Real-world religions on futuristic sci-fi

yeah, i think Pitch Black did a good job making his religion seem serious-but-natural.

i definitely think Babylon 5 did a great job of showing a multitude of views, and showing not just religious nuts, but honest good religious people as well.

However, i'm a little annoyed that religious people seem to have to be in a very formal religion, and we don't really see religious lay people .

And for me , personally, it's not about religion, but a relationship with God. But that would be hard to portray if your universe doesn't actually believe there is a real God.

 

Speaking of B5, didn't Sinclair reference the Jesuits on more than one occasion. I think he went to a Jesuit school.

 

I recall the same, though I couldn't tell you the episode. I think it's mentioned once when he helps Garibaldi pull a prank on her at breakfast one morning. Also, Capt Lochley was a Catholic. That was mentioned in Lost Tales, I believe.

 

Babylon Squared

 

Given Sinclair's final fate, I have to wonder if his Jesuit upbringing had any influence on Minbari religion. Just imagine a branch of Christianity being one of the roots of an alien faith.

 

Philip Jose Farmer wrote a series of short stories featuring a character called Father Carmody, who is Catholic. He also wrote a book called Jesus on Mars which features a version of Judaism that accepts Jesus as the Messiah. Night of Light is another Farmer book featuring Catholic characters.

Then there's Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock, about a Jewish man who travels back in time to find Jesus.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller is set in a Roman Catholic abbey.

 

A classic is The Fire Balloons from The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury.

 

In TOS: Balance of Terror, Angela Martine makes the sign of the cross while grieving at the ship's chapel.

 

The Seafort saga is about a Christian theocracy and I think also features Muslim characters (been a while since I read them).

 

There were Mormon settlers in Starship Troopers... were.

 

Flashforward written by Robert J. Sawyer and published in 1999 predicted there would a Pope Benedict XVI in 2009, six years before Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger actually became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. Perhaps Ratzinger had read the novel, which includes religious themes framed in a scientific context.

 

She also kneels in prayer at her wedding, Keiko is wearing traditional Shinto dress at her wedding to Miles.

In one episode, Picard waxes philosophic about his belief in a afterlife, although not tied to any particular religion.

 

I just remembered reading the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson -- which features a band of traveling Sufis among the Martian colonists.

 

I was going to cite this. Also, in Firefly, Anarra seems to have some kind of meditation/Buddha thing going on at times in her quarters. In written fiction, there is the Warlock series by Christopher Stasheff, featuring the monks of St Vidicon, a technologically oriented branch of Catholicism. In the B5 episode Deconstruction of Falling Stars, there is an homage sequence to Miller's Canticle monks preserving technology. Arthur Clarke writes about a priest's struggles with scientific revelation in the fantastic story The Star. Heinlein wrote about theocracy in America in the novella If This Goes On..., and Star TrekS9 had the Bajorrans.
Point is, religion in science fiction has been tackled from various angles for a long time. And that doesn't even scratch the surface- try digging into Eric Flint's 1632 series and you'll find whole sections about religion, including the novel 1634: The Galileo Affair, which is practically totally devoted to religious debate.

 

He is half-human.

I would think finding intelligent life on other planets would be a drastic blow to most established religions on this planet (especially those who are of the Judao-Christian origin)

 

I was aware of these, but left them off this thread deliberately. The Bajorans aren't human (therefore their religion falls into the "made-up" category.) And 1632 isn't set in the future. (I read about the first 6 or 8 novels in that series, but gave it up because the universe got too complex to keep track of, with all the multitude of contributing authors and story threads.)

Likewise David Weber's "Safehold" series features a made-up religion for a set of future humans who've been cut off from their original Earth history. Interesting read, but not exactly "on topic" for what I was looking for.

 

TNG was even at times more abrasive towards people with religious beliefs. in, Who Watches the Watchers, Picard outright says that it's backward and primitive for cultures to worship a deity

 

Granted, though, this example was more personal for him. The "deity" in question was how Picard himself was seen by a primitive culture.

I also just remembered another reference from TNG's "Data's Day". In addition to the O'Briens' Shinto-style wedding, Data also makes a reference to the shipboard celebration of the Festival of Lights. This implies that there are practicing Hindus on board.

 

What about the TNG episode where Ardra [sp?] returns to take her planet back and Picard and crew expose her powers as not one of a deity but rather technology.

There are many, many examples in Trek where the series outright insults people with religious beliefs using metaphors.

Here is another, Voyager episode where Janeway's father returns to take her to the afterlife only to find out it was an evil alien trying to kidnap her.

The only thing close to a "deity," on Trek are the Q. And they are portrayed as nothing more than evolved aliens who act like petulant children.

 

Roddenberry was a sworn atheist and fairly hostile to Christianity. He was occasionally forced by the network to include Christian references in TOS, however - such as the quote mentioned above in Who Mourns for Adonis and the reference to the Son of God in Bread and Circuses.

I wonder if that was an adaptation of the Arthur C. Clarke classic (1956) "The Star" which tells of an astrophysicist and Jesuit priest who is part of a crew on an exploration mission to a remote star system - which Mistral mentions above.

Another example - Book in Firefly is a practicing Christian minister or monk. He is shown reading the Bible on more than one occasion, spends time at a monastery, is referred to as "Shepherd" Book, a pretty plain reference to some sort of ordained or lay preacher, and gets into an argument with River about fixing the scientific inaccuracies in the Bible. Likewise, Mal is portrayed as a former Christian (he kisses a cross before diving into battle in the pilot episode) who has fallen from the faith.