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Religion is to God as Sci-Fi is to Science

You could apply this kind of "deconstruction" to any kind of fiction, from Bagpuss (Professor Yaffle is a shaman!) to The House Of Leaves. Why single out SciFi?
 
^ This.
Ninja'ed, but this.
Bet one can do the same with Doctor Seuss and soap operas.

Not to mention we haven't even defined what exactly is Sci-Fi (I doubt we would reach an agreement over a definition, unless its a very broad one).

And it seems Limbo is a bit confused about the word " worship"...
 
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I'm confused. Is the point here that sci-fi can sometimes be read as an allegory to religion or is the point that sci-fi is necessarily analogous to religion? I agree with the first and disagree with the second. Stranger In A Strange Land certainly lends itself to a religious interpretation. Snow Crash, on the other hand, not so much.
 
abaddon said:
Analysing a book you have not read? This does not aid your analytical credibility. Nor does entirely missing the BSG-Mormon connection.
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The BSG-Mormon connection is irrelevant. It's only skin deep. Under the surface is where the action is, is where the archetypes are. When I deconstruct sci-fi, I don't need to know what the author intended, because the author is not in charge of the creative process, that is to say the conscious mind is not in charge of it. If it was, there would be no such thing as writers block. The conscious mind of the artist is really just along for the ride. Inspiration and genius comes from a deeper place than the conscious mind.

As myth, sci-fi is the picture-language of the collective unconscious, as is all myth.

"The Lord of the Rings is itself an example of this. Tolkien started out just to write a sequel to The Hobbit. However, as Ursula LeGuin says, the story often comes from places within that the writer did not even know existed until he or she sat down to write. Tolkien tells us in the Foreword to The Lord of the Rings that "the tale grew in the telling" into something much larger, darker, and complicated than his original intent.

At the end of his first draft of Chapter III, Tolkien wrote to his publisher that the story "has taken an unpremeditated turn." By the time he was writing Chapter VII, he reported that "It is now flowing along, and getting out of hand . . . [it] progresses towards quite unforeseen goals." When Faramir appeared, Tolkien reported to his son that "I am sure I did not invent him, I did not even want him . . . but there he came walking into the woods of Ithilien . . ." Later he said "Gollum continues to develop into a most intriguing character."

http://greenbooks.theonering.net/guest/files/120101_02.html
 
Just because creativity is a process of discovery does not mean that it comes from beyond the brain.

It's an algorithm; it's hard work; it's related to your personality and your energy and your health; it's related to your chemical makeup and a million other variables; but there is no mystical woo behind it.

The artist creates the work, not some meta-artist puppeting them.
 
Loss Leader said:
I'm confused. Is the point here that sci-fi can sometimes be read as an allegory to religion or is the point that sci-fi is necessarily analogous to religion? I agree with the first and disagree with the second. Stranger In A Strange Land certainly lends itself to a religious interpretation. Snow Crash, on the other hand, not so much.
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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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Loss Leader said:
I'm confused. Is the point here that sci-fi can sometimes be read as an allegory to religion or is the point that sci-fi is necessarily analogous to religion? I agree with the first and disagree with the second. Stranger In A Strange Land certainly lends itself to a religious interpretation. Snow Crash, on the other hand, not so much.
Click to expand...

Any position one may take on any topic supports Limbo. If one disputes that, it's because one lacks Limbo's enlightenment.
 
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 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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:rolleyes:

I haven't seen a single physical Church of Superman. Maybe you could point to one, and to it's liturgies, sacraments, and dogma.

Suggestion: Evaluate Cool Hand Luke as a Passion Play. Allegory is by no means unknown to the world.
 
Donn said:
Just because creativity is a process of discovery does not mean that it comes from beyond the brain.

It's an algorithm; it's hard work; it's related to your personality and your energy and your health; it's related to your chemical makeup and a million other variables; but there is no mystical woo behind it.

The artist creates the work, not some meta-artist puppeting them.
Click to expand...


Creating From Our Unconscious

We all have hidden or shadow aspects of our minds, and actors and other artists may have a greater appreciation for the unconscious, and more actively make use of those depths.

An NPR interview reported that actress Lili Taylor (photo) “is particularly influenced by the work of Carl Jung. A founding father of modern psychology, Jung developed the theory of the collective unconscious, and proposed the existence of archetypal patterns that help shape personality.

“Taylor says she sometimes finds it helpful to think in terms of Jungian archetypes when she begins working on a part: ‘It’s another way of helping getting in there, because I have a whole wealth of literature to turn to if I have come up with the trickster, the villain or the great mother or the nag or whatever.’”

Another example is TV series “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner, who has described how much he uses his inner life as inspiration for the show, as he did for his writing on “The Sopranos.”

“I count on my subconscious to be consistent,” Weiner told an interviewer. “And how that works I have no idea, and I don’t even want to investigate it. Because if I lose that I have nothing to say.”

[...]
 
John Jones said:
:rolleyes:

I haven't seen a single physical Church of Superman. Maybe you could point to one, and to it's liturgies, sacraments, and dogma.
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Sure you have, you just don't recognize them because your concept of religion is so narrow. The church of sci-fi is the movie theatre, the comic book store, the Star Trek convention, the MarsCon, the Star Wars isle at the toy store.
 
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There is no consciousness beyond the one in our minds.

The works of Jung can inspire, but so can the works of the Sex Pistols. It's still mind-deep and no deeper.

The subconscious is a part of the mind. Nothing "collective" there. The unconscious is simply lights-out.

You want the pool to have no bottom and be connected to all the other pools.
 
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Donn said:
Just because creativity is a process of discovery does not mean that it comes from beyond the brain.

It's an algorithm; it's hard work; it's related to your personality and your energy and your health; it's related to your chemical makeup and a million other variables; but there is no mystical woo behind it.

The artist creates the work, not some meta-artist puppeting them.
Click to expand...

Ah, but this would mean no collective unconscious, no archetypes existing outside human minds, mystical experiences being basically the product of our brains insted of a window to an ouside realm. Nope. No. Can't be.
 
Sure you have, you just don't recognize them because your concept of religion is so narrow. The church of soap opera is the TV set, the gossip sites, the TV magazines, the TV studios, the re-runs.

You probably could say the same about every single type of cultural manifestation... Heck, sports even give us living gods.
 
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