Religion in Doctor Who

General / off topic
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Sorry just going to put this here as it’s a bugbear of mine when people think that ‘theory’ in this context mean something like ‘speculation’ or ‘best guess’.

The definition of a scientific theory is completely different to that usage (emphasis added):

In modern science, the term “theory” refers to scientific theories, a well-confirmed type of explanation of nature, made in a way consistent with the scientific method, and fulfilling the criteria required by modern science. Such theories are described in such a way that scientific tests should be able to provide empirical support for it, or empirical contradiction (“falsify”) of it.

Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge, in contrast to more common uses of the word “theory” that imply that something is unproven or speculative (which in formal terms is better characterized by the word hypothesis).
Source

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Okay, I’ll admit that hypothesis might be the better word. I used theory because the way I understood it, a theory could only only be tested so far but couldn’t be completely proven.

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Non (and ex) Christian here.

Personally I don’t see any Biblical contradiction in this episode. Could a omnipotent God have fulfilled the Star of Bethlehem through Villengard and Joy? Sure.

Christianity believes in free will but it also believe in God being able to preordain things. So why not?

Personally, I don’t expect the Christmas special to represent other religions 'cos, y’know, Christmas. But it would be nice to see more religions represented in the show in general. Especially since the Anglican marines seem to be here to stay. Islam gets some decent representation through Yaz and her family, so some Hinduism and Buddhism would be nice.

Also completely new religions. I expect that to happen when/if humanity scatters to the stars.

And, personal bias, but I wouldn’t mind seeing Paganism becoming a more prominent religion in the Whoniverse’s future. It could use the rep and the show could do some interesting things with it.

I’m a bit tired of Christians and Muslims being portrayed as serious religious folks and pagans mostly being shown as woo-heads.

Here endeth this brain dump.

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The radiocarbon half-life or decay rate has been determined at 5,730 years. Therefore, carbon dating can only yield dates of thousands, not millions, of years with any form of accuracy. This article explains it quite well: Carbon-14 Dating—Understanding the Basics | Answers in Genesis.

The Ark was approximately 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 51 feet tall (the Bible gives very exact measurements for its construction, though they’re given in cubits). Not all dinosaurs were huge, if you had young ones or smaller species, that could account for potential size issues. Let’s say Tyrannosaurus rex went extinct in the flood, but the much smaller species Nanotyrannus (only having a height of 6.5 feet) would be taken on the Ark as the representative of Tyrannosaur kind. Also, according to Genesis 9:1-3, it was only after the flood that God gave man permission to eat meat. (Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.) Thus, many Creationist theorize that nothing ate meat before the flood, citing Pandas as an animal that has what appear to teeth adapted to a carnivorous diet but in reality only eats bamboo.

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If you’re going to use Answers in Genesis as a source, fine. But please also read other, non-Christian sources. There’s no point in arguing against your own version of someone else’s position.

You are right about the limitations of carbon dating which is why a variety of different methods are used to date fossils.

This thread looks to be a decent start/summary on the topic:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Paleontology/comments/joibup/how_do_we_date_things_older_than_50000_years_old/

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I’d like to comment on my own personal reaction to this part of the episode.

Part of me thinks it was cute and harmless; part of me was horrified.

Out of a context that I’ll get to in a moment, I think it’s no different than the show giving Who explanations for real historical events. How many things has the Doctor caused, according to the show? So, being a Christmas episode, I want to look at it a see a silly fictional explanation for the event which may or may not have happened.

Now, about that context. I’m hypersensitive about things that are already happening in the US right now, and which I expect to see ramped up significantly starting in January. We have a segment of our population that think they are Christians, who promote an agenda of intolerance, hatred, of treating anyone different as worth less. This has always existed, it’s nothing new, but in the course of this country’s existence, the path has been one of increasing protections against intolerance and hate crimes and whatnot. There is an effort underway to erase the line between church and state, and to shift the country from one that can claim religious freedom, to one with a single mandated religion. This absolutely horrifies me.

Now, none of this is should land on the shoulders of Doctor Who, and of course it doesn’t. I simply want to explain where I’m coming from, when I say this: I don’t want the Christian religion anywhere near Doctor Who. I am all for seeing Christian ideals reflected in Doctor Who as much as possible,

By this I mean, the teachings that preach kindness and understanding, helping others, and all the messages that I took from what I learned about Christ – things that I feel are embodied by the character of the Doctor - I absolutely want to see that. What I don’t want to see is anything that even comes close to suggesting that Christianity is the correct religion, the true religion, the right religion. Because that messaging breeds intolerance and holy wars and what not. And also because the ideals I describe are not the sole providence of Christianity.

So, where do I land on the ending of Joy to the World? On one hand, I didn’t mind it, and on the other hand, I really wish they hadn’t gone there.

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That’s not how they date dinosaurs. Your source is completely biased. You need to use scientific sources not ones that start with the answer they want and then work backwards.

Okay so even if they used baby dinosaurs… I just used ChatGPT to work out how many species they could fit on that ark, given that we need at least 50 of each (according to my previous source, or they won’t breed), and it says only 224 species of animals could have been saved. Unless it was bigger on the inside.

