Sci Fi and Spirituality

An interesting notion came to me recently, in the difference between "soft" science fiction like Star Wars, the Matrix, the Fifth Element and "hard" science fiction like Star Trek and Star Gate is clearly on the one hand about explaining how the wonderful things that are happening occur (dilithium crystals, DHDs, etc) but also there tends to be a level of spiritualism in the former that is sometimes lacking in the latter.

In many cases, the "soft" or science fantasy genre like Star Wars or the Matrix often rely on spiritualism as a form of displaying the character progression - in a sense, rebelling against the very concept of technology to survive the technological future. I'm sure there's no better example of this than a simple line uttered by Darth Vader - “Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.”












If you wanted to take an even more in depth look - you could make the comparison that in the hard science shows, technology quite often acts as a solution, while in the science fantasy it is often the problem. Could this be an example of humanity's thoughts towards science when we don't know how it works? Or perhaps they just take spirituality as a method of forcing the story along a lot faster than taking the time to explain how stuff works.

"God did it" is certainly a simple way to wave off complex ideas, although maybe the only difference between hard sci fi and science fantasy is that in sci fi they simply look you in the eye and say "An-advanced-alien-race-very-similar-to-what-we-conceive-to-be-god did it"