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posts about #scienceandreligion more → 
Can Jesus Become Your New SF Hero?
San Francisco, 4:45 PM
Tue Nov 10
27 posts in the last 24 hours
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Can Jesus Become Your New SF Hero? |
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01/03/09
In 2008? Someone should have told all the sci fi fans that have been around forever.
01/03/09
Or he's just dumb.
01/03/09
There's fiction in there, sure, but no science whatsoever. Just fantasy. Lots and lots of fantasy.
01/03/09
01/03/09
Is the "Left Behind" series really Sci-Fi? And how are they irresponsible? I have not read them, and have no intention to, so any help would be appreciated.
01/03/09
There have been some sci-fi books I've read that had a spiritual bent to them. One in particular is escaping me, however, about an encounter with an alien race on a newly discovered planet. There is a priest or something on the mission who has a very important role, and there is also some kind of unexpected and completely horrific massacre from the aliens, who are somewhat angelic...
Didn't "Speaker for the Dead" (which seems to be the red-headed stepchild of the recent Ender resurgence, for all I've heard it discussed) also lean heavily on belief and religion, or is my over-worked sci-fi rolodex memory making things up?
Anyone else have religious sci-fi novels of note they know about?
01/03/09
There's also an interesting sci-fi riff on Paradise Lost in the manga "2001 Nights". A Vatican-funded expedition to a planet called Lucifer in the outer solar system that has some unusual properties.
01/03/09
01/03/09
Nightfall is right up there, with a very heated conflict between Religion and Science, and there was some stuff going on with Speaker for the Dead. The entire planet's colony is Catholic, Ender is the original Speaker for the Dead, and there are certainly issues raised between the priests and Ender, but I don't recall a lot of them being of a scientific bent. Mostly it came down to one of two questions. Do Speakers respect other religions (yes, because Speakers, while treated like clergy, are not practicing a specific religion of their own), and can piggies becomd practicing Catholics (one prime issue there was the role that what we might term assisted suicide played in the continuation of their species).
01/03/09
And please, even if it's not true, please tell me he comes with other fun outfits and styles such as Cowboy Jesus and Pirate Jesus and Ninja Jesus.
01/03/09
[www.adfuntureworkshop.com]
Unfortunately, he only comes in "Astro Jesus" flavor.
01/03/09
01/03/09
01/03/09
01/03/09
@Smeagol92055: But I still get 50%
01/03/09
01/03/09
01/03/09
Which is also more or less the concept of Narnia as well.
01/03/09
I believe your stipulate is inaccurate.
There are (and have been) plenty of excellent scientists who are religious. I expect they're actually the majority.
-Kle.
01/03/09
01/03/09
Science and Religion have been traditionally cast as mortal enemies for one basic reason. Galileo Galilei. The Roman Catholic church saw his teachings as heresy coming from outside the church, but Galileo was a devout Catholic and only saw himself as trying to bring a more scientific understanding of how the world worked to his religion. The result was that the Vatican banned the teaching of "heliocentrism" as proven scientific fact, and threatened to excommunicate Galileo unless he recanted. Then, when he caved in and did so, they kept him under house arrest for the final years of his life.
_THAT_ is where the strife began. Even the current Pope, or Pope John-Paul II said it was a mistake for the church to do what they did at that time, and basically what has happened as a result is that anytime someone comes up with a new scientifically-based theory of the physics of the universe, it's denounced by someone from the religious side on the basis that it somehow conflicts with what the Bible says. You know, in spite of the fact that there is absolutely no reason why evolution couldn't have been the means by which Creation took place. And the flip side is that you also have Atheistic scientists who decry religion on the basis that there's no empirical evidence (or at least none that we are capable of recognizing) that a divine being exists.
Carl Sagan's Contact (novel, not the movie) ends with an example of the sort of thing that could very well put the "either/or" argument to rest.
01/03/09
01/04/09
It's always amusing to hear someone go on about how Religion proves that Darwin's theory of evolution is wrong, because from what I understand...Science sorta agrees. There's an island that he was unable to set foot on down there (the entire thing is ringed by a steep cliff face) where modern biologists have been able to witness evolution take place on an annual scale. If the island gets a lot of rain, the seeds grow really big, and the little birds that are born with big beaks are strong enough to crack them open while the little birds with smaller beaks starve to death before they can breed. If the rains aren't quite so abundant, the seeds are really tiny, and the little birds with the small beaks do fine, but the little birds with the large beaks spend more energy carting those beaks around than they get from eating the tiny seeds so _they_ starve to death before they can breed. Either way, That's evolution happening within a single generation, where Darwin's theory as originally stated (and as often argued against by Religion) was that such changes occur over several generations.
Oh, and the reason Religion picks on Evolution all the time? Probably because (unlike Galileo) Darwin renounced Christianity after his little island-hopping vacation.
01/04/09
"Science and Religion have been traditionally cast as mortal enemies for one basic reason. Galileo Galilei. The Roman Catholic church saw his teachings as heresy coming from outside the church, but Galileo was a devout Catholic and only saw himself as trying to bring a more scientific understanding of how the world worked to his religion."
It was as much a disagreement over Galileo flaunting the authority of the Church as anything else. They told him not to publish, and then he did anyway. That got the Pope all riled up.
-Kle.
01/05/09
They told him not to publish because they believed his theory conflicted with the Bible, so it was probably a mix of the fact that he refused to concede, and the possibility that his theory could be damaging to Church doctrine. But this was back in the day when they probably still held to the idea that both Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are factual accounts of what happened, even though they list conflicting orders of events. And at a time when being appointed Pope of the Roman Catholic Church was every bit as much about world politics as it was about religion.
@X: The Eliminator:
Reconcile Genesis chapters 1 and 2, and when you have successfully done so you can complain about the creation-by-evolution theories. However, I do have to say that the idea that life can spontaneously just happen takes every bit as much a leap of faith as the idea that a divine hand has to be present to get the show started.