Can anyone make sense of the prophets-pah wraiths plotline?

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." It's a great quote.

 

I guess that's something. The book was technology we don't understand and the magic words were some voice activation code.

 

I certainly don't understand it at all.
But that is one part of the show I really like.
Go figure.

 

The pah wraiths plotline did come across as a bizarre story for a Star Trek show.

While there may indeed have been a worldly scientific explanation to the pah wraiths, the way the story was depicted made it seem as though it was something supernatural, which is not very Trek-like. When Kai Winn was reading the books of sorcery and recanting spells, it felt more like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with Willow researching spell books, than Star Trek.

 

Part of the problem is DS9 actually dealt with religion, which other Trek series avoided since it can too easily result in controversy, bad feeling, and, gasp, boycotts. But religion is, by definition, supernatural, and by making their gods nothing more than "wormhole aliens above and beyond linear time," they married these issues in a way that might appeal to both science and faith, but might also offend both scientists and clerics. But they did it in a way that doesn't absolutely insist only one way is the right way, so viewers are allowed to interpret much of it as they wish. While the other Trek series skirt these issues more, I think DS9 handled the subject matter in a very Trek-like manner, actually addressing social concepts in fiction that might have real world non-fiction applications.

 

At their core, weren't the Q, the race of Trelane and the race that judges Kirk and the Gorn commander (and Wesley Crusher, FFS) also supernatural? When compared to the other "gods" of Star Trek, the Prophets were actually quite limited and far less intrusive. Certainly, they fell in line with a typical Star Trek trope in which what appeared to be gods were beings who were both mentally and technologically more advanced. More often than not, it was asserted that humans might evolve to such a stage over time through mental exploration.

What Star Trek typically did was make that distinction between physical and metaphysical seem arbitrary and temporary. Where DS9 differed in past portrayals of religion and godhood is that it took seriously the current distinction between physical and metaphysical: they may be more evolved than us, but here they are, and we must contend with their actions. To that extent, the series was able to address religion more directly as a cultural and social phenomena, as you say. Where it really differed was in making the Prophets less meddlesome than those other "gods." They exercise power in a very localized setting: the Bajor system and the wormhole they created. Their actions tend to be limited to giving out information that comes to them via their ability to break down temporal boundaries or a few things that directly affect Bajor. And even their silly battle with the Pahwraiths largely seems to be an internal struggle. Moreover, they seem open to reason, willing to listen to ordinary beings and make changes based on what we tell them. To that end, they are far more benevolent than what we normally see in Trek's gods.

 

Many have often made fun at how frequently Trek characters must deal with "god-like" beings - like it's almost every other week - but rarely are religions built around them that make them gods in the there and then - it's usually just vast power, and often technologically based or enhanced (and sufficiently advanced, of course) or well hidden, or indeed, the product of millions or billions of years of evolution, so even humans may one day reach such levels (as if evolution worked toward some high goal like that rather than simply favoring mutations that might happen to be more advantageous for a new or changed environment and which could, by some accounts, as easily be construed as a step "backwards" if they step was advantageous for the current environment).

When stating how evolution works, Trek typically gets it wrong or imposes some objective terms on it, like "higher" life forms or "more evolve," as if that were in fact the goal of evolution. It's not. A cow or a dog or a cat or a chimp is just as evolved as a human - products of the same length of time on the evolutionary tree. Only our mutations that heightened our intelligence and awareness that gives us considerably longer foresight sets us apart, and we may arbitrarily say that's superior or higher or more evolved, but that's just an subjective term - not an objective one with greater universal value, and certainly not the intended product of evolution, let alone the epitome of evolution on this planet.

Regardless, never are any of these god-like beings in Trek really suggested to be the creator of the universe. Even Apollo who was thought to have been god by primitive humans was just from a powerful race of aliens.

The Q seem the most god-like of all I've seen, but I don't think even they ever suggested they created this universe. And they seem quite fallible and lacking in understanding of relatively simple things, like human beings. But maybe that's just an act.

I don't know if the prophets are less meddlesome than, for example, the God of Abraham, at least in times past, though more modern people seem to directly interact with Him far less than those characters in the ancient text. The wormhole prophets are less meddlesome than some other Trek god-like beings, but through their orbs and direct interactions with those in the wormhole, they do interact often enough that they are more a matter of fact than a matter of faith. How many religions can claim that? Well, most "claim" it, but none have it, as far as I've ever been able to tell.

