Recently I was talking with a friend who mentioned to me that she’s seen only one of the Star Wars films. She saw the first one when it first came out back in 1977 and never watched another.
Why?
Because she had recently converted to Christianity from another religion and, as a zealous new Fundamentalist (she’s now a Catholic), she was horrified by the alien creatures in the film.
"I wanted to get up in front of the screen and shout ‘God didn’t make these!‘" she told me.
While she now recognizes that the mere depiction of alien beings isn’t inherently sinful, she still doesn’t particularly enjoy sci-fi, and part of the reason why is that God didn’t make creatures like what you see in the movies–at least so far as we’re aware at this point.
I’ve had other friends express similar reservations about sci-fi. They just can’t relate to the alien creatures or situations that one often finds in it, and sometimes they also point to the fact that God didn’t make the world the way that it’s depicted in sci-fi.
I’m sympathetic to this. I’m a sci-fi fan, but I’m still sympathetic.
From one perspective, I’m sympathetic to it on an emotional level. Humans have emotional comfort zones regarding what they want to experience. If our experiences are too strange, too alien, too outside-our-comfort-zones then we get . . . uncomfortable. For most people, just looking at the Star-Nosed Mole (something God did create!) is enough to give them the willies.
If science fiction gives some folks an outside-the-comfort-zone experience and makes them uncomfortable, I respect that. That’s not where my comfort zones are set, but I have such zones just like everyone else, and some forms of fiction I find distasteful and, therefore, I avoid them.
That’s a matter of taste, though, not of principle.
I’m also sympathetic to my friends’ theological concern, for I had the same concern back when I was an Evangelical. Much as I liked science-fiction, I wondered about a form of entertainment that depicts the world in a way that God didn’t make it.
After all, one could argue, if God chose to make the world this way and not that way, why should we spend time filling our imaginations with the way the world ain’t?
I realized, though, that this objection got at a principle that affected a lot more literature than just science fiction. It also affected fantasy, of course, and imaginative fiction generally. But it still affected yet more.
It affected fiction itself.
There are distinctions to be made between different kinds of fiction (fantasy, sci-fi, realistic, detective, romance, western, etc.). They all obey different rules and depart in different ways from the way the world actually is. But all forms of fiction depart in some way from the way that God made the world.
That’s why we call it fiction. . . . It’s the way the world ain’t . . stories that aren’t true.
Sci-fi and fantasy may (sometimes) break laws of nature that apply to the real world. Detective stories, romances, and westerns may all be written according to formulas that involve wildly improbably events that seldom happen–at least in conjunction with each other–in the real world. But even the most realistic story (or what in a typical English department would be considered a realistic story) involves envisioning the world a way that it isn’t.
So the objection can be posed even to realistic narratives: Why should we fill up our imaginations with material about the world the way God didn’t make it?
It’s a question worth considering.
There are good answers to it, and in upcoming posts I’ll share with you what I take to be some of those answers, but for now why not contemplate the problem?
Related discussion here.
I had a entirely different reason for an aversion to Star Wars movies: They are too “muppetty”. I’ve seen The Muppets and when I saw parts of Star Wars, I couldn’t help thinking about it and I couldn’t keep watching.
Star Trek TNG, on the other hand, I always liked.
What’s the evidence that God DIDN’T make other worlds with different kinds of life?
I like best Tolkien’s explanation, that by creating a fictional world and reality is an act of “sub-creation”, and, rather than subtracting from God’s glory, we are instead giving glory to God. We are made in God’s image, as God is a creator, so we to are driven to be creative in our own little ways.
The problem with the argument against fiction is that it explains too much. By forbidding you to envision the world any other way than what it is, you are forced into a hyper-calvinist view of predestination, as you are saying that the world cannot be not even one jot or tittle different to the way it is. This binds both human freedom and God’s, as God would be equally bound to create things exactly as they are.
Also, the fact that it is possible for our minds to envision things differently that are still logically possible itself implies that these things could be different, and, by extension, God could have chosen differently.
There are also so many minor things in life that can hardly matter that they are one thing rather than another. I see know reason why many trivial details unlikely to impact the future should be compelled to be one thing rather than another, for example, a car being blue instead of red.
And, there is of course the fact that our Lord, Jesus Christ himself engaged in fictional story-telling, even rather bizarre and unusual tales, some that would get
run out of town if you tried to write about them in a fundamentalist community, e.g. people in heaven and hell being able to communicate with each other, in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man.
I remember quite a few years ago a friend of mine started a similar discussion, saying that all fiction must be a lie, because it is saying something that isn’t true. I think an essential difference there is that lying involves deception, while fiction is not deception if it is plainly stated to be fiction. It would only be a lie if a work of fiction was depicted as being a true story when it wasn’t (and not just as a literary device, I mean actually trying to trick people like with an entirely fake history-book.)
