Thursday, November 5, 2015

On religion and science-fiction


It occurred to me, as I read through the first three chapters of Genesis today, that I had to treat this as a form of fan fiction.  I’ve always thought that the bible begs to be crossed over with Stargate SG-1, and this might as well be the time to do that.

If you’re unfamiliar with Stargate SG-1 I’ll refer you to this blog post.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.  Spares me from having to re-invent the wheel.


With me so far?

From what I can tell in the Bible we will be dealing with four character classes:

Name
Alignment
Major characteristics
Ori
Neutral Evil
Derives power from siphoning off mental energy through “worship”
Goa’uld
Chaotic evil
Requires human host to survive.
Tau’ri
Neutral Good
Modern humans
Ascended Ancients
Lawful Good
Evolved aliens who want to help others “ascend” to a higher plane/dimension free of suffering

(Character alignment, with examples, for the non-gamer geeks among us.)

You can likely already see where this is going.  I’m going to simplify each character description as I go, so if you go to the Stargate wiki and find yourself drowning in details don’t worry, I’m not going to be that bad.

The whole series starts with a corollary to Clark’s 3rd law.  The law being:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

And the corollary shown here being:

Any sufficiently advanced civilization can distinguish the difference between technology and magic.

In the beginning we see a “god” using “magic” to enslave a group of humans using technology that the humans do not understand and they see as magic and miracles.  The Tau’ri don’t understand it either, but they don’t understand how it works.  They recognize what it is, advanced technology, and from there they derive that the “god” is really an alien, and one hostile to humankind.

When you take this theory, the idea of alien using advanced technology to convince humans they’re gods and manipulation humanity for their own ends, the stories in the Bible start making a lot more sense.  This explanation even smoothes over a lot of the questions and problems people have with the Bible.  Of course it’s also pure fiction but if this interpretation is both fiction and a better fit then how can we be sure the original one is real?

This question lead me straight to Atheism.


Just to be clear I’m using the Youvision bible app, the KJV and the Canonical reading plan simply because it let me start now.  I want to have some wiggle room in case I miss some days over the next year.



So in Genesis Chapter 1 we get a creation story.  That’s it.  It’s not a particularly good creation story, I find the Navajo stories much more entertaining, but as creation myths go it’s all right.  It’s also completely incorrect, science has proven that, but as a historical document, a record of how those people at that time thought the world came about it has some value.  The most interesting verse in the whole thing is Gen 01:29

And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

God wants everyone to be vegan.

For some reason the story from Genesis 1 wraps over into Genesis 2 and doesn’t end until 02:03.  When they wrote this back in 1611* they kind of screwed that up there.

In Gen 02:04 we start what some have called an entirely new creation story.  But upon reading this I have to disagree.  “In the day” means that it was during the time that “God” was making the earth, or claimed he was making the earth.  It says that he lifted a man from the ground and breathed him into life.  Now we know that’s not possible.  But have you considered a form of transporter?



Oh look, it just rose out of the ground!  Add an inhaler of a stimulant and all of a sudden someone who was once somewhere else, sedated, and transported is rising live from the ground.  And then he transports plants and animals and eventually even a woman.  That rib thing also makes no sense, but hey, what a good excuse for taking that tissue sample.

We get into a bit of geography here.  Near as I can tell the writer was trying to explain that this garden, this sealed off, security gated area, was all the way over there that away.  Far from civilization at the time.

But then we come across the whole Tree of Knowledge thing. Why oh why would this god put a tree like that in the middle of his little walled off, sealed garden?  To test their obedience.

See, I believe that Lord God, as he’s been called since Gen 02:03, is really an Ori.  And the Ori derive energy by siphoning it off humans through “worship”.  How better to test to see if your brainwashing on your newly-acquired breeding stock is working then to put a simple test out there and see if they fall for it.  Make the result of their failure something obvious and easily visible, like...nudity!  If they suddenly freak out over being naked that’s an obvious sign that something’s gone wrong.

In Gen. 03 something does indeed go wrong.  A Goa’uld shows up.  The Goa’uld are serpent-like parasites that require human hosts to survive.  In the Stargate SG-1 universe it’s argued that they are actually most of the “gods” out there, especially of the Eqyptian pantheon. 

According to Christian scholars all this was happening around 6,000 BCE.  According to Wikipedia that puts us squarely in the middle of the Neolithic period.

People were farming then.  They were building cities.  In India they were sorting out copper and in China they were learning to write.  Humans were starting the long march towards becoming the Tau’ri.  They were, in other words, entirely useful at that point, a useful resource on a planet full of useful resources.  And here was this Ori, right in the middle of it all, setting up his own little breeding farm.  No self respecting Goa’uld is going to allow that competition to stand.

But they can’t attack directly.  That could lead to thermonuclear size war and ruin this lovely, lush little planet.  So the Goa’uld had to get all Cold War sneaky about it.  So he snuck in there, through the security perimeter, and talked the breeding stock into breaking the rule.  And other than realizing they were naked exactly nothing happens.

Nothing

There was no good reason for them not to eat of that tree, other than that LG said not to.

 LG comes back, gets a quick visual that the brainwashing isn’t holding as well as he would like, and has a temper tantrum equivalent to “I was going to make you special!  I was going to take care of you!  Now you can just go out and get a job like everyone else!”

So Adam and Eve do just that.  And LG sticks a guard with a lightsaber at the gate to his compound to keep them out. 

Notice what scares LG the most though.  Humans knowing the difference between good and evil.  Humans having knowledge.

See, the whole thing still hangs together.




*  FYI, the bible was not faxed down from heaven

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Version

The book I'm reading was published in 1611.  It has a great deal of historical significance, but that's about it.

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