The Third Gospel of SF is that Jesus was the founder of an Earth-based religion that will disappear when we leave the planet. Two of the best-known proponents of this viewpoint are Isaac Asimov and Anne McCaffrey.
Asimov is generally acknowledged to be one of the three most influential SF writers in the world (Clarke and Heinlein are the other two). He is an avowed atheist: “I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.” (http://www.adherents.com/people/pa/Isaac_Asimov.html)
As an atheist, the worlds he created: The Foundation books, the Robot books and dozens of others, (along with 1600 science fact articles) left Jesus behind on Earth as “human religion”. As an apostle of the Fourth Gospel of SF, his influence is far-reaching even today, sixteen years after his death.
In a 1994 letter, I asked SF writer and creator of the multivolume, incredibly popular DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN® series (over 21,000,000 copies of her books on the shelves of the English-speaking world), “Pern has a noticeable absence of the religious traditions of present-day Earth. Does this absence reflect a belief that Humans will outgrow such trappings?” She replied, “The absence of religion on Pern was deliberate…The need to blame a superior being for the vicissitudes of life might help the ignorant and untutored but I do not wish to be counted in that number. Nor will I impose my value judgments on others…therefore I leave religion off Pern!”
Theology – or lack of theology – bashing isn’t my forte, so I’ll leave that to someone who knows theology better. My biggest qualm is and always has been the size of the platform from which the Four Gospels of SF are proclaimed. Psalm 71 says it best: “They have set their mouth above the heavens and their tongue parades through all the earth.” At any rate, for the sake of my beliefs and for the high probability that several in the SF community will find them irritating, I’d just like to point out that it’s impossible to leave Jesus behind on Earth – no matter how much we want to.
2 Peter 3:8 says, “But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day.” Based on this and other verses, I believe that God is outside of time and does not experience it in a linear way as we do. Because Jesus and the Father are one (John 10:30), Jesus is the same way – outside of time.
Because He is outside of time, He is most likely outside of space as well because, according to contemporary physics: “In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single construct called the space-time continuum. Spacetime is usually interpreted with space being three-dimensional and time playing the role of the fourth dimension.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime)
Now, let’s see if I can explain my belief clearly:
a) Jesus stepped into linear time and lived for 33 years on Earth in a linear fashion
b) Jesus performed miracles on Earth, taught, was crucified, died and was buried on Earth
c) He went to hell, returned to heaven and then rose from the grave on Earth, defeating sin and reclaiming Humans as His children
d) While doing all of this, He remained both fully human and fully God and as God, He was outside of time
e) Given what I believe, Jesus was God, outside of time and space
f) Outside of time and space, He exists, so that when we go into space, we will find it impossible to “leave Jesus behind” -- because he's already there.
…and as much as I love to hear my own voice, that’s all I can think of to say on the topic!
6 comments:
It amuses me how many things have other religions, though--and get them wrong as only agnostic WASPs and self-hating Jews can.
For instance, there was an episode of the newer Outer Limits with a Native American woman on a space ship, and all kinds of mystical mumbo-jumbo about childbirth and the universe being alive (which ought to be called the Uranus Hypothesis, oughtn't it?).
Except, there's a scene where she is visited by her grandmother's ghost, and is perfectly fine with it, Native Americans being all in tune with death and life and all the colors of the wind. But the writers, in their ignorance, said she was Navajo. Now Navajos make Orthodox Jews look latitudinarian, and the thing they hate most in the universe, other than incest and parricide, is ghosts. They will abandon a house if someone dies inside it; they will not speak the names of the dead; they will not even look at a corpse. As well make a Hasidic rabbi cook a Canadian bacon pizza in an oven on Sabbath, as a Navajo be okay after she sees a ghost. There's four days of purification just after finding a corpse!
And don't even get me started about Buddhism.
Oh, do. lets hear your thoughts on Buddhism.
I meant, "Don't get me started about portrayals of Buddhism in science fiction," obviously.
SF writers, especially of non-print SF (TV shows in particular), seem to think Buddhism is about human transcendance and ascending to a higher plane of being, while being pacifist and environmentally conscious. It's not. It's about ceasing to desire and thereby being freed from the degrading cycle of transmigration, which one is trapped in by the delusion that one is something other than the only thing that truly exists: being itself. In other words, Buddhists are Acosmic Monists.
Thus, for instance, a Buddhist's response to Transhumanism (vis "Jesus Emperor of Dune") would be to say, "The Omega Point is a hill of dung; the Kurzweil Singularity is a hitching-post for donkeys." If, that is, one might paraphrase Rinzai Gigen, founder of the most influential Zen sect in Japan.
I haven't really read many portrayals of Buddhism that I thought were badly off the mark in sf. Not that I think there arent many to be found if one tries.
Besides, Buddhism, like christianity, is not a monolithic institution. There is a wide variety of sects of Buddhism with some very different ideas.
And then theres the fact that a religion in the future will not necessarily (or even probably) be the the same as it was in the past. They continue to change, to split off into new sects, and some of those sects diverge so much as to be new religions in their own right.
Take the example of the Navajo woman you show such contempt for. Is it really so inconceivable that Navajo's in the future might not have such a freak-out over corpses and ghosts---especially in a diverse multicultural society with many non-Navajo influences?
I see little reason to think so.
By the way, if the two of you would take your discussion to a private forum, I would appreciate it. I'd rather not have this kind of "flaming" on this blog.
Thank you in advance.
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