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Religion is to God as Sci-Fi is to Science

CplFerro said:
Okay, grant what you say. There is some talk among scientists and commentators that the universe may be informational in nature, like the Matrix. Why couldn't human willpower "cheat code" that Matrix? If so, why couldn't that be the basis for ESP, UFOs and the paranormal?
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Because that doesn't change anything. Mind is still brain function; brains are still made up of atoms. No matter what the ultimate nature of subatomic particles might be, you can't change it by thinking at it.

It's like... If you activate a cheat code in a game on your PC, you can walk through walls in the game. You can't use the cheat code to upgrade your video card; you still have to go to the store and buy a new one, and there's nothing you can do to change that.

(A related implicit question would be, what energy powers the human will?)
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Donn is correct; ATP. "Human will" is brain activity.
 
Sorry if this has already been said:


"Religion is to God as Sci-Fi is to Science"

No. I think this analogy would be better as: Religion is to God as Fantasy is to Magic.

Because we know that science exists and that it works. Even if SF is literature which distorts science for dramatic effect, science is demonstrably real. The same can not be said for gods or magic.
 
Darat said:
Science did investigate the claims of psionics extensively and discovered that the claims could be explained with very mundane facts, for example poor recollection or trickery as used by stage magicians for decades.

The reason why there is only a very small minority of scientist (outside the humanities) now that investigate the claims of psionics is that there is nothing new to investigate just the same old, same old. Scientists on the whole want to discover something new so they do not spend time going over and over the same ground looking for something that has already been shown to not exist.
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Are you saying that my grant proposals regarding my research into phlogiston have been a waste of my time?
 
Brainache said:
Sorry if this has already been said:


"Religion is to God as Sci-Fi is to Science"

No. I think this analogy would be better as: Religion is to God as Fantasy is to Magic.

Because we know that science exists and that it works. Even if SF is literature which distorts science for dramatic effect, science is demonstrably real. The same can not be said for gods or magic.
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I think the best formulation would be “God is to religion the same extrapolated/not real/impossible science and technology are to science fiction”.

It would be OK, boiling down to fictional constructs built over fictional constructs. It would also be correct to say mythical tales from religions share common story-telling elements with science fiction tales. No problems here; there are things, recipes, basic plots that work better when it comes down to storytelling. These elements, these memes, will be selected and used by the next storytellers and thus eventually pass, disseminate through generations and cultures, becoming dominant.

Limbo, however, links them with Jungian archetypes. Cultural constructs are human-dependent; they were created by humans, they exist because of humans they make sense only for humans, without humans, they cease to exist, their meanings disappear(1). They can not be passed ahead without some contact between humans – spoken or written language and art, for example. Jungian archetypes, on the other hand, are said to just exist somehow in some rather nebulous thing called collective unconscious(2) and humans somehow can access it during creative processes and mystic experiences. Humans would be able to drink Jungian archetypes directly from this source. Jungian archetypes don’t actually need art, architecture, spoken or written language to be transmitted between humans. Obviously, there are no reliable bits of scientific evidence backing the existence of Jungian archetypes (3).

That not being enough, Limbo’s sources include a book claiming paranormal experiences guided science fiction authors. Thus claim is at least debatable, questionable; some may have while some may not have and others… How can we know? Has Asimov ever had a mystic experience? What about Douglas Adams? And what exactly are these mystical experiences? Can anyone prove they are actually related to some external, paranormal realm or activity instead the mere products of some sort of neural activity? ETA- the answer has two letters, starts with "N" and ends with "O".

On the top of it all, lets not forget science fiction is the sort of thing rather hard to define(4) and the books’ author’s approach and examples IMHO doesn’t help it at all. Example: is “Superman” actually science fiction? Are we talking about hard or soft science fiction? Or both? It seems a case of heavy selection bias coupled with inadequate sampling and definition.



(1) Yes, different humans will find different meanings and maybe non-human beings can find uses and meaning to them.
(2) Its mystic cloud-storage and computing, bro!
(3) Their adepts will try to shelter on the usual excuses- not within science’s realms, science is not ready yet, skeptical inquiry blocks the effect, close-minded mainstream science, the effect exists but is very close to random chance, are you experienced?, etc.
(4) Personally, sometimes I think its better to think of it as loose bunch of tales from classic genres (ex.: romance, drama, comedy) within some sort of environment/background where “sciencey” stuff is somehow important (I am a science fiction fan, btw). But I may be wrong.
 
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Limbo said:
Stranger in a Strange Land is a sci-fi classic and one of my favorites, so I am familiar enough with it to deconstruct it quickly. Then I'll move on to Battlestar Galactica.

The main character is Valentine Michael Smith, a human raised by Martians. He comes to Earth and finds himself a stranger among his own people. Smith is an example of the modern shaman of the ET mythos - he is a mana-personality and liminal figure, a perfect example of a shaman who derives his spiritual authority from his own experience, rather than from a social institution. He is set apart from his people by virtue of his experiences being raised by Martians, just as a shaman is set apart from his people by virtue of his initiatory crack-up. Martians are the modern 'tribal gods' of the modern shaman that is Smith.

