religious or political view over another. What I was trying to do was show that we tend to lump viewpoints together in ways that are completely random, and then assume that these conglomerations have *always* been that way, and can not be any other. You know, ‘secular humanists are always liberals’ or ‘Conservatives are always religious’ or whatever. So I was trying to show how that doesn’t have to be the case. I don’t think that counts as Christian SF simply because I didn’t have a clear Christian agenda in mind when I wrote it. But in theory, yes, if someone *else* wrote the story you described, yeah, it could be. But getting back to the question…
Ovadiah David:
There can and should be Christian science fiction. Science fiction is basically speculative fiction, stories about possible futures or imagined worlds, and why would a committed Christian have to leave his worldview at the door when exploring his imagination? If there's one genre with no limits or prejudices it's science fiction, so why wouldn't it be open to matters of faith and how they manifest themselves in the way we see the future?
Republibot 3.0:
As for me, I think Christian SF is entirely possible. My kid’s Sunday school class is going through a set of lessons based around some modern kids time traveling and hanging out with the apostles after the Resurrection. If that ain’t SF, what is it? The first half of “The Lost Takes of Babylon 5” was arguably Christian SF, too. That said, *most* of the Christian SF I’ve read is pretty dreadful, and most of it is pretty old - dating from the 1950s, and based on that kind of stuff as the only example I’d say a lot of the websites making fun of the concept are right to do so. But it doesn’t have to be that way. I think Christian SF can be done, and it can be done wonderfully, but I don’t think it’s happened yet.
Question Number Two:
Why do you think these other sites have such a negative reaction to the concept of Christian SF? Obviously a lot of it comes from them simply being kneejerk liberal sites with a built-in antipathy towards anything traditional, but more than that some of them seem really angry, offended, and insulted that anyone would dare do such a thing. Why?
Doubting Thomas:
From the days of Galileo to George Bush shutting down stem cell research, Christians have a reputation of slamming the brakes on ideas and progress. This is certainly deserved. Honestly, if I saw a science fiction book displayed in the window of a religious book store I would be suspicious that it contained a sermon disguised as a story about an earth centered universe and thin arguments against evolution. The anger comes from the expectation that we're about to see yet more interference with the added twist of populist appeal, but let's not forget that the greatest scientist of all time, Isaac Newton, was a devout Christian. It's not fair, but that's the problem with anything that lasts a long time, you become responsible for defending all of it's history.
Burt Cottage:
I think it’s because sci-fi prides itself on an “anything’s possible” ideal. Christian sci-fi holds mostly to that with one exception: a Creator behind it all and, therefore, a moral code. We may disagree with what that code is. We may—as authors or artists—find ways to depict or approach that moral code in ways that anger or annoy our fellow Christians. But we still start or end with the idea: God is.
RB2:
Simple. They fear judgment, despite the fact that they tend to be more judgmental than most Christians. If such a thing were successful, that would imply validation of beliefs that they hate.
Tessa Dick:
People who believe in a mechanistic world of cause and effect reflexively reject the idea of what they see as magical nonsense. Religion, whether it presents itself as wicca, Christianity or any other form, is only so much hocus pocus in their minds. The universe ultimately makes sense, and is predictable, so if something unexpected happens, then it must be due to an error or omission in their equations It cannot be the result of divine intervention.. Besides, propaganda has blamed the Church for the errors of science, beginning with the model of an Earth-centered universe, which was developed by scientists before Christ was born. Yes, the Popes did accuse Copernicus, Galileo and others of heresy, but
>>>While the word Nephilim is used in one other place in the Bible to metaphorically describe the large people living in Canaan at the time of the Exodus, this is the only place where it is used in the classic sense. There is simply not enough information available in the text, and the Book of Enoch is simply a midrash.<<<
I always used to get in arguments with my Sunday school class about that. "The Canaanites were the giants from Genesis!"
"But wouldn't they have all died in the flood?"
"Oh..."
According to Enoch, the *point* of the flood was to kill the Nephilim, without it the world itself wouldn't have survived. And, yeah, all the books of Enoch are just legends, not taken seriously by anyone as scripture. I think even calling 'em a Midrash gives 'em too much credit. They're just legends tacked haphazardly on to a couple dangling plot threads in Genesis. They're the pseudpigraphal equivalent of fanfilms.
The Artist Formerly Known As Republibot 3.0