Atheism does not mean one may not have religious beliefs. Jainism is an atheisstic religion, as are some forms of Buddhism. Both have afterlife concepts. There are plenty of people who have no religion OR belief in deities that also have some belief or are open to the idea of an afterlife. Frankly if the universe is a holographic projection, it's as likely as anything.
Having a room for ceremonies such as weddings does not imply religion, nor does participating traditional ceremonies. Besides, I was specifically talking about 24th century. Cassidy's reference to a priest is a pretty clear reference to religion, I grant you that. It is part of DS9 trying to ruin the setting of TNG. Regardless, there being one 24th century human whose father might have been religious doesn't change the big picture. Superstitions are mostly gone and that's how it should be.
Not entirely sure how religion in Trek came into all this, but per @Racefuel I'm missing a few posts so I'll comment as best I can. I strongly suspect that with time travel, a lot of the religious figures may have been studied in person by Federation time travelers doing research and found to not be supernatural. In which case, religion would be affected. I think there may still be belief in an afterlife due to near death experiences, but even Voyager tackled that by having an alien create a fake near death experience for Janeway. Admittedly that doesn't mean all near death experiences are aliens, so religions might be reconfigured around those instead of ancient figures who time travelers may have found to be more ordinary than holy books described.
Couple of decades of good living standards and proper education seems to already be getting rid of religion pretty effectively. Americans just don't get how anomalously religious their country is for the western world.
1000% yes on the first one. It was tragedy for the sake of drama. Nothing more. Shoehorning it into the main plot was contrived as hell. In regards to what was going on on the Borg Cube, yeah, it was poorly plotted and planned out.
That's your perspective, and you're entirely welcome to it, I'm not going to try to force you to think a certain way. I do think, perhaps, you should examine your inherent bias and determine if you're projecting your personal beliefs onto a topic and seeing only what you want to see rather than what is actually being presented.
I personally feel religion has been very harmful to my life, but here isn't the proper place to discuss that. However, I checked my entire post and I don't think I said anything bad about religious people (below). Unless you were talking to someone else? (Your post was right under mine).
On the other hand, I'm a lifelong atheist myself, but I'll concede that we saw a chapel on the Enterprise as far back as "Balance of Terror." So Roddenberry was apparently okay with that then. That being said, we've seen no indication that Soji is particularly religious, so I agree there's no reason to expect her to worry about her afterlife or whatever.
I guess I'm influenced by the game Final Fantasy 9 where the villain, upon finding out he's a construct and he has no idea what happens after he dies (other than he ceases to exist), has an existential breakdown and goes on a rampage. Is this how Soji becomes the destroyer? :O
Again, I'll invite you to examine your preconceived notions and inherent bigotry that you believe that only the poorly educated and people suffering from a low standard of living are religious.
Just to be puckish, isn't "Because Roddenberry said so" kinda a religious attitude, and a fundamentalist one at that? Star Trek is not a religion and Roddenberry is not the Pope or a prophet, let alone infallible.
IIRC Chabon was asked awhile back if he would have Jews in Star Trek, and his response was basically "Human religion is gone among in Roddenberry's world. There are no Jews, Muslims, or Christians. That's just the way the setting works."
I try to answer politely, despite you accusing me of bigotry. My statement is based on observable evidence. Religiosity drops inc countries with good education and living standards. This is a fact. In the Europe religiosity has been steadily declining for decades.
The beauty of Star Trek has been that (nearly) everyone can find something in it to identify with and be able to connect with. That was what has always been intended. Where things get off track is when you have people who wish to claim hegemony across *all* of Star Trek to the exclusion of everyone else because they want to have their personal beliefs justified and reinforced to the exclusion of everyone else and show intolerance towards anyone who says or wishes otherwise.