List of religious ideas in science fiction

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Science fiction often portrays real religions being exported to alien planets.[citation needed]

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 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.).

As an exploratory medium, SF rarely takes religion at face value by simply accepting or rejecting it, though a simple rejection does tend to be the more common bias, particularly in golden age authors like Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, but even among these this refutation is only general, not universal. As with many topics in SF, when religious themes are presented they tend to be investigated very deeply. Since the genre of SF often deals with humanity’s understanding of itself in the face of great technological and social change—some SF grapples with questions of a spiritual or religious nature.

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, comics, film and television

[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.

[edit] Creation myths

[edit] Delusion

[edit] Demons

[edit] Devil

[edit] Robot Devil

  • Futurama features a character called the Robot Devil, who is often seen doing devious things throughout the series.

[edit] Eschatology (Ultimate fate of the Universe)

[edit] God or Gods

  • Lester del Rey. 1954. "For I Am a Jealous People". Jehovah abandons humanity, and sponsors an alien race in an invasion of Earth.
  • Octavia E. Butler. 1993."Parable of the Sower" Religion created Earthseed where God is change.
  • Orson Scott Card. "The Worthing Saga". As the protagonist keeps himself in hidden stasis over the years, he becomes the target of worship by the descendants of the very settlers that he delivered to a new world.
  • G. K. Chesterton 1908. The Man Who Was Thursday
  • In Philip K. Dick's Novel "Valis", the protagonist faces an all-powerful God who subtly manipulates the actions and thoughts of humans in an effort to redeem humanity.
  • 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.
  • 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 the Star Trek: The Next Generation 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 the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Who Mourns for Adonais?", 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.
  • The video game Homeworld features a single god called Sajuuk.
  • In Avatar the Na'vi worship a goddess named Eywa

[edit] Heaven

  • "The Reformers" 1952 Weird Science #20 -- Three space men dressed in scifi versions of bishop garb land on planet to reform it of evil. There are greeted by a man named Peter and told they are not needed for there is no crime, no immorality, or any of the evils seen in other societies. They decide to create these evils themselves so that they can blame these evils on literature, clothing, and alcohol as they have done on previous worlds (including Earth). They contact their home base and we learn that their leader is the Devil and the planet they are on is Heaven.
  • To Reign in Hell 2000 Steven Brust & Roger Zelazny

[edit] Hell

[edit] Identity

[edit] Jewish

  • Clifford Meth's "I, Gezheh" presents a futuristic universe where the prosletyzing Hasidic sect Chabad-Lubavitch have gained influence over many alien worlds.

[edit] Logos

[edit] Meditation

Main article: Meditation in popular fiction
  • In Star Trek, the Vulcan people use various meditation techniques to suppress their emotions, calm the mind, and enhance their telepathic abilities.
  • In Star Wars, the Jedi use meditation and visualization techniques to control their Force abilities.
  • The Jaffa of Stargate SG-1 use a meditative state called "kel'no'reem" to replenish their energy and access their subconscious, similar to human sleep (as Jaffa do not sleep). Humans have been shown to kel'no'reem as well, although it only serves to provide access to their subconscious and does not replace sleep.
  • In Frank Herbert's Dune, the Bene Gesserit and Mentats use various forms of visualization, mantra, and other meditative techniques to enhance their respective abilities.

[edit] Messianism

[edit] Metaphysics

[edit] Millennialism

[edit] Morality

[edit] Original sin

[edit] Star of Bethlehem

  • Arthur C. Clarke. 1955. The Star - a Jesuit serving as the astrophysicist of an interstellar exploration ship suffers a deep crisis of faith on discovering that the star seen on Earth at 4 B.C. was actually a nova which destroyed an entire sentient and highly developed race. In Christian religious terms, God had utterly destroyed these peaceful and virtuous beings, in order to announce to humanity the birth of His Son - a discovery which might shake the faith of even the most devout of Christians.

[edit] Penance

[edit] Reincarnation

[edit] Theocracy

Depictions of a fictional society dominated by a theocracy are a recurring theme in science fiction, speculative fiction and fantasy. Such depictions are mostly dystopian, and in some cases humorous or satirical.

[edit] Alien Pope

In the story "In partibus infidelium" ("In the Land of the Unbelievers") by Polish writer Jacek Dukaj, humanity makes contact with other space-faring civilizations, and Christianity - specifically, the Catholic Church - spreads far and wide. Humans become a minority among believers and an alien is elected as the Pope...

[edit] Robot/Computer Pope

In Clifford Simak's novel "Project Pope" (1981) robots on the planet End of Nowhere have labored a thousand years to build a computerized, infallible pope to eke out the ultimate truth. Their work is preempted when a human Listener discovers what might be the planet Heaven.

