Well, she really isnt a judeo-Christian angel in any sense of what has been written of them. I guess I forgot to point out that in general, angels as we know them have not always been seen the way they are in modern western society.
I’m jumping in here without reading all previous nine pages (don’t think I’ve posted in this one - had a bit of a posting fest since I watched the finale the other day), so tell me to frak off if I’m not adding anything new.
I don’t think it matters so much what KT is. She and the head characters, and indeed “God” could all be a remnant from an earlier cycle - escapees who managed to get out of the cycle of war, destruction and rebirth perhaps. That would work for me as an atheist or agnostic (I can never decide - the former seems so, well faith-based). But if I was a present-day monotheist who believed in the literal truth of the Bible then a Judaeo-Christian type angel would probably be fine.
I think today we have lost a sense of the numinous, largely as a result of our obsession with rationalism and science. Now I’m a scientist and try and base my interpretation of the world on rationalism as much as I can (it works pretty well). But that doesn’t mean there’s no place for the mythological or the transcendental in my world-view. I think that today in the West we tend to think we have to be either rational or “spiritual”. But the mythology that we associate with religion has always provided metaphors that help us understand the world in a sort of intuitive way. It’s been argued (by ex-nun and writer on religion Karen Armstrong for one) that people used to understand this, and that it’s only relatively recently that we’ve started to get all worked up about the literal truth or otherwise of religious texts which were to a large extent always intended as metaphor.
Now, BSG has got into the souls of most of us here - like a great book it lives within you long after you’ve watched the last DVD or read the last page. I think the reason for this is that it gives us a great, accessible and meaningful mythology that’s relevant to our situation today. Something that can do this imbues the world with more meaning and makes it more numinous. I enjoy being out in the wild much more as a result of having read Lord of the Rings. The desert is a much more exciting place as a result of my having digested the Dune series and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy. I don’t expect to meet Frodo Baggins or have to battle orcs when I’m out in the woods here in the UK, or have to escape a sandworm in the Sahara, but Tolkein, Herbet and Robinson have given me new eyes with which to look at the world. They’ve given me a mythological template that I overlay on the real world, without getting lost in fantasy. The mythological and the rational can coexist and complement one another and enrich our lives in the process.
So, what I’m trying to say is, to a very large extent I don’t give a frak what Kara Thrace is, I just thought it was cool when she disappeared, and that the world was richer because of the existence of something so complex, beautiful and inexplicable. BSG gives us a mythology, and it doesn’t have to be completely rational, although we can find rational explanations if we want. It enriches our lives and gives us new eyes. The “supernatural” elements can remain mysterious and/or metaphorical. In fact this is a minor consideration for me. What matters to me is the extra mythological layer that BSG has added to my world. If I ever do begin to blur the lines between fantasy and reality I’ll just have to work out whether it’s orc’s, sandworms or centurions I’ll be meeting round the corner now.
I have no idea if that made sense, and apologise for my verbosity 
+1
An excellent post, with only one exception:
A common claim, but untrue. As Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” There is as much empirical evidence to support the existence of a deity as there is to support astrology (that is, to say, none). Yet one would not be accused of being “faith-based” if he/she were to reject astrology for lack of evidence.
I think the problem most people are running into is that they expected something more concrete and tangible. When Baltar’s head is slammed into things and he’s making the Hylon with two backs in the laboratory I figure something pretty big is going on, so when SB comes back just like Gandalf (new white Viper and all) I pretty much stopped viewing BSG as sci-fi and more as fantasy or sci-fi fable, which meant just about any character could be any way and I wouldn’t be too upset. Unless the Adamas became Cylons. That would’ve been way uncool.
To echo NickB’s post, I also liked that Lee accepted Kara’s identity in that he had accepted (most likely long ago) that there is far too much that has happened to chalk up to coincidence or rationale. The show just is much more like a Star Trek or Star wars than RDM initially intended, I think, but that’s okay. I like a lot of fantasy in my sci-fi.
I’ll dub you an ambivalent agnostic. 
That is certainly the truth…
Great, great comments! That makes perfect sense and sums up my feelings exactly. I’m glad you’ve enunciated them so well. Thanks!
I never thought about there being more than one Kara, but it’s sort of forming a thought in my head now.
Two questions:
- The cylons, do they like age? cause it seems like Cavil and Tigh never get older but then why would Cavil be worried about dying if he wasn’t aging?
- Athena downloaded Boomer’s memories so could there have been another Kara to download her memories? She was a blank until she did and then found had a sleeper program to find the fleet and lead them to Earth and all that?
Elegantly said, NickB. This echoes my thoughts and feelings.
Starbuck is an “angel”, a “Messenger of God”, a “Harbinger” and she fulfilled her destiny.
I don’t find this hard to swallow, as I’ve always thought of angels (and I can’t know if they really exist) as beings of light, capable of detached goodness and fearsome determination to complete their appointed mission from “God”.
There is a line in the movie, “Michael” with John Travolta. First time one of the main characters sees Michael, wings and all, he’s a cigarette-smoking, scruffy mess. “You’re an angel?” he asks with disbelief.
Michael: “I’m not that kind of angel.”
I’m surprised I feel good about the mystery of Starbuck and the other “Angels”. It makes BSG richer for me. Lot’s to think about for a long while.
Maybe its a definitional issue. My problem is that, while I see no evidence for or reason to believe in the existence of god, there is a chance that I’m spectacularly wrong and all those believers are right. A small one, granted, but I can’t possibly know whether there is or isn’t a god. Extraordinary claims do indeed require extraordinary evidence, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We can’t say that something manifestly and certainly does not exist because we can’t prove that it does, although it would be very foolish indeed to accept the existence of anything on the basis that we can’t prove that it does not.
