Gods from Outer Space: Science Fiction as Theology

[lpetrich]

Transcendent Outsiders, Alien Gods , and Aspiring Humans: Literary Fantasy and Science Fiction as Contemporary Theological Speculation
Ryan Calvey mainly talks about some visual-media SF works, and he concedes some incompleteness. But this is what he talks about:

Introduction: More/Less Theology is the Problem/Solution
He proposes liberal-religion and New-Age "sane spirituality" as an alternative to both religious conservatism and atheism.

Chapter One: Science Fiction on Theology; Science Fiction as Theology
Describing how SF stories often feature superpowerful or otherwise advanced entities -- godlike entities

Chapter 2: Aliens as Traditional Gods
The authoritarian and judgmental and punitive sort

Chapter 3: Making Contact with New Age Alien Gods
Nice and friendly ones

Chapter 4: Voices from Below: Aspiring Humans and “Hierarchies of Beings” in Gene Wolfe’s Short Sun and Wizard Knight
Ryan Calvey then lists a lot of such characters, like robots, supercomputers, magically-animated toys and statues, holograms and other AI simulations, projections of others' minds, assembled and cloned human beings, and also ET's. He mentions them because we might seem like gods to them. RC proposes this hierarchy:

• Transcendent outsiders
• Human beings
• Aspiring human beings

It is clear not simply that we should have and encourage more respect for the best works of science fiction and fantasy for their literary merits, though we should (in part, as I have argued, by reevaluating the dated, but still prominent, concept many critics have of genre), but that, in valuing both genres, we should stress what I have argued throughout—that one of their most useful functions is to provide testing grounds for theological/spiritual/moral ideas and possibilities in ways that realistic narratives typically cannot and our mainstream discourse often does not. What could (or should) such a recognition change about how we speak about or teach either genre or literature in general? What effects could or should accepting science fiction and fantasy as spiritual/theological playgrounds have on how we think of religion and theology, spirituality and transcendence? These are questions for us to consider.

RC conceded that his work did not cover some possibilities, and I'll give a more complete list.

Angry -- authoritarian and judgmental and punitive
The Day The Earth Stood Still -- humanity ought to become more peaceful -- or else!!! Though Klaatu is a Jesus Christ figure, Gort is an enforcer

Friendly -- like liberal/New-Age theology
Carl Sagan's Contact, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Starman, Cocoon -- especially Contact:

... the alien “Caretaker” she encounters provides her with a different, more sophisticated model for God. Contrary to her expectations of traditional religion/theology (judgment, intervention, commandments, etc), her encounter, while in surface ways similar to most human/transcendent outsider interactions, is far more in line with progressive and New Age spirituality than those we have discussed earlier.

...
‘It isn’t like that,’ he said. ‘It isn’t like the sixth grade.’ […] ‘Don’t think of us as some interstellar sheriff gunning down outlaw civilizations. Think of us more as the Office of the Galactic Census. We collect information. I know you think nobody has anything to learn from you because you’re technologically so backward. But there are other merits to a civilization’

...
The emphasis in Ellie’s interaction with the Caretaker is growth, expansion, and development—humans have reached a point where they are on their own.

CEIII is rather disjoined, with the ET's being friendly only in the last part of it. They were *very* annoying in the first part of it. Starman features a sort of virgin birth, and Starman and Cocoon seemingly miraculous healings.

Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End also fits, and also the Brobdingnagians and the Houyhnhnms of Gulliver's Travels.

Some UFO contactees' accounts have striking parallels, and RC mentions some of what Orfeo Angelucci described. Here are some from George Adamski. From his part of Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953), "Space Brother" Orthon about nuclear bombs and the devastation that they can cause:

To this, too, he nodded his head in the affirmative, but on his face there was no trace of resentment or judgment. His expression was one of understanding, and great compassion; as one would have toward a much loved child who had erred through ignorance and lack of understanding. This feeling appeared to remain with him during the rest of my questions on this subject.

From Inside the Spaceships (1955), "Space Sister" Kalna about war and things like that:

It is a great pity that we must talk of such sorrowful things—and still sadder that such woe exists anywhere in the Universe. In ourselves, we of other planets are not sad people. We are very gay. We laugh a great deal.

Aloof -- involving themselves with humanity, but not willing to talk to us about anything. Something like a deist god.
2001: A Space Odyssey is a classic of this one. The move's four black slabs are involved with humanity, but they say little or nothing to us. They are involved in humanity's emergence, and they take crewman Bowman on a wormhole ride and keep him in a sort of hotel room for the rest of his life.

