions such as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Bahá'í Faith - see LDS fiction and Bahá'í Faith in fiction.

Contents

[edit] Religious themes in science fiction books, film and television

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

[edit] Afterlife

[edit] Ancestor veneration

[edit] Angels

    • In Charles Phipps' Machine Goddess, the whole of human history is influenced by pre-Big Bang beings that take the name of Angels and Demons.
    • In Hideaki Anno's anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, humans are the components in a final celestial being known as the eighteenth Angel, and the 17 monsters are also named angels.

[edit] Apocalypse

[edit] Christianity

[edit] Creation

[edit] Delusion

[edit] Demons

  • John Ringo Princess of Wands ISBN 1-4165-0923-2 A Christian housewife/soccer mum gets involved in an organisation which co-operates with the FBI in dealing with demons.

[edit] Devil

[edit] Eschatology (Ultimate fate of the Universe)

[edit] God or Gods

    • Octavia E. Butler. 1993."Parable of the Sower" Religion created Earthseed where God is change.
    • Orson Scott Card. “The Worthing Series’’
    • G. K. Chesterton 1908. The Man Who Was Thursday
    • In Philip K. Dick's short story "Faith of our Fathers", the protagonist faces an all-powerful god that reveals that it is a predator on all living things.
    • Alastair Reynolds. “Absolution Gap”
    • David Zindell 1988. Neverness New York: Spectra
    • Stargate and Stargate SG-1, the supposed ancient gods are revealed to be powerful, parasitic aliens posing as supernatural beings to exploit mankind. Furthermore, the Stargate explorers are often mistaken for gods since they use the stargates, but the conscientious ones take pains to disabuse that assumption. Initially an ordinary Star Trek-esque show, Stargate SG-1 and its spin-off Stargate Atlantis have shifted to have as the central theme the concepts of what it means to be a god, particularly with the new Ori story arc.
    • Star Trek: The Motion Picture, an alien force of incredible, God-like power enters Federation space, forcing the Enterprise crew to discover the meaning and purpose of its arrival.
    • In theStar Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Who Watches the Watchers? (TNG episode)Who Watches the Watchers?", a serious accident with a hidden scientific observation post starts a chain of events that leads to a primitive civilization becoming convinced that the Starfleet personnel are divine beings with Capt. Jean-Luc Picard being the supreme one. The crew of the Enterprise struggle to prevent the reestablishment of religion in the civilization.
    • In Star Trek (original series) episode "Who Mourns for Adonis?", the Enterprise crew encounters an alien figure reminiscent of the ancient Greek god Apollo. The "god" asks to be respected, worshiped, and permitted to offer care and love for the crew. In critiquing this figure, the crew reduces it to the mere product of an "energy source." After destroying the entity, Captain Kirk rhetorically asks, "Would it have hurt to have gathered a few laurel leaves?" This comment can be seen to reflect on the ironies of scientific reductionism and the concomitant rejection of divinity. Finally, it offers a possible nostalgic lament about the results of the "acids of modernity."
    • In Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, a nobleman re-creates a rival religious movement to dethrone a false pantheon of Hindu-inspired "Gods" on a world where magic and science coexist.
    • In Lois McMaster Bujold's Chalion novels, The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls, there are five gods, with substantial consideration of free will and how the gods influence and interact with people. The theology is consistent and well-presented.

[edit] Heaven

[edit] Hell

[edit] Identity

[edit] Jewish

[edit] Logos

[edit] Messianism

[edit] Metaphysics

[edit] Millennialism

[edit] Morality

[edit] Original sin

[edit] Penance

[edit] Purgatory

[edit] Reincarnation

[edit] Resurrection

[edit] Soul

[edit] Theocracy

[edit] Works cited

  • Clark, S (2005),Science Fiction and Religion, Blackwell Publishing, 2005.
  • McKee, G (2007),The Gospel According to Science Fiction-From the Twilight Zone to

the Final Frontier,London-Westminster, John Knox Press Louisville.

  • Riley, R., (1985),The Transcendent Adventure-Studies of Religion in Science Fiction Fantasy, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT.