I feel pretty secure in rejecting the literal truth of religious texts, but we don’t understand the universe fully and who knows - maybe there is a guiding force of some kind out there. I don’t believe there is, but can’t say I know there isn’t. That’s the faith-based element for me. I’ve always been very suspicious of certainty, which for me is the enemy of reason. With astrology we’re talking about whether there is a plausible mechanism, and everything we know about astronomy, gravity and celestial mechanics suggests there isn’t. With god we’re talking about something that, pretty much by definition, exists outside of our universe, and that’s a more metaphysical issue. Frankly I’d rather not spend my time worrying about it - I do know that not everyone who claims to be party some revealed religious truth can be right in any objective sense.
I think that’s probably fair, but the ambivalence due to my wavering towards atheism rather than in the other direction. Perhaps a “soft” atheist? A doubting atheist? Or maybe someone who’s just happy to admit they simply have no idea what the frak it’s all about and is pretty happy to leave it at that.
Thanks for all the kind comments by the way guys - I thought I might be in danger of disappearing up my own fundament…
Thanks. And yes, I was surprised at how it worked for me when I really wanted and expected some answers. The fact the answers weren’t provided doesn’t mean we can’t find some for ourselves depending on our persuasion, and perhaps that was the intention. Or perhaps it was down to the writers having dug themselves into a huge hole. In any case I thought it worked really well stylistically.
I’ve also warmed to this kind of blend since reading quite a bit of Gene Wolff, specifically the Book of the New Sun series.
Thanks for the welcome Pike. So if angels are defending God they must intuitively be ruthless? Like… Gabriel http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0857376/ ? I really think that Moore, BSG executive producer, intentionally left us with the questions and with speculations. Kara Thrace is too brutal for an angel. And I don’t think angels are all puffy and immaculate white, but I believe they have some sore of… self-respect and self-awareness. Remember Starbuck asking herself: “What am I?”
I loves you forever :3
Well let’s think of Starbuck as a mortal angel oHead Gaius and Six are the true angels
Basically their seems to be two types of angels Jesusesque Starbuck Angels and the true guiding human angels Gaius and Six
Sure someone’s suggested this already, but just in case…
Maybe Starbuck, H Baltar and H Six are the Lords of Kobol, ancient beings who managed to escape the cycle and who now attempt to guide those living in subsequent phases of the cycle to a sensible resolution so it can be broken once and for all.
I think that’s what I’ll go with. And it could be a whole new series!
This is the crux of it for me: the way the problem of god is configured, it’s impossible to know the truth one way or another. Such a being, were it to exist, would be completely ineffable to the human perceptions and intellect, so…in the end, I am left with a simple question: who cares? I don’t mean that to sound flip. A being imbued with the qualities of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence couldn’t possibly care about what a limited, small being like myself thinks and does, much less whether or not I believe in it. It seems to me that the concept of god has a usefulness to the psyche, as a way of explaining things that are extremely difficult to grasp, to come to terms with, or to make meaning from. Faced with such things, we often find ourselves staring straight into a deep, implacable void yawning beneath our feet and threatening to swallow us into a meaningless gray smear of nothing (worse than suffering, no?). We can either fill that void with the concept of a deity that is completely beyond our ken, thereby explaining the inexplicable; or we can admit that we don’t know. Well…I happen to be more comfortable with saying I don’t know. I can’t know. So why worry about it?
Does that make me an atheist or an agnostic? I prefer not to worry about that, either. I have qualities of both, and I’m OK with that.
That’s Mr. IT to you.
Perhaps it is a definitional issue. I know plenty of atheists and I just don’t see this “certainty” you refer to in them. Richard Dawkins recently wrote about a “Theist-Atheist Scale”. It is a scale from 1 to 7, with the numbers meaning as follows:
[ol]
[li]Strong theist. 100% certainty and belief in God. “I do not believe, I know.”[/li][li]De-facto theist. I cannot be certain of God’s existence, but I strongly believe and live my life on the assumption that it is there.[/li][li]Agnostic theist. I am uncertain, but inclined to believe in God.[/li][li]Agnostic. God’s existence and non-existence are equally probable and improbable.[/li][li]Agnostic atheist. I am uncertain, but inclined to not believe in God.[/li][li]De-facto atheist. I cannot know for certain, but I think God is very improbable and I live my life on the assumption that there is no God.[/li][li]Strong atheist. I know there is no God.[/li][/ol]
I would wager that there are plenty of theists that would rate themselves as a 1, but (based on what I’ve seen) proportionally much fewer atheists that rate themselves a 7. Even Dawkins doesn’t consider himself a 7. I would rate myself a 6.
In what I see as perhaps another definitional difference between us, I see true agnosticism as implying that one believes the existence of a god to be unknowable. This to me seems to be an indefensible position. Perhaps the answer is unknowable, but then again it wasn’t too long ago that humanity thought that the earth was flat, that it was the center of the universe, and that the sun revolved around it. Just as I am not willing to say that one can be certain there is no god, I am also not willing to say that it is impossible to know for sure.
It’s possible that, from your standpoint, my interpretation of the meaning of agnosticism is taking it too far, while from my standpoint your interpretation of the meaning of atheism is taking it too far. What do you think? And, where would you rate yourself on the Theist-Atheist Scale?
Put me down as a 6.5…
Haha, well if we’re not limiting choices to whole numbers, I’d probably be a 6.5 or so too. 