Holy question

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Burt

What about Shows like Babylon 5, which shows more of religon's in the future?

It shows them all right, but JMS is very good at undercutting religion while making it look like he respects it. The Minbari faith, for example, is taken very seriously by the characters involved... but the show ends up providing a sci-fi explanation for literally everything in it. Brother Theo and his monks are considered nuts by Ivanova and Garibaldi (who actually questions their ability to watch a bunch of monitors); we also find out the government uses them as a nice wholeseome environment to put brainwashed criminals in, presumably programming in the whole believing-in-God thing. And even then JMS couldn't risk having sympathetic characters who were actual, real-life Christians -- Theo and his order were into religious equivalence, the whole "all religions are actually true from different perspectives" thing. Delenn dragged Sheridan to a Baptist revival when she thought it would be good for him, knowing neither of them believed a word that was said there. This is the sort of condescension I mean.

Of course, I'm not forgetting that Gene Roddenberry was even more anti-religion, and openly used Trek to attack it. He believed religion was a phase humanity would grow out of. It wasn't till DS9 and VOY that religion in Trek was taken seriously, and episodes like "Mortal Coil" and "Destiny" had really interesting takes on the subject.

To actually answer the poll question, I've known sci-fi fans from all sorts of religions -- and I don't know anyone whose faith or lack thereof changed because of their sf habits. So empirically speaking, it looks like the two can coexist just fine.