Why Not A Starfleet Ships Chaplain As A Main Character?

[Timelord_Victorious]

Well, obviously you don't define faith the same way I do.
In a religious context faith means believing without evidence. Not talking about proof beyond doubt, just any evidence. There is none, so there is no reason for me to believe any of it. And extraordinary claims require a Bit more evidence than "an ancient book, written by people who hardly knew anything about how the natural world works, says so.

You didn't go to this surgeon on faith. You had evidence that he was a competent doctor since your relatives had good experiences with him.
If you had went to him, trusting he could operate on you well enough, without ever knowing if he really is a medical doctor after screwing up the rest of your family already, then I would call that faith.
The way it went, you trusted him on good measurable evidence. You can Call it faith if course, but it is not what an atheist means when talkibg abour faith in god and I doubt you believe it the same thing.

Your unique flower is different than god, too. I know flowers exist, what general properties they usually have and that there are probably many flower species that I have never Seen before since new ones get discovered all the time.
So in this case I have reason to tentatively take your Word for it.
Though I might ask you for a picture you might have taken or the location if I want to experience it myself.
If you can't provide any, I will still accept as a likely true anecdote but can otherwise remain happily ignorant about the flower.

Faith in a spouse has nothing to do with his/hers existance, but whether or not him/her cheating on their partner.

Trust in friends is a property of friendship, otherwise they wouldn't be y friends. Again, has nothing to do with their existance.

[yousirname]

We've seen Counsellors but so far no chaplains, as far as I know, have been depicted in any incarnation of Trek. Seems to me like too much of a departure.

Realistically, you have two options: depict an extant religion, or a fictional one. Neither prospect excites me. Depiction of an extant religion won't be able to get in-depth without courting more controversy than networks will sign off on; the blandness and superficiality that will (I think) inevitably result pushes it into "Why bother?" territory.

On the other hand, a fictional religion seems no more interesting. Granted, you can get more in-depth, in all likelihood taking elements of real religions and cloaking them in enough 'fictionality' to deal with them in depth without provoking letter-writing campaigns. But the idea just doesn't excite me. The few depictions of spirituality in Trek that do exist have always seemed bland and uninteresting to me. It's always some reported personal difficulty; McAlien's duty dictates that he do X, but (gasp!) McAlien's religion forbids him to do X! And then we get some hellishly long shot of McAlien staring at a little statue or whatever with strings in the minor chords on the soundtrack and then... McAlien either does or doesn't do X. The controversy over doing which is entirely informed and never connects viscerally with the audience. Yawn, as far as I'm concerned. Obviously just my personal preference, but I'd rather we didn't bother doing that. It's worked well enough so far without that.

[DonIago]

You realize that Deep Space 9 portrayed a fictional religion, right?

[yousirname]

DonIago wrote:

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You realize that Deep Space 9 portrayed a fictional religion, right?

Yeah, but not a Starfleet chaplain. Sorry if it wasn't clear that that's what I was referring to.

[DonIago]

Ah. That's different.

[Star Wolf]

Are we expecting anything more then Father Mulcahey or Shepard Book out of a Starfleet Chaplin?

[T'Girl]

Maybe Reverend Eric Camden (Stephen Collins) from the show 7th Heaven would be a good model for the character.