How the prophets take suggestions and alter their actions is, of course, hard to understand since they knew before, or after, the entirety of their existences, so it's not really a change or alteration, but just what "already" happened, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. As for their benevolence, I'm still wondering what they did with that massive fleet of the Dominion's that "disappeared" on its way through the wormhole to the Alpha quadrant It wasn't just prevented from coming through - it vanished. That's a pretty active hand for God these days, and there's no real proof it was at all benevolent. It may have worked out well for our local heroes, but that's hardly an objective definition of benevolence.

 

The enemy of my enemy is my friend...

 

With friends like that, who needs . . . wait a tick. This redistribution of alliances is trickier than I thought.

 

DS9 deals with religion in a social sense mostly through the culture of Bajor but it's by no means the first Trek to deal with the spiritual/philosophical side of religion (in a sci fi manner) - that was a key theme of episodes of the Original Series, of the Q continuum and of Final Frontier. I think the Prophets/Pah Wraiths were an extension of that and although they remain somewhat mysterious, they are really just alien life forms existing in such a different way to us as to seem supernatural. And in a way since they basically tick the boxes of what we in the real world would call gods/angels/demons, it's not entirely unreasonable to conflate the two. In fact it all kind of brings up the question of at what point does something real turn into something spiritual and does something spiritual have to NOT be real? In what sense are these beings different from various mythic beings of our world? And if they had real tangible existence then how would or should people respond? Is religion the way we see it on Bajor the right response?
Although DS9 can feel a bit out there and fantastical with these beings I do believe the whole plot asks pretty important, classic philosophical/societal questions that Star Trek has always been interested in.

 

That's a trap, though. The Neo-Platonic test really preferences only specific notions of religion that look, more or less, like Christianity, and make it seem that other possible configurations, like polytheism, are invalid.

 

Gotta love the Klingons-- they killed their gods. (And, I'm guessing, wrote an opera about it.)

 

Apart from Kirk saying "we find the one (god) sufficient" or the occasional mention of a deity, or deities, no Trek series has really dealt with religion as an on-going concern within the series. Even episodic concerns hardly were the major point of most stories, as far as I can recall. But my only point was that DS9 deals with religion far more consistently and frequently and throughout its entire run, so that's one main feature that sets DS9 apart from all other Trek series. Vulcan mysticism, however, clearly does some things that science would have a hard time explaining. For example, Spock feeling the crew of the starship Intrepid die from lightyears away. Bad enough Vulcans can read minds when in physical contact with you, but even without that benefit, and a faster than light speeds? Good trick.

Naturally, or supernaturally, as the case may be, what constitutes god isn't up to any one individual, or any one particular society, such that they could reasonably insist that their God IS everyone's god. They never mentioned it, really, but I would think in the Trek universe, as we encounter hundreds of other cultures with their gods, and countless "god-like" beings, our ideas of religion or god would either die, or be forced to radically evolve. Just knowing we are not alone in the universe, for a start, might shake the very religious foundation of some people's faith.

Klingons killing their gods was a laugh, IMO. But one of my favorites was Terry Pratchett's view from his fictional Discworld series. "The Gods are not so much worshipped as blamed."

 

I think TOS was somewhat schizophrenic when it came to gods and godlike powers. In Where No Man Has Gone Before there was the implication that someone automatically becomes evil when they acquire such powers. [Ditto in Charlie X (which I always assumed was an answer to Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land).]
Kirk even says, "Absolute power corrupting absolutely..." If the beings were sufficiently advanced that they didn't want to control or kill the crew, they usually didn't want anything to do with them (their version of the Prime Directive? LOL)

 

Schizophrenic? I'm not sure I agree with the use of that term as applied to TOS's POV on god-like beings. Regardless, I was more of the opinion the deeper meaning is that power magnifies what is already there, and absolute power magnifies things to a ridiculous extent. Humans are flawed, usually deeply, and thus power tends to magnify those flaws. Who amongst us is without flaw? Without comparable power to keep one in check, it's too easy to become, as he said, corrupt, and perhaps resort to our baser natures. Other beings may either be less flawed than humans (by the time they acquire that power, having learned more discipline or acquired more wisdom), or not alone, their fellows perhaps keeping them in check. Wanting to grub away alongside some ants, albeit on some somewhat larger than usual anthill, just doesn't hold a lot of interest for many god-like beings. We should probably be thankful most god-like beings feel they have better things to do than step on us, or become murderously annoyed if they find us raiding their food pantry.
But for Trek, worse than running into god-like beings every other week is the more improbable occurrence of running into other races with comparable technology. Really, we/they should be hundreds/thousands of years ahead/behind most people we/they meet. And maybe we are - we just don't dwell on those less advanced cultures, or feel they are worth our time, so our stories are mostly about those who are well beyond us, or comparable to us.