There are 1.5 million known species of animal on Earth now.

Noah’s ark is a legend, it is impossible that it actually literally happened. And there certainly weren’t dinosaurs anywhere near living humans.

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What happened after Noah’s ark is one of these odd little stories that sticks in your mind.

Noah got drunk and passed out in his tent, nude. One of his sons goes into the tent, sees that he’s nude, and runs and tells the other two, who then walk in the tent backwards carrying a robe between them and cover up Noah before turning around. I can only imagine how silly the scene must have been.

And, of course, the one son gets cursed unto the generations…

The bible actually can be somewhat entertaining at times. Things like the guy who wanted to cast out his daughter in law for getting pregnant until she revealed she was actually the hooker he slept with a while back. (Not really sure how he didn’t notice that…)

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That’s easy to explain. They didn’t have glasses in biblical times!

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Could be.

Oh, and my mistake, he wanted to burn her to death, not cast her out. It’s been a while.

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Glasses. That’s a lot classier than where my mind went with that one!

Regarding Noah: I can’t speak to the story of what happened after, but there’s an obvious explanation for the Ark that I haven’t seen mentioned. Clearly Noah was a Time Lord.

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I agree. It’s such a loaded topic that some people on all sides are quick to take offence (we know the sort). I find, often when people take offence like that, it says more about them than the thing in question.

As for my own attitudes towards religion, I am not religious. Never have been. I tend to feel uncomfortable with rules that are imposed on me and prefer to come to my opinion on the basis of my own reasoning. It’s led me well so far. That said, I see the huge value and comfort for many that religion can offer (and the persecution that so many have sustained because of differences in belief). Consequently, I sincerely believe that it is better to live in a world/universe where we strive towards tolerance and, indeed, overt acceptance of different beliefs and cultures. I draw the line where the consequences of those differing views result in harm to our environment or to other peoples. I adhere very firmly to Popper’s rule regarding the necessity of intolerance towards the intolerant. Otherwise, it’s all good to me.

I love the fact that those with religious belief can take as much enjoyment from DW as I do. I think the balance in the show is pretty good at not overtly committing to any particular position. This is important as it leaves room for all of us to enjoy the show. The more, the merrier. I would not want the Doctor to identify overtly with any specific religion precisely because that would be reason enough for some to feel the show is not for them. Nonetheless, the Doctor should be welcoming of any belief provided it does not justify prejudice and harm.

There is plenty of narrative space for us to read it (the show as a whole and the ending of Joy to the World in particular) as we like. That is the best possible outcome, in my book.

:smile:

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I somehow never knew Lambert, Newman, and Ford were Jewish! I’m a non-religious Jew, but I worked at a Jewish summer camp for a couple of summers, and I ran an activity once that was based on the Jewish history of comic books. I love the intersection of Jewish history and nerdy stuff, pretty fascinating. That being said, I’m not holding out for a Hanukkah special. Not sure if I’d want one tbh, for a number of reasons. I was sort of joking about how they could make one the other day, but I feel like it probably wouldn’t be handled well irl.

Anyway, going back to the topic at hand, I was actually surprised people had an issue with the ending of this episode. It’s not really something I considered when watching, so it’s interesting to hear different people’s takes on it.

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First of all like I alreay said I am quite religious. So religious in fact that I am currently studying christian theology.
I’ve been trying to put my thoughts on the ending into coherent words since it aired.
But what @lwebb said in the thread comes pretty close to what I am feeling.

Though the star is for me more about being a sign of hope/ a light in the darkness. It means a lot to me and just using as a tool for a story just doesnt sit right with me. To me it just feels disrespectful.

While I thought the “no wonder there was no room at the inn” was funny I do have some trouble with it, but that one is very nitpicky.

Generally I think anything discussed in the bible should be left alone in fiction. I am not talking about imagery or ideas taken from it, but things like actually traveling into that time or letting any chracters from it (including god) appear.
(This is entirely my opinion. Other christians might have other opinions (like some in this forum) and I am aware that I am quite sensitive in this regard.)

About the other topics mentioned in this thread:

Like others already have said I personally dont believe that the bible is literally true.

Even though I dont think the things you have mentioned so far (the evolution and the creation mythos depicted in the bible) necessarily contradict each other: To me there is a great difference between a fictional universe that includes things that might contradict the bible and directly interacting with things that are in it.
And while we are already talking about contradictions: I know several people who would disagree with what I am about to say, but the bible itself is full of contradictions. The very first and second story already contradict each other. There are two creation myths in the bible and they have a different order of creation.

The way you phrased this I assume with “in his image” you mean the physical image of Adam when he was created. Once again there are different interpretations of this, but the way I read it is, that “in his image” doesnt mean the physical body, but rather “his” mind/soul. (I am putting his into quotation marks because in the version of the creation myth that has god creating the human in his image Adam and Eve are created at the same time. At this point I could ramble on about the singular/plural problem, but that would probably get too off topic.)

