Religion in Star Trek

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Remember, I talked about the result, not the method to get there.

The method is the pathway to the result. The result of having people of faith in existence in the world is a better world.

All of those things listed could be done through purely secular means, and I mean all of them.

So why weren't they? My point is that they don't happen as often through the actions of secular people, not that they couldn't, or not that secular people never do any of the things I've listed. A religious person, because of their faith, is more likely to step forward. Possessing faith makes it easier to get through difficult times too, for instantances drug and alcohol treatment.

Part of having a religion is you have community, the social environment of the church is one of secondary benefits of faith that many people like the most. Having God in your life and hundreds and some time thousands of people praying and pulling for you does help you get thorugh your problems. Not everyone in your church is going to be your instant best friend, but they are your extended family.

And how many of those wars would not have been fought any way, how many were more about territory or secular political power or responding to an invasion by a foreign power than religion. (Please bring up the crusades)

Considering the mass death of the purely secular wars, I think you got us religious folks beat in that catagory.

Name one tangible, positive benefit that can be attributed to religion or having a God that could not have been obtained through secular means ...

Sure, right after you reel off a list of pure secular benefits that could not possibly be obtained by a person of faith.

Still waiting.

method and pathway are the same thing. You can acieve the results through secular means... so, even if you are right, the results do not require religion.
You're acting like religion is free from blame. They might have started universities, but they are also responsible for retarding what was taught at asaid universeities. I am worried about Intelligent Design being taught to a new generation, when their isn't one paper on it that has met the burden of going through the peer-reviewed process.. in order to get it through, proponents need only complain loudly and apply political pressure. It's sad.
Uou're claim that a religious person is more likely to step forward is a generalization. You have no data to back it up, and the only reason the numbers would come up in your favor is that 80 of the country are religious. However, the RSS and the ACA do a lot for charities.

Good people generally do good things, but it takes religion to make a good person do bad things.. if that's required by the dogma. Why else do you think there is so much hatred toward gays? It took a book that said that burning witches was correct for people to burn witches!

 

[scotpens]

. . . From Merriam-Webster

Main Entry: obsolete
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): obsolet·ed; obsolet·ing
Date: 1640
: to make obsolete

Well, never mind that “obsolete” was used as a verb in the seventeenth century. It SOUNDS funny.

 

[Cheapjack]

would they need ... god ...? Yes.

Gods are made in the image of humans and not vice versa. They are certainly not necessary.

Name one tangible, positive benefit that can be attributed to religion or having a God that could not have been obtained through secular means.. and by this I'm talking about the result, not the method to get there.

Sure, right after you reel off a list of pure secular benefits that could not possibly be obtained by a person of faith.

Drug and alcohol recovery programs with a spiritual component have a higher success rate over time than similar programs without the spirituality. Islam has the highest. The court system and the insurance companies will push you towards a spiritual AA first because of the success rate. And no it isn't 100 percent.
After the earthquake in Haiti many charities came to help (some secular), the Salvation Army had been there since the year 1950. Now a private secular charity could have been there the same period of time, point is they weren't.
People of faith do more charity work in general, I'm not talking about just donating money (which is important), I mean hands on, getting dirty charity work. I've volunteered in a hospital, mission soup kitchens and most recently senior meals on wheel. I did encounter good secular people of non-faith volunteering in the hospital, but not too many.
Once as a child I assisted with my church with a rice harvest in Japan, it as near our Airbase.
There are anecdotal stories from doctors and nurses I've spoke to that people of faith do slightly better in the emergency room. Anecdotal.
While people of faith do get divorces, the number are lower than with people without faith.

once science started explaining stuff

Okay, where did the matter and energy for the Big Bang originally come from?

T'Girl, I have to say it:

There is no rational proof that God exists, none at all. It's all based on a lot of books written 2000 years ago. No one has ever come back from the other side in modern times, been scientifically tested and examined ,and told us what it is like and which of us have paid into the right religion. If some people want to believe that there is an afterlife, that's fine. But I think there will be less religion in the 24thC and it will be a private thing and they will not be interested at all in imposing it on others. They are more interested in making life here better. They will be more rational, cos they have better technology and technology is caused by rationalism. They will also be more agreed that technology has improved the lot of mankind, too, more so than people today.

