Holy Sci-Fi!: Where Science Fiction and Religion Intersect

by Paul J. Nahin

Can a computer have a soul? Are religion and science mutually exclusive? Is there really such a thing as free will? If you could time travel to visit Jesus, would you (and should you)? For hundreds of years, philosophers, scientists and science fiction writers have pondered these questions and many more. In Holy Sci-Fi! , popular writer Paul Nahin explores the fertile and sometimes uneasy relationship between science fiction and religion. With a scope spanning the history of religion, philosophy and literature, Nahin follows religious themes in science fiction from Feynman to Foucault and from Asimov to Aristotle. An intriguing journey through popular and well-loved books and stories, Holy Sci-Fi! shows how sci-fi has informed humanity's attitudes towards our faiths, our future and ourselves.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy

242 pages, Paperback

First published April 9, 2014

About the author

Paul J. Nahin is professor emeritus of electrical engineering at the University of New Hampshire and the author of many best-selling popular math books, including The Logician and the Engineer and Will You Be Alive 10 Years from Now? (both Princeton).

Reviews

[Steve Gross · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun book. The big flaw is that the author uses Christianity as his baseline religion (which he acknowledges right away) which leads him down certain paths and not others. There's really nothing to be learned from this book, either for or against, but it's a fun read.

[cypher · Rating 4 out of 5]

the topic is interesting and so was some of the information, even if the logic behind some statements was not completely sound, like the arguments for God not being omnipotent, for example (something like God could not give people freedom of choice, if people don't have it, so that means God is not omnipotent...how about, if people don't have it, God did not wish to give it, at least as an option, or even God can't make 1+1 not equal 2, so God is not omnipotent...how about God made those rules to begin with the way it was desired, and if God would have wanted, all of physics could have looked different, with deferent rules like that making logical sense, at least as an option...it's more about thinking logical in abstract concepts...the logical arguments in this book were not the best to "prove" the points sometimes).
the book is also grasping at straws a bit too much sometimes, in the desire to find things which fit the topic (the robots of Asimov, for example, the discussion about man creating the robots and what it means to be "master"...it kinda fits, but it's not really the subject of the most significance to the topic, in my opinion, is man God or not, and how, for the robots).

the book is still interesting overall, and it's obviously trying to summaries a lot of content (many sci-fi works have touched on religion in some way) into a single book. an extra point for the work involved.