[edit] God taking an alien Chosen People

In Lester Del Rey's "For I Am A Jealous People", Earth is invaded by vicious green-skinned aliens, who kill and eat any human they catch. The protagonist - a Middle West small-town clergyman whose wife, son and daughter in law were all killed by the aliens - rallies his community to pray and ask for God's deliverance. However, when captured by the aliens and taken to a church which the aliens converted into a temple of their own religion, he is shocked to find God manifesting Himself there - and revealing that He had now repudiated humanity, taken the green aliens - "The Seed of Mikhtchah" - as His new Chosen People and specifically charged them with conquering Earth and exterminating all humans. Escaping thanks to the self-sacrifice of his good friend the town doctor, a staunch atheist, the protagonist escapes and becomes a fiery Prophet who rallies humanity to successfully defy God Himself and expel God's murderous green emissaries from the Earth. That turns out to be possible because God, though performing a few miracles in favour of His new people, expects them to win mainly by their own mortal strength - and humans, fired by their new "Anti-God Religion" prove the better, more determined soldiers. The story's title is taken from The Book of Exultations which was added to the Bible in the aftermath, of which some excerpts are given: "Thou shalt have no other people before me... Thou shalt make unto them no covenant against me... Thou shalt not forswear thyself to them, nor serve them... for I am a jealous people" (Exultations XII, 2-4).

[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".
  • An extensive treatment of this theme is Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man (1966). The Twentieth-Century Karl Glogauer, a Jew obsessed with the figure of Jesus (and with Carl 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 begins to have a mental breakdown and steps 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.
  • The Last Starship from Earth is a 1968 science fiction novel by John Boyd. It is set in a dystopian society in the very near future. Although it is not obvious at first, this is also an alternate history story. In this world, Jesus Christ became a revolutionary agitator and was never subjected to crucifixion. He assembled an army to overthrow the Roman Empire, and established a theocracy that has lasted until the twentieth century.
  • 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.
  • In Robert Heinlein's 1973 novel Time Enough for Love, Lazarus Long manages to travel back to the time period but never finds any evidence of the crucifixion, Jesus or any religious reformer in Judea during the first half of the 1st Century. He refers to the event as the "Crucifiction."
"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...
  • In Jeremy Robinson's "The Didymus Contingency" (2004), described by its publisher as "religious yet worldly", a scientist discovers time-travel and sets out to see Jesus' death and resurrection - only to witness several scenes not recorded in the New Testament and get proof that Jesus was a fraud. The dilemma of whether or not to make in the present a revelation which would shake the foundations of Christianity is mixed with the appearance of an assassin from the further future and further plot twists... (The Didymus of the title is, of course, the Apostle Saint Thomas, whose initial skepticism of the resurrection earned him the title "Doubting Thomas" - though, to be sure, by the traditional Christian account he was finally convinced of this event's veracity).
  • Resurrection Day by Thomas Wycoff is about a man sent back into time to steal Jesus' body to disprove Christianity.
  • In the TimeWars series by author Simon Hawke, in 2461 Cardinal Lodovico Consorti proposes to use the recently-discovered time-travel technology in order to obtain empirical proof that Christ indeed rose from the dead after being crucified. In reaction, the Catholic Church excommunicates the Cardinal, with the Church hierarchy preferring to continue relying on faith alone and not seek such a factual confirmation.
  • Similar to the above but with a Protestant focus, when the protagonists of Clifford Simak's "Mastodonia" make trips to the past commercially available, American church groups band together and seek to purchase an exclusive franchise for Jesus' time on Earth - not because they want to go there but because they do not want anyone at all to go there. The clergymen state quite forthrightly their apprehension that time travel would disprove some of the accounts given in the Gospels and thus undermine Christianity. When refused an exclusive Jesus-franchise, the church groups turn aggressive and energetically lobby Congress to ban traveling to Jesus' time, or even ban time travel altogether. This opens up an enormous theological debate, soon described as "the biggest religious controversy since the Reformation". The controversy remains unresolved by the end of the book, and meanwhile the pragmatic time-travel organizers concentrate on less controversial (and very lucrative) dinosaur-hunting safaris to the very distant past.

[edit] Time-travelling to spread Christianity before the birth of Jesus

S. M. Stirling's Nantucket series introduces a related dilemma, also derived from time-travel: the entire island of Nantucket is suddenly transported into the past, to about 1300 B.C, and the modern Americans marooned in the past must make the best of the Bronze Age world in which they find themselves. The Christians among them face the dilemma of whether or not to embark on missionary activity and spread their religion - even though Jesus Christ had not yet been born and even through the very act of their spreading Christianity might so fundamentally change the world that Jesus would never be born at all, 1300 years ahead.

A fanatic believes this would be such an utter sacrilege that in order to prevent it he attempts to kill everybody, before they had a chance to change history. After he is foiled, however, the more mainstream Christian leaders on Nantucket reason that - since God has seen fit to transport them into this past time, fully equipped with the New Testament and the tenets of Christianity - He must have meant them to spread this knowledge widely and save the souls of those they encounter. God would then, in His own time, find the way to send His Son also to the altered timeline which would result.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Clark, S (2005), Science Fiction and Religion, Blackwell Publishing.
  • McKee, G (2007), The Gospel According to Science Fiction-From the Twilight Zone to the Final Frontier, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
  • Riley, R., (1985), The Transcendent Adventure: Studies of Religion in Science Fiction Fantasy, Westport, CT., Greenwood Press.

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