How Can Religion Get Portrayed Like DS9 Again?
- Thread starter VulcanMindBlown
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I'm a very religious person and totally comfortable with religion having no place in Star Trek. It doesn't offend me that someone imagines that religion has little to no place in the future of humanity as that's their vision, and if I like the other elements of their vision, I'll grant them the privilege of excluding something important to me.
I'd say the alien was lying.
How would you know?
^ I just would. That's the nature of faith - the belief in things not seen.
I feel the same way. I don't need 'representation' in Star Trek.
Sine I feel it is often stereotyped, I would rather it be excluded than done poorly. I don't need representation either.
With the condition that it be done reasonably well, I personally would like representation.
If Discovery can have a female First Officer, and a Chinese Captain, let's have a "openly" Christian Lieutenant too.
http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/real-life-science-mystery-could-make-you-believe-god Thought this might be relevant to the topic.
Does that mean an American-style Evangelical Christian? Or someone who goes to Traditional Latin Mass? Orthodox? There are how many denominations and sects floating around? I am skeptical that the writers, no matter how well intentioned, would be able to do anything with this 'reasonably well' and I also don't think it is something they need to worry about.
Bajorans in general bored me, and for me, the religious episodes were among the worst episodes of DS9 to me.
Kirk found "one God to be sufficient" so maybe we already have.
No reason not to have religion in Star Trek so long as it's treated as something personal and not as a source of conflict.
I think the new show should have a Muslim captain.
I think the new show should have a Muslim captain.
Kirk found "one God to be sufficient" so maybe we already have.
Go with Catholic, half of all Christians are Catholic and Catholic are over 16% of the current world population.
If Michelle Yeoh is going to be the next Captain, have her be a Chinese Catholic.
Space Pope
With respect, finding an explanation for religion is to treat it as a superstition. In the real world, the various faiths do not depend upon any kind of regular miracle or supernatural event happening in front of them. Christians, Muslims and Jews do not expect to see Angels. When Hindus have a festival in which an image of a specific god is burned, no one expects the image to speak and bless them. Likewise there is no scientific "explanation" or "test" for the belief a particular child is the Boddisatva reborn.
I was deeply disappointed with how DS9 approached religion, because to this day I've zero idea how Bajorans viewed the universe. Do they believe in Fate or Free Will? What are their notions of Death? How do they explain suffering? One needn't explore this in depth, but a few strong hints can work. In BSG we heard a great about eternal return, that history repeats itself in cycles over and over again. Interestingly, the same notion popped up in Lexx. In Babylon 5 we knew the Minbari were deeply religious, lacing every day activities with ritual and meaning. It came as no real surprise they believed the universe itself to be conscious, and striving to understand itself via the individual lives of the beings within it.
The only religious idea IMHO explored in detail with a culture in TREK would be the Klingons--especially their attitude towards Death. In this they resembled ancient Samurai or maybe Vikings, welcoming death as what gives meaning to life, with evidently a potentially Valhalla-esque "heaven" awaiting those who die well.
Either way, one explores a culture's religion in fiction by focusing on actions motivated by a given world view. Klingons rush into battle, eager to prove their worthiness and risk death. Minbari, believing themselves part of a sentient universe, seek to meditate and thus understand more. Folks in the Twelve Colonies look for clues indicating where they may be in the Cycle of Time, to know how to go forward. And so on.
I was deeply disappointed with how DS9 approached religion, because to this day I've zero idea how Bajorans viewed the universe. Do they believe in Fate or Free Will? What are their notions of Death? How do they explain suffering? One needn't explore this in depth, but a few strong hints can work. In BSG we heard a great about eternal return, that history repeats itself in cycles over and over again. Interestingly, the same notion popped up in Lexx. In Babylon 5 we knew the Minbari were deeply religious, lacing every day activities with ritual and meaning. It came as no real surprise they believed the universe itself to be conscious, and striving to understand itself via the individual lives of the beings within it.
The only religious idea IMHO explored in detail with a culture in TREK would be the Klingons--especially their attitude towards Death. In this they resembled ancient Samurai or maybe Vikings, welcoming death as what gives meaning to life, with evidently a potentially Valhalla-esque "heaven" awaiting those who die well.
