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No Such Thing As Space Jesus
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"You found me out... I'm not really a god... I'm *cough* *cough* just an ordinary... Eternal, omniscient, superintelligent being." - The Sun God - Futurama: The Game
Sufficiently Advanced Aliens are very common in sci-fi, and they will often claim to be actual deities. In some cases, they'll be actual, historically worshipped deities like Apollo or Thor.
Unless under some sort of mind control or from a "primitive" culture, the heroes will never treat a Sufficiently Advanced Alien as a deity, or even consider the possibility that they might just be right. Some Earthlings might fall for the "alien", but they will be shown to be weak-minded to be taken in by these "gods".
For something like the Goa'uld, alien parasites whose "miracles" are born from technological prowess, this is reasonable enough, but for beings like the Q or the Ori, who have immense, unexplainable powers that genuinely seem god-like in nature, it stretches (dis)belief. The only reason they should be considered "just" powerful aliens seems to be " they came from Outer Space", which doesn't really make all that much sense if you think about it - if there is a deity who created everything, and you could physically meet them, why should a divine encounter only happen on Earth?
The page quote comes from Star Trek V The Final Frontier, and demonstrates a (possibly unconscious) problem with this trope: characters are automatically going to disbelieve if the self-proclaimed deity runs against their view of what God is or should be. Sure, the Judeo-Christian God would have no need for a starship, but Helios had a chariot and Ra had a barge... The entity is momentarily believed (if not by Kirk) because it pretends to be the God of monotheism. Had he said he was Quetzalcoatl , one suspects our heroes would have been a little more disbelieving.
See also Sufficiently Advanced Alien, Arbitrary Skepticism, Our Gods Are Aliens and Ancient Astronauts. Not to be confused with If Jesus Then Aliens which in some ways is almost the reverse. No Such Thing As Wizard Jesus is how Jesus will continue to be worshiped and not suspected of being anything other than the son of God even if an alien superhero named Josys from the planet Beaven is running around doing everything he can do and more.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- In an issue of Fantastic Four, a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Walt Disney goes mad and believes himself a Messiah. To solve the problem of overpopulation he plans to use the Human Torch to reignite the Earth's core thus expanding the landmass. He dies just as he's about to push the big button. Afterwards his assistants claim the idea would never work. Queried why they were doing it, they admit they were programmed to obey him. The point being, they know the messiah stuff is rubbish but they can only do what they're told.
- Averted with the gods of Olympus and Asgard in the Marvel Universe Elseworld Earth X. They effectively are Sufficiently Advanced Aliens - albeit ones from another dimension rather than from outer space - but they're referred to as gods anyway. They aren't technically deceiving anyone — they have assumed the mantle of gods so long they believe themselves to be — but they aren't, technically, gods.
- They're still powered, or at least *extremely* affected, by belief, unlike their main Marvel Universe counterparts.
- And the Eternals were godlike superpowered immortals who were also once worshipped as gods — in fact in their original series they were said to have inspired the myths and legends that led to belief in gods, but once they became Canon Immigrants in the mainstream Marvel Universe this was retconned into having been mistaken for already-existing gods.
- The Marvel Universe generally averts his. The higher up the cosmic scale you go, the more blurred the distinction becomes, and the most powerful cosmic entities - such as Eternity and Death - are apt to show up in both magic and space-based stories, notably Dr Strange and the Silver Surfer. They effectively are both supremely powerful magical beings and Sufficiently Advanced cosmic entities.
- Their creators are in fact gods, giant robot gods.
- Subverted by The First. They appear to be space gods, they believe themselves to be space gods, they are worshipped by mortals on other planets as gods... but they're really an Atlantean's imaginary friends. I'm not even kidding.
- Averted hard by the graphic novel Creature Tech. The alien symbiote that has implanted itself on the protagonist comes from an entire species of Space Jesuses. This causes the protagonist to convert.
Film
- Averted in Plan Nine From Outer Space, in what could have been a very interesting moment had Ed Wood not glossed right over it.
Eros: It is because of men like you that all must die! No use of the mind God gave you! Jeff: You talk of God!? Eros: Is it so hard to believe that we might also think of God?
- Inverted in the anti-Mormonism film The God Makers, which has an odd animation describing how Mormons believe God and His followers come from a planet called Kolob. This, like much of the information in the film, is a bit of Did Not Do The Research; while initially the Kolob belief was part of Mormon doctrine, it's since fallen out of favor with modern Mormons, who have since revamped most of the teachings associated with it without the extraterrestrial connotations, and any talk of the doctrine in its original form is done purely as quaint non-religious speculation.
