What Do You Think Really Happen with Religions in ST?

[sojourner]

I think everybody has free will to do whatever they want.... That's God's given right. I don't think you can blame it on religions or other people if you did something seriously wrong. And, besides that, psychopathic people are going to kill people no matter what if they made up their mind about it. Look at Pol Pot from Cambodia.... That man has no religions, and he is one of the most hated man, probably the most hated person, in Southeast Asia.... i don't think any major religions condone that type of behavior.

Sorry, but evolution gave me intelligence and intelligence gave me free will. No superstition needed.
And hey, do you really want to start naming people through history that have done atrocious things? Because I can bet a lot more of them were religious than not.

 

[Paradon]

Gene Rondenberry wasn't a bad guy! There are people who are horrible and are religious.

 

[Paradon]

I think everybody has free will to do whatever they want.... That's God's given right. I don't think you can blame it on religions or other people if you did something seriously wrong. And, besides that, psychopathic people are going to kill people no matter what if they made up their mind about it. Look at Pol Pot from Cambodia.... That man has no religions, and he is one of the most hated man, probably the most hated person, in Southeast Asia.... i don't think any major religions condone that type of behavior.

Sorry, but evolution gave me intelligence and intelligence gave me free will. No superstition needed.
And hey, do you really want to start naming people through history that have done atrocious things? Because I can bet a lot more of them were religious than not.

I think war is mostly fought over territories and they use religions as an excuse (You know like you killed my wife and children...God will punish you)...with the exception of the Crusades of course. God is part of human subconscious wanting to do good. Like I said: it's a powerful metaphor.

 

[T'Girl]

- Space probes worship human beings

Or humpback whales.

... does it change who you are if you did believe in God?

If you're devout sure, influances how you make decisions and your vision the universe around you.

Anyway, do you think Q's are gods in Star Trek universe?

I think the Q we've seen the most is like the norse Loki, he has the powers of a god, but is a troublemaker.

I do wonder sometimes if Q is quite as powerful as he says he is, not that he doesn't have some impressive abilities, but is he truly omnipotent and omniscient?

 

[sojourner]

Doesn't omniscience remove free will?

 

[C.E. Evans]

I don't think the Q are gods, but they come awfully dang close. To civilizations who may not know better, they could be easily mistaken for gods, IMO...

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

And, to answer your question about why people need religions. I think sometime people tend to go too far using cold logic. I think part of being human is hoping and dreaming for a better life.... I think that's why all these stories of gods and goddesses and religions were created. I think it really helps people cope with situations that would be unbearable under normal circumstances, such as life and death situations, or even when we are trying to make the right choices in life. Let's face it! Doing the right thing is far more difficult than what a lot of people think. No one is perfect. I can attest to that! Trying making the right decisions under stress using cold logic and more often than not, someone is bound to get pissed off.... I think God is part of the human sub-consciousness, if you ask me.... Sometimes, a wishful thinking isn't so bad! We all can hope!

sure there has been many gods, and many "benefits" of believing in them.

What matters is if any of them have been truthful. None have been shown to be truthful, and there has been no positive benefit of religion that could not also have been achieved through secular means.

 

[Myasishchev]

I think everybody has free will to do whatever they want.... That's God's given right. I don't think you can blame it on religions or other people if you did something seriously wrong. And, besides that, psychopathic people are going to kill people no matter what if they made up their mind about it. Look at Pol Pot from Cambodia.... That man has no religions, and he is one of the most hated man, probably the most hated person, in Southeast Asia.... i don't think any major religions condone that type of behavior.

Sorry, but evolution gave me intelligence and intelligence gave me free will. No superstition needed.
And hey, do you really want to start naming people through history that have done atrocious things? Because I can bet a lot more of them were religious than not.

I think war is mostly fought over territories and they use religions as an excuse (You know like you killed my wife and children...God will punish you)...with the exception of the Crusades of course. God is part of human subconscious wanting to do good. Like I said: it's a powerful metaphor.

The Crusades are one of the better examples of religion as excuse, especially the Fourth Crusade, which succeeded in killing several ten thousand Christians and never actually arrived in a Muslim country. But they were by and large pretty cynical ventures.

Anyway, yeah, I reckon the larger part of the human race has been thoroughly secularized. A bunch of them may be deistic, but I doubt many at all follow any present-day faith, simply because most present-day faiths are archaic and not easily adaptable to conditions involving aliens (when God sent His only Son to die for our sins and/or made Mohammed the seal of the prophets, it turns out what He was really saying was "screw the Klingons").

Even so, I'd expect that a fair number of people follow the Bajoran example, and follow faiths which have emprical evidence to back them up: Prophet worship, Q worship, Surakism, and listening to the music of Wyld Stallyns.

Also, Scientology, whose mythos becomes disturbingly plausible in the context of Star Trek.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I've always liked to think that gradually humanity was dominated by people who said "Hey, why are we letting tradition control our minds?" and rejected it in favor of life -- of natural values.

