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The Krells, in the insolence of their success, tried to usurp the power of God. And were destroyed.
Science is a religion— an evil, godless religion that isn't just Bad or Wrong, but unethical by nature. And like all religions, it has sins—or, rather, "virtues". These are the sins that the Mad Scientists transgress in their quests For Science. If...no, when these are violated something will Go Horribly Wrong and the transgressor will receive karmic punishment in accordance to the sin, increasing in evil as the number rises (Math is evil too!). No exceptions.
Proud scientists will actively try to check off as many of these sins as they can as a proof of their scientific genius.
- Automation.
- Making something, anything, with Potential Applications.
- Genetic Engineering and Transhumanism in general
- Immortality when it doesn't revive the dead.
- Creating Life.
- Cheating Death.
- Usurping God.
Despite the name, magic often considers these sins as well, the kind it is capable of but must never be used.
Examples:
The First Sin of Automation
- On Star Trek, taking organic oversight out of the command decision loop is almost invariably a catastrophic mistake (except when it's Data). Humans in the Federation almost do more manual labour than we do.
- Warhammer 40000: the Iron Men. Bit humanity in the rear in the form of a galaxy-wide dark age.
- Dune - where humanity was enslaved by its own machines and who outlawed anything approaching sentient machines on pain of death.
- Mass Effect had the Quarians build the Geth as a cheap labour force... and you can how well that worked out as they've been stuck in a flotilla of ships for 300 years after the Geth kicked their asses.
- Council Wars: Creating new A Is is the only thing that is banned.
The Second Sin of Hubris
- On Doctor Who, any exotic technology that fixes Earth's big problems by solving energy crises, eliminating air pollution, or giving us an effective non-Doctor defense against aliens is an alien plot to destroy us.
- Warhammer 40000. Adeptus Mechanicus. Necrons. Enough said.
- I Am Legend, the movie: we cured cancer and everybody died. And turned into an evil horde of zombie-vampires.
The Third Sin of GE and Transhumanism
- On Star Trek, human genetic engineering is banned, and most of the products of it are dangerously deranged.
- The Dominion, Federations Evil Counterpart, is basically a huge genetic engineering society. Jem'Hadar were created from nothing, Vorta bred from some other form; and it's stated that The Founders were once humanoids but G Ed themselves into shape shifters. It is even supposed that their close-mindedness is the price they payed for their new body abilities.
- Dr Bashir is the unique exception in Star Trek canon of a genetic augment who turned out for the better. His case is sympathetic in that he was a special needs kid before the augmentation and has a stable personality. To bring the point home, he visits his fellow augments in a couple of different episodes and while they all possess extreme intelligence like him, they also suffer from mental defects and/or personality disorders and are, regardless, banned from having meaningful careers.
- On the other other hand, the flaws are explicitly due to flaws in their black-market augmentations. It isn't a reason for the ban (which is explicitly just Khan), it is a result of it.
- Warhammer 40000, the Primarchs and the Astartes. Roughly fifty-fifty split on the good-evil divide, but the bad fifty definitely left their mark.
- There's a trend here, isn't there?
- In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, the creation of Artificial Mages is explicitly banned. This is one of the reasons why Jail Scaglietti, a Mad Scientist with a passion for biological manipulation, is considered an interdimensional criminal.
- Interestingly, the TSB only comes down hard on the people that built and commissioned artificial mages/cyborgs. The creations themselves are only punished if they're found to have been gleefully kicking dogs or something. Otherwise, they're treated same as any other person, with no limits on what they're allowed to do. Also interestingly, the majority of these created beings seem to turn out to ultimately be pretty nice people; turning out as well as they do when built and raised by insane women and/or mad scientists, one has to wonder how well off they'd be if the process WASN'T illegal and thusly only used by madsci types.
- Many of the mooks (and some of the bosses) you face in Mother3 are either unnatural crosses of animal species (eg., Cattlesnake, Batangutan, Kangashark) or mechanised animals (eg., Steel Mecharilla). They only exist because Porky deemed regular animals as uncool, and so had his Pigmask army to alter them genetically.
