Religion and Science Fiction: Now Available for Kindle!

I just received word that Religion and Science Fiction is now available for Kindle through Amazon.com.

The price for the Kindle edition is almost as low as the discounted price for which you can still get the print edition until the end of this month, via the publisher's web site. Use the discount coupon code RASF during checkout to receive 40% off. That offer expires 8/31/2011 - in other words, in only a few days from now. So if you prefer to have it in paperback at a 40% discount, you need to act quickly! The Kindle price, I assume, will remain the same for the foreseeable future.

Also check out the blog review that is underway at Cheese-Wearing Theology. Amanda MacInnis has blogged through two chapters from the book so far, in the following posts:

Mis-Reading Star Trek? Exploring Danna’s Chapter in ‘Religion and Science Fiction’
From Dr. Frankenstein to Topher Brink

If any of you get Religion and Science Fiction for the Kindle, let me know how it looks on that device!

Religion and Science Fiction - Now Available!

The book I edited, Religion and Science Fiction, is now available via the publisher's web site. More information at Exploring Our Matrix.

Thoughts for Science

Another subject that has come up a lot this semester is the fact that quite rapidly, that which was once science fiction is quickly becoming actual science. Perhaps not as fast as some authors rashly predicted, but genetic alterations, robots, and cryonics are now a thing of the present even if they aren't yet mainstream. The result has been mass opposition and endless debates over the morality of things like stem-cell research and cloning, and a significant conservative backlash to some of the paths science is taking. Now, whether or you or I personally agree with this that or the other, I think that I can safely say that opposition of any kind, whether they end up being right or not, is in fact a good thing. It is good for people to argue against and reasonably debate the things that many scientists are doing. Why do I say this is a good thing? Because whether or not cryonics or cloning is morally wrong, scientists must sometimes be made to stop and consider the moral implications of what they are doing. And that will only happen if people offer arguments against them. So whether stem cell research ends up saving countless millions of lives or is simply the first step down a long slippery slope ending in human beings as crops (or both), I am just glad that people are stopping to consider the ramifications and proceed cautiously. I think Ian Malcolm put it best in a Sci-Fi movie about the dangers of rashly cloning long extinct dinosaurs..."Yeah well, your scientists were so focused on whether they could, they never stopped to think if they should!"

Strange Bedfellows

Something that has always been on my mind, throughout freshman year in my FDR class, through science classes and religion classes a like, is this odd relationship that science and religion have. There are two schools of thought on this. One of which is that science and religion can't really co-exist, the other is that well, they can. Throughout the study of science fiction, i haven't had this question come up. Why ? Because the science fiction I've seen/read has moved past this question. I'm finding it really interesting to explore the ways in which God, or this higher power is manifest in various things I've watched or seen that are sci-fi, and that's the topic that my paper is exploring...

Till Later.

Evil may be stronger than good...

Science + Religion Today has an interesting article on the physiological effects of good and evil. Since the notion of good vs. evil pervaded much of the course I thought that this was worth sharing!

Performing good deeds (or just thinking about doing them) helps us perform better on tests of physical endurance and willpower, new research suggests. But doing evil things make us even stronger.

-B

Matrix Alternate Ending

If you think about it Neo was faced with a false dichotomy. When, in reality, he had three or more choices. Now why didn't I think of that!

-B

Arguments Against Immortality

IO9 has once again posted something that connects with recent discussions in class, this time offering four arguments against immortality.