The Theology of Doctor Who. Chapter 1: SCIENCE AND RELIGION part I

CHAPTER 1
SCIENCE AND RELIGION

(part I)

TARDIS-Worship
Throughout Doctor Who’s forty years, religion is almost exclusively portrayed as primitive and superstitious[1]. Religious people are caricatured as naive and infantile, for example the character Gwyneth from The Unquiet Dead’[2], who insists that alien invaders are angels sent from her dead parents. Religious faith is seen as a blinkered, unquestioning belief, as symbolised by the blind vicar in Remembrance of the Daleks. Religious people are shown to be easily manipulated, for example, 1967’s The Underwater Menace features a great farce as heroes and villains go to and from a secret room behind a statue of the living goddess Amdo, all whilst the worshipper’s eyes are closed in prayer.

Inherent in this picture of religion is the idea that religious minds create superstitious and fanciful explanations for rational events. For example, when the TARDIS lands in 1964’s Marco Polo a local, Tegana, seeks to put the crew to death as evil spirits[3]. In the same season The Aztecs sees companion Barbara mistaken for the goddess Yetaxa and faced with the interesting dilemma of changing history in order to end human sacrifice. It is a recurring sci-fi formula: The protagonists arrive in a primitive world: On witnessing our heroes’ superior technology the people of this world either fear them as evil magicians, or worship them as gods. This would eventually give rise to Arthur C. Clarke’s third law, which states: ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’[4]

This principle, combined with the time-travel plot device, allows the Doctor and his companions to become the inspiration for mythology. Appropriately titled, The Myth Makers begins with the Doctor hailed as Zeus.[5] By season 14’s The Face of Evil, the Doctor should perhaps be unsurprised to find himself heralded, this time as the ‘Evil One’. Finding his own face carved into a mountainside, he realises that he had left his imprint on an earlier visit. More commonly, though, it is some ancient alien force that is deified[6].

Alien Gods
“Now, creatures like those have been seen over and over again throughout the history of man… and man has turned them into myths… Gods… or Devils. But they are neither. They are, in fact, creatures from another world.”[7]

Again, this is a common idea in Science Fiction and inspired Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods[8], which postulated that space-travellers inspired ancient religion and provided advanced technology. This theory has been used to explain ancient mysteries such as the Antikythera mechanism[9], the Annunaki seal[10] and the vision of Ezekiel[11].[12]

The most openly critical expression of the von Däniken principle is Gene Roddenberry’s unmade episode of Star Trek entitled The God Thing[13] in which Christ is revealed to be one avatar of a ‘Universal Lawgiver’ machine. The machine was to have visited Earth again, reinterpreting the law, but it malfunctioned, leaving us with a two thousand year-old outdated morality.[14]

Science and Sorcery.
“As time goes by and our civilisation grows up more, the
model of the universe that we share will become progressively less
superstitious, less small-minded, less parochial. It will lose its remaining
ghosts, hobgoblins and spirits, it will be a realistic model, correctly
regulated and updated by incoming information from the real world.”
–Richard Dawkins [15]

With mankind blinded by superstition and worshipping what it cannot understand, it is our hero’s place to dispel the myth with a rational, and indeed scientific, explanation. This idea takes centre stage during Jon Pertwee’s tenure as the Doctor. The production team sought to mirror the successful formula of the 1950s’ Quatermass serials[16], resulting in greater focus on the Doctor’s role as a scientist and heavy reliance on the ‘rational explanation’ device. The finest example of this is the 1971 occult epic The Daemons, which will be in greater depth in Chapter 3.[17]

Both in the von Däniken principle, and in the ‘rational explanation’ trope, Doctor Who supports the idea of scientific supersessionism. What was once a mystery can now be explained by science. Weather systems and natural disasters no longer require a supernatural or theistic interpretation. As science explains more and more, God must retreat, becoming, as Julian Huxley has it, “Not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat.”[18]

The problem with this picture of scientific supersessionism is that it depends on a rather simplistic understanding of the origins of religious belief. For Richard Dawkins, belief in God develops as an umbrella explanation for natural phenomena, biological ones in particular. “Our own existence once presented the greatest of all mysteries”[19], begins The Blind Watchmaker, but no longer: “Darwin and Wallace solved it”[20]. Any motivation beyond this teleological, God-of the-Gaps understanding is unperceivable. Indeed, all Dawkins’ vitriolic criticisms are mere footnotes to one simple assertion: That Darwinian Evolution[21] has dispensed with the need for belief in God, because the primary reason for believing in a God is to explain biological complexity.