- This is ultimately the goal of the Human Instrumentality Project in Neon Genesis Evangelion, and it is most certainly portrayed in a fairly negative light. Of course, the scientificity of this sin is somewhat questionable.
The Fourth Sin of Anti-Thanatosis
- Jacob Crow in Timesplitters: Future Perfect creates the Timesplitters as part of an attempt to gain immortality.
- Warhammer 40000 again-humanity arguably succeeded with the Astartes, then pre-emptively kept things from getting out of hand by ensuring the Astartes die in glorious battle as a rule.
The Fifth Sin of Autogenesis
- Fullmetal Alchemist has Homunculi, who score a 4.5 being both botched resurrections and attempts at creating life.
- The manga kicks it up another notch, in that the resurrections (while they aren't Homunculi) aren't even the person they were tryng to bring back.
- Warhammer 40000. The Primarchs and Astartes might qualify, the Imperium definitely created the Life Eater, and it's entirely possible, if not likely, that the Imperium has created much more.
- Forbidden Planet, where the Krell's subconsciousnesses created creatures which had the power to destroy but not be destroyed.
- Frankensteins Monster - though debateable, since the Monster was created as a blank slate in the book.
- "The Cylons were created by man..."
The Sixth Sin of Resurrection
- Herbert West in Re Animator has a serum that brings the dead back to life, which he uses on anything dead he comes across. He also makes a few interesting attempts at create new life, with varied results.
- Warhammer 40000. The Adeptus Mechanicus have this as one of their most rigid rules and breaking it will lead to shouts of "Burn the heretic!"
- This being 40K, they are far from the only ones shouting this.
- The Necrons are an entire species that Came Back Wrong as a result of this.
- Arguable, they sought out the C'tan and became immortal machines because their rampage was going badly already. The leaders at least knew exactly what they were getting into.
- Unlikely. The Deceiver never lets ANYONE know just what they're getting into. (And it was he that did the job.)
- Project F of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, which attempts to bring back the dead by creating a clone with the memories and personality of the original. As it's a subset of Artificial Mage research mentioned under Genetic Engineering, this is also banned by The Federation.
- One of the major recurring themes in Shadow Hearts is a manuscript that can resurrect the dead, but it never turns out like intended.
- Star Trek , while future medical science is sophisticated enough that characters almost routinely come back from clinical death. However, some extreme attempts have fallen into this trope, such as Kira wanting her boyfriend, the Kai, to be rejuvenated by using artificial parts to replace decaying brain tissue. This is progressive and further replacements leave him less and less Bajoran till he asks to be allowed to die.
- However the Came Back Wrong variation is subverted with Neelix. He is revived, after being dead for several hours, by Seven's nanoprobes. Neelix struggles with this greatly, not least because he didn't see an afterlife while he was dead and he did not feel "right" upon his return. But, after one interrupted suicide attempt, he starts spiritual counseling with Chakotay and actually fully recovers (we're left to assume anyway.)
- The Goa'uld sarcophagus from Stargate SG 1 can repair any injury, and revive the recently dead, but repeated use is addictive, and damaging to the psyche, and may be a contributing factor in why the Goa'uld are Always Chaotic Evil.
- And being effectively immortal, they began eating their own offspring to prevent competition.
The Seventh Sin of Autodeification
- The General in Psi Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy used an alien psi device to gain massive psychic powers, in the process he killed dozens, lobotomized hundreds, and betrayed every one of his allies. His commeuppance was getting beat by the protagonist.
- SEELE has a big problem with Gendou Ikari's apparent attempts at this in Neon Genesis Evangelion.
- Mainly because it got in the way of their attempts.
- Surprise, surprise, Warhammer 40000, albeit in an unconventional fashion: the Immortal God-Emperor of Man. The fallen Primarchs may also think of themselves this way, though they didn't elevate themselves to levels just shy of a Physical God.
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