Literature
- By the end of
Arthur C Clarke's Gentry Lee's Rendezvous With Rama series of novels, it's heavily implied that the titular ship, and the other ships like it, were constructed by God - the God - for the purpose of conducting an intergalactic survey of His creations. Much of the conflict in the later novels arises from the way the characters behave in the light of this revelation.
- Just to clarify, God made very little of the Rama survey ships or the system behind them. Rather, according to the robots behind the 'survey', moments after the very, very first big bang (the Rama series assumes the theory of big bang > snapback > big bang > snapback, etc ), a tiny nanite factory of sorts was created, with instructions to create the necessary infrastructure to, and to go about, watching and taking note of any civilisation making steps toward Utopian society. Every recurring 'big bang', the process begins anew, the eventual goal being to find the key pattern to creating a true, eternal Utopia— without violating free will by just making Utopia and rendering the whole affair pointless. The only source of this information is, importantly, according to the robots, who themselves make certain to point out they were just programmed with this knowledge, and can't exactly give any real proof besides the scale of their operation and its goals.
- Interestingly, in the original novel actually written by Arthur C. Clarke, one of the characters is a memeber of a church that believes Jesus really was an alien or at least from outer space. Although his belief is never confirmed or denied by the Rama spacecraft. In the end he's just a competent crewman with a strange personal belief.
- In Ray Bradbury's short story "The Man," there is such a thing as Space Jesus! You just missed him, though; he left planet yesterday. Good luck finding him.
- His body may have left, but his spirit's still in the Temple. It always is, right?
- There's also another one where two ministers try to make a Space Jesus representation to some aliens, but it turns out that they've had their Jesus Analogue and are well aware of The Faith.
- Averted in the Cthulhu Mythos. While the Great Old Ones and the Outer Gods are "merely" immensely powerful extradimensional entities, they are often referred as gods and worshipped by various cults (after all, what else do you call something like Yog-Sothoth, who is eternal, omniscient and pretty much all-powerful, not to mention completely unbound by our 4-dimensional universe?).
- To his face, probably something like "AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRR MY BRAIN HURTS".
- The Other Gods are indeed real gods (while the Great Old Ones are just powerful aliens) representing real universal principles in Lovecraft's universe. They just happen to be as impresonal and untouchable as the laws of physics, themselves. Yes, they're personifications of impersonal forces of the universe. Try to wrap your head around that.
- In The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, followers of Great Prophet Zarquon (a Jesus-like being) are mocked by a stand-up comedian at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Zarquon then proceeds to show up, apologize for being late...and then disappear when the Universe ends.
- Toyed with in Book Of The New Sun where God is real, but it seems quite clear that he is a sufficiently advanced alien from an alternate dimension manipulating humanity from afar. This does not stop any Urth religions from worshiping this alien as God.
Live Action TV
- One of the most common plotlines in Star Trek. Apollo, Satan(!) and Quetzalcoatl have all been 'explained' away as Sufficiently Advanced Aliens as have a number of fictional alien gods. Oh, and Q once claimed to be "the" God. (He was probably kidding.)
- Averted by Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Ben Sisko begins with the usual Federation attitude towards the Prophets, but gradually changes towards a more mystical, even devout view of them; note how he ceases to call them "Wormhole Aliens" in favour of "Prophets", the Bajoran religious term.
- A slight variation in Star Trek Voyager, where Chakotay meets the "sky spirits" of his (non-specific) Native American beliefs. While it is confirmed that they had direct interaction and cultural exchange with his native ancestors leading to their mythology, they do not particularly claim to be Gods.
- The First Ones from Babylon Five - notably the Vorlons who have engaged in some very specifically religious meddlings in the affairs of several species, and Lorien - who had been a patron to their millenia old culture.
- Both invoked and averted: This is the central theme of the first story in the tales from Babylon 5 dvd movie, which revolves around a man on Babylon 5 who is apparently possessed by a demon. The priest brought in to deal with the situation gives a long speech about how churches are emptying because people haven't found God in the heavens (apparently people in the future think extremely literally and expect to find some old bearded guy in white robe floating around the crab nebula, while ignoring any kind of significant religious experience down on boring old terra firma). While the possibility that the "demon" is an alien is raised early on, the ending leaves it open and even seems to lean towards the supernatural. Either way this is the creature behind the legend.
