I see no problem with personal faith in Star Trek. The more the merrier, in my opinion.
Middle-Easterners in "Discovery"
- Thread starter Lord Garth
- Start date
Everyone is allowed a personal faith except humans it seems. I don't see theocracies existing on Earth any more. Maybe all the religious fundies left Earth and formed their own colony.
Personal faith != theocracy
Religion will not go away in the future. It will be different, but it's core will remain the same. If some people in today's time can still accept witchcraft and other ancient mysticisms then that should tell us there'll still be some form of Judaic belief in our future.
That's highly possible. One aspect that I did like about TOS is that it presented us with the idea of people who just wanted to go out and do their own thing.
However, even GR acknowledged that faith would become more of a "private matter" in the future.
Agreed.
Keeping Star Trek Safe For Anxious Middle Class Americans (and those willing to go along to get along) Since 1966.
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It would be even more interesting to have human characters whose ancestors are not indigenous to where they were born on Earth to reflect a world where global migration is as normal as moving from one part a city to another.
E.G A brown skinned person with a Mandarin name who is from Shanghai
I realize this is beside your point, but I am reminded of the hubbub raised by some when Zoe Saldana was cast us Uhura. That silly criticism was "Saldana is wrong for the part because she isn't African-American...she's Dominican!!"
Those critics sort of missed the fact that Saldana is a Dominican of African descent -- and being of African descent was the point of the Uhura character's ethnic background, not that she was African-American.
More to your point, modern migration in the form immigration means that there are all types of people from all types of cultures living in all parts of the world, and that will almost certainly be even more true in the future. The idea that "'region X' will only have peoples of 'ethnicity Y' who all belong to 'culture Z'" will be less of a truism in the future.
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People who believe in witchcraft and ancient mysticisms are often considered to be stupid and backward nowadays, out of touch with the modern, scientific world. I suspect that would be also so in the Star Trek universe with Christians, Muslims, Hindus, etc. It is just contracting science and if they would really find a higher advanced being or beings, no rational thinking person would call them god or gods. They would be simply called aliens. In the former Star Trek series humans have met quite a bunch of very highly developed beings. Q is a prime example of it. Creating a world would be easy for him. All the old religions just don't make any sense in such a universe anymore. I really think they would be dwindling because of this. But maybe there would be some new religions to replace them, just like our current main religions replaced older beliefs.
Well, this thread is now derailed in a different direction, but my take on religion in Trek is as follows... over a hundred years ago people have been forecasting that religions and faiths are going to be long gone by our times, because of education and a better understanding of science, not to mention the understanding of biological evolution and our place in the cosmos. However, this did not happen, vast majority of Westerners still believe in Gods. Therefore, in a future such as the one depicted in Star Trek, where humans did not go any significant modifications (as unlikely as this scenario is), people will still largely have some sort of faith.
Today I see a new universal faith emerging, a belief in something vague but good I think this emerging faith would be the dominant one in a world such as the one depicted in Star Trek. However, it would also be uninteresting to see stories revolving around faith and interfaith conflicts in Trek, so, perhaps, it's best to leave it without it altogether.
Today I see a new universal faith emerging, a belief in something vague but good I think this emerging faith would be the dominant one in a world such as the one depicted in Star Trek. However, it would also be uninteresting to see stories revolving around faith and interfaith conflicts in Trek, so, perhaps, it's best to leave it without it altogether.
Right now we live in scientifically literate times. We have spacecraft zooming about the solar system and are discovering extraterrestrial planets. Science and knowledge about anything we're curious about is at our fingertips on the internet. Yet a third of Americans still think that orange monstrosity in the white house is a good thing. We should never overestimate ourselves.
Over 90% of Americans believe in a God or Gods and only 3% are positive that there isn't one. This is the reality of our times. Clearly there is a discrepancy between knowledge and beliefs.
It would be even more interesting to have human characters whose ancestors are not indigenous to where they were born on Earth to reflect a world where global migration is as normal as moving from one part a city to another.
E.G A brown skinned person with a Mandarin name who is from Shanghai
I did that in a pitch. "We asked for diversity, and your lead in a white woman."
I pointed out the entire part of the bio that the 'white woman' just had a white name due to global migration and intermixing of cultures - and that I felt it was a bit narrow minded to assume that over hundreds of years of globalised cultures, we'd still have 'white' and 'brown' countries.