We dont know. Nobody knows. Thats actually a very big thing that we do not know and can not know. God works in mysterious ways and no one knows why he does the things he does. But thats the thing about religion. We dont choose what we believe. To you it doesnt make sense and you dont believe. To me it doesnt make sense and I still believe. For me it bottles down to science telling me how things happened and religion telling me why.

That is really fascinating! I did not know that. Is there anything about this topic you could recommend?

One of my faves is the story where Jesus curses a fig tree, because he was hungry and it wasnt wearing any fruit. Even though it was explicitly mentioned that it wasnt even the right time in the year for it to be bearing any.

Sorry if this got a bit rambly.

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Thanks for posting this, I was going to say this too - I’ve read lots about the contradictions in the Bible but it was a long time ago and I don’t have all the details at hand, but yes the Bible has contradictions in it from the very beginning!

I really don’t think it’s intended to be literally true. It was written by up to 40 different authors over a long period of time (1500-1600 years) and has been translated many times.

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Yeah, it’s an anthology, and a committee got together and decided which books to include and which not to include, and they rejected as many or more books as they accepted. I even have a full book sitting around somewhere of nothing but books that were rejected for it.

And what’s worse about the translations is that a lot of them are translations of translations. And King James wasn’t even a particularly good translator, as much as I might love him in the Witchfinders.

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I’ve been thinking on this a bit, Religion is just very complicated for me personally so let me elaborate on that a bit:
For a start, I was raised vaguely Christian, protestant to be more precise, but we really only went to church on Christmas and it didn’t really matter at all in daily life. Between about ten and fifteen, I decided I wanted to get confirmed, and was really quite religious, going to the children’s service and the classes regularly, and I made some very good friends there. Since my confirmation I have been and continue to be very active in organizing church activities for children.
However, since about when I was sixteen, it’s gotten a lot more complicated. For a start, I realized I was queer, and wasn’t always made to feel welcome in my church because of that. And even if my local church and it’s parent organization are fine with it, it’s a fact that the Christian church has done and does a lot of very bad things to people all over the world, so I don’t know if I want to be associated with that. Secondly, since also realizing I’m trans, a lot of this was further enhanced. Clearly God didn’t make me perfectly, for example. Also I count the right to complete bodily autonomy as one of my most important values and things like believing God already knows everything that’s going to happen feel like they take away from my freedom in that regard. And perhaps the most important thing to make me question my faith has been my depression. (This is somewhat dark, so I’m spoilering it for anyone who doesn’t want to read it rn/ever.)A lot of my depression is linked to my menstrual cycle and since that is explicitly a punishment by god in the Bible, I just plain refuse to believe in a god who would torture me like that. It’s the most terrible thing that’s ever happened to me and I just can’t accept that a god that is supposed to be loving doing that. And, quite honestly, one thing that kept me alive during my darkest time was the possibility that there is nothing after this life. I didn’t want to throw away my life for a mere chance at heaven/an afterlife. Though I do have to say that having these mental issues has given me a quite uncommon appreciation of life, so in a way, I am thankful for it.
In spite of all this, I do still sort of believe in God anyways. I think in the same way that in maths you start by making up some axioms and then discover what follows logically, I believe God might have made up the laws of physics and nature and then the universe followed from that. The Bible to me is texts that may or may not have a basis in fact but contains a lot of interesting things. I’ve recently become quite interested in the science/sociology of religions actually, it’s really cool to examine how religions form, influence society and people.

To come back to doctor who, I didn’t love but also didn’t have a problem with joy becoming the star, it honestly doesn’t feel that different from the narrative choices we’ve done every year for the kids’ nativity play. I do however think that this is about as far as you can push it without causing major offense. And I don’t know if it was a smart move from a production perspective, because there are people from all sort of backgrounds unhappy with it.

I do wish that doctor who would explore more different religions and cultures because quite honestly Christmas being the only thing represented is not only boring but also doesn’t fit our world today

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First I would like to say, thank you for sharing. I am really glad that you made it through your darker days and hope that you are in a better place now. I really appreciate having you in this community.

I also feel this. This can be interpreted in ways that fit almost every worldview whiteout confirming or denying anything.

It would be great to see more cultures represented in the show. I think that is a reason why Demons of the Punjab was such an interesting episode.

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I did actually put together a whole powerpoint on it for a doctor who society I started, complete with sources! However, please note that I was a kid and did not know anything about how Israel was formed or the political situation there, and so did not know to avoid some of these. You’ll notice a few are, ahem, rather biased when it comes to the war, but these articles are about doctor who, so, the bias is unrelated - I just felt obligated to say, as a disclaimer, I do not support the views of these publications outside these particular articles! Just gathered them because they’re interesting on this particular subject!

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/doctor-who-doctor-jew

I would be happy to share the powerpoint, but maybe minus the interview - has me in, and I don’t want to dox myself or anything. Plus, the interviewee agreed to share when I said I’d just be sharing with the club, so, not sure he’d be okay with me uploading it to the internet as well!

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This is the first time I have ever come across assertions of Jewish inluence on the show (I don’t think I even knew Newman, Lambert or Ford were Jewish) so I’m going to read those articles with interest. I’m sure I’ll have thoughts in response. :slight_smile:

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