Twitter Instagram Facebook Youtube Linkedin Rss

Science Fiction

All //Playlists //Podcasts //Responses
16 July 2020

Religion and Science Fiction

Playlist
Learn about why SF is great material for studying religion while enjoying these episodes about Star Wars, fictional religions, and religion in SF.
Read More
8 June 2019

Science Fiction and the Para-Religious

Response
[I]t is notable how infrequently religion appears as a major theme in the personal lives of famous science fiction authors and how many, including those for whom religion is a major theme in their work, are themselves either atheists or practitioners of idiosyncratic or unorganized alternative spiritualities...
Read More
30 May 2019

Navigating the Religious Worlds of Science Fiction and Video Games

Response
There’s always another thing to see as data for religious studies, but widening the boundary for what counts as data comes with a price. Every new category is a multiplication. When your choices are infinite, then explaining your choices becomes an obligation.  
Read More
27 May 2019

Science Fiction, Video Games, and Religion

Podcast
Science fiction and video games are more visible than ever as their popularity reaches record numbers. From classic arcade games to modern open-world sandbox simulators that require hundreds of hours to complete fully, science fiction is one of the most common gaming genres. This podcast explores the ways religion and science fiction appear together in these cultural products, asks how gamers see the value of this play, and how we seek belief in things that are 'out of this world' as a means to escape the present by sharing our hopes about the future.
Read More
5 May 2016

Time Travel and Fictions of Science

Response
Despite his best scholarly efforts, Tylor’s Anahuac is “fiction” in the same way that Europeans have drawn on their vast reservoir of myths, legends, and stories of Amazons and the Lost Tribes of Israel in their mastery of the Americas. In 1856, Edward Burnett Tylor, of inscribed with “Huitzilopochtli the god of war, Teoyaomiqui his wife, and Mictlanteuctli the god of hell” all compiled into a gruesome symbol of Aztec religion. “There is little doubt," Tylor opined, “that this is the famous war-idol which stood on the great teocalliof Mexico,...
Read More
2 May 2016

Popular Culture, Dr. Who, and Religion

Podcast
Go back to 2013 to discuss Religion & Pop Culture (and #DoctorWho) with James F. McGrath! It's a big universe, and sometimes things get lost in time and space.
Read More
24 September 2015

Human Consciousness & Religious Reality

Response
Essentially, Kripal calls out the religious studies world for not having a sufficient appreciation of the power of imagination and invites scholars and the interested public into a new comparativism that moves away from strict materialism. It was real to me. There I was, curled into a corner, comforter wrapped around my shaking limbs and sweating torso, twisted in terror in the sinister hours of the morning.
Read More
4 April 2012

Divine Inspiration Revisited

Response
When encountered for the first time, the idea of a fiction-based religion might seem quite ’far out’ and counter-intuitive. How is it possible to mix together religion (that, supposedly, deals with faith and so with a truth of some sort) and works of popular culture, which are clearly created by human imagination, and so are by definition not true?
Read More
2 April 2012

Fiction-Based Religions

Podcast
The majority of those who identified as a Jedi on the 2001 UK census were mounting a more-or-less satirical or playful act of non-compliance; nevertheless, a certain proportion of those were telling the truth. How does a religion constructed from the fictional Star Wars universe problematise how we conceptualise other religions, and the stories they involve?
Read More
1 / 0

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The views expressed in podcasts, features and responses are the views of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Religious Studies Project or our sponsors. The Religious Studies Project is produced by the Religious Studies Project Association (SCIO), a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (charity number SC047750).