They stopped replying to me after that one.
Most people I know who believe in the 'old gods' (so to speak, I just like that phrase) are scientists, or scientifically minded. Including a physicist who's also a tree worshipper.
Belief in a thing doesn't negate other things; I'm not keen on the overall logic that in Star Trek world we have evolved beyond religion; just that it wasn't an issue to be judged on or to have thrown into the fabric of society (such as one nation under Gods).
Not too long ago I was working on a project with an Irish born Hindu and Pakistani born Christian. I left that to move into a team with a Sikh, an athiest and a catholic. Didn't really matter to any of us and the most conversation we got out of our differences were collectively sharing ideals without arguing; learning about what it was like to be a Christian in Pakistan was legitimately fascinating, and both of us listened without converting or arguing who had the better viewpoint.
That scenario, to me anyway, fits well into the Trek universe: Share and respect our differences and beliefs, not reset to default and strip us of them.
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Perhaps such a belief system is what Kirk refers to as "The One" in Who Mourns for Adonais.
Kor
Frankly, America is an outlier and Americans take religion way (way!) more seriously than westerners in general.
Religion is in decline in western countries, this is a fact. It correlates with better education, this is also a fact. Whether this will eventually lead to religion becoming nigh extinct, no one of course can say for sure. It is getting pretty close to that in certain Scandinavian countries already.
As for actual topic, I really find it sad (if quite telling) that how the first response to a post asking for more and non-stereotyped representation of people of middle-eastern descent directly jump to the religion while no such thing was mentioned in the original post.
Frankly, America is an outlier and Americans take religion way (way!) more seriously than westerners in general.
Percentages of people in European countries who said in 2010 that they "believe there is a God"
Religion is in decline in western countries, this is a fact. It correlates with better education, this is also a fact. Whether this will eventually lead to religion becoming nigh extinct, no one of course can say for sure. It is getting pretty close to that in certain Scandinavian countries already.
As for actual topic, I really find it sad (if quite telling) that how the first response to a post asking for more and non-stereotyped representation of people of middle-eastern descent directly jump to the religion while no such thing was mentioned in the original post.
I would expect that in the Star Trek universe where according to how Earth is portrayed by what the characters say, the standard of living is pretty much good whether one lives in Californa or Burkina Faso (which in todays RL is one of the poorest nations on the planet, as in extreme, subsistence poverty not relative poverty). So yes I would expect very monocultural places like Africa, Japan, China and a lot of Asian places to have a much more diverse population than they do today, even if they are 15% diverse that would be a massive increase.
Under a one world, federal style state, migration between old nation states/regions should be a lot easier to do, after all Star Trek humans are living all over the galaxy, what would be the point of a strict migration policy when folks are leaving in their droves. ('We are on a 1000 planets and spreading' according to TOS Kirk)
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I have no problem with a personal philosophy.
I think there is some public confusion about what the difference between personal belief and religion is. This is because religion is now a word applied to what many people would have classified as ideology. It is also applied to eastern religions like Buddhism and Taoism, where once it specifically meant Abrahamic revelation-based religions with uttered "creeds".
Some people may not know what an uttered creed is, since they may not attend church, but basically people have to say a sentence, like the following one, and deviation from it counts as exiting the religion:
"I believe in Lady Artemis, the Huntress Almighty, who created all things macroscopic and microscopic. She is unmade, a product of completely spontaneous existence, not begotten by any natural force."
A religion, in the old western sense, fundamentally, was a revelation from a god, with a dogma, and uttered creed.
A religion, in the modern sense, is basically synonymous with the word "ideology", since Buddhism, for example, while having dogmas, is agnostic, with no souls, or afterlife - even though I like it, it still encourages people (at least in some branches) to see metaphor everywhere in favor of what it posits - which I would argue is problematic, since it acts the same as any Abrahamic creed in encouraging the natural world to be seen as an endless reason for why it's propositions are symbolically true. All religions work the same way. Leninism is another example of an ideology which has a dogma, a path to salvation, etc, and which is sometimes now called a religion, as a point of irony.