- Almost the whole point of Stargate SG-1, with the Asgard being especially bizarre (it is difficult to imagine anyone less like the "real" Thor than the Stargate version, although, to be fair, he did use a holographic persona when keeping up the Masquerade). Note that the Ori are ascended mortals, which would be more than enough to qualify them as gods in several Fantasy settings and more than one real-world religion; however, one of the major running themes in the show is that merely being immortal, omnipotent, and omniscient does not a god make, nor does it automatically entitle one to being worshipped. Even though the Ori and the Ancients also gain power (somehow?) from being worshipped. It's extremely difficult to imagine a being any more godlike then the ascended beings in Stargate, but there you go.
- The fact that it's later shown that ascended are neither omnipotent (technology can kill them) nor omniscient (it's possible to hide from their observation with the same) takes some of the "godly" aura off them. In fact the Ori are in the end totally destroyed with what amounts to an Anti-Ascended WMD. If we could kill god with an A-Bomb we might rightly question his "godhood" as well.
- Technically, the "Anti-Ascended WMD" was created by a former Ascended being, and there are plenty of religions where gods can kill each other.
- Played with in Doctor Who in the episode "The Satan Pit", where the Doctor finds Satan chained up on the edge of a black hole. The episode never clarifies if it's just a Sufficiently Advanced Alien, actually Satan, or a Sufficiently Advanced Alien that inspired legends of Satan, but all theories are put forward by different characters.
- In another episode, "Pyramids of Mars", the Monster Of The Week is Sutekh, whose personality and history heavily resembles the same god from Egyptian mythology and possesses very god-like powers (said by the Doctor to be "near-limitless"). Again, it is not clarified whether this is another alien encounter or something completely different.
- Sutekh is specifically said to be an Osirian, and that he was imprisoned on Mars by the leadership of his planet. Fanon describes the Osirian culture and many fans suggest that Sutekh was influenced by The Beast or at least his legend.
- And for what it's worth, Sutekh and the Beast were both voiced by the same actor.
- Played straight in many episodes, however, where the local religious fanatics would be worshipping something that would later turn out to be either advanced alien technology or some kind of native animal; see The Curse Of Peladon, The Face Of Evil, etc.
- Inverted with The Doctor himself, as he is occasionally reffered to as a god, even by other Sufficienty Advanced Aliens, and at times seems to really think he is one, or at least has the right to act as one, due to his status as a Time Lord. Ironically, though, most of his "powers" really are technology based, and beyond a long lifespan, superintelligence, and rather weak telepathy, without his tech he is as vulnerable as anyone else, a propensity to cheat death for a set number of times. There are other beings, though, like the Guardians of the Universe, who seem closer to genuine godhood.
Video Games
- Very awkwardly averted by the Naaru of World Of Warcraft. They don't particularly say they are deities (or say anything since they speak though wind chimes in your brain), just extremely holy. There isn't a single NPC that speaks ill of them, even though part of their life cycle is a black hole that devours souls. Epileptic Trees surround them to the effect of this trope, but the issue is brushed under the rug as they were barely featured in the following expansion.
Western Animation
- Averted in (of all places) Futurama. Bender almost at once calls the sentient nebula he encounters God. He comes close to this trope when he says that God wouldn't use binary code, but he realizes that a space probe which "collided with God" would. It is not exactly confirmed, but it is heavily implied the nebula is indeed Him.
- It should be said that while there is no mention of Space Jesus, there is a Space Pope.◊
- There is mention of robot Jesus though.
- The robot Jews believe that He was built, and that He was a well-programmed robot, but they don't believe He was the robot Messiah.
- And a zombie Jesus, possibly connected to His second coming "in 2148".
- This is probably a mixture of Star Trek V (as above) and The Changeling, an Original Series episode in which a robot probe collides with something and becomes sentient. (Although in The Changeling, the probe decides Kirk is God!)
- And to Star Trek The Motion Picture, in which an alien-altered probe becomes a god by the end of the film. And Kirk claims to be it's "God".
Real Life
- Both the Voyager 1 photo of Earth commonly known as the Pale Blue Dot and the vastness of the universe in general are popular arguments against theists who claim humanity has a special place in the heart of God. Theists readily dismiss the argument, seeing instead the poignancy of God's love for creatures so small on a cosmic scale.
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