Nope. In the context of that converstion it means about how we expect God to be like when we actually meet Him. In Christian circles it is called putting God in a box.
ST:TMP - Special, Longer Cut...
- Thread starter Data Holmes
- Start date
Nope. In the context of that converstion it means about how we expect God to be like when we actually meet Him. In Christian circles it is called putting God in a box.
ST-One
Vice Admiral
Yeah, or a book...
What it actually means is that gods, all gods, are created by the beings that think they were created by those gods.
It's the confirmation of everything that TOS always told us about gods and the god with the capital 'g': they don't exist. They are made up. And we can only move on, evolve, once we overcome these 'delusions'.
So then by your logic and what we saw in TMP Vger made up humans.
ST-One
Vice Admiral
No.Humankind is V'ger's creator/god. But humankind is not what V'ger expected his creator/god to be.
He expected... more.
Humankind is V'ger's creator/god. But humankind is not what V'ger expected his creator/god to be.
He expected... more.
So then what you are saying is that yes for V'Ger it had a god. At least now you've admitted that when before you were saying that there was no God and V'Ger had to deal with that. You are headed in the right direction now.
So, by expecting another machine you are saying that machines are more then humans? Also V'Ger actually did get more then expected. It got a human that had abilities beyond itself, which is a definition of a god. It's creator did give exactly what it needed an ability to see beyond the physical universe.
ST-One
Vice Admiral
Humankind is V'ger's creator/god. But humankind is not what V'ger expected his creator/god to be.
He expected... more.
So then what you are saying is that yes for V'Ger it had a god. At least now you've admitted that when before you were saying that there was no God and V'Ger had to deal with that. You are headed in the right direction now.
No.V'ger was wrong, and there really is no god. He really was 'in for a disappointment'.
No.V'ger saw carbon-based life forms as a lower form of life. HE expected his 'god' to be more than himself (like certain humans do).
Then V'ger would be 'god' to humans as well, since the reverse it also true.
Wrong again.
By joining with V'ger, Decker gave him the ability to evolve, to experience emotions, to gain insights from a totally new perspective (for V'ger)
V'ger knew everything that there was to know. But he had no imagination, no fantasy and no creativity.
Humankind is V'ger's creator/god. But humankind is not what V'ger expected his creator/god to be.
He expected... more.
So then what you are saying is that yes for V'Ger it had a god. At least now you've admitted that when before you were saying that there was no God and V'Ger had to deal with that. You are headed in the right direction now.
V'ger was wrong, and there really is no god. He really was 'in for a disappointment'.
V'ger saw carbon-based life forms as a lower form of life. HE expected his 'god' to be more than himself (like certain humans do).
Then V'ger would be 'god' to humans as well, since the reverse it also true.
Wrong again.
By joining with V'ger, Decker gave him the ability to evolve, to experience emotions, to gain insights from a totally new perspective (for V'ger)
V'ger knew everything that there was to know. But he had no imagination, no fantasy and no creativity.
ST-One
Vice Admiral
V'ger was wrong, and there really is no god. He really was 'in for a disappointment'.
V'ger saw carbon-based life forms as a lower form of life. HE expected his 'god' to be more than himself (like certain humans do).
Then V'ger would be 'god' to humans as well, since the reverse it also true.
Wrong again.
By joining with V'ger, Decker gave him the ability to evolve, to experience emotions, to gain insights from a totally new perspective (for V'ger)
V'ger knew everything that there was to know. But he had no imagination, no fantasy and no creativity.
TOS never allowed for anything divine to actually exist, why would that change with TMP?
You are trying to see something in there that was never once part of Star Trek.
V'ger was wrong, and there really is no god. He really was 'in for a disappointment'.
V'ger saw carbon-based life forms as a lower form of life. HE expected his 'god' to be more than himself (like certain humans do).
Then V'ger would be 'god' to humans as well, since the reverse it also true.
Wrong again.
By joining with V'ger, Decker gave him the ability to evolve, to experience emotions, to gain insights from a totally new perspective (for V'ger)
V'ger knew everything that there was to know. But he had no imagination, no fantasy and no creativity.
TOS never allowed for anything divine to actually exist, why would that change with TMP?
You are trying to see something in there that was never once part of Star Trek.
My point is two fold here. Many intend to have an anti-religious or anti-Christian message but when you dig into what was really said it wasn't really anti anything. But you are so blinded by your anti-religious/anti-Christian POV that you miss it. I'm just trying to show how it really is not as anti-religious as you seem to think. Don't look at TMP so literally and see it as an allegory and you'll pick up on it:
Humanity=God/Creator
V'ger=humanity searching for the divine.