What separates both definitions of religion from free thinking/atheism/humanism - or 'private belief' - is the existence of a dogma of some kind, which is unfalsifiable. Thus, by their essence, religions are fundamentally at variance with 'objective truth', because at the very least, they posit something that cannot be proven, cannot be dis-proven (by design), and in every case, the acceptance of the dogma leaves one open to credulity toward other unfalsifiable claims - because the point at which a person breaks from the objective truth is the point at which anything might be true. An enlightenment humanist may have a poignant philosophical interpretation of life, that cannot be proven, but they are under no illusion about it's truth - being entirely subjective to them - and about the primacy of evidence, which would force them to abandon it if ever contradicted.
I'm all for private belief existing in Star Trek, but by it's very nature private belief is completely indistinguishable from atheism at the surface of a person's skin, and so does not need to be depicted - hence my objection to Serveaux's idea that actual "creed" religions be represented, with people muttering the Shahada and praying five times a day, or performing a prayer to a murti of Ganesha, or whatever. These present day religions may not even exist by then, so this is purely on account of the prudish sensibilities of current audiences that we consider foisting them onto an atheistic show - we don't talk about editing Greek atheists into Ben Hur, I note, because religious entertainment is allowed to be exclusionary when they want.
The post-modern movement (which rejects the enlightenment) confuses people by arguing that Star Trek style enlightenment humanism, with everyone in the world naturally adopting a futuristic and inclusive culture without religion, through education and exposure to diversity, is a form of imperialism no better than religion. It argues for a multiculturalism in which no belief is better than any other; so you wouldn't be able to criticize an Aztec priest for cutting out a heart, because it is just as much a 'legitimate narrative' as atheism and humanism. The idea being that if an Indian like me starts wearing culturally-neutral clothes, adopting a supposedly western outlook on life (in fact universal), we have been colonized - as if a pair of jeans are more than a comfortable garment, and actually a symbol akin to an Afghan burka - enforced by a dogma, a biased ideal of beauty, etc. Maybe this is partly true, but it does not erode the fact that in one system I am alive, with a nice comfortable pair of threads, and another, my ribcage has been violated on account of someone practicing his culture. This is why we have things like individual rights, because they have a demonstrable posetive effect on people's welfare. The deeper problem with this racist bullshit is that a). atheists have always existed in every culture, from ancient Greece to ancient India, and are not a modern phenomenon as religious people would like you to believe, doubt has always existed b). science/humanism is non-cultural, beautful and the heritage of all humankind, it does not change it's outcomes depending on the color of your skin, or your gender, or your surname, and most importantly c). the objective truth of the natural universe exists whether solipsists like it or not, and can be independently verified by any human being on earth, irrelevant of their class, culture, creed or color - a religion can't - they are of a qualitative difference to one another, not quantitative. If Star Trek dares to posit that in future we will all speak one language and have one world culture based on reason, and individual rights are promoted above communal interests, I am fine with that - more than fine with it, I see it as desirable and rational - an end to racism, nationalism and sectarianism. All evidence points to this being an inevitable consequence of education and freedom of belief. But to some people here, that peaceful transition is somehow equivalent to the bloody conversion of the Roman Empire, or the Arab Conquests, or the Colonization of India by the British, in terms of cultural relativity. I call bullshit on that; science isn't relative, and the secularization of Europe has been conflict free.
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I would like to know what the actual question was that was asked of the people in that poll relative to the question asked in the poll mentioned earlier (the one of which 'Tesophius' said "Over 90% of Americans believe in a God or Gods and only 3% are positive that there isn't one.").Frankly, America is an outlier and Americans take religion way (way!) more seriously than westerners in general.
Percentages of people in European countries who said in 2010 that they "believe there is a God"
Religion is in decline in western countries, this is a fact. It correlates with better education, this is also a fact. Whether this will eventually lead to religion becoming nigh extinct, no one of course can say for sure. It is getting pretty close to that in certain Scandinavian countries already.
As for actual topic, I really find it sad (if quite telling) that how the first response to a post asking for more and non-stereotyped representation of people of middle-eastern descent directly jump to the religion while no such thing was mentioned in the original post.
Quite often, the way the question is worded makes a huge difference in how it is answered. People may not necessarily have a belief in God/Gods and actively practice a religion, but depending on the wording of the question, those same people may not necessarily say that God does not exist.
In that European poll, even though 10% of Swedes believe there is a God, that does not mean that 90% of Swedes believe there isn't a God.
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Isn't it awesome to know that the Trek "utopia" represents the triumph of the West and consequent eradication of all other points of view and all other traditions?
I mean, we're so self-evidently doing the best job!
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