John, I guess you also don’t like Farscape either, as it actually DOES have muppets.
I figure that God gave me my imagination, so I honor Him by using it. Weren’t some of our greatest scientific discoveries the result of someone saying, “what if,” and then acting on it?
As for Star Wars, I saw it twice, both when it was newly released. I fell asleep both times. The only scene I liked was the cantina scene (mostly for the jazzy music). Some folks just don’t care for that type of sci-fi (I’ve tried, believe me!).
I do like sci-fi with robots and other human-created devices and scenarios, particularly when things go awry (i.e., man trying to be God).
‘thann
The way I see it, the justification for engaging in fiction has to do with the fact that since we are God’s image bearers we are creative creatures and as such we have a desire to create and this included works like fiction. Even art, like Michaelangelo, engages in a type of fiction, in that the works are not necessarily depicting things as they actually were (the staue of David) or will be the (the Last Judgement). In engaging the world of fiction we
use our imaginations to wonder and ponder, and hopefully, if it is fiction like Lord of the Rings or Brothers Karamazov, lead us to the think on the true reality of good and evil. Fiction can serve and indeed has served as a conduit for teaching the truth. Of course, more could be said in defending the legitimacy of fiction.
I wonder then, what to make of Jesus’ use of parables? He told stories (lies?) to make a point.
If stories can be used to make a point, then why can’t they be used to entertain? And so much the better if they entertain and make a point at the same time, a la Tolkien.
Ah! That Star-Nosed Mole makes my skin crawl! Who knew such um… interesting… creatures existed 🙂
I have been al ong-time fan of (print) SF&F. The last few years, I have been developing more and more reservations about much of it, which can be extended to other fiction as well.
First, it can be used to depict the world-as-it-ins’t in a very convincing and attractive way that has an ideological subtext. Or at least values that we shouldn’t want to absorb.
For instance, Ursula K. Le Guin’s anarcho-communist planet Annares in The Dispossessed. When I was university age, it seemed such a good way of organising society – in fact, there were a few years when I held it as a principle that I should not take any job that would not exist in a society set up on such lines. And the attractiveness of the narrative made it seem very realistic, and it was somehow easy for me not to even think of the question, “If we really organised society like this, how would people really behave?” I didn’t even think about looking at how Israeli kibbutzim (the most obvious real-world parallel to Annaresti society) had developed.
Second, I think that much SF&F – especially the visual, so I can understand your friend’s attitude – has the effect of accustoming us to the grotesque, and to some extent destroying our proper, moral reactions to grotesque things. (This is probably related to underlying values as well.) It seems to me that it is easier to accept real-world human/animal DNA hybrids, for example, if we have already been exposed to all kinds of bio-SF, because natural repugnance has already been dulled.
“It affected fiction itself.”
Exactly. And it would exclude such writers as Flannery O’Conner, Graham Greene, Chesterton, etc. The ability to write about the Gospel without *writing about the Gospel* – to effectively smuggle it into one’s work, can be very effective & lead to profound & edifying works. The rub is that these works are more apt to be misunderstood.
I, for one, find many works of super hero ficion – OK . . . comics – to be edifying, if they’re done right. Stories about such super-powered characters, who, being human, make all too human choices & have to deal with the consequences. When it’s well-done, I find that fascinating. Not to mention informative in my walk with Christ. (I found Batman Begins & the Spider-Man films to have very Christian overtones.) Same with sci-fi, fantasy, & other genre fiction. Christ even used lillies of the field to teach us about how Christians should live. That type of personification can be very effective & is why CS Lewis’ use of talking animals & mythological creatures in Narnia works so well.
As Jimmy pointed out, some folks don’t like that sort of fiction; it doesn’t work for them. That perfectly OK. Matters of taste are not to be disputed, as the saying goes. A friend of mine likes overly sentimental chick-flicks & she finds support in them. I don’t. To each his own – within reason. Some works are not good for anyone.
Can’t wait for your next post on this, Jimmy!
I think the answer is, in fact, simpler than most of the ones offered above, and applicable to all fiction, although particularly to sci fi and fantasy. When we write fiction, we are seeking to discover some truth about human beings, by putting our characters in various situations and then seeing how they would act. In sci-fi and spec. fic the way this is done is to say, well, what if circumstances/the world was very different, would people still be the same? How would we be the same? How would that affect our lives, the way we think, the way we react? Even aliens are just humans with alterations – so that we can do thought expirements based on questions like, “what would people be like if they were in total control of their emotions and tried to live by logic” (aka Vulcans).