I'm a buddhist.

 

[DevilEyes]

Voyager tended to treat religion in two ways, according to its function. As a supernatural way to defeat death, Voyager regarded religion as superstition, possibly even fraud. See Emanations, Mortal Coil, False Prophets. As a set of aspirations that give life meaning, it tended to be fairly positive. See Prime Factors, Muse, Omega Directive.

What Sacred Ground says depends on how you interpret the events. If the old folks are indeed the gods, you can interpret the episode as saying that there is something beyond science. If they aren't, you can interpret the episode as saying not to let preconceptions blind you to what's in front of you, even ones drawn from science.

So which category does Chakotay's religion fall into, which they beat us over the head all the time?

DS9 says that religion works; that good people adore religion; that religious people are only bigoted because of a handful of bad misleaders; that bad people who seem "good" are still evil and may be possessed by demons; that the gods will save us if we give them their due sacrifice. This all strikes me as reactionary BS, but seems to be one of DS9's most attractive features for most of the people at this bbs.

Your interpretations of DS9 are always amusing to read, although not as amusing as your interpretations of BSG. It's always fun, in its own way, to see someone with such one-dimensional and narrow-minded views defined by ideology. It reminds me of the old history of literature books by Marxist literary critics that I had to read at the university.

 

[Cheapjack]

'Who watches the watchers??????????'

 

[stj]

So which category does Chakotay's religion fall into, which they beat us over the head all the time?

Chakotay's visions were induced by a machine. It is perfectly clear that on one level, Voyager equated religion with peyote visions. Which is why Chakotay's little gagdet quickly disappeared. I don't think Robert Beltran ever quite grasped that a lot of his character disappeared with it. Although Voyager imagined that a nice person could turn hallucinations into inspiration, I'm pretty sure the average religious is rather more fond of the supernatural.

Your interpretations of DS9 are always amusing to read, although not as amusing as your interpretations of BSG. It's always fun, in its own way, to see someone with such one-dimensional and narrow-minded views defined by ideology. It reminds me of the old history of literature books by Marxist literary critics that I had to read at the university.

Substituting bad manners and thinly disguised redbaiting for an argument is to be expected. Your views range from ignorant and bigoted to vacuous and pretentious.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

There is no rational proof that God exists, none at all.

Nor does there have to be. That's the very nature of having faith. Believing in things I *don't* actually see proof of. I realize that's not enough for some, but there we are.

As for "Who Watches The Watchers"...meh. People keep bringing that up, but I don't have a problem with that episode. Picard, as is his wont, was beating the Mintakans over the head with his point, but I think he was only doing it just to convince them that HE wasn't a god. Not necessarily that they shouldn't believe in anything...just don't do it with HIM. It's certainly not something that should provoke righteous anger or anything like that.

 

[JarodRussell]

There is no rational proof that God exists, none at all.

Nor does there have to be. That's the very nature of having faith. Believing in things I *don't* actually see proof of. I realize that's not enough for some, but there we are.

Fighting endless wars about something that cannot be proven, and changing education from teaching a theory that has empirical evidence to support it to teaching a fantasy story that only requires faith but can't be backed up by anything, those are good enough reasons to be highly critical about this faith thing.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Nor does there have to be. That's the very nature of having faith. Believing in things I *don't* actually see proof of. I realize that's not enough for some, but there we are.

Faith= hope and desire mistaken for knowledge

Faith is not a good way to assess reality. People think it is because it's always placed in the context of sweetness.

Let's say I was told that in two weeks someone would come to my house with a million dollars. I have no desire to doubt the source, and I have faith that this will happen. So I start buying things for myself and others. I make large donations to charity. I do good things all around. It turns out that I nearly depleting my savings, because I have faith (mistaken knowledge) that I will get all that money again. I mean, beliefs inform actions, and I really believed that I was going to get money. If I am wrong, I wind up having to struggle to rebuild my savings.