Note, this isn't my own theistic view, but how I believe ST:TMP presents its rather obvious case.
Vejur, like mankind in the Trek universe, created a non-existant God in its own image, out of its own desire for one to exist in order to answer its questions. It wanted answers. It decided that Creator had those answers. It began its search.
This is presented as something that all maturing/growing species and individuals do at some point in their lives. "A father, a brother... a God..."
In the Trek universe, during times past, many men created a divine man-like being to answer their questions. At the same point in its life, Vejur created a divine machine-like being to answer its questions. By the time of Trek, mankind outgrew its need for such a being.
Vejur has not. There began its search for that being, and those answers.
Of course, in the end, the reality was that there was no divine machine-like being. It was, in the end, forced to accept that it didn't need a God to find answers. It needed humanity.
Kirk provided the proof that the "creator" was mankind. Completely undivine, unimpressive little mankind, always trying to be better, sometimes succeeding.
Vejur's expectation of a machine Creator might have been smashed by Kirk's evidence to the contrary, but it still believed that mankind has its answers... so it wanted to gain what it had.
At the end of the story, there was no supreme being, only Vejur's desire for one. It still got its answers, luckily for it, but without the need for a Creator. To join with a human gave it humanity's greatest asset: human imperfections, and thus a drive to improve itself.
Further, Vejur's quest was, until it opened its mind to possibilities that it previously declared "not logical", completely "cold, barren". It wasn't growing, it wasn't learning, it wasn't doing anything.
If Vejur had held onto its belief that God was a machine, it would never have found any answers. It would have continued its search for something that didn't exist forever. Always being "cold, barren", as Spock described. Never growing, never learning, in a state of empty certainty. It would have digitised mankind and lost its future with it, all because it refused to budge from its irrational beliefs.
Sew...
Unless you believe that Christians will one day find their God in outer space, completely unaware that they're being idolised by them, then your view is not inline with this film. If you simply must have a Christian angle... leave behind your expectations and take what you can see and hear. Otherwise you'll probably never get your answers, and waste your life on a quest for something that doesn't exist.
Or so Roddenberry thinks.
Vejur, like mankind in the Trek universe, created a non-existant God in its own image, out of its own desire for one to exist in order to answer its questions. It wanted answers. It decided that Creator had those answers. It began its search.
This is presented as something that all maturing/growing species and individuals do at some point in their lives. "A father, a brother... a God..."
In the Trek universe, during times past, many men created a divine man-like being to answer their questions. At the same point in its life, Vejur created a divine machine-like being to answer its questions. By the time of Trek, mankind outgrew its need for such a being.
Vejur has not. There began its search for that being, and those answers.
Of course, in the end, the reality was that there was no divine machine-like being. It was, in the end, forced to accept that it didn't need a God to find answers. It needed humanity.
Kirk provided the proof that the "creator" was mankind. Completely undivine, unimpressive little mankind, always trying to be better, sometimes succeeding.
Vejur's expectation of a machine Creator might have been smashed by Kirk's evidence to the contrary, but it still believed that mankind has its answers... so it wanted to gain what it had.
At the end of the story, there was no supreme being, only Vejur's desire for one. It still got its answers, luckily for it, but without the need for a Creator. To join with a human gave it humanity's greatest asset: human imperfections, and thus a drive to improve itself.
Further, Vejur's quest was, until it opened its mind to possibilities that it previously declared "not logical", completely "cold, barren". It wasn't growing, it wasn't learning, it wasn't doing anything.
If Vejur had held onto its belief that God was a machine, it would never have found any answers. It would have continued its search for something that didn't exist forever. Always being "cold, barren", as Spock described. Never growing, never learning, in a state of empty certainty. It would have digitised mankind and lost its future with it, all because it refused to budge from its irrational beliefs.
Sew...
Unless you believe that Christians will one day find their God in outer space, completely unaware that they're being idolised by them, then your view is not inline with this film. If you simply must have a Christian angle... leave behind your expectations and take what you can see and hear. Otherwise you'll probably never get your answers, and waste your life on a quest for something that doesn't exist.
Or so Roddenberry thinks.
V'ger was wrong, and there really is no god. He really was 'in for a disappointment'.
