Wow. That’s the only way I can describe this witout risk of moderation. Just–wow.
Also, I never knew that all of the historians, anthropologists, and paleontologists are simply gathering practacal knowlegde biding time until they eventually visit the past.
“A ship is safe in a harbor, but that is not what ships are for.”
Otherwise, why’d we ever leave the Olduvai Gorge? I mean, it’s a long walk to Tierra del Fuego and all.
I don’t think we’ll ever go to other planets with an eye towards relieving population stress on Earth. Which means we need to think of planetary colonization in other terms, probably economic. If self-sustaining colonies are ever developed, how, exactly, will those colonies feel about forever being under the heel of Earth-based corporations and government?.. how’d that work out for the UK?
Someone mentioned a pithy line from Babylon 5 about the folly of not expanding out beyond one’s home planet. The more I think about the impact such an expansionist policy (assuming light speed is a hard limit) the more I think colonization beyond our own solar system is bound to lead towards a path of mutual destruction. The idea that, say, a treaty could be negotiated between interstellar opponents, across light-years, strikes me as giggly improbable, given just how difficult it would be for either party to monitor the distant actions of the other.
ETA: But just to be clear, and as an atheist with his own doubts about interplanetary and interstellar colonization, I think the idea that colonization of this sort is an “atheist mythology” is ludicrous. Atheism is a singular position on a single issue. The absence of a belief in deities. That’s it. There is nothing else inherent in atheism, nothing else that binds us. Even secular humanism, which is the closest I think you can get to a set of commonly shared/held atheist values in the west, has nothing to say about colonization of space. And, as noted, a great many theists also hold to the idea that we can/will/should colonize space, so it’s by no means an exclusively atheist notion.
Why aren’t we chomping at the bit to build colonies in the center of Antarctica or the Atacama Desert or the Empty Quarter? They are orders of magnitude easier to reach and more hospitable than anywhere else in the entire universe off-Earth. Do you dream of millions of people living their enture lives sealed up in metal tubes there as a romantic ideal? How many people do you think is enough people? A trillion? A trillion trillion trillion? Is the universe not fulfilling until every corner of it is filled with packed metal hovels? Until every planet is covered with nothing except one big city?
I find interplanetary (let alone interstellar) colonization to be extraordinarily unlikely, based on what I know. Bearded man from the sky descending to declare himself our creator (or other supernatural religious events,) even more unlikely. A human-level AI… I don’t really know enough about that field to even guess how far away it is; possibly because of my ignorance, it seems like the closest to possible of any of these, but still so far off as to be fantasy more than reality.
None of them seem to be things I’d see in my lifetime, and none of them are things I’d plan for, much less plan my life around. So I’d say the influence as “mythology” compared to the mainstream religions is pretty minor; I certainly don’t see myself heading to the local atheist church to pray for the AI and space colonization efforts in the hopes of future gains.
I don’t mind them as fantasy, and I don’t think that’s the same as a mythology that becomes part of peoples’ lives. I also don’t mind telepathy in fantasy, or any number of other things that I find unlikely to the point of near-impossible. Fictional exploration of ideas isn’t a mythology either, and I don’t think Harry Potter fans view their favorite books the same as religious followers view their own.
I can’t say absolutely that none of these things will happen, since my knowledge is not absolute. Which maybe makes me a soft atheist, or even a ‘hard agnostic,’ but bearded man really, really seems far out there. Humans have developed technology over time that allow us to do things that seemed impossible in the past, so there’s at least some room for doubt that we know enough to declare “We cannot invent technology X;” perhaps there’s something we’ll learn that will make life in space more plausible, in 1,000 or even 10,000 years. Human beings have existed that long, so there’s a chance we still will be around and will advance more. Bearded man from the sky requires even wider stretches of imagination, for me.
Let’s dispel a myth here. The purpose of science is to observe how things work objectively, without resorting to opinions or predisposed outcomes. The purpose of science is NOT to disprove religion or the existence of gods. The purpose of science is NOT to establish a competing religion or mythology.
Many scientific observations DO conflict with ideas espoused by religion. Because of science, we know the heart is not located in the center of the human body, something that religious ideals held sacred. We actually cut open corpses and found out otherwise. Because of science, we know that Earth is not the center of the universe, because we observed and recorded the behavior of heavenly bodies. Again, religion had established that it was, and it was considered blasphemy to claim otherwise.
