Sci-fi... religion for geeks?

16may24v 0.1

http://poelposition.blogspot.com/2024/05/sci-fi-religion-for-geeks.html

As we are being drawn ever deeper into a quagmire of prosaic existential nonsense from Stormy Daniels to the ongoing invasion by illegal itinerants - the temptation to pass the buck to a supreme being to sort out still remains, despite thousands of years of failure to persuade any deity intervene to assist in any obvious way.

The age of discovery in the 18/19 centuries that evolved from the work of Newton and Kepler promoted various notions of heresy as established religious beliefs were directly and indirectly challenged. And we are still being held hostage by fanatics with irrational beliefs.

Deference to religious tolerance has allowed other pseudo religious cults to become empowered and impose their all manner of irrational beliefs, as though there is currently a general entitlement to hold almost any absurd belief as a "human right."

Woaaa...

My turn! I have been a Sci-Fi aficionado since episode one Dr Who in 1963 - and what a wild ride that has been while Russell T Davies insists on breaking it with defiant self-indulgence and fits of superfluous social engineering.

Meantime the budget bar (Who's early wonky cardboard sets remain icons of British culture) was quickly raised by Star Trek in 1966 - but Dr Who's premise of freedom to move in any dimension - including time - provided infinite creative scope compared to the linearity of Star Trek, where the focus on the hardware defined the boundaries.

And then the Stargate movie came along in 1994 and wove Egyptian and Norse mythology with space opera, but avoided attributing "supreme being" status to the gadget party tricks.

Star trek strayed into the metaphysical with the introduction of the Q Continuum in 1987; after which it was easy to cheat the "linear science" plot if required, although this plot device was used sparingly to avoid annoying the purists.

Star Gate had its Ancients - since it was necessary to explain where the stargates had originated. The Doctor Who equivalent being the Time Lords.

All three of these sci-fi dynasties have a nervous relationship with "supreme beings" and are uncomfortable with the challenge of relating to established religions. So the backstories of the Time Lords, the Ancients and Q are left are rich opportunities for fandom speculation. 

The internet has provided infinite scope to disseminate and explore these various geek heavens - and efforts to relate and explain are ongoing. 

All of them accept varying degrees of telekinesis and extra sensory perception as an integral part of their existence, plus of course the matter transport technology exploited in all is a huge leap of faith. Never mind inertial damping, artificial gravity and FTL travel.

I can't ignore Star Wars (1997 on) any longer. It has always struck me as being an outlier with most overlap with Star Trek. The device of a Force that "flows through all living things" is a neat way to tackle the metaphysical challenges. Parallels with Stargate's ascended Ancients.

And then we need to accommodate the fascinating stories of Uri Geller and Matthew Manning. Just what on earth is going on there? Despite attempts to expose them as frauds, they continue to exist with their followers in a parallel universe of uncertainty. After all many billions are taken in by Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and the rest - where there is considerably less hard evidence of bent spoons or hands on healing.

And right now (may24) we are being blasted by a peak of cyclical solar activity - the origins of which we only "sort of understand".

So I thought I would catch up with Einstein's unified field theory, as you do - which was a subject of interest to Steven Hawking and the place where all these ideas will inevitably collide.

Mark Fiorentino has done a decent job of touring that subject in the linked video.

You can skip in 5 minutes and watch X1.5

https://youtu.be/DtNG25y26pM