[edit] External links

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[edit] Religions

  • Orson Scott Card. A member of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly called the LDS or Mormon Church), some of his novels have stories explicitly drawn from scripture or church history. For example, Stone Tables is about the life of the Biblical prophet Moses. His Women of Genesis novels address the lives of Old Testament women Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah, while The Folk Of The Fringe stories and Saints are about Latter-day Saint pioneers. In some of his other writings the influence of his Mormon beliefs is less obvious. For example, parallels can be made between Card's Homecoming and Alvin Maker sagas and the story line in the Book of Mormon and the life of LDS founder Joseph Smith, Jr.
  • Tom Ligon. Among his many short stories "The Devil and the Deep Black Void" and "The Gardener" published in 1986 and 1993 in Analog Magazine, are science fiction stories which are about a Muslim terrorist organization in a largely Muslim space-faring civilization where Bahá'ís are refugees. In the stories the terrorists are prevented from crashing a spaceship into the Earth (long predating the events of 9-11) and instead are driven to an unusual world where Bahá'ís live which eventually reveals that civilizations have reached great levels of technology and then mysteriously transcended. The ethical conflict of pacifism, a debatable stance associated with the Bahá'í Faith, in the face of terrorists is worked out. One character, who takes on the name of the historical Bábí who performed an assassination attempt on the life of the Shah of Iran, chooses the path of violence in defense of the population.

[edit] Time-travelling to meet Jesus

One of the consequences of assuming time travel to be possible is to open up the possibility of modern people traveling back to the time of Jesus Christ - and specifically, to the crucifixion. This raises complex moral and religious questions dealt with in very different ways by different writers.

  • In Richard Matheson's The Traveller (1954), a professor who is a confirmed sceptic is for that reason chosen to be the first to travel in time to see the crucifixion, in a kind of traveling cage which makes him invisible to the people of the past. Seeing the actual scene, he feels an increasing empathy for Jesus, and finally attempts to save him and is hauled back to the present by the monitoring conductors of the experiment. He comes back a changed man - though he had seen no miracles, he did see "a man giving up his life for the things he believed" and "that should be miracle enough for everybody". At least, it is miracle enough for the formerly-skeptic professor; in short, without actually being aware of the invisible visitor from his future, Jesus in his stance had managed to make him a believer.
  • John Brunner's Times Without Number (1962)depicts an alternate reality in which the Spanish Armada conquered England. In this Twentieth Century, time travel is discovered - controlled, like much else in the world, by the Catholic Church. It is decreed that every new pope, on entering his job, would be privileged to travel to Palestine in the time of Christ's ministry. Everybody else is strictly forbidden to go anywhere near.
  • In Arthur Porges's story The Rescuer, (1962) scientists in 2015 face charges of having deliberately destroyed a three-billion dollar project. They tell the judges that instead of the carefully controlled experiment in time-travel they had planned, a religious fanatic had taken over the machine, and headed for Golgotha with a rifle and five thousand rounds. His attempt to save Jesus might have wiped out the entire present world as we know it, and the only way to stop it was by destroying the machine. The affair must be kept from the public, since some might identify with "The Rescuer".
Cover "Behold the Man".
Cover "Behold the Man".
  • The most extensive treatment of this theme to date seems to be Michael Moorcock's book Behold the Man (1966). The Twentieth-Century Karl Glogauer, a Jew obsessed with the figure of Jesus (and with Jung) and who also appears in other Moorcock books, travels in time to the year 28 A.D. He meets various New Testament figures such as John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary (whose conduct is anything but virginal). Finding that Mary and Joseph's child Jesus is a mentally retarded hunchback, who could never become the Jesus portrayed in Scripture, Glogauer himself begins to step into the role of Jesus. In the end, he does fully become Jesus, and dies on the cross (having specifically asked Judas to betray him). This raises the philosophical issue of whether or not it even matters if the historical Jesus ever existed.
  • In Poul Anderson's book There Will Be Time,(1972) a young twentieth century American discovers that he had been born with the ability to travel through time without any need of a machine. Reasoning that there must be others like him and that Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion is a good place to try locating them, he goes there and walks through the street singing the Greek mass, which is of course meaningless to people of the time. This does help him to get located by agents of a time-traveling organization, who take him to their headquarters in the far future - without having gotten to see Jesus at all.
"Give us Barabbas!" Were they all tourists? (from The Bible and its Story Taught by One Thousand Picture Lessons, 1910).
"Give us Barabbas!" Were they all tourists? (from The Bible and its Story Taught by One Thousand Picture Lessons, 1910).
  • In Garry Kilworth's story Let's go to Golgotha (1975 - published in a collection of the same name), tourists from the future can book on a time-traveling "Crucifixion Tour". Before setting out, they are strictly warned that they must not do anything to disrupt history. Specifically, when the crowd is asked whether Jesus or Barabbas should be spared, they must all join the call "Give us Barabbas!". (A priest absolves them from any guilt for so doing). However, when the moment comes, the protagonist suddenly realizes that the crowd condemning Jesus to the cross is composed entirely of tourists from the future, and that no actual Jewish Jerusalemites of 33 A.D. are present at all...

[edit] See also

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