Battlestar Galactica and the Power of Faith

I won't spoil the final moments of Ron D. Moore's masterpiece series, Battlestar Galactica. If you haven't watched the show from beginning to end, many story elements may not make sense, especially the effect that the faiths of both Colonials and Cylons have on their destinies. I advise you to rent or buy the available DVDs. They're meant to be watched from end to end. You'll need a friend with recorded latter season 4 episodes to complete things.

The final episode, which aired last night, March 20, confirmed in part what I was hoping--about Kara Thrace and the virtual images of Caprica-Six and Gaius Baltar, which (up to this episode) could only be seen and heard by the ones they "haunted."

In Battlestar, faith was used to guide, to advise, to ridicule, to change, to deny. Faith was a shield and a bludgeon, a way to comfort and an oracle to foresee. Battlestar showed that the Higher Powers portrayed in the show not only cared for the individual, but also allowed it to follow its own path, utilize its own free will--if they so dared. While often free will was exactly what the characters did not need, in a few instances, the right choices at the moment made the difference between life and death (take Gaius's speech to Cavil as an example).

On television at least, I can't think of a better example of blending the notions of faith with science fiction that attempts to portray both individual and believer and diety(s) with a sense of the genuine, of what we'd all hope that our paths in life and our hope and belief will do to aid us.

And if some of us get a battlestar to aid us in our journey, I'm cool with that.

Is deity-bashing the rage in SF?

(Facebook readers note: This is a cross-post from my blog at http://cxmachina.blogspot.com.)

Yes, after having a lively conversation with friends in the cross-post of this blog on my Facebook account, I'm still studying the nature of SF and its treatment of theology.

Perhaps the irreverence in SF is less a matter of faithlessness or even science/theology segregation (as if religion were water and science were oil and thus can't mix). Perhaps deities and (as in the case of Stargate and Star Trek) pseudo-deities just make better antagonists in a storyline.

I can buy that. Villains such as an evil guy in a trench coat with chemicals and atomic bombs, or evil emperors and his legions are milquetoast compared to some multidimensional being swallowing planets or subjugating whole populations in terms of drama. And it doesn't hurt to outfit the humans with offsetting technology.

I just wonder what powers the powers of characters that vanquish the "evil" deities in the SF stories. If we examine the comics we see that alien ancestry leads to fantastic powers (Superman), or incredible wealth and strength of will can do wonders (Batman).

Wonder Woman keeps things more terrestrial and theological but embracing the Greek pantheon: Princess Diana's powers are, through her apparel and ancestry, boons from the gods.

Diana is more akin to Greek heroes like Perseus, who are nothing without the support of their gods. I guess that's out of fashion, as mankind is doing now in reality what the Goa'uld and Sargon do in fiction: to dare consider themselves equal to gods.

Which does bring up the concept of where religion ends and mythology begins in SF...a topic for another time.

Arthur C. Clarke makes God "work"

(A point of order: Since I'm Catholic, my posts argue on the nature of God in science fiction. You could easily add your beliefs in substitute and the results would likely be the same.)

After my last post on how God seemed like a niche player at best in Star Trek, I immediately recalled two short stories, both written by Arthur C. Clarke, that co-starred the nature of God as part of a significant story element in two wonderful SF tales I'd read years ago.

The first, "The Nine Billion Names of God", tells the story of Tibetan monks who have a computer constructed to print out the many, many names of God, with, shall we say, interesting results. The second, "The Star", involves a Jesuit priest who suffers in his faith after he returns from a historic space mission that found a destroyed ancient civilization, killed off by their star going supernova.

Both stories totally avoid the deus ex machina problem that the supposedly-omnipotent and omniscient "Q" brought to episodes Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager. In these stories, God has actually acted, but in a way we as people are used to: behind the scenes or after the fact, where our minds have to question, interpret, even fear.

Both stories illustrate a way to add God to a fictional universe as a potent force, without dogma or fire and brimstone.