Scientific observations are made from as much of an unbiased view as possible, and that includes rejecting myth and religious teachings as well as preconceived secular notions. The “tribalism” as you so call it does not result from seeing lightning hit a hut and thinking the gods are angry. Right now, the possibility of space travel involves much speculation, and our capability has only gotten to the point where it takes us 40 years to send a table-sized object out of the solar system. These speculations are based on observable facts, and belief in what MAN can do, not what myth can do.
Many core truths are unfalsifiable. I only know a little bit about Hinduism, but I know that in Eastern religions the universe is very old, which puts them above Christianity at least.
From here.
The year before Sputnik. Astronomers are not experts on space travel.
I don’t think many people think star travel is in our immediate future. But where will be we 2,000 years from now? Assuming we still exist, that is.
again, I don’t think science fiction authors are the best people to consult on this. there’s a big difference between saying “Star Trek correctly predicted the cell phone” (which isn’t really a big leap considering cell phones still use radio) and “We’ll be able to do something that violates all known laws of physics.”
still here on earth. Warp drive and transporters will still be fiction.
Fundamentalist Christianity exists despite your lack of belief in it. While there are different interpretations of the Bible, all Christian sects trace their beliefs to the Bible in some way.
I don’t know what an atheist sect would be, but I’ve never heard atheists trace their lack of belief to anything - though in some cases they may get ideas from reading.
I’ve listened to testimony of several former evangelical Christians who became atheists, and none attribute their deconversion to any sort of tract.
Clarke was not writing as an sf writer, he was writing as a futurist and the person who first thought up the synchronous orbit for communications satellites.
There are ways of getting to the stars, especially closer ones, without warp drives. L. Sprague de Camp, who did not believe in ftl travel, had a whole series of books based on slower than light interstellar travel. It is hardly a rare topic in sf.
Yes, I enjoy SF, but most of it has exactly as much to do with a plausible future as The Lord of the Rings has to do with a plausible past.
I’ve been reading Asimov’s from 20 years ago to catch up, and it strikes me that stories set on Earth, some set in 2019, are as likely to show technology out of date as technology we don’t have yet. Lots of them have people still using fax machines.
But science fiction is not at all about predicting the future. You knew that, didn’t you?
Tell that to the people (in this thread and elsewhere) who believe that just because SF writers imagined a technology means that it is not only possible but likely. They are the ones that think that SF is not only predicting the future, but foretelling it.
calling yourself a “futurist” doesn’t mean you have any clue what is possible or will be possible in the future.
SCIENCE FICTION IS NOT REAL. That’s why it’s fiction. Just because some guy can imagine some shit and write books about it doesn’t mean it’s even remotely possible.
So, what part of L. Sprague de Camp’s idea for space travel is impossible?
All I did was identify the person who said something. In fact, I think Clarke was wrong with his first law - I prefer the science fiction author (Asimov) who corrected Clarke with his own corollary
“When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion — the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.”
It’s important to recognize the difference between science fiction based on actual science and science fiction that’s not. Just because “warp drive” is nonsense doesn’t mean that “rockets to the moon” are nonsense - even though both of them were science fiction at one point.
Thank you for elaborating on my poorly stated idea.
I agree with your post. I may sound like a conservative guy, but according to the Political Compass I am a libertarian. I am just disappointed with educated people’s readiness to take media constructs for reality. Science shows spend more time commenting on speculations about various types of multiverse than presenting the criticism made by Penrose or Steinhardt to the inflationary paradigm. I am baffled by the idea supported by friends of mine (many of whom are IT specialists) that one day robots will become so intelligent that they will want to break free. Not only do these people have difficulty understanding that hardware or software is not endowed with willingness, but they also come up with pop culture concepts (such as mutation of robotic equipment) to build a discourse bordering on pseudoscience. On the Internet it gets even worse because communities tend to behave tribally in that anyone who questions ideas held dear by the most influential members of the group gets stigmatized and regarded as a ‘troll’.
Actually, what had established that the Earth was at the center of the universe and that orbits must always be circular (and if necessary, circles upon circles, because the one thing that wasn’t acceptable was abandoning the circles) was a conflation of religion with the philosophy passed as “science” of Aristoteles, a guy whose head would have exploded if he’d ever encountered the actual scientific method. People who try to justify their geocentrism through biblical texts are looking in the wrong book.