Would a God Play God?

I’ve been watching Stargate SG-1 from the beginning, and decided not to blog about every episode (the way I still need to finish doing with Doctor Who). But I do plan to write occasional blog posts on interesting religious themes in the show. And one moment that really struck me was in the episode “Abyss” from Season 6, when longstanding member of the team Daniel Jackson, who had ascended to a higher plane of existence, refused to intervene to help his friend Jack O’Neill, saying:

I’m no more qualified to play God than the Goa’uld are.

This got me thinking about gods, God, intervention, manipulation, wisdom, and a whole range of other intersecting topics. Would a truly wise anthropomorphic deity by definition be wise enough to avoid “playing God”? Does one have to move beyond any genuinely anthropomorphic view of a deity in order for it to begin to seem even remotely coherent to envisage that entity as (fore)knowing and controlling all things – and in doing so, doesn’t the whole notion of “intervention” go out the window anyway, as the deity in question becomes all-encompassing?

I love the way science fiction provides opportunities to discuss theology…

For a fantastic treatment of the religious themes on Stargate and elsewhere in sci-fi, see Douglas Cowan’s book, Sacred Space.