Battlestar Galactica will be my next post.
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That's trivial. I'd like to see you try to fit Charles Stross' novel Accelerando into your narrow little straitjacket of a concept of sf!
 
Limbo said:
It's the religion of no-religion. Through sci-fi and comics people can and do worship without worshipping. It's just so radically different than the picture of traditional worship that people don't recognize it. And when they are confronted with their worship, they are repelled because they have developed such strong hate of traditional religion that they can't think straight.

Superman as Christ-Figure: The American Pop Culture Movie Messiah

Abstract

Holy subtexts abound within the popular cinema. Superman: The Movie (1978) and Superman II (1981) were examined as a protracted secular analogue of the Jesus story. The literature was reviewed and twenty Superman-Jesus parallels plus eight Christic personalistic traits were explicated. It was concluded that Superman is not only a legitimate Christ-figure, but the American pop culture movie Messiah.
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Utter tosh. "Can't think straight" indeed! Your equating enjoyment of sf with worship is absurd. I reckon if you tried to shoehorn your religious allegories into any sf stories I've enjoyed (and enjoyed for entirely other reasons than their supposed allegorical aspects), I'd get pretty negative on ya too. Not because I can't think straight, but because you are an annoying little idiot that doesn't understand sf at all. Certainly not my kind of sf. (And calling it "sic-fi" is a clue you aren't a fan anyway.)

In fact, I reckon you get anger from your victims because it is actually insulting for you to interpret our enjoyment of sf as worship.
 
sackett said:
Sci fi is to literature as diapers are to toilet training.
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And literary snobs are to sf as any bigot is to the things they are ignorantly dismissive of.

Your statement is not only completely wrong, it's also not witty or funny in any way. It's just ignorant.
 
asydhouse said:
And literary snobs are to sf as any bigot is to the things they are ignorantly dismissive of.
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Yeah it is one of the reasons I dont bag people who read books about sparkly Vampires and such. By and large I think the style and construction of the prose is truly awful.

Then I remember I have made a total of $200.00 as a professional author and Stephanie Meyers could probably buy a moderately sized island nation in the Pacific from the income she has received from writing (bad) books lol
 
MG1962 said:
Sure, but the underlying thing to remember, you don't have to write well to produce good science fiction. Idea and setting are cherished above all else. Since the 1980s though science fiction writers have concerned themselves more with style and I think authors like Ted Chiang are outstanding examples of authors who could hold their own in the 'lit world'
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Wait! Even in the 50s there was some experimental, modernist sf writing. I remember reading some wacky and wild literary sf way back. Theodore Sturgeon? Bradbury? Bester?

And then the 60s came along and John Brunner in Stand On Zanzibar was successfully using the modernist techniques of John Dos Pasos (USA). And the whole New Wave that Moorcock husbanded when he took over editing New Worlds magazine, publishing the likes of Thomas M. Disch and J.G. Ballard et al.

It's a very rich tradition, and more various than the OP can admit.
 
MG1962 said:
Yeah it is one of the reasons I dont bag people who read books about sparkly Vampires and such. By and large I think the style and construction of the prose is truly awful.

Then I remember I have made a total of $200.00 as a professional author and Stephanie Meyers could probably buy a moderately sized island nation in the Pacific from the income she has received from writing (bad) books lol
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Still, as you yourself have pointed out, genre excellence may be based on other aspects of the work than the assumption that "style" or what have you are the point of the thing. When the reader and writer are colluding in reaching for something other than "literary excellence", applying that criterion is simply an exercise in snobbery: teenage vampire love stories are vehicles for indulging in private sexual feelings and adolescent dreaming of romance and adventure, not spectacular prose that calls attention to itself, as in elite "literary" performances.

And why not, I say!
 
WRT sparkly vampires, I think it's also worth noting that different things can have different uses. There are people who read books entirely to switch their brains off and relax. There are people who will read different kinds of books for different reasons - and one of those reasons, again, can be to switch their brains off. Plus, let's not forget that trash literature (just as any other kind of trash culture) can be enjoyable in its own right. Sometimes something can be enjoyable precisely because it's bad, or corny, or typical of a restrictive genre.

Or, to put it another way, it would be entirely wrong to be dismissive of someone else's choice of reading material because it doesn't suit your particular tastes and/or doesn't fulfil a function that your literature choices do.

Plus, of course, while I've not read the Twilight books myself, I've seen all of the films and therefore know enough about the story to know that it is, indeed, bad fiction (although I have to admit that the very end of the last film is good and, no, I don't mean the credits, or because it's finally over). But that doesn't mean that all books which can be slotted in to a comparable category are equally terrible. The Hunger Games has been discussed at length on this forum, so I'm not going to argue this point, but they're often lumped in with Twilight but are actually good books. And, given that they're a semi-mythical, semi-literal retelling of, amongst other things, Theseus and the Minotaur, and that they're told entirely from the POV of an unreliable narrator, they're not as unsophisticated an example of writing that those who are critical of "sparkly vampires" might assume them to be.