H.P. Lovecraft's stories may also qualify.

UFO abductions (the abductors act like clumsy wildlife biologists) and UFO surveillance (the usually speculation about their presence in our airspace) fall into this category.

Apotheosis -- evolving into gods.
The classic here is Isaac Asimov's short story 'The Last Question".

Absent -- effectively nonexistent. Humanity is at the top of the heap, only subject to entities that behave in completely impersonal ways.
Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy is a good example of that.

In real life, that's what the Universe has been like as far as we have been able to determine. In connection with ET's, it's provoked a lot of discussion about the "Fermi paradox", why we don't observe any evidence of them if they exist.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

There's a small documentary film called Thor which came out a couple of years ago that explores the same concept.

 

[Bronzeage]

An earlier work by Eric von Danikan, Chariots of the Gods, covered the same ground. It was a popular rage for a while, until his evidence was examined by real archeologists and anthropologists. It was a supermarket tabloid grade fabrications along the lines of "these stones are too big for humans to move, therefore aliens."

 

[James Brown]

Sorry, Bronzeage. In my bookstore, not three weeks go by when someone doesn't ask for Chariots of the Gods. That's probably not a 'rage' by definition, but it definitely hasn't slipped into obscurity.

 

[KeepTalking]

From my reading of the OP, I don't see any comparison between this book and Chariot of the Gods. Chariot of the Gods was about supposed archaeological evidence that many myths and legends regarding gods were inspired by visits from actual ETs. The book discussed in the OP seems to about how spirituality and morality can be derived from relatively modern science fiction works.

 

[Bronzeage]

Sorry, Bronzeage. In my bookstore, not three weeks go by when someone doesn't ask for Chariots of the Gods. That's probably not a 'rage' by definition, but it definitely hasn't slipped into obscurity.

Seriously? I guess the good news is you are selling books.

 

[Bronzeage]

From my reading of the OP, I don't see any comparison between this book and Chariot of the Gods. Chariot of the Gods was about supposed archaeological evidence that many myths and legends regarding gods were inspired by visits from actual ETs. The book discussed in the OP seems to about how spirituality and morality can be derived from relatively modern science fiction works.

I see that. It was just a quick offhand remark.

I think the idea of deriving spirituality and morality from science fiction has the order reversed. Morality is a social construction which allows large groups of people to live in cooperation. Such a construct necessarily puts restrictions and limits on individuals. When an individual demands to know what authority has made these rules, the obvious answer is "society," but who is going to believe that. For some reason, an inaccessible and mysterious, but very powerful being is a more credible answer.

In any case, if spirituality and

 

[KeepTalking]

From my reading of the OP, I don't see any comparison between this book and Chariot of the Gods. Chariot of the Gods was about supposed archaeological evidence that many myths and legends regarding gods were inspired by visits from actual ETs. The book discussed in the OP seems to about how spirituality and morality can be derived from relatively modern science fiction works.

I think the idea of deriving spirituality and morality from science fiction has the order reversed. Morality is a social construction which allows large groups of people to live in cooperation. Such a construct necessarily puts restrictions and limits on individuals. When an individual demands to know what authority has made these rules, the obvious answer is "society," but who is going to believe that. For some reason, an inaccessible and mysterious, but very powerful being is a more credible answer.

I'm not saying that I agree with the author, it is just what I understood from reading the OP. In fact, I particularly disagree with the sentiment expressed as being part of the introduction:

He proposes liberal-religion and New-Age "sane spirituality" as an alternative to both religious conservatism and atheism.

This seems to indicate that Calvey views religious conservatism and atheism as being much the same, and implies that they are both insane (since "sane spirituality" is an alternative to them). Given my disagreement with his introductory premise, I doubt there is much that I will agree with when it comes to the "sane spirituality" he proposes to counter it. I do think science fiction (as well as a variety of other literary genres) can be a good way to explore the ramifications of moral systems, but using sci-fi as a basis for morality and spirituality just doesn't work for this atheist at all. I am certainly more inclined to let society dictate mores, especially if that society is a secular one.

 

[Bronzeage]

I think the idea of deriving spirituality and morality from science fiction has the order reversed. Morality is a social construction which allows large groups of people to live in cooperation. Such a construct necessarily puts restrictions and limits on individuals. When an individual demands to know what authority has made these rules, the obvious answer is "society," but who is going to believe that. For some reason, an inaccessible and mysterious, but very powerful being is a more credible answer.