Either way, one explores a culture's religion in fiction by focusing on actions motivated by a given world view. Klingons rush into battle, eager to prove their worthiness and risk death. Minbari, believing themselves part of a sentient universe, seek to meditate and thus understand more. Folks in the Twelve Colonies look for clues indicating where they may be in the Cycle of Time, to know how to go forward. And so on.
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I disagree here. Speaking from the faith I know best, Christianity, I can say that many Christians do claim to see and experience miracles, witness divine intervention, and do, in fact, expect to receive some kind of physical sign that indicates whether or not God is angry or happy with them. One need only look to faith healers as a tiny example of that expectation of miraculous intervention.
I love the way DS9 explored religion. The Bajorans were a deeply religious people, who embraced the Prophets as their gods. Like most religions, even when their gods weren't around, there were plenty of people to speak for them. The Bajorans had answers for the Big Questions, because they did what every other religion has done all throughout history: they filled in the blanks as best they could. If that were not the case, then we would have never seen the ontological arguments between Kai Winn and Vedek Bareil, and of course those arguments and disagreements were legion.
The only difference between any other religion and Bajor's is that we actually got to see the gods of their devotion, and they turned out to be non-linear beings living in a wormhole.
I'm sorry--but what exactly did the Bajorans believe? Yeah, they had Gods they called Prophets, but other than that, what were their actual beliefs about Death? About the purpose of life? About the nature of virtue and evil? We don't know because DS9 never gave us a hint. If you can answer any of these questions, kindly cite exactly where in what episode we found this out. Hindus believe in karma and dharma, essential ideas of how the universe operates. Muslims believe in absolute obedience to the will of an all-seeing, all-loving Allah, so much so that cruelty to animals is viewed as a sin as great as cruelty to children. Essential to the Christian faith is the Passion of Christ, and how that act is interpreted pretty much determines if you're a Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant. Is it a balancing of moral scales, an act of love that changes the nature of death, or was it a message to guide the Elect?
As for daily miracles, let us look at communion. We Christians maintain the bread becomes the body of Christ. But it still tastes like bread. If you aimed a tricorder at a Communion Wafer just as it the Supplicant swallows it, it is in no way part of the Faith important what that tricorder would reveal. We view this as miraculous, but it is no way a tangible violation of physical laws the same way walking on water or raising someone from the dead would be. In Islam the baby Jesus spoke clearly and rationally when a newborn--but no one expects that to happen today. No Muslim depends on such a thing happening to maintain their faith, any more than Jew expects or needs God to speak to anyone via burning bush anytime soon.
As for faith healers--the vast majority of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists (the five largest religions on this planet) have nothing to do with them. A fair number of faith healers have been proven to be charlatans, as well, and this had zero impact on believers in their faith, not if they were part of a widespread religion. Hence my point--that debunking "miracles" is not a way to "explore" religion. In terms of story-telling, you explore religion by showing how belief impacts behavior.
As for daily miracles, let us look at communion. We Christians maintain the bread becomes the body of Christ. But it still tastes like bread. If you aimed a tricorder at a Communion Wafer just as it the Supplicant swallows it, it is in no way part of the Faith important what that tricorder would reveal. We view this as miraculous, but it is no way a tangible violation of physical laws the same way walking on water or raising someone from the dead would be. In Islam the baby Jesus spoke clearly and rationally when a newborn--but no one expects that to happen today. No Muslim depends on such a thing happening to maintain their faith, any more than Jew expects or needs God to speak to anyone via burning bush anytime soon.
As for faith healers--the vast majority of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists (the five largest religions on this planet) have nothing to do with them. A fair number of faith healers have been proven to be charlatans, as well, and this had zero impact on believers in their faith, not if they were part of a widespread religion. Hence my point--that debunking "miracles" is not a way to "explore" religion. In terms of story-telling, you explore religion by showing how belief impacts behavior.
With Christianity, we have a hard enough time interpreting Scripture in light of past, present, and (prophesied) future events now, in the real world. Imagine the poor script consultant having to extrapolate 23rd/24th century interpretations of prophecy, or wrestling with the questions of whether androids and aliens have a soul/can be saved, etc.
Alien religions in Star Trek are created primarily as plot devices - to explain why so and so won't let you do this or that and cause you to have to work around it, to parody our non-religious behavior (Ferengis worshipping money gods), to get somebody in trouble for not following it...they aren't developed as a way of life, only to make characters do/like or not do/abhor something.
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