V'ger was wrong, and there really is no machine-like god. He really was 'in for a disappointment' because its actual creators were mere carbon-based lifeforms from Earth, which it had previously classified as an infestation.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
For once, I really wish you were right, but unfortunately, there are definite TOS indications of 'the one God' that seems to jive with the Christianity stuff, such as Kirk saying "we find the one quite sufficient" (to Apollo, I think) and of course all that 'son of god' stuff that spoils the otherwise wonderful BREAD & CIRCUSES. I don't like to dwell on those bits, but they are part of the record.
That's all really nice and all but it is contradicted by the movie itself. Vejur did not create a divine being in its mind but it had imagined what it believed its Creator was. Vejur didn't create its Creator. It knew it had a creator when the Ilia probe was answering why Vejur was traveling to the third planet ahead. Because that is where the creator was and Vejur knew it to be true due to data it had that confirmed it.
Agreed. That's also how I interpreted that line. It didn't offend me.
Vejur's Creator, the living machine it expected to find on Earth, is compared numerous times throughout the movie to a deity/God/divine being.
"Capture God? Vejur's in for one hell of a disappointment."
"A father... a brother... A God... and asks... is this all that I am?"
"We all create God in our own image."
The way the movie is written, the Creator is depicted as Vejur's God. It has all the answers. The message couldn't be anymore obvious if it was delivered with a marching band.
Vejur had a false image of who and what its Creator was. A machine that creates machines, gives them a purpose, answers questions, all by intention, all by design.
That ultimately false and self-inspired image was created entirely by Vejur, and discarded when new verifiable information became available.
When Vejur made the decision to return to the third planet, it was following its primitive NASA programming, which instructed it to "... learn all that is learnable. Return that information to its creator." At that point, it was merely returning to the point of origin to complete an instruction.
Somewhere along the line, it became alive, and wanted more than to follow simple instructions. It wanted answers. Then, creator became Creator. No longer the mere point of origin, but the source of its very existance, and the answers that it sought. With that, Vejur guessed that its Creator would be like it, making the Creator in its own image.
Of course, it guessed wrong, and wasn't blessed with humankind's stubborn refusal to let go of myths... after correcting its error, and joining with its real non-divine creators, human beings, it gained something far more valuable... freedom of thought.
Vejur never found its Creator. The Creator, a superior living machine, was a figment of its imagination, based on guesswork and assumption. Because it let go of this error, it found another answer, the real answer, in the same place. Motivated also by the Ilia/Vejur attraction to Decker, it joins with a human. Like humans, it can now answer its own questions without the need for a cosmic voice to guide it... "I think we gave it the ability to create its own sense of purpose... from our own human weaknesses..."
The promise of finding its Creator, another living machine, was a good motivation to get its ass moving, but it ultimately found its true answers elsewhere: within its new-found imperfect humanity. Just as well it let go of its living machine expectation, too... or, as I said before, it would have digitised and wiped its answers out of existence based on a false assumption.
So humanity was not its creator?
The difference is between creator and Creator.
Humanity was not its Creator. Vejur's Creator was a living machine who would answer all its questions and tell it what it was, who it was, why it was. It willed it into existance, and Vejur wanted to know why, and what for. Vejur's Creator was a product of its own mind. It believed in the Creator, but ultimately would never find it, as it did not exist.
Humanity built it... it created it. Manufactured it. Drilled holes in it and launched it into space to measure gas particles and so on.
By joining with a human and gaining our ability to free itself from the confines of total logic, it was able to find its answers within itself, think for itself... in the process of doing that, it answered its own questions, gave itself a purpose, and no longer needed its Creator. It outgrew the need for answers to be given to it. Matured enough to do it for itself.
Humanity was not its Creator. Vejur's Creator was a living machine who would answer all its questions and tell it what it was, who it was, why it was. It willed it into existance, and Vejur wanted to know why, and what for. Vejur's Creator was a product of its own mind. It believed in the Creator, but ultimately would never find it, as it did not exist.
Humanity built it... it created it. Manufactured it. Drilled holes in it and launched it into space to measure gas particles and so on.
By joining with a human and gaining our ability to free itself from the confines of total logic, it was able to find its answers within itself, think for itself... in the process of doing that, it answered its own questions, gave itself a purpose, and no longer needed its Creator. It outgrew the need for answers to be given to it. Matured enough to do it for itself.
But the point is, like many of us, we think we know what our creatior is but when we actually encounter Him, He tends to not be exactly what we think but does end up being the answer to everything and completes us as Vejur's Creator (a human) did for it.
Um they didn' mention it was actually Christianity UNTIL they were leaving the Roman planet, and Christianity did kind influence the Roman Empire.
Similar threads
