“I realised that science couldn’t answer any of the really interesting questions, so I turned to philosophy. Been searching for god ever since.” Chantilas. Red Planet.
I really love this quote, it might possibly be one of my favourite quotes from a movie. It is I admit from my favourite science fiction film, a Mars movie. But the quote delivered from a character who is a philosopher (as well as a surgeon or something) during a quiet moment in the story is just, it’s great.
I feel like it should clash with my atheistic thoughts and notions.
But I like the idea of god, not in a belief structure sort of way, but in a fictional idea sort of way.
I don’t believe in god, I think it’s frankly a silly proposition that there’s some deity that influences our actions or that we must atone to.
But in fiction I think it’s a great concept, it’s a great concept to play against other things.
Maybe not god as such, belief might be a better term for how I like it to work in fiction.
Having god or gods for that matter in fiction is a little bit of a dead end.
The Greeks and Romans had it right with their gods in their plays, poems and other fictions that they created. Those gods, the polytheistic religions from those civilisations had flawed gods that aside from being immortal had the flaws and problems of humans, they drank, they had sex, they fought and they weren’t all powerful.
Which is the problem in any fiction that’s written, you need to balance the powers of your characters and the world that they inhabit. Having people, places, things with too much power upsets that narrative. It means you can’t write a plot with super-powered elements in it because whenever there’s a problem then the all powerful thing would just come along and BANG, that’s it problem solved. There’s no problem solving process that goes along with trying to sort out a problem, it’s just fixed and then that’s it.
Then there’s free will. With god around you don’t have any.
You already start with “original sin”, whatever that is, and then spend your whole life trying to atone for this sin that’s built into you. Which suggests the lack of any free will. If you had free will then you’d have the choice not to start with the sin, or to make choices to avoid the sin implantation in the first place.
Or, alternatively if god has a plan, then why should we bother striving, why should we try and control our lives if god has planned it all?
Returning to the quote, I could simply cut out the god bit and quote it as “I realised that science couldn’t answer any of the really interesting questions, so I turned to philosophy.” But that still doesn’t make how I think any clearer. I do think that science has all the answers.
I certainly think science has the answers to the really interesting questions, or at least will have a stab at the interesting questions until someone comes along with an even better go at it. Scientists want to be challenged, with proof, not god. Though if god showed up that’d be an interesting conversation (or not).
I really love this quote, it might possibly be one of my favourite quotes from a movie. It is I admit from my favourite science fiction film, a Mars movie. But the quote delivered from a character who is a philosopher (as well as a surgeon or something) during a quiet moment in the story is just, it’s great.
I feel like it should clash with my atheistic thoughts and notions.
But I like the idea of god, not in a belief structure sort of way, but in a fictional idea sort of way.
I don’t believe in god, I think it’s frankly a silly proposition that there’s some deity that influences our actions or that we must atone to.
But in fiction I think it’s a great concept, it’s a great concept to play against other things.
Maybe not god as such, belief might be a better term for how I like it to work in fiction.
Having god or gods for that matter in fiction is a little bit of a dead end.
The Greeks and Romans had it right with their gods in their plays, poems and other fictions that they created. Those gods, the polytheistic religions from those civilisations had flawed gods that aside from being immortal had the flaws and problems of humans, they drank, they had sex, they fought and they weren’t all powerful.
Which is the problem in any fiction that’s written, you need to balance the powers of your characters and the world that they inhabit. Having people, places, things with too much power upsets that narrative. It means you can’t write a plot with super-powered elements in it because whenever there’s a problem then the all powerful thing would just come along and BANG, that’s it problem solved. There’s no problem solving process that goes along with trying to sort out a problem, it’s just fixed and then that’s it.
Then there’s free will. With god around you don’t have any.
You already start with “original sin”, whatever that is, and then spend your whole life trying to atone for this sin that’s built into you. Which suggests the lack of any free will. If you had free will then you’d have the choice not to start with the sin, or to make choices to avoid the sin implantation in the first place.
Or, alternatively if god has a plan, then why should we bother striving, why should we try and control our lives if god has planned it all?
Returning to the quote, I could simply cut out the god bit and quote it as “I realised that science couldn’t answer any of the really interesting questions, so I turned to philosophy.” But that still doesn’t make how I think any clearer. I do think that science has all the answers.
I certainly think science has the answers to the really interesting questions, or at least will have a stab at the interesting questions until someone comes along with an even better go at it. Scientists want to be challenged, with proof, not god. Though if god showed up that’d be an interesting conversation (or not).