I only saw the series premiere, but I understand that the revival of BSG has since developed some religious themes underlying the Cylon-Colonial conflict. Cylons = monotheists, Colonial humans = polytheists?
What’s the story? The more details, the better. Thanks.
I’m not an expert, but they seem to share the Greek pantheon: Apollo, Athena, etc. Then again, they often refer to their gods as “The Lords of Kobol” (Cobal?), and it’s unclear if this is the Greek Deities or some other ones. We don’t really know much detail.
Roslin (the president) either truly believes or is finding it politically helpful to appear to believe that she is a prophet sent to lead the survivors to Earth (a mythical planet which their holy books say is the origin of humans.) To do so, she needed a religious relic (the arrow of Apollo) to be brought to a temple (The Temple of Athena), which then revealed a star map to show her the way to Earth.
What it seemed to show, actually, was the night sky as it appears someplace on Earth, with the constellations the Galactica planets were named after: Caprica, Geminon, Sagitarion, etc. (These constellations, of course, being the twelve in the zodiac we have chosen for the signs in astrology.) Presumably, knowing the orientation of these stars from Earth would let one figure out where Earth should be.
The Cylons, on the other hand, believe in only one god, and he’s on the side of the Cylons. That’s really all we know, except that Six-in-Baltar’s-head has him convinced that God has a plan for exterminating (or perhaps evolving?) the humans, and it revolves around Six and Baltar having a child that Six isn’t pregnant with: Boomer-Two is. But it’s somehow “their” (Six and Baltar’s) child. I don’t really get that part. Maybe it’s meant to be obscure, or maybe I just misunderstood. But there’s some indication that some unborn baby is a messiah-like figure.
The Humans believe in a what seems to be very similar to the Pagan Greek Religion. Apollo is mentioned as being “Son of Zeus…named for a God”. The gods themselves are also known as the Lords of Kobol, who have names like Athena, etc. They are worshipped sometimes by the use of small(handheld) featureless idols(one that looks very primtive, only have the basic human form and breasts, but no face or anything disguishing). “Gods” is typically used instead of "God.
Instead of the Bible, their holy work is the “Sacred Scrolls”, which are a couple thousand years old. One of which, the Scroll of Pythia(Pythia was the Delphic Oracle in our history), describes the humans leaving kobol sometime in the past, presumably because they had offended the gods. One of the Gods, athena, apparently sacrificed herself and her tomb is on Kobol. It contains a map to Earth.
We don’t know too much. They’ve been rather vague about the whole thing.
The cylons even more so. The cylons talk about the true God, and while nothing specific, the language sounds rather christian. They also believe that when a cylon dies, it’s soul is sent back to the other cylons and reborn into a new body, so there’s a kind of reincarnation sense there.
One thing I’m curious about the Cylons, is why do they need a god? When a humanoid Cylon’s body dies, its consciousness is transferred back to the Cylons, and wakes up in a duplicate body. Isn’t that immortality? Why would a being who is immortal have any use for God?
There seems to be some confusion. Cylons are confident their consciousness will live on in a new body, yet there is some concern over how God will handle their soul.
If I were immortal, I think I’d seriously question the need to keep God around.
While there are many places on Earth where you could see all 12 zodiac constallations, there isn’t anywhere where you could see all 12 at the same time. Some of them would be on the dayside of the Earth.
Also, in that scene, you could ONLY see the stars in the given constallations, many other stars would have been visable. So it was kind of like they were in some bizarre planetarium that only showed them what they needed to see.
Yes, that seems to be the case, assuming that the Cylon tortured by Starbuck and eventually tossed out of an airlock on Roslin’s command was telling the truth, which I believe he was.
On what do you base this part of your claim? I have not seen anything that indicates dead Cylons wake up in new bodies.
Earth is not the mythical origin of humans, but the mythical destination of the lost “13th tribe” of humans who left Kobal. The other twelve tribes founded the 12 Colonies named after the Zodiac. Kobal is the mythical (well, less mythical now that they’ve been there) origin of humans.
I suspect, for no particular reason, that the names of the “Lords of Kobal” are “translated” as Greek theonymns (hows that for a handy made-up word?) for our convenience–so that we can recognize the names instantly as those of gods and have some sense of what they might stand for, without lots of awkward exposition. (E.g., “We need the Arrow of Flandlethwarp to find Earth!” “Flandlethwarp? You mean the God of Light?” “You know any other Flandlethwarps, you frakkin’ idiot?”)
The Cylons definitely use distinctively Christian language in talking about God. (Well, they did before this whole pregnancy thing. That’s confused the issue quite a bit.) Six in particular (but not uniquely) likes to talk about things like “sin,” “repentance,” and “forgiveness,” “commandments,” and “false idols.” Why they need a god (and a different on than humans worship) is a mystery, but I suspect it has to do with their formation of a seperate but fully “human” society. Humans have a strong need to worship, and I doubt it is only because we are mortal. (Hindus believe in reincarnation as well, but have lots of gods.) And of course, if there is a god, whether one “needs” a god or not is totally irrelevant. Even if you don’t believe in God, the Cylons could still worship the “true” one–it is fiction after all.
I’m wondering why the toasters are monotheistic.
If computers are binary, shouldn’t they worship a god that is in two parts?
in the pilot the 2 different cylons explain that when they die they upload their memories to a waiting (well the waiting part is not certain, we still dont know if the new body has no memories or some core set) body, that body can now tell the rest of the cylons what it knows.
Additionally, I thinks there’s some evidence we may have seen it work. During the episode where Leoben is captured and tortured, at one point Leoben tells Starbuck she’s “special.” Or something along those lines. Later, when Starbuck was back on Caprica, Boomer told her (paraphrasing) “the Cylons know you’re special. You know that, Leoben told you.” To me this means after they spaced Leoben, his consciousness did make it back to the Cylons (we now know the Cylons have always been relatively close behind the fleet), and he reported the events of his experience with Starbuck. Otherwise, Boomer would have been making a pretty big guess, just hoping Leoben had actually met Starbuck at some point, and told her that. That could be part of the Leoben program I guess, “if you ever get close to Starbuck, inform her she’s special.” But I still think it’s a pretty big gamble for Boomer to assume he ever actually did.
Also, and this is even more tenuous, but during the same Starbuck/Leoben episode, the main bargaining chip Leoben had to avoid being killed immediately, was that he’d planted a nuclear explosive somewhere in the fleet. Starbuck needed to find out where. Adama, suspecting the full extent of Cylon abilities, specifically went to the morgue and pulled out the previously killed Leoben’s body. In the presence of this body, he called CIC and directed them to order all ships in the fleet to spread out, no closer than [whatever it was] distance apart, to minimize any damage caused by an explosion. He leaned close to the dead Leoben and said either “know,” or “no.” Either way, it seemed to me he was counting on the dead Leoben’s body to still have the capability to transmit this info to the still living Leoben. Shortly after that, the living Leoben changed his strategy and admitted he didn’t really have bomb.
Of course, I could just be reading too much into it.