Posted on 03/27/2009 5:38:49 AM PDT by jalisco555
DS9 had a lot of religious references. The whole ‘Emissary of the Prophets’ storyline.
The other series were pretty devoid of religion though. Well I didn’t see much of Voyager, but I know Enterprise really didn’t talk about it much, except maybe some of the Vulcan philosophy.
You're right, I forgot about that. I never much got into DS9, basically giving up on it during the third season.
As far as religion goes, there seems to be a huge confusion both among scientists and those in the religious community that do not like what scientists say. The scientists themselves are partly to blame because they are hostile in return.
Science can only ever explain the “how”. Religion is there to explain the “why”. Sure, you might explain “why” planets rotate as they do and “why” life on earth is currently at its present state of evolution. But that isn’t really the answer to “why”. Just an answer to “how” it got that way. “How” the machine works, not why there is a machine in the first place.
Religious literalists cannot stand that which contradicts whatever intepretation they have chosen as their permanent programming. That results in conflicts like the creationist/evolution issue.
The Pope and many other religious leaders see no conflict between science and religion. because they understand the difference between the how and the why.
Science fiction often steps into the realm of the why and therefore requires religion.
Yes, I love them! We’ve had four or five ancient history and literature sets. I’d spend the mortgage payment if I didn’t force myself to stop! (Right now I have a recorded book from the library - free!)
He also doesn’t talk about Firefly (if we are just sticking to TV SciFi). While oblique references with the Sheperd Book, there are a few episodes where religious belief (even among prostitutes) is highlighted.
Or maybe he did talk about Firefly and I missed it.
Did this guy get paid by the word?
I only saw one episode of Enterprise. It was jaw-droppingly bad and I never watched again.
I’ve literally bought several dozen courses from them over the years. I have a backlog of video courses in my home. Fortunately the audio courses are available as digital downloads or I would have no shelf space left! What an amazingly excellent company.
The trailers for the new movie seem interesting. The franchise definitely needs a refresh and re-imagining, it got extremely stale after a while.
My husband gets downloads, and there are other sources with free courses available to download. I’m stuck with CDs, though - I have one player in the kitchen and another in the car! I haven’t bought any on video, because I don’t spend any time sitting in front of the TV. Maybe I will when the baby’s born, though; there are several courses I’m interested in that are video-only.
I'm slowly (very slowly) working my way through the astronomy course (96 lectures!) as well as the visual tour of ancient Rome. No way to do those on audio, I'm afraid. The art history courses are also excellent.
The whole idea that literature can only be about normal folks living normal lives amongst crushing normalness is very, very new. Literature used to almost always be about the fantastic. I think Gene Wolfe (a Catholic sci-fi/fantasy author who uses Catholic imagery in his writing) has an essay about this, and why the folks who teach that real “literature” can only be mundane are just a recent and sickening abberation.
Freegards
That sounds very interesting. But some great SciFi has come out of the asian countries (Gundum (1970 till now in various forms) and Astro Boy (1950 in comic form on in various forms) being the biggest, Cowboy Bebop being my favorite, there are many, many more) However, I went to a lecture by some of the creators of Astro Boy, and they were discussing how Astro Boy (arguably the begining of Anime) came around due to America’s influence on Japan... However, it seemed to imply it was more animation of Disney than culture (and maybe the technology the west brought). They still seemed to have many parts that were uniquely Japanese. And if you look at Koren anime, and all have their own taste, but it’s still SciFi.
They didn’t have the Roman Panthoen background, however, they had just lost many of their myths in the last hundred years, including the modernization of their culture destroying most of the myths. Like in Korea with the Korean war, and Japan, where the samurai were wiped out by technological advanced troops (and subsequent merging into each other with WWII) and then the subsquent destruction of the Empeuor and deity ordained rule after the end of WWII. (Not that he isn’t still part of the goverment, just he used to be it... and now... The goverment that was set up by the Americans is what has the power)
People still needed a way to explain the world, especially when it’s been stir, shaken, and beaten to a bloody pulp like Japan was after the war, and with it’s last ties to the old world shown to be false or unreliable. I wonder if you couldn’t augment that argument to follow the idea of the loss of ability to express oneself through myths in the modern world full of scienctific fact? I mean it would explain the disparity between Japan Scifiction and American. I’m sure that the introduction of American culture did push it along that direction, however, without having that mythos destroyed, I don’t see the Japanese falling into the SciFi/fantasy known as Anime :D.
Sorry it’s a little unclear, but I have class :D.
This is reflected to a great extent in the winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature. No genre writers (and certainly no science fiction), no children's writers, just Literature with a capital L.
I’d like to have some of the archaeology and art series on DVD. Maybe Geology, too. My 12-year-old is nagging for the Peloponnesian War set; I could get it for him at the end of the school year, if he’s done well!
I'm sure that's true, although I'm not really into that. It would be interesting to see the similarities and differences in key elements between Asian and Western sci-fi, and then to attempt to determine to what extent Western influence over the past 150 years (give or take) was responsible for the similarities.
And often enough, the explanation eventually proves to be wrong, so science posits a different one. That's one of the enjoyable elements of older science fiction, 1920s-40s: writers worked either within the parameters of the best scientific knowledge/theories of the time, or they attempted to make massive leaps beyond what was known or reasonably theorized. Either type of speculation can produce interesting scientific possibilities and interesting plots.
I did this course on audio. It was outstanding. I'm sure it's even better on video.
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