In a variation of the classic ‘computer as god’ plot[22] 1977’s The Face of Evil (originally entitled The Day God Went Mad) sees the Doctor join forces with the savage Leela from the tribe of the Sevateem[23]. Leela has been cast out from the tribe for questioning the will of their god, Xoanon. The mythologisation of science is central to the plot, as the Doctor discovers that Xoanon is simply a malfunctioning computer. Leela stows-away on board the TARDIS and throughout their travels the Doctor attempts to have a civilizing influence on her. There is some limited success in curbing her violent tendencies, though she is strong-willed enough to retain her warrior ways. The Doctor has more success in other areas. Eighteen episodes later Leela remarks: “I too used to believe in magic, but the Doctor has taught me about science. It is better to believe in science.”[24]

Of course, Doctor Who is quite right to attack superstition, closed-mindedness, unquestioning obedience and blind faith. A problem arises, however, when religious belief, or - more correctly - theistic belief[25], is almost exclusively cast in this light[26]. Doctor Who’s criticism is not merely against the negative elements of some religion, rather, it paints all religion as negative, the very antithesis of what the Doctor stands for. Unlike Babylon 5, there is no example of what good religion looks like. In Doctor Who the opposite of bad religion is not good religion. It is science.

The Conflict Thesis
In its scientific supersessionism and caricature of primitive religion, Doctor Who is entirely dependant on a conflict thesis[27]. The idea of a war between science and religion, with science the undoubted victor, is a widely accepted view in the public consciousness but science fiction is both particularly susceptible to it and acts as a carrier. Religion makes a useful foil, portrayed as diametrically opposed to the scientific ideal of empiricism.

Ernest Lucas holds Thomas Huxley personally responsible for the propagation of the conflict thesis, and shows that a stream of philosophers and scientists has steadily objected to it from as early as 1883.[28] Even Einstein rejected the notion that ‘Belief should be replaced increasingly by knowledge.’[29] Barbour’s 1966 “Issues in Science and Religion” is a turning of the tide, correcting common misconceptions about Darwin, Galileo and Newton, who ‘Whatever problems they may have had with Christian authority or Christian orthodoxy, were people for whom religion mattered.’[30] John Polkinghorne comments: “Only in the media, and in popular and polemical scientific writing, does there persist the myth of the light of pure scientific truth confronting the darkness of obscurantist religious error.”[31]

Given its consistent refutation, the continuing sway of the Conflict Thesis is quite disturbing. To speculate, its survival in the face of such opposition could be due to its sociological usefulness[32]. The popular notion of scientific rationalism as the antithesis of religion has been wide-spread since the Scopes trial, where making a decision in favour of Darwinian evolution could also represent rejection of an oppressive religious regime. Since then, the caricature account of two conflicting world-views, one depending on fool-hardy fideism and unquestioning obedience, the other relying on rationalism and promoting freedom of thought, has been a convenient prefabricated response to the challenge from religion. “In fact,” write Couch et al., “the conflict is not between religion and science, but rather between religion and the philosophy of naturalism, which denies the existence of anything supernatural.”[33] As we shall see, this conflict thesis is based on a both a false picture of religion and a false picture of science.

(continued....)

