Comments on: Science fiction, religion and rationality

By: Stephen J.

Stephen J. — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:22:29 +0000

Feh. I’m unthrilled with rationality as a supreme good myself; I tend to go with words from Tom Stoppard (hardly a raving religious nutter) on this topic, from his play JUMPERS:

“The National Gallery is a monument to irrationality! Every concert hall is a monument to irrationality! — and so is a nicely kept garden, or a lover’s favour, or a home for stray dogs! …(I)f rationality were the criterion for things being allowed to exist, the world would be one gigantic field of soya beans!”

As for the idea that having the debate is more important than reaching a conclusion, to this too I say rubbish. If that were true, and acknowledged to be true, what would be the point of having a debate at all? (And if you want an example of an irrational crank who’s poisoning debate, check out P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula, who desecrated a Eucharistic host and put the photos on his blog to “prove” God wouldn’t strike him dead. Being a crank more interested in drowning your opponent’s views than disproving them is a matter of attitude, not position.)

I love science fiction, but any belief that it’s necessarily suited to be a voice for optimistic rationality and progress because it examines scientific possibility is a complete mismatch of criteria. “Progress” and “optimism” are irrational values that are set before the science; they aren’t deduced from it.

By: GLP

GLP — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 07:52:49 +0000

Thanks for this neat summing up. I think the Mundane and Optimistic manifestos are brave and necessary experiments, but for me, the *story* always has to come first (and I’m speaking here as someone who has a story in Jetse’s forthcoming “Shine” anthology). If I come up with a good story idea, I will write it, irrespective of whether it fits into one of these categories. If it does fit in, that’s all well and good; but if it doesn’t, that’s fine too. The thing that has always attracted me to SF is the sheer range of possible settings, and the range of possible stories to be told – the size of the playground, if you will.

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:01:36 +0000

Re: prescriptivism — in the Tao Te Ching it’s said “He who would rule the empire in order to do something with it will destroy the empire.” The same thing, I think, is true of art. It isn’t a tool for achieving some goal.

By: Cheryl

Cheryl — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:03:11 +0000

I tend to think that’s what the speculative genres do, at their best. They provide a platform for working out cultural, religious, and scientific “what ifs”. I’d add horror to the list of fiction genres that work in a similar way.

None of this excludes there simply being a good story behind everything, of course.