The worst sci-fi is that where the author finds an answer to their question which doesn’tring true with the reader, and doesn’t ring true with what we do know of humanity.
The great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy underwent a major spiritual crisis right about the time he wrote _Anna Karenina_, and part of his quandry involved his ability to create characters so lifelike that they seemed to walk right off the page. He became increasingly concerned that he was tresspassing against God by doing so, because only God can create people.
In his later works, the parable-like short stories that were written to teach moral truths in a simple way for semi-educated ordinary Russians, he tried hard to suppress that ability, to draw the characters in a simplified and cartoon-like way, but many of them still have a vividness that sticks to your mind long after you’ve finished reading them.
I found this for John’s post. It may help him with apologetics:
Argumentum ad Ignorantiam: (appeal to ignorance) the fallacy that a proposition is true simply on the basis that it has not been proved false or that it is false simply because it has not been proved true. This error in reasoning is often expressed with influential rhetoric.
A. The informal structure has two basic patterns:
Statement p is unproved.
Not-p is true.
Statement not-p is unproved.
p is true.
B. If one argues that God or telepathy, ghosts, or UFO’s do not exist because their existence has not been proven beyond a shadow of doubt, then this fallacy occurs.
C. On the other hand, if one argues that God, telepathy, and so on do exist because their non-existence has not been proved, then one argues fallaciously as well.
Hep me to connect. I’m missing the link on where sci-fi hooks up with apologetics. Do the hysterical claims of the “spirit spooky” count?
Perhaps some “evengelical friends” might sometimes take the Sola Scriptura argument too far. I’m used to hearing it applied to Catholic teachings that have a strong basis in Tradition but not in scripture, such as the dogma of purgatory. However, applying the argument (or a close relative of it, anyhow) to sci-fi seems far-fetched.
To be fair, I’ve never met an evangelical who thought there was anything wrong with sci-fi or any other genre of fiction so long as it wasn’t blasphemous or pornographic.
Well, maybe we should apply our time with more fruitful endeavors such as determining how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or whether disembodied spirits really can guide us on our paths to true knowledge.
My first post to John was intended for Allen. Sorry, still getting used to the names being below the dotted line rather than above it.
I grew up Baptist and encountered a number of people who recoiled in horror at the idea of aliens and creatures and their protests were all very similar to what Jimmy said: “God didn’t make this!” This always bugged me, even as a child.
Once, in Sunday school, we had to draw a picture of something that God created. Some kids drew plants, some animals, I started off with a star field. Great, said the teacher. Then I added a “space snake” (yeah, I was a weird kid) taking care to show that it was really thin because there is nothing for it to breath in space.
I thought it was a cool application of my knowledge of space and what kind of creature might live in it. “God didn’t make that!” My teacher scolded. When she showed my parents, their reaction was: “How do you know?” It was one of the few times my parents ever took my side against a teacher and it really made me feel safe to create.
There was nothing especially graphic or revolting about my crayon rendering but there was no mistaking the true revulsion it elicited from my teacher. Armed with nothing more than a box of crayolas and a five-year-old imagination, I was able to cross the line of her comfort zone.
Another day, they made us draw Satan (okay, so maybe the church was weirder than I). The other kids drew horrible ugly creature-like beasts and this pleased the teacher immensely. I drew a picture of a handsome blond man in a white robe — because my mom told me Satan’s power is in his ability to appeal to you and lure you in. Again, the teacher was terrified but my parents were proud.
I am all for respecting people’s comfort zones but my memories give me pause as to their motives. I think some people have dangerously delicate minds.
Hep me to connect. I’m missing the link on where sci-fi hooks up with apologetics. Do the hysterical claims of the “spirit spooky” count?…
Well, maybe we should apply our time with more fruitful endeavors such as determining how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or whether disembodied spirits really can guide us on our paths to true knowledge.
Dan, as a newcomer to this blog, maybe you should wait a while and see what Jimmy’s doing. A lot of the stuff he posts about isn’t apologetics but just stuff he’s interested in.
You’ve been pretty judgemental in your comments so far (such as calling people “immature”). Maybe it would be better to observe a while longer before passing judgment.
Trust me John, I’ve known for years what Jimmy’s up to.
Plus, I’ll bet that Jimmy has clever answers to questions regarding the quantification of angelic beings or the activities of disembodied beings.
God gave us our imaginations. He gave the people who wrote the bible (at the very basic level) the way to express things clearly, but with flourish. The bible is hardly a dry technical manual. He gave us the ability to contruct poems, to use metaphore and simile…
Granted, like the rest of the gifts God has given us (intellect, authority, etc) it all depends on how we use it. but I’d like to at least argue that the condition for the possibility exists that God is OK with us exercizing our imaginations, both as readers and writers. I think the desire to think “outside the box” is part of the human condition, and I think letting our imagination roam allows us to be open to new possibilities, sometimes for conquering problems.
