So, I just taught "Who Mourns for Adonais" in my sci fi class, today.
I was surprised (though perhaps I shouldn't have been), by the level of interest in Kirk's line: "Mankind has no need for gods. We find the one quite adequate."
Curious what those here make of this line.
It was to be taken as expressed: Kirk believes in God and his "we" means the rest of humanity does as well. I've said this before, but contrary to some who I would describe as militant atheists pushing an agenda, TOS was not anti-religion at all, with several characters clearly expressing their faith, including McCoy and Uhura. TOS was clear in Kirk having no tolerance for
false gods, as seen in his challenges to Apollo and Gary Mitchell:
To Mitchell:
"A god, but still driven by human frailty. Do you like what you see?"
"One jealous god. if all this makes a god, or is it making you something else?"
In all rational sense, he's challenging and mocking the idea of an enhanced
human calling himself / acting as that which he could never be.
...and of course, this continues in
"Who Mourns for Adonais"--
"We find the one quite sufficient"
Again, Kirk draws that line in the sand, as he will never see anyone--not former friend altered by an energy barrier, or a creature using devices to play deity (Apollo, and you can throw Trelane into that category).
I vaguely remember some explanation in later fandom and/or fanon that "The One" was the proper name of some particular philosophy (possibly humanistic) that humans of the 23rd century subscribed to. But an American audience of the 1960s would have understood the line as referring to monotheism of the Judeo-Christian type. No doubt it was included to acquiesce to network censors and their desires to not alienate certain segments of the viewing audience.
I've never found any evidence of this added to please network censors or certain audiences. One, there was no NBC (or sponsor) obligation to introduce or refer to Christianity in TOS at all--IOW, Roddenberry's hands were not forced, otherwise, I'm sure the anti-religion-in-TOS individuals would have produced this evidence at any time over the past 52 years to accompany the wealth of other network & staff papers and accounts in relation to the production of TOS. Two, other 60s sci-fi series, such as
The Outer Limits, and
Land of the Giants featured characters who were similar to Apollo, and asserted their superiority over humans, but there was no network demand that a Christian belief needed to be added either for basic acknowledgement / pleasing any demographic, or as a counter to the villain of the week.
Additionally, as much as a series like
Bewitched (ABC, 1964-72) was constantly attacked by various groups for allegedly promoting witchcraft, Ashmont (the series production company formed by William
Asher & Elizabeth
Montgomery), or Screen Gems were not pressured by ABC to add Christian themes, character beliefs to act as a counter to the nose twitching, hand waving, spell-casting antics of Samantha Stevens, Endora, Doctor Bombay, Aunt Clara, or anyone else. In other words, there was no pro-Christian network agenda, and of
all TV series, if one accused of selling the dark "art" of witchcraft was not pressured, I seriously doubt it happened in the way imagined in the TOS case. If religious belief appeared on TOS, it was likely due to the characters expressing it because they were conceived to be that way, so stories could--and did have faith references that were not out of place in that world, or to established characters.
Again, TOS had characters
naturally believing in God and/or the Christian faith, which was referred to when relevant, with Kirk always willing to beak down the
pretenders. This was a consistent character trait carried over to
The Final Frontier when Kirk uttered his famous
"What does God need with a Starship?" line. Its his same, traditional challenge to
false gods, because he believes in the real
"one", as pointed out to Apollo.