Which, I suppose, makes the point that you also shouldn't be dismissive of something that you're not very knowledgeable about. I myself used to be dismissive of country music and all associated genres, but then I watched O Brother, Where Art Thou? and discovered how awesome bluegrass actually is and can now appreciate adjacent genres such as country. Now I try not to be dismissive of anything that I don't have a good working knowledge about, because you really do never know when you're going to find something that you might appreciate, and finding more good things can only improve your life.
 
PixyMisa said:
Because that doesn't change anything. Mind is still brain function; brains are still made up of atoms. No matter what the ultimate nature of subatomic particles might be, you can't change it by thinking at it.

It's like... If you activate a cheat code in a game on your PC, you can walk through walls in the game. You can't use the cheat code to upgrade your video card; you still have to go to the store and buy a new one, and there's nothing you can do to change that.


Donn is correct; ATP. "Human will" is brain activity.
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I think we are misunderstanding each other, Pixy, one or both. I'm asking, what if all these particles, the nature of the physical world as we detect it mundanely and through scientific investigation, are simply one version out of any number of possible universal configurations, governed by a higher level of reality. And if so, why couldn't that higher level, in principle, contact or be contacted by someone who thinks, based on sense deception, that the universe is as you describe, in such a way as to change that universe? Even Sean Carroll at one point says, "this is the way it is, so long as we accept that quantum physics is right"--which it may well not be, and certainly is not, if life is a videogame.

Cpl Ferro
 
Brainache said:
Sorry if this has already been said:


"Religion is to God as Sci-Fi is to Science"

No. I think this analogy would be better as: Religion is to God as Fantasy is to Magic.

Because we know that science exists and that it works. Even if SF is literature which distorts science for dramatic effect, science is demonstrably real. The same can not be said for gods or magic.
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Yes, I've read this whole thread and unless I missed it, nowhere did Limbo explain the thread's title. Sci-fi is religion according to him, a secular religion alongside the supernatural religions, both of which embrace literalist fallacies in lieu of realising their mythic essences. Even God, according to Limbo, is a part of the human mind, not a literal Creator. So, a better title would be "Religion, God, and Sci-fi are to Truth, as Copies are to Originals".

Cpl Ferro
 
Correa Neto said:
Limbo, however, links them with Jungian archetypes. Cultural constructs are human-dependent; they were created by humans, they exist because of humans they make sense only for humans, without humans, they cease to exist, their meanings disappear(1). They can not be passed ahead without some contact between humans – spoken or written language and art, for example. Jungian archetypes, on the other hand, are said to just exist somehow in some rather nebulous thing called collective unconscious(2) and humans somehow can access it during creative processes and mystic experiences. Humans would be able to drink Jungian archetypes directly from this source. Jungian archetypes don’t actually need art, architecture, spoken or written language to be transmitted between humans. Obviously, there are no reliable bits of scientific evidence backing the existence of Jungian archetypes (3).
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Which would make a cool story, if you think about it. Imagine an alien race with access to the Archetypes directly, so that they appear impoverished culturally, even primitive, but with amazing levels of maturity and sanity.

Cpl Ferro
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
WRT sparkly vampires, I think it's also worth noting that different things can have different uses. There are people who read books entirely to switch their brains off and relax. There are people who will read different kinds of books for different reasons - and one of those reasons, again, can be to switch their brains off. Plus, let's not forget that trash literature (just as any other kind of trash culture) can be enjoyable in its own right. Sometimes something can be enjoyable precisely because it's bad, or corny, or typical of a restrictive genre.

Or, to put it another way, it would be entirely wrong to be dismissive of someone else's choice of reading material because it doesn't suit your particular tastes and/or doesn't fulfil a function that your literature choices do.

Plus, of course, while I've not read the Twilight books myself, I've seen all of the films and therefore know enough about the story to know that it is, indeed, bad fiction (although I have to admit that the very end of the last film is good and, no, I don't mean the credits, or because it's finally over). But that doesn't mean that all books which can be slotted in to a comparable category are equally terrible. The Hunger Games has been discussed at length on this forum, so I'm not going to argue this point, but they're often lumped in with Twilight but are actually good books. And, given that they're a semi-mythical, semi-literal retelling of, amongst other things, Theseus and the Minotaur, and that they're told entirely from the POV of an unreliable narrator, they're not as unsophisticated an example of writing that those who are critical of "sparkly vampires" might assume them to be.

Which, I suppose, makes the point that you also shouldn't be dismissive of something that you're not very knowledgeable about. I myself used to be dismissive of country music and all associated genres, but then I watched O Brother, Where Art Thou? and discovered how awesome bluegrass actually is and can now appreciate adjacent genres such as country. Now I try not to be dismissive of anything that I don't have a good working knowledge about, because you really do never know when you're going to find something that you might appreciate, and finding more good things can only improve your life.
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Or, before you remove an edifice, ask why it was put there in the first place.

Cpl Ferro
 
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