Christian tropers, join together!

There was a sci-fi novel about humans discovering a totally irreligious alien species. A clergyman character wonders if they've been created by the big red guy. At the end he performs an exorcism and their planet blows up.

Don't remember the title, but AFAIR it's been mentioned on the other Wiki's article on religion in SF.

Wait, there's religion in SF? Aren't science and faith usually diametrically opposed to each other?

Yes there is religion in sci-fi. Both in the form of religions in sci-fi and religious sci-fi. I myself wish to write a series of short stories in a cyberpunk setting whose universe runs off the cosmological and metaphysical rules of Buddhism, my own religion. Though many people treat religion and science as diametrically opposed they really aren't and don't have to be.

A Canticle For Leibowitz. Read it. It is awesome.

Also, I rather like Lewis' Space Trilogy (the first two books, at least; That Hideous Strength was not nearly as good as Out Of The Silent Planet or Perelandra IMO).

EDIT:

What makes you think that, if I may ask?

edited 3rd Sep '12 1:31:47 AM by Carciofus

I wouldn't say that they're opposed, but rather that as concepts, they're applied to very different areas in life. After all, the scientific method is based on observing and reproducing results, while

(Not thinking very straight right now. Apologies.)

Okay, I've been meaning to drop by here for a while, but I keep forgetting.

1. . Quick introduction: I'm a 24-year-old American who's currently working on his Master's Degree in Biblical Studies. I consider myself non-denominational because no specific denomination really lines up exactly with my personal views on some theological points. (that and I'm always been hesitant to identify myself in a subgroup due to I Cor. 1:10-17). My thoughts on varying issues range pretty far, and I don't really slot into any particular denomination.

2. . The Space Trilogy is awesome. CS Lewis is one of my favorite authors.

3. . I totally agree that there isn't a dichotomy between faith and science; I think God created a rational, ordered world. I think that false dichotomy is at least partially due on the fogginess of how "faith" is usually defined; a lot of people seem to think of it as "dogmatically believing something without evidence", which I think is quite inaccurate. In context, the word for "faith" often means something closer to "trust" or having confidence in somebody's character. The famous "faith without sight" thing could easily mean (and I think it does) trusting God to act a certain way on the basis of His character even if we can't necessarily see what He's doing. In that specific context it's less disbelieving your eyes, and more being able to trust that God will do what He said he would do even though we don't have empirical evidence. It isn't entirely without knowledge, though; we're aware of His character.

I could say more, but this is a long enough first post as it is.

edited 4th Sep '12 1:37:13 PM by JapaneseTeeth

Heh, you made me chuckle a bit here. I thought, it's that sort of thing that happens, as the joke goes, "only in America". Most places tend to have one or another denomination as a majority, in America it's more natural to swap for a different one if your own doesn't suit you.

edited 4th Sep '12 1:59:15 PM by lordGacek

Eeyup. I guess it's that whole melting pot thing. The area I live certainly doesn't have any single dominant denomination that I know of.

Where I live it's pretty much Baptist. Followed by Catholicism (mostly people from up north and immigrants), and then third would probably be Methodist or non-denominational. I'm Episcopalian (Anglican), so there's not a lot of us here in Georgia.

edited 4th Sep '12 2:17:09 PM by wuggles

@JT - Yay!

I'm not really sure what denomination I am. I did attend a prebysterian church for almost two decades, though.

edited 4th Sep '12 2:29:43 PM by dRoy

I tend to take denominations on a personal level rather than on what kind of church I attend. Although even in that case I've been bouncing around between different denominations anyway. I just never saw them as all that big of a deal.

@JT - True. Still, I am a little gravitated towards Methodists for some reason.

This question may come off as a little asinine, but it has been bugging me a while.

If a baby dies, what happens to his/her soul?

Ah, that's got to be on the top 10 list of questions preachers get asked. The answer is, unfortunately, that we don't know for sure, as the Bible never directly addresses it. However, everything we know of God's nature, as well as the various places in the Bible that speak admiringly of childlike innocence, suggests strongly that they go to heaven/paradise/wherever "good" people go.

Some people disagree with that rather strongly (hence infant baptism), but I don't see a whole lot of basis for that view.

edited 5th Sep '12 8:31:09 AM by EdwardsGrizzly

My personal take on it is that ultimately God is just and we just have to trust to be fair on the matter; if he's just, no one will end up in a place they don't deserve to be.

One standard objection to the "babies go to Heaven" idea is that if that were the case, it would be morally good to kill babies before they get the chance to damn themselves.

My reply (which is not the only possible one, definitely, and I would be interested to hear how others would reply to the same objection) is that it is not good to take from others the possibility to choose between good and evil. If that were the case, well, God could easily take away my own possibility to do the same; but it is insulting to refuse a human being the dignity of making a free, irrevocable choice. Even if that would be in their own interests.

edited 5th Sep '12 11:30:50 AM by Carciofus

Yeah, it's simply not a human being's place to attempt to decide for someone else like that.

That, and to elaborate on , if it were really better to never exist than to exist and face the choice between good and evil, God would not have created free-willed people in the first place.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Having the opportunity to act as a moral agent seems to be inherently good, even if that opportunity is abused.

Freedom to make choice. It is surprisingly prevalent in Christianity.

This somehow persuades people and fiction to portraying it as the religion of chains.

Hi, another question time. According to Christianity, where is Adam after he was created?

What do you mean? After he was created, he was in the garden; after he sinned, he was anywhere else, or do you mean after he died, heaven or hell?

Hey J Teeth. Haven't seen you around in a while.

I totally agree that there isn't a dichotomy between faith and science; I think God created a rational, ordered world. I think that false dichotomy is at least partially due on the fogginess of how "faith" is usually defined; a lot of people seem to think of it as "dogmatically believing something without evidence", which I think is quite inaccurate. In context, the word for "faith" often means something closer to "trust" or having confidence in somebody's character. The famous "faith without sight" thing could easily mean (and I think it does) trusting God to act a certain way on the basis of His character even if we can't necessarily see what He's doing. In that specific context it's less disbelieving your eyes, and more being able to trust that God will do what He said he would do even though we don't have empirical evidence. It isn't entirely without knowledge, though; we're aware of His character.

I agree with you on that assessment: our life is supposed to be an experiential walk with God rather than a sort of experiment. You don't go out of your way to find proof of a relationship.

I don't know if this comes across correctly, but my personal opinion is that trouble always arises when people try to use the Bible as a science textbook: that's not how it's supposed to be applied. Science tells you how the world works, religion tells you why. (To use an extreme example: just because the infallible Word of God contains a passage where a circle's circumference is described as ~about~ 3 times its diameter doesn't instantly mean Christians fail Math forever.)

edited 6th Sep '12 6:16:25 AM by Pyrite

And honestly, does any sane Christian believe that the world is created in literally 7 days?

edited 6th Sep '12 6:12:49 AM by dRoy

I'm of the opinion that it's within God's infinite ability to literally create the Earth in 7 days, and that it's entirely possible that that was what happened during Creation (and that we're interpreting the evidence wrongly)... but we weren't there, so we won't know for sure. At the moment, the available evidence from our limited POV leans towards an older Earth. Does this change anything? Not really.

And Now For Something Completely Different:

edited 6th Sep '12 6:23:58 AM by Pyrite

Yes, a lot of them. My own views are similar to Pyrite, except that from my own limited POV the evidence for an old earth is not as compelling as it is frequently presented as, so I'm inclined to assume the younger earth that is the most obvious reading of the relevant scriptures.