I’m currently watching the Netflix adaptation of The Three Body Problem (or 3 Body Problem, as they have styled the title). The dialogue and exposition writing is so much better than the recent Avatar: The Last Airbender that I could cry. I finished episode six last night, and it’s taking a lot of my willpower bandwidth to continue working on schoolwork instead of finishing the final two episodes. It’s been a while since I read Liu Cixin’s book, and I have not read the other two books in the series, though with the amount of enjoyment I am getting from the show, they may move to the top of my summer reading list.
With all those caveats on my own ignorance in place, I’ve noticed an interesting religious theme in the show. In the first episode, Vera, a scientist who’s shortly going to commit suicide, asks another, “Do you believe in God?” This question is seemingly related to the fact that the particle accelerator they both work at is spitting out “Alice in Wonderland”-type results, like all the other colliders in the world. This implies that the only reason to consider religion is because you encounter things that don’t make sense.
Revelations in the show make it seem likely that Vera, like another protagonist, has also encountered a mysterious human who tells her that “the Lord” will take care of her if she stops her research and perhaps force her to commit suicide if she doesn’t. Later, it becomes clear what this group of fanatics refer to as “the Lord” is actually a group of technologically advanced aliens. This is a common enough science fiction explanation for God, but what makes this framing interesting to me is that these humans know that their Lord is a group of aliens. They are under no illusions that anything supernatural is going on. All of the aliens’ marvelous capabilities are scientific in their minds, and yet they still frame the aliens as a god, one who cares deeply about humanity’s best interests, and worship them accordingly.
Continue reading “Religion as a Technology”