I'm not saying that I agree with the author, it is just what I understood from reading the OP. In fact, I particularly disagree with the sentiment expressed as being part of the introduction:

He proposes liberal-religion and New-Age "sane spirituality" as an alternative to both religious conservatism and atheism.

This seems to indicate that Calvey views religious conservatism and atheism as being much the same, and implies that they are both insane (since "sane spirituality" is an alternative to them). Given my disagreement with his introductory premise, I doubt there is much that I will agree with when it comes to the "sane spirituality" he proposes to counter it. I do think science fiction (as well as a variety of other literary genres) can be a good way to explore the ramifications of moral systems, but using sci-fi as a basis for morality and spirituality just doesn't work for this atheist at all. I am certainly more inclined to let society dictate mores, especially if that society is a secular one.

Society dictates all mores, without regard to who is given credit. A moral code and the problems it addresses depend upon the environment. The moral code of a people who live in a tropical climate where food is easily available all year round, will develop a much different code than a people who live in a harsh place, where starvation is always a threat.

The problem comes when these people move beyond their original home territory. The strict rules which governed property rights and sharing in a harsh environment do not work well in a land of plenty.

In the same way, a moral code which does not account for private property and boundaries will cause problems in a modern city. The moral code is always a generation or two behind the times.

In this generation, we have seen the moral strictures against homosexuality slowly crumble. Why there were ever any such things is another question, but we have come to recognize these rules have no purpose.

This is one of the problems of ascribing moral rules to the edict of a God or other authority. It's really hard to modify the words of a God and still maintain his authority. That's a problem for spirituality to solve.

 

[lpetrich]

... In fact, I particularly disagree with the sentiment expressed as being part of the introduction:

He proposes liberal-religion and New-Age "sane spirituality" as an alternative to both religious conservatism and atheism.

This seems to indicate that Calvey views religious conservatism and atheism as being much the same, and implies that they are both insane (since "sane spirituality" is an alternative to them). Given my disagreement with his introductory premise, I doubt there is much that I will agree with when it comes to the "sane spirituality" he proposes to counter it. ...

He more or less regards them as two sides of the same coin:

Much like political debates on cable news programs, mainstream theological debates can rarely go anywhere productive because both sides “know” what they know—and both believe they know all anyone needs know about the topic: that there is a God and God looks exactly like my faith/inerrant holy book tells me, or that your holy book’s idea of God cannot exist.

and

In addition, the focus on those simplistic questions keeps us from exploring two interconnected issues I’d like to argue are far deeper and more useful than the simple “Does God exist?” approach of mainstream discussions: (1) what we consider transcendent/how we define the transcendence (what ideas about transcendent beings such as God or gods make sense to us now, given our current understanding of ourselves and the world) and (2) what moral improvements are desirable and how could they become possibilities, even realities.

He approvingly notes the case of 19th cy. American Transcendentalist writer Ralph Waldo Emerson:

In American Veda, Goldberg recounts Emerson’s views, which he argues were influenced significantly by his reading about Indian religion and reflected, for the time, a striking break from literalism and scriptural adherence of any kind, Christian exclusivity, and notions of God as an anthropomorphized being separate from and disappointed with sinful human beings.

Instead, some New-Agey wooziness, like “Emerson took the revolutionary notion that men are essentially good, not fallen, one step further […] All human beings are essentially divine”.

 

[arcadia]

Bronzeage: "In the same way, a moral code which does not account for private property and boundaries will cause problems in a modern city. The moral code is always a generation or two behind the times.

It seems to me that you are saying that moral codes evolve (usually in the face of determined opposition from beneficiaries of the status quo)? Does this imply that there is some natural impetus for this process of "developed morality"? One which depends on where one is located? I can understand the process when it comes to basics like when it is okay to kill or steal; such rules generally favor survival of the species as a whole. But where would the impetus for the evolution of other rules come from? Perhaps from deeper understanding of our true natures? Moral concepts about who can have sex with whom and when really don't seem to have any natural basis. With the possible exception of incest and, though I don't it does, evolution.

Overall, since ancient times, it does seem that the codes have, ever so gradually, pared down both the "shalls" and "shalt nots". Why? Maybe simply because we, as a species, have gotten smarter about folks who claim authority to tell us what to do? Maybe that's evolution of a sort, but does it contribute to survival.