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If we're counting LDS as Christian, Orson Scott Card and Larry Correia might rival him depending on how you count 'successful'.
And Stephanie Meyer far surpasses any of them.
There's probably a worthwhile discussion there, right?
Sanderson, Card, Correia, and Meyer are all Mormons. Now as it happens I don't count Mormons as Christians, but that aside - it is interesting that all these examples are from the same religion. Are Mormons in general punching well above their weight in science fiction and genre spaces?
In order to write seriously about religion, you probably have to believe seriously in religion. Given that Mormons are mostly in a small concentrated area of the US I would be unsurprised that a lot higher percentage of Mormons seriously believe than other religions.
I wonder if there's a cycle - there was a phase, I thought, of really Catholic science fiction, works like A Canticle for Leibowitz, or A Case of Conscience, and prominent Catholic authors; Gene Wolfe springs to mind. Apparently some people think there's something there even today, though to my untrained eye the golden age of Catholic science fiction was in the past.
So maybe just different subcultures or groups get into particular genres every now and then. There may not be that much to it.
Catholics are still writing Science Fiction, but it's generally not getting as popular. I think the age of seeing the world sacramentally/semiotically is in the past. In our materialist age, the Mormon worldview appeals more (not Mormonism specifically, but generally the idea of a God who is more like a superhero than something fundamentally different from a creature. And then the pseudo-scientific philosophy that comes out of that.)
Other Catholic science fiction:
There's also a lot of Catholic-haunted sci-fi (often written by ex-Catholics or agnostics who are inspired by Catholicism):
In LDS theology there are no creatures at all. Everything exists eternally. We don't think God is "caused" somehow or dependent on some greater god for power; he's fully self-existent just as in other Christian theologies. It's just that we are too.
Kind of like Hinduism?
To be fully self-existent in Classical Christianity means to be fully actual, with 0 potential for change. If your idea of God is one that can change, then it is one that can be acted on. There is an explanation for why your God is in the current state instead of another state. This explanation pre-exists your God. Your idea of God doesn't really explain anything about the world and we are still left with the question of why is there something instead of nothing. Which is fine, it's something that the Greeks and other Pagans accepted and lived virtuous lives according to their customs for generations. It's not terribly satisfying to me, just like it wasn't satisfying to Plato and Aristotle. But it's not going to cause a huge cognitive dissonance on its own.
My point is that LDS teaches something like "God is just like us, just more self-actualized and powerful. Theosis is us leveling up according to the nature we already have that is equal to God's."
Classical Christian thought is more like, "We have a different nature from God's, but He promises Theosis anyways through the marriage of Heaven and Earth in the Person of Jesus Christ. Human nature has now been grafted onto a Divine Person and we are able to participate in the internal life of God through conformity to the perfected human nature of Jesus."
Oh no! LDS theology has something in common with Hinduism? That's terrible! Anyways.
Acted on by himself, sure. It's a stretch to say someone capable of changing themselves is not self-existent, and has more to do with the rest of the bundle of Christian theology than with the word "self-existence." It's not that such a being is not self-existent, it's that Christian theology holds that a self-existent being is (for other reasons) incapable of change.
It's more that for both of us, our idea of things that are self-existent explains nothing about why there is something (self-existent being(s)) rather than nothing. This question predates self-existent beings in both cases.
The ontological argument attempts to address this, but I and most others find it unsatisfying, to say the least. Basically just word salad. If existence is a necessary quality of the greatest possible being, is it not also a quality of the most evil possible being? Why is existence only a quality of the greatest possible being?
The latter is also how I'd describe LDS theology. We put off the natural man, and put on the divine nature. We don't really believe in "natures" in the classical Christian way, but inasmuch as you can use the word nature we certainly don't share God's nature yet.
God is definitely like us, but more self-actualized and powerful. I don't think any LDS person would say that he's "just" more self-actualized and powerful though. There's a fundamental difference of type, it's just not as fundamental as in classical Christian theology.
I have my complaints with classical Christian theology too, and don't particularly care to litigate them right now. I just think it's pretty silly to say that LDS people see God as like a superhero. It's just not true. It's your way of fitting LDS theology into classical Christian theology, retaining just enough of LDS theology to make it look silly. Frameworks can't fit inside each other, though; you need to address them on their own terms rather than saying "within my framework your framework is wrong." Yes obviously it's wrong by definition if the argument assumes your framework to be true. That's not a productive conversation to have.
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