See, it's about faith at all... it's about what's true. You can have faith in anything. You can believe anything. But wouldn't you like to have as many true beliefs and as few false beliefs as possible? Wouldn't you like a way to assess fact from fantasy? Faith is not the way to do either of those things

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Also, religion is inherently destructive. It's negative reinforcement. Instead of people taking credit for their own accomplishments, they thank some invisible man in the sky. One thing that religion does is tear down a person's self worth..it does rebuild it again, but that self worht is now centered around God, not themselves. I think that is destructive.

How about indoctrination? A child doesn't even have the ability to comprehend a belief system yet he or she is considered a certain kind of religion and taught in those respects. How about the teenage believer I heard about on a call in show who was the perfect religious alter-boy model, and when, as a teen, he started reading stories that might make one doubt the historicity of Jesus, he was afraid to read anymore "for fear that I am wrong. I feel like a heretic just thinking about it."

Anything that keeps a child from thinking, reading, and learning because of dogma or because of some unsubstantiated fear, is wrong. I don't care what rationalization you can come up with for it. Anyone could be wrong about anything, and a rational person will appreciate it about themselves, but for someone to fear that he is wrong is just mind-boggling.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

I'm also going to go out on a limb and say that Trek's philosophy is pretty much almost entirely secular. I'll remind you first that Roddenberry was an atheist. There are all of maybe three of four references to religion in all of TOS, the strongest of which is Kirk's "we find one quite sufficient" refence, or maybe Uhura's rambling in that Roman episode. Trek has many writers, and I'll remind you that me, like many atheists, refer to god all the time, because religion has permeated thought processes after being in power for a long time, after the beliefs and values having been given a free pass for many generations, and it filters in almost involuntarily for even for the most strident atheists becuase of, well, osmosis.. or whatever. However, the whole idea of the Federation, and the future in which people work together for the common good is entirel;y secular and can only only be accomplished through secular means.

 

[Mark Antony]

There is no rational proof that God exists, none at all.

Nor does there have to be. That's the very nature of having faith. Believing in things I *don't* actually see proof of. I realize that's not enough for some, but there we are.

Fighting endless wars about something that cannot be proven, and changing education from teaching a theory that has empirical evidence to support it to teaching a fantasy story that only requires faith but can't be backed up by anything, those are good enough reasons to be highly critical about this faith thing.

Are you going to stop all of the endless wars and improve everybody's education by constantly bickering about religion in a Star Trek message board? I think you have to step away from your computer, and get out there into the frontline and really shake things up - go out and make a difference. Be the change you want to see in the world. Maybe you and The Flying Spaghetti Monster could get together and write a best selling book like The God Delusion or God Is Not Great.


I am surprised that noone has brought up Picard's speech in Where Silence Has Lease. The fake Data asks Picard what death is, and Picard says:

"Oh, is that all? Oh, Data, you're asking probably the most difficult of all questions. Some see it as a changing into an indestructible form, forever unchanging; they believe that the purpose of the entire universe is to maintain that form in an earth-like garden which will give delight and pleasure through all eternity. On the other hand, there are those who hold to the idea of our blinking into nothingness. That all of our experiences and hopes and dreams, merely a delusion."

Then Data asks Picard what he believes. Picard replies:

"Considering the marvelous complexity of the universe, its clockwork perfection, its balances of this against that, matter, energy, gravitation, time, dimension, I believe that our existence must be more than either of these philosophies. That what we are goes beyond Euclidean or other "practical" measuring systems, and that our existence is part of a reality beyond what we understand now as reality."

Picard, the greatest Star Trek character ever, is expressing a belief in an existence that goes beyond what we understand now. It is obviously a belief that religious people can relate to.

 

[T'Girl]

There is no rational proof that God exists, none at all.

Many places, events and people in the Bible can be confirmed through archeological or historical research, but not everything. Empirical evidence exists for some miracles, but not all.

But wouldn't you like to have as many true beliefs and as few false beliefs as possible? Wouldn't you like a way to assess fact from fantasy? Faith is not the way to do either of those things

But not everyone want to live a stark, cold, sterile existence. Many people would prefer to experience a life rich in "sweetness." Faith in everyday life is recipe for happiness, hope and fulfillment.

