Science as Religion: The Day the Earth Stood Still

A film that teaches we should worship Science is a classic sci-fi tale—I should perhaps call it an iconic film—titled The Day the Earth Stood Still. Released in 1951 (remake done in 2008), and still a great film to watch, it portrays American society just after World War II and gives a glimpse of the reaction to that era that cost millions of lives and ushered in the atomic era with the threat of global destruction—the Cold War. Most significantly, it advances the idea that salvation for the human race rests in the hands of Science.

Many have seen the film, so I will make my synopsis a quick one. A humanoid alien comes to Earth, landing in a flying saucer on the mall in Washington DC near the Washington monument. There is panic. Tanks and troops immediately surround the spaceship. The door opens and a creature emerges. When he produces what might be a weapon, one of our soldiers shoots and wounds him. When this happens, an eight-foot robot appears. A visor on his head opens and he emits a ray that destroys the weapons of the troops (though he does not kill anyone). The wounded alien gives him orders in their language and he desists. The army whisks the man off to a hospital.

His name is Klaatu. He is an alien from an unnamed planet who comes to earth on a mission. Not allowed to meet with world rulers, he escapes the hospital and stays in a boarding house run by a war widow, befriending her son, who leads him to a scientist. But the manhunt tracks Klaatu down and he is killed. Gort, the robot, retrieves his body and brings him back to life. The scientist arranges for a group of scientists to meet with the revived Klaatu. He warns them that other plants are afraid of Earth now that the people there have developed atomic weapons. If Earth does not achieve peace, the planet could be “eliminated.” He flies off into space.

Klaatu is very much like Jesus.

He comes from beyond the Earth, like Jesus. He is also a healer. What the solider who shot him mistook for a weapon was really a device that could cure cancer. It is damaged when Klaatu is wounded and rendered inoperable. And he is exemplary in his behavior. He is kind, thoughtful, polite, compassionate, and fair-minded; this is in contrast to most Terrans (and they are mostly men) who are violent, stupid, and crude. He is a paragon of virtue and intelligence. He has power. The Earth “stood still” refers to his demonstration of his power by shutting down all electricity and gas locomotion on the planet for half an hour. And, most of all, he dies and is resurrected.

All of this, of course, is due to Science, not the power of God or any other supernatural entity. Technology enables him to cure cancer, do the “miracle” of shutting down the Earth, and also brings him back to life. Science has done even more than this, we find out.

Gort, the robot, is example of how technology has brought salvation to his planet. There, Klaatu says, his people created “a race of robots” who function independently of humanoid control and keep order and peace. They are peaceful, but if they sense wrong (in the form of war or aggression), they destroy the perpetrators of such ventures. Thus peace has been achieved, on Klaatu’s planet at least, through the instrumentality of Science.

The scene at the end is fascinating. The scientist Klaatu met gathers a number of other scientists together. They stand in front of his ship. They are of many races and some of them are dressed in native costume, suggesting a universality of the human race. Light from the ship bathes them—rather like the light of God that shone on Moses. He delivers a sermon to the assembled scientists that tells of his own people’s salvation through creating a race of robots to police them. He warns them of the dire consequences of Earth’s current course (Judgment Day might come if we don’t change our ways) and then, like Jesus, he ascends—he flies off into the sky. Someday, he will return.

So Science will save the human race. It was, of course, the thing that put the human race in danger in the first place. Still, if properly used, as Klaatu’s people used it, it can save the human race from destruction. One might say the film was a call to the moralistic use of science and technology. Still, Science as surrogate religion is the main theme of this film.

Cardassians--not a good race of beings

For writers of sci-fi, I would suggest this is too pat an answer. Science is subject to human morality. If humans are immoral, science and technology will be used for immoral purposes. Rather than lauding the scientific method as the fountainhead of all truth and thinking—as I have heard many people say--that someday science will explain everything (as if that would cure our problems), speculative writers need to focus on the morality and ethics of the human race. What would make science a benign and not a malevolent thing? The moral disposition of those who are working with it could bring technology to good uses. This leads me to believe that ethics and morality, and how and why people are good, should be a prominent theme in speculative fiction.