To a degree, scifi and fantacy are a philisophical exercise… if people lived under these conditions, in this sort of a society, this is what they’d think and this is how they’d behave.
We also run into something else… “science fiction” and even fantacy, occationally, have the nasty habit of occationally coming true. A lot of the creations of Jules Vern’s mind has come to pass.. 1984, Brave New World… We’re not just seeing it in the actual inventions a lot of times, but the attitudes that allow those inventions to be used without scruple (engineered humans, dosile or worker humans, etc). People have been imagining dragons and giant lizards well before dinosaurs were discovered… I think that there is a valid balance between pure exercizing the imagination and actually exploring the human condition that happens in scifi/fantacy works. Sometimes we’re seeing into the future, sometimes we’re exploring contemporary issues in a “safe” context.
Gene–comix roxxxxxorr!!!!111oneoneoneone 😉
Not being a writer I can’t really say I have thought much about fiction writing. It strikes me as a mystery similar to music – hard to explain, but also deeply bound up with being human. I can tell you that when I and the other scout leaders I know start telling stories around the campfire it can be difficult to tell where the truth ends and the pure fiction begins!
As an artist there can be a good deal of fictionalizing that goes into even a realistic painting, but this is not in any sense lying. It is more a question of eliminating unnecessary elements that might get in the way of what the artist wants to say. If I want to draw attention to a subject’s eyes, I may need to simplify the background, or subdue or change the color harmony. I might move the subject’s hand or leg to create a composition that directs the viewer more readily to the face. The purpose of all of this is not to lie, but to get to the truth about the eyes.
determining how many angels can dance on the head of a pin
Again?
Angels, of course, are spirits. They do not have material bodies. Only material bodies can occupy space and so exclude other objects. Therefore, the presence of an angel at a location, such as the head of a pin, does not exclude other angels from that location.
In theory, an infinite number of angels could dance on the head of pin. In practice, all of them could. 0:)
Re: ideological baggage in world design
But regular fiction does this too. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started a regular piece of fiction and started rolling my eyes at how the author’s set things up, even in a supposedly realistic setting. But I’m the obnoxious kind of child who would watch a commercial on TV and then tell my mom (as if she didn’t know) what they were really selling.
But I know what you mean. Heinlein is the one who usually over-impresses people with his theories about society. I enjoy him, but I never could take that part seriously for a minute. His influence on others mystifies me.
Re: Tolstoy and character creation
It’s really sad that Tolstoy should have tormented himself with doubts like that over a gift that was undoubtedly given to him by God. I would hope that an artist wouldn’t say, “Oh, no, I draw too realistically!” and try to mess up more.
However, I admit that when I write, I occasionally worry about whether or not I’m treating my characters fairly. It seems mean to ruin their lives with a stroke of the pen, even if their lives never would have existed without that same pen.
Orson Scott Card says that he just tells himself that he is God to those characters and is testing them. But you know, Orson’s a nice guy and all, yet I wouldn’t want him to be God over me. Nooooooo, not a fun experience working for Orson as a character.
Lois McMaster Bujold admits that it’s not fun for her characters for her to play with them, because her main theory of character exploration is to figure out what would be the worst thing that could happen to a character and then do it, so she can see how they react. But Lois’ characters are spunky enough that they don’t just sit there and suffer (or if they do, you don’t have to sit through that part with them). They get up and do something about it, and things come out okay for them (at least until next time). But Lois would be a lot more fun God than Orson, no doubt about it.
“I figure that God gave me my imagination, so I honor Him by using it.”
I agree completely, Ruthann. I don’t think there’s any harm in simply imagining worlds other than this one which God created (as fas as we know). As long as it remains imagination, and not some desperate plea for a different world because ours sucks and that world would be better, what harm does imagination (sci-fi included) do?
(To put that in context, I am a fiction writer (sort of) and a Star Trek, Harry Potter, and fantasy fan, though I’ve never been that into the Star Wars saga.)
I’ve read that at least some of the Fathers felt or thought similarly about pagan (i.e., classical) literature. I think it was St. Augustine who fretted about the time he wasted feeling sorry for Dido. So this isn’t really a new phenomenon. And while I don’t agree with this kind of thinking, it’s really no worse than the Matthew Arnold kind of “worshiping” culture and literature, which is probably an even stronger force, culturally, nowadays.
I have read it before
I ‘m from china a sci-fi fan
sigh my english is poor,so I can’t give a comment on this topic
your bolg give me more usefull infor