I'm also going to go out on a limb and say that Trek's philosophy is pretty much almost entirely secular. I'll remind you first that Roddenberry was an atheist.

Actual Star Trek was pretty noncommittal on the subject one way or the other in most episodes. Both Kirk and Picard made their positions known, Kira certainly did. Many other characters never let us know where they stood. You can't say with certainty they were secular, nor I faith.

Gene Roddenberry's faith, stated in many interviews, was Buddhism. (Please say Buddhism isn't a faith)

Trek has many writers, and I'll remind you that me, like many atheists, refer to god all the time, because religion has permeated thought processes after being in power for a long time, after the beliefs and values having been given a free pass for many generations, and it filters in almost involuntarily for even for the most strident atheists becuase of, well, osmosis.. or whatever.

So you and other atheists make religious references because you are surrounded by people of faith, their institutions and their impact on the overall culture, and the people three and a half centuries from now make religious references because they are ...

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

But not everyone want to live a stark, cold, sterile existence. Many people would prefer to experience a life rich in "sweetness." Faith in everyday life is recipe for happiness, hope and fulfillment.

Mis-characterization. My existence is far from cold and sterile. In fact, because I know for certain that this will likely be the only life I will get, that it is not a rehearsal for some afterlife that may or may not exist, that makes this life infinitely more valuable. The line between faith and making something up because its comfortable is very thin.

 

[Cheapjack]

There is no rational proof that God exists, none at all.

Many places, events and people in the Bible can be confirmed through archeological or historical research, but not everything. Empirical evidence exists for some miracles, but not all.

But wouldn't you like to have as many true beliefs and as few false beliefs as possible? Wouldn't you like a way to assess fact from fantasy? Faith is not the way to do either of those things

But not everyone want to live a stark, cold, sterile existence. Many people would prefer to experience a life rich in "sweetness." Faith in everyday life is recipe for happiness, hope and fulfillment.

I'm also going to go out on a limb and say that Trek's philosophy is pretty much almost entirely secular. I'll remind you first that Roddenberry was an atheist.

Actual Star Trek was pretty noncommittal on the subject one way or the other in most episodes. Both Kirk and Picard made their positions known, Kira certainly did. Many other characters never let us know where they stood. You can't say with certainty they were secular, nor I faith.

Gene Roddenberry's faith, stated in many interviews, was Buddhism. (Please say Buddhism isn't a faith)

Trek has many writers, and I'll remind you that me, like many atheists, refer to god all the time, because religion has permeated thought processes after being in power for a long time, after the beliefs and values having been given a free pass for many generations, and it filters in almost involuntarily for even for the most strident atheists becuase of, well, osmosis.. or whatever.

So you and other atheists make religious references because you are surrounded by people of faith, their institutions and their impact on the overall culture, and the people three and a half centuries from now make religious references because they are ...

T'Girl, you may be right.

Maybe it IS technology that has got us into this mess. Maybe we would be better off living the way we didd 2000 years ago and dying of horrible diseases and being told what to do by someone who claims they have a link to someone in another dimension, without any concrete proof.

But, I don't think so. I think some people just want to keep us in ignorance and love the idea of being some sort of channel to the otherworld and love the importance and self worth this gives them. And the control over others.

And, apart from that, ST is about rationalism. ST says that technology and a move away from ignorance and a rational understanding of the universe. This is what gives them their better life and they all just about agree on that.

That is what ST is about. Some have a belief in an afterlife, but they are not TOLD what to do t by someone who loves the status it gives them.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

The idea that being religious means your thought processes are inferior is false. As mentioned WAY upthread, it is only when refuses to accept the reality of the world that there is a problem. Accepting the reality of the world, to me, comes with accepting science. That said, though, I think that denying what one has experienced--those things that one can only describe but never convey in full to another person as you might show a work of art to two people--isn't a good idea either.

 

[JarodRussell]

The idea that being religious means your thought processes are inferior is false. As mentioned WAY upthread, it is only when refuses to accept the reality of the world that there is a problem. Accepting the reality of the world, to me, comes with accepting science. That said, though, I think that denying what one has experienced--those things that one can only describe but never convey in full to another person as you might show a work of art to two people--isn't a good idea either.

