From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Tue Oct 07 2003 - 19:45:00 EDT
Walter Hicks wrote:
>
> George Murphy wrote:
..............................
> > I continued this thread with a new name because I think SF deserves more
> > attention in science-theology discussions than it gets. SF films & TV play a major role
> > in the popular understanding of science (mostly bad) & can serve as a vehicle for
> > promoting views about religion, both positive & negative.
>
> I was always a big fan of the original Star Trek. I liked its upbeat morality theme. I vaguely
> recall one where the planet visited had what Kirk thought were "sun worshippers" and Spock informed
> that they were "Son worshipers" ---- much like an old religion on his own planet. Somewhat of
> put-down I thought.
>
> Lewis' Silent Planet trilogy was a nice piece of Christian sci-fi. I have to confess that I am not
> aware of much else. Can you direct us to some?
Rich already mentioned Herbert's _Dune_ - the book, not the movie, which stunk.
Here are a few other SF book with overtly religious themes.
James Blish _A Case of Conscience_.
Walter M. Miller, _A Canticle for Leibowitz_
Robert A. Heinlein, _Job: A Comedy of Justice_
Philip K. Dick, _The Divine Invasion_ and _Radio Free Albemuth_
Carl Sagan, _Contact_. (Though the Jodie Foster film is good in its own way, I
think that, surprisingly, Sagan's novel really deals better with the religious issues.)
There are also a number of short stories - Frederic Brown's "The Answer", Robert
Sheckley's "The Battle" & Arthur C. Clarke's "The Star". (But such stories don't have
to have titles with that format!)
"The Force" in Star Wars of course has to be considered, as well as some of the
individual episodes of the various Star Treks. But the latter were hampered by the fact
that Gene Roddenberry hated religion. The religious imagery in the Matrix films is
pretty obvious. (If you didn't know differently you'd think that Neo was a Roman or
Anglican priest in a cassock.)
& by happy coincidence, here's a point at which our present subject line (SF
then & now) & the earlier one (Original Sin) come together. There is very little
explicit religion in the 1957 film "Forbidden Planet," which was the first really well
done American SF film with a decent budget. But the basic plot, in which the advanced
race "The Krell" were destroyed by their "monsters from the Id", the "mindless
primitive", is exactly the problem that has to be dealt with by any theological claim
that an evolved humanity was created in a condition of "original righteousness". If you
wanted to get a discussion of these ideas going in a church, you could do worse than
start with "Forbidden Planet" - which is also just pretty good - & reasonably hard - SF.
(But you have to get used to Leslie Nielsen in a serious role!)
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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