[1] At first this could be almost subconscious- a particularly resilient sci-fi trope passed on unthinkingly, but as the show progresses it becomes a more intentional ‘point’.
[2] Gatiss, Mark. The Unquiet Dead. 2005.
[3] When the same happens in 1983’s The Kings Demons the crew are welcomed as evil spirits.
[4] This becomes Arthur C Clarke’s ‘Third Law’ in a 1973 edition of ‘Profiles of the Future’.
[5] Having agreed to help Achilles, the Doctor then devises a familiar plan to aid with the capture of Troy.
[6] The Kroll in The Power of Kroll, Magnus Greel in The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Helix in The Masque of Mandragora, The Mara in Kinda and Snakedance, to name a few.
[7] Letts, Barry; Sloman, Robert. Doctor Who: The Scripts. The Daemons. Titan Books, London. 1992. Pg. 90
[8] von Däniken, Erich. Chariots of the Gods. Putnam, 1970.
[9]An analogue computer believed to originate in ancient Greece.
[10] A Sumerian seal which depicts lizard-like creatures descending from the sky in a round craft.
[11] This apparently gives a detailed account of a UFO landing.
[12] See appendix 1 for a list of examples of the von Däniken principle in Doctor Who.
[13] Thacker delivers an excellent chapter on The God Thing and the spirituality of Gene Roddenberry in Thacker, Anthony. A Closer Look at Science Fiction. Kingsway Publications, Eastbourne. 2001.
[14] When asked by a child if he would ever go back in time and meet Jesus, Russell T Davies joked: “Every year I hand that script in. Let me do it! The last Christmas special, they were worried.” Cited in Wylie, Ian. ‘Doctor Who: New Series Launch’. The Life of Wylie. Manchester Evening News. http://blogs.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/ianwylie/2007/03/doctor_who_new_series_launch.html (12/5/2007)
[15] Dawkins, Richard. Royal Institute Christmas Lecture, 1991. Lecture 5: ‘The Genesis of Purpose’ cited in Couch, Steve; Watkins, Tony; Williams, Peter S. Back in Time: A Thinking Fan’s Guide to Doctor Who. Damaris Books, Milton Keynes. 2005. Pg. 150
[16] As noted in Walker, Stephen James. ‘Background’. Letts, Barry; Sloman, Robert Doctor Who: The Scripts. The Daemons. Titan Books, London. 1992. Pg. 8
[17] Other strong examples are The Time Monster and The Curse of Peladon.
[18]Julian Huxley. Wikiquote. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Julian_Huxley (25/4/2007)
[19]Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker. Penguin Books, London. 1991 (pg. xiii)
[20]ibid.
[21]Though it is of course Neo-Darwinism that Dawkins is in favour of. It could equally be labelled ‘Neo-Mendelism’, though the name of Darwin provides a convenient cultural foil, which, I would speculate, is a direct descendant of the Scopes trial.
[22] There are many versions of this story, which seems to originate with Frederic Brown’s one-page short ‘The Answer’. The Answer (1954). Alteich’s Technology and the Future. http://www.alteich.com/oldsite/answer.htm (25/4/2007)
[23] A corruption of the ‘Survey Team’ which crash-landed on the planet generations before. This sci-fi trope of the corruption of names is tied closely to the notion of the mythologisation of science and can been seen clearly in many classic films, notably Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and Planet of the Apes (1968).
[24] Dicks, Terence; Russell, Paddy. Horror of Fang Rock. 1977.
[25] Doctor Who’s positive treatment of Buddhism is examined in greater depth in Chapter 5 “Buddhism and ‘B’-Movies”.
[26] The few minor deviations from this standard are explored in Chapter 5 “Buddhism and ‘B’-Movies”.
[27]Throughout science fiction, and thus here, this term relates to both the Draper-White historical warfare thesis and the fideism-dependant epistemological conflict thesis.
[28]Ernst Mach, 1883 A.N. Whitehead, 1926 Michael Foster, 1936 E. Zilsel, 1942
Lucas, Ernest. ’A Biblical Basis for the Scientific Enterprise’ in Alexander, Denis (ed.) Can we be sure about anything? Science, faith and postmodernism. Apollos (Inter-Varsity Press), Leicester, 2004. Pg.50
[29] Torrance, Thomas Christian Theology and Scientific Culture. Christian Journals Limited, Belfast. Pg.7
[30] Polkinghorne, John. Belief in God in an Age of Science. Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton, New York. Pg.76
[31] Polkinghorne, John. Belief in God in an Age of Science. Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton, New York. Pg.77
[32]Ironically, this makes it a very clear example of Dawkins' memetic virus. –a "unit of cultural information"- an idea or principle that self-replicates, much like a gene or virus, on the virtue of its ‘catchiness’.
[33] Couch, Steve; Watkins, Tony; Williams, Peter S. Back in Time: A Thinking Fan’s Guide to Doctor Who. Damaris Books, Milton Keynes. 2005. Pg. 150