can anyone think of a sci-fi story that involves the conflict or even the interaction of Human religion and extraterrestrial?
It just occured to me that I can't seem to think of any...
worth exploring I think...

That's just silly.

@mgoldfarb: The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak, but that was mainly about robots trying to create a perfect religion and an infallible computer Pope.

Funny Christians. Great.

The Dark Light Years by James Blish. And was that "Speaker to the Dead?" I'm not sure about that. And the chaplain is a strong character in "The Mote in God's Eye."

Lots of snarky Religious stuff in Jack Vance. He has this thing about religious pilgrims. His last book "Ports of Call is a good example. There is some stuff in one of the Alastor series, "Marjune" i think.

And Cordwainer Smith is all about religion and aliens, although most of the aliens are human derived, ie "The Underpeople"

Of course, "Stranger in a Strange Land" is about religion almost exclusively, with Michael Valentine Smith being a stand in for Jesus as well as a representative of the Martians.

There is a lot of religion in "The Stars My Destination," but no aliens, and some weird Michael Moorcock thing about a hermaphroditic rock star messiah. I have repressed the name of that turkey.

Good old Christians. "Broadcast Him" lol.

That was...awkward. Though I'd rather see all deep questions debated in youtube form than read another Christopher Hitchens drunken ramble.

As for sci-fi with religion/aliens, "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell deals with a Jesuit mission to an alien world. The whole story centers around the interaction of religion with a first contact scenario. It's pretty heavy stuff, especially the ending. The sequel "Children of God" is also excellent.

ah "The Sparrow"...was recommended to me a while back - forgot to pick it up...thanks for the reminder
it seems most times religion in sci-fi is just the usual extrapolation of human beliefs...or, very often, an alien belief system is just a disguised human one...

@mgoldfarb: halo?

@mgoldfarb: As wishnevsky mentioned, Speaker for the Dead, and its sequels, examine the collision of human culture with extraterrestrial sentience and religion is a fairly central theme. Human colonists end up spreading Catholicism to a portion of the aliens, who end up interpreting the gospel in their own self-serving ways.

It's easily my favorite science fiction series. (Though not the prequel stuff Card did branching out into post-war Earth with Bean -- that was weak, compared to the original four books)

SF and religion? Arthur C. Clarke's and Gentry Lee's Rama books are heavy on religion.

Boy -- that vid is TERRIBLE. (Fine ... I judged it. Judge me.) I gave up on it after about 45 seconds.

@wishnevsky: I suspect you're thinking of "The Final Programme" by Moorcock. If I'm remembering correctly, the messiah aspect came in right at the end of the novel. This was made into a film called "The Last Days of Man on Earth" that did not strike me as particularly good, and left out the messiah angle entirely.

@mgoldfarb:

The Sparrow goes into the alien cutlures beliefs conflicting with human religion in a very visceral way. It doesn't come across as complete analog (there are shades of Cortez/Montezuma, but nothing too overt) that would ruin the work. It's actually widely read among Jesuit priests and lay people.

And although the collision of Christianity and alien culture isn't by any means the focal conflict, the Roman Catholic Church figures large in Dan Simmons's Endymion and Rise of Endymion, with it as the main antagonist and the aliens on the good guys' side.

I would throw Dune on the list as well. I join the others in recommending The Sparrow and Children of God as well as Speaker for the Dead.

A CD I purchased a few years ago, features a Cantata by Gerry Goldsmith in his "Planets of the Apes" style called Christus Apollo. The poem of the work, by Ray Bradbury, deals with Christ and his appearence across the Universe.

[www.telarc.com]

Shame on me, It's Jerry!!

Spock needs to stop tapping the keg. This short is cheesier than the LDS color by number pamplets.

@mgoldfarb: There's the whole Bajoran plot line in DS9.

As for the video, I hope that Paramount's lawyers set their phasers on "kill."

@CSX321: Yeah, but they also suck. Everything Clarke wrote with Gentry Lee is quasi-sociological mush with a side order of sex. And it's badly written.

Well, that settles it. Creationists are only funny when they don't intend to be.

@dlomax: I dunno. I wouldn't vote for him, but Huckabee's awfully good on Colbert.

Ugh. That was beyond horrible.

To answer mgoldfarb's comment: Stranger in a Strange Land, maybe Babylon 5?

If you can, try to imagine Absolutely nothing existing. What would there be now? You can not, no matter how hard you try get something out of nothing. Try it for your self 0+0=0, always has and no intelligent scientist or evolutionist rather can ever change that out side of his/her fairytail.