 

[RyuRoots]

I always liked to think that by at least the 24th century people became smart enough to realize how silly using complex ways of saying "I'm afraid of death" to comfort themselves is.

Or alternatively, at the very least, that people don't feel a need to shove religion down everyone's throat, like so many followers of organized religion today.

 

[sonak]

I always liked to think that by at least the 24th century people became smart enough to realize how silly using complex ways of saying "I'm afraid of death" to comfort themselves is.

Or alternatively, at the very least, that people don't feel a need to shove religion down everyone's throat, like so many followers of organized religion today.

You have a pretty narrow view of what religious belief is about. You realize there's more than just the Christian religious tradition right?


Many religions have very little to do with an afterlife.

 

[Myasishchev]

I've always liked to think that gradually humanity was dominated by people who said "Hey, why are we letting tradition control our minds?" and rejected it in favor of life -- of natural values.

Good God, I hope we never do that.

 

[Nightdiamond]

RyuRoots wrote:
I always liked to think that by at least the 24th century people became smart enough to realize how silly using complex ways of saying "I'm afraid of death" to comfort themselves is.

Or alternatively, at the very least, that people don't feel a need to shove religion down everyone's throat, like so many followers of organized religion today.

I think Trek back tracked on this after TNG. At first humans were shown as being ultra evolved and beyond superstition, no religious baggage etc.

But afterwards we see humans being "saved" by godlike figures and religion gradually slipping into episodes.

I think they couldn't keep up that attitude for long. The lack of any type of spirituality or supernatural made it a cold, bland universe.

 

[Myasishchev]

What human had a surplus of religious faith? Sisko? He relied on evidenced space gods, and, as a Space Jesus, had no need for faith.

Well, Chakotay had faith. I'll leave it to your sound judgment to determine whether that alleviated the cold or the blandness.

 

[Nightdiamond]

Even Picard was slipping a little into it in the later seasons. A little anyway.

DS9? Full of religious ideology until the last episode.

Chakotay and the......stuff he did- yes an example of spirituality.

I think science solves a lot of problems-Trek just couldn't stick with that idea for too long, I think.

 

[T'Girl]

and there has been no positive benefit of religion that could not also have been achieved through secular means

Likely the opposite of that statement would be true.

Look at Pol Pot from Cambodia.... That man has no religions, and he is one of the most hated man, probably the most hated person, in Southeast Asia.... i don't think any major religions condone that type of behavior.

And hey, do you really want to start naming people through history that have done atrocious things? Because I can bet a lot more of them were religious than not.

I think war is mostly fought over territories and they use religions as an excuse ...

You sometimes hear "most wars were religious," which doesn't stand up to examination, using numbers coming from The Dictionary Of Wars (G. C. Kohn), of the the 1,700 plus wars listed, only seven percent of them are religious wars.

Certainly the various non-religious secular wars have killed far more people. Prior to the twentieth century the estimate for all war related death in Human history is 40,400,000. The figure for "just" the twentieth century is 169,200,000, the bulk of whom died in secular wars.

 

[RyuRoots]

You realize there's more than just the Christian religious tradition right?


Many religions have very little to do with an afterlife.

I'm well aware. But those usually aren't the religions whose members take every opportunity to shove their views down everyone else's throat and generally NEED to die out.

 

[Myasishchev]

You sometimes hear "most wars were religious," which doesn't stand up to examination, using numbers coming from The Dictionary Of Wars (G. C. Kohn), of the the 1,700 plus wars listed, only seven percent of them are religious wars.

Certainly the various non-religious secular wars have killed far more people. Prior to the twentieth century the estimate for all war related death in Human history is 40,400,000. The figure for "just" the twentieth century is 169,200,000, the bulk of whom died in secular wars.

I dunno. The European aspect of World War II was by turns a religious war by any other name, with its principal antagonist pursuing a rather millenarian goal. Nazism and Communism really blur the lines between a secular ideology and a religious faith, however materialist.

I also wonder if it does not count as religious the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, which had more than a tint of religiosity to them; it's impossible not to consider the police action in the Vendee or the guerilla combat in Spain without considering their inhabitants' Catholicism.

In any event, does the sample include wars from before the rise of Christianity? The study is better made if one excludes from the sample wars which took place prior to any of the major exclusivist, proselytic religions actually existed. Judaism is pretty much the only religion fighting holy wars in antiquity, of which I am aware.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Likely the opposite of that statement would be true.

please explain what you mean.

What I am saying is that there is no real tangible, demonstrable benefit of religion that requires religion. Sure, religions can help the homeless, but so can secular organizations. And if you say that religions can promise an eternity in heaven, well i know a few used car salesmen that can make promises too, but that doesnt mean that there is any truth to it.

 

[Captain Verata]

I also believe that in Star Trek people of the Federation are without any religion. Many of the Starfleet characters seem like secular humanists, especially Picard. It helps Mr. Roddenberry is one too and most likely saw his vision of a better future without any type of religion existing on Earth.

"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes."-- Gene Roddenberry