Talk:Religious ideas in science fiction
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Science Fiction, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to articles on science fiction on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article. Feel free to add your name to the participants list and/or contribute to the discussion. |
| Start | This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale. |
| ??? | This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the importance scale. |
 |
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Popular Culture, a WikiProject which aims to improve all articles related to popular culture. |
|
| Start | This article has been rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale. | |
| Low | This article is on a subject of low-importance within popular culture articles. | |
|
This article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need. |
||
Contents |
[edit] Childhood's End
Childhood's End is not really about religion. It's not about millenialism in any normal religious sense; it's really about evolution of the human species. I think Clarke would be surprised to be told it's about religion (though he might think it's about what religious should be, since he never seemed to have very much time for it).
Some of these others need a little explanation. I've only read the first four Foundation books, and it was a long time ago, but there was no real discussion of religious themes in the first three, and only slightly in the fourth. DJ Clayworth 16:34, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
Childhood's End theme is obviously religious. Go back and read the conversation between Karellen and Stormgren in the Chapter One. They discuss religion. Arthur C. Clarke might not be religious himself in any sense you would recognise or he would admit but the novel is replete with religous references and symbolism. Berry College
In almost all of his books, Clarke makes some comment about religion. Most of the time, they are against religion; sseing as Clarke is an atheist, this is predictable. In The Trigger, the hero, Horton, is an atheist, who, at one point, is forced to watch maniacal overly-religious individuals murder innocent people. In Rendevous With Rama the main character is also an atheist who only sends a religous message for his friend just in case there is a god. In an interview, Clarke said "religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." I hope this clears up some of the debates over Clarke's view of religion. CJK
[edit] Expressionism
The main link between religion and science fiction is Impressionism, I think. Both are vaguely fantastic and highly emotional. Could this be worked into the page anywhere? 72.1.206.21 18:01, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
[edit] What's that story?
What's the story where, in the far future of the Universe, a god of the gaps, its power dwindling, flees from a Universe-spanning civilization that has no need for religion: but when finally cornered, discovers that mankind has morally evolved, and is willing to forgive its, er, trespasses against them? -- The Anome 11:10, July 15, 2005 (UTC)
And what about A. E. van Vogt's The Book of Ptath, where religious belief (in you, by others) is the source of god-like powers, rather than the result of them? -- The Anome 11:10, July 15, 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Why was the Jesus section wiped?
I have created the following and added it to the article, I worked quite hard at it. I think the theme of people going back to the time of Jesus is highly relevant to the article. Katieh5584 wiped it all out without giving any explanation. Can some explanation be given, please?Adam keller 19:38, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
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 travelling beck to the time of Jesus Christ - and specifically, to the crucifiction. This raises complex moral and religious questions dealt with in very different ways by different writers.
- 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".
- 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-travelling "Crucifiction Tour". Before setting out, they are strictly warned that they must not do anything to disrupt history. Specifically, when they 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 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 crucifiction, in a kind of travelling 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; in short, without actually being aware of the invisible professor from his future, Jesus in his stance had managed to make him a believer.
- 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 crucifiction is a good place to try locating them, he goes there and walks through the street singing the mass, which is of course meaningless to people of the time. This does help to get located by agents of a time-travelling organization, who take him to their headquarters in the fat future -without having gotten to see Jesus at all.
- 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 or anywhen near.
- 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 sepcifically asked Judas to betray him). This raises the philosophical issue of whether or not it even matters whether the historical Jesus ever existed.
- The above was posted two days ago and no reactions. So,unless somebody has a good reason to offer why I shouldn't, I am going to to include this section in the article again tomorrow. Reactiuons, anybody? Adam keller 19:30, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Interesting article. I'm surprised it doesn't mention Firefly, which is almost littered with religious references. 63.68.0.194 21:16, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