Experience is a good word in this context. Because everything a human being can experience with his senses simply MUST have a rational explanation.

It is just basic physics. Everything you can see MUST emit photons or it is made up in your brain. Everything you hear MUST emit sound waves or it is made up in your brain. Until proven otherwise, of course. Maybe there are entities out there that can interact with us by sending out technobabble like tachyons that have yet to be found, and humans might have a sensor for these particles, like pigeons have a sensor for electromagnetic fields or dogs for ultrasonic waves. But the thing is that humans are part of this universe. We are build from electrons, protons, neutrons, etc... and hence we are bound to the laws of physics in EVERY way. Even when the combination of atoms and molecules creates something like a soul. The soul may have a designer, but everything still must work according to the universal laws.

It's like basic computer programming, too. When you see a picture on a computer screen, then this picture has someone who painted it, and it can be beautiful, it can have a meaning, but it still is just described by bits and shown to you by a glowing LCD display.

So as soon as you experience something, you can be sure there is a rational explanation. It's simply how the universe works. It doesn't work at random, it follows a strict set of laws and constants. That is a scientific fact. The question whether there was someone who designed this set of laws or not is purely philosophical and has nothing to do with science. Science describes how it works and not why it works.

 

[flemm]

So as soon as you experience something, you can be sure there is a rational explanation. It's simply how the universe works.

I agree, but I think it's worth noting that, as our knowledge of the universe increases, our conception of what is rational also changes. Certainly there are many concepts that we currently accept as rational that would have been perceived as highly irrational by scientific minds of the past (examples: Einsteinian relativity, the uncertainty principle). It's possible that by the time we fully understand how the human brain functions (for example), we will have made some breakthroughs of similar magnitude and redefined our conception of what we are ready to accept as rational.

I'm certainly on board with the idea that everything in the universe can be rationally explained (the universe does seem to work that way), but with the caveat that aspects of that rational explanation (once fully known) will/would seem as counter-intuitive or outright crazy to us as, say, time dilation would have seemed to Galileo.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I do agree that science cannot overlap with notions of morals and purpose--anyone who uses science to infer in either direction (that there is or is not a designer, or that there is or is not purpose) stretches it beyond what it can do, just as I think it's foolish to expect the Bible to be a scientific treatise.

To me, explainability in the physical sense does not preclude purpose, meaning, value, or design. That's actually something I toyed with with one of my fanfic characters. He is an empath in a species not normally supposed to be capable of such things (and for whom it is even more maladaptive if the individual doesn't have help coping with it than it would be for a human). He believes that this was a spiritual gift given to him. Yet I can tell you that if you scanned his brain and found differences between its function and a normal member of his species (and as the character's "creator" I can say definitively that you would), he would not see this as any threat to his beliefs. He would just have a little more insight into HOW he does what he does.

 

[T'Girl]

Maybe it IS technology that has got us into this mess.

Cheepjack, I don't reject technology, but while I enjoy and make use of technology I try never to be too impressed by it. Essentially it nothing but a tool. People are what matter. Social, family, faith, culture. Star Trek isn't solely a technological demonstrator (although that's part of what brought me initially to the show), it about the Human experience, curiosity, interactions. One of the most common complaints about the various series is that many of the character don't "grow." Part of religion is to be more than you are, that you grow by possessing spirituality, having a state of grace make you more.

One of the on going disagreements between peoples of faith and anti-faith is that faith holds the Human Beings are more that just animals with big brains.

ST is about rationalism ... and they all just about agree on that

Data is likely the single most rational being ever to be on Star Trek, his stated goal in his existence is to be more Human than he was. Why? He was already a rational, logical, intellectually being, what more is there? What Data wants is what he doesn't have. Data wishes to transcend the rational, to possess something that logically doesn't existent. Even after Data was equipped with the emotion chip he told the Borg Queen that he aspired to be Human. Which means the emotion chip hadn't provided him with what he needed. Data wanted something that intellectually he shouldn't have wanted.

Data wanted a soul.