Yet you insist we take your position on faith, with nothing more than an assertion that science and faith are irreconcilable. Sorry, not taking the bait.
How will you react if the Klingon War Arc isn't wrapped up?
- Thread starter Mark 2000
- Start date
Science and Faith would be better. A story line that explores both.
I'm making a call right now (that could very well be wrong): The War is wrapped up but the Federation loses.
The 20% of the space they lost stays lost (for now) and they have to explore outward in Season 2 to gain new territory.
The 20% of the space they lost stays lost (for now) and they have to explore outward in Season 2 to gain new territory.
But we are the universe. We're just little tiny pieces of it autonomously moving about.
In fairness Science can be horribly dogmatic. I'm reading a book at the moment about the Permian mass extinction and there are a number of chapters dedicated to the conflict in the scientific world between Catastrophism and Gradualism. Even with overwhelming evidence very early on that neither concepts exclusively contributed to mass extinctions, it still took around 150 years for the scientific community to realise that both concepts were legitimate and both had an impact on various mass extinctions. Scientists can treat their areas of research with near religious fervor and the notion that scientist just dump information in light of new information particularly when they have staked their careers on a particular theory is just not accurate.
What's also inaccurate is the notion that science and faith cannot be reconciled. Robert T. Bakker is one of the worlds most renowned paleontologists, he's the father of most modern theories of dinosaur biology and behaviour. He also happens to be a christian minister. He is a man that managed to reconcile his science with his faith and firmly believes in God and that the earth is 4 billion years old. For Bakker, religion and science are not mutually exclusive. So the notion that the two cannot ever be reconciled is simplistic at best.
It is much easier to reduce it down to that binary, rather than discuss it.
Which is why it concerns me so much that a TV show often boils it down rather than explore those complexities.
On the OP's question, the writers have basically painted themselves into a corner. If they wrap up the Klingon war storyline in a single episode, after all the elaborate setup they've done, and especially in light of all the rhetoric about the show offering more sophisticated serialized storytelling, it's hard to imagine any way to avoid having it seem painfully contrived. On the other hand, if they don't wrap up the storyline, not only would that violate a promise they've made multiple times, but it would put them on the spot to continue in it some serious manner that does justice to the war's implications... military, political, personal, you name it... which is something they've studiously avoided thus far, to the point that I'm inclined to doubt they're even capable of it... which means (again) something painfully contrived. Either way, viewers lose.
(Basically, after episodes 12-13, the writers lost whatever benefit of the doubt I was previously willing to extend them. The MU arc started with a couple of interesting episodes but ended as a complete train wreck, and was exceedingly ill-timed as a diversion from the season's supposed main theme. I can't help but wonder how much more interesting things might have been had the show given the war due attention — indeed, even had Lorca help win it — and only then traveled to the MU and revealed that Lorca was from there. That would have been fodder for some genuinely provocative moral conflicts. Again, though, these writers don't really seem interested in that.)
Meanwhile, as for next season...
More on-point... however one may feel about this issue philosophically, I have zero confidence in the ability of the current writing staff to do it justice. The very prospect makes me cringe.
(Basically, after episodes 12-13, the writers lost whatever benefit of the doubt I was previously willing to extend them. The MU arc started with a couple of interesting episodes but ended as a complete train wreck, and was exceedingly ill-timed as a diversion from the season's supposed main theme. I can't help but wonder how much more interesting things might have been had the show given the war due attention — indeed, even had Lorca help win it — and only then traveled to the MU and revealed that Lorca was from there. That would have been fodder for some genuinely provocative moral conflicts. Again, though, these writers don't really seem interested in that.)
Meanwhile, as for next season...
Hmm. Because, basically, unless you buy into Gould's notion of non-overlapping magisteria (which is basically just one giant case of special pleading), there is no way that methodological naturalism is compatible with any sort of supernatural worldview.
Of course they can co-exist. They have for a long time, and doubtless will for a long time to come. Coexisting, however, doesn't mean that they're logically compatible, much less of equal value or otherwise equivalent. One is a time-tested self-correcting mechanism for acquiring and apprehending useful information about the universe we live in. The other... is not. People of course have an inalienable right to believe any damnfool thing they like, but that doesn't mean anyone else is obliged to take them seriously.
More on-point... however one may feel about this issue philosophically, I have zero confidence in the ability of the current writing staff to do it justice. The very prospect makes me cringe.
Saint Augustine would disagree with you on this. He advocated for the bible to be viewed as metaphor in light of scientific truth and reason. He understood that Scientific fact trumped the bible, but he was able to reconcile his faith with these truths and make them logically consistent. Robert T. Bakker, a paleontologist i spoke about in a previous post has been able to reconcile his faith with scientific truth and doesn't see the two as mutually exclusive or logically inconsistent.
I’ve given the actual, objective definitions of science and faith. You’ve given nothing but “no it’s not”. Which, incidentally, is exactly the difference between science and faith. I’m sorry I tried to “bait” you into explaining yourself.
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Umm, what?
I'm sorry, are you talking about the Saint Augustine who wrote Confessions and City of God? The sick and twisted SOB who was obsessed with original sin and convinced that everything earthly was corrupt? Who painstakingly developed a theology that could justify war? Who institutionalized the logically incoherent concept of the Trinity? Who took a positive delight in condemning his political enemies as heretics?
Granted, technically he did concede that the Bible shouldn't be taken literally when it contradicts "God-given reason." But he was writing in the 4th century, so the scientific method really wasn't a thing and there was damn little that reason could explain anyway. At any rate, it's awfully weak tea as counterbalance to all the other noxious idiocy he inflicted on Western civilization for the next millennium.
I never said the dude was perfect, just that he acknowledged that scientific truth outweighed the bible and was a proponent of critical thinking.
You’re talking about a culture vs a methodology done correctly. Dogma is not science done right. There are “scientists” who preach biological inferiority of ethnicities and genders. So? Dogma is bad. Got it.
So? Reconciliation is not coexistence. Most religious people have to reconcile their homophobic, misogynistic sky god religions with the modern world. It doesn’t mean that god can be safely nestled into the scientific method. It doesn’t mean that we should continue the god of gaps narrative until all the gaps are gone or that there are just some gaps that shouldn’t be touched. Religion is a limiting factor in scientific learning and always has been. That is undeniable. Only by “reconciling” in the favor of science can anything get done.
What I'm trying to say is that you can believe in God and scientific truth. It's not mutually exclusive. This is why I used Bakker as an example. The guy factually knows that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and completely accepts it but also preaches about God on the weekend. Religion and science coexist perfectly for him.
As a Gay man, i'll be the first to call out the bat shit crazy looney tunes religitards, but I've had enough christian friends in my life who had zero problems with my homosexuality, who didn't just tolerate my existence but accepted and celebrated it as a beautiful act of god (in their opinion) that I know that you cannot tar and feather religion as being solely oppressive or restrictive nor can you tar all religious people as backwards thinking science deniers. For a lot of people Religion and Science is not a binary situation, they make it work and it's not a matter of one over the other.
Also Science for all of it's gifts has the potential to be as horribly corrupted as religion has been.
My reaction: 
Followed by "at least it's not time travelling alien Nazis"
Followed by "at least it's not time travelling alien Nazis"
You mean your average fanboy?
When Star Trek has tackled science/faith in the past it has generally come down pretty hard on the side of "atheism awesome, faith stupid". It started this somewhat coyly in Who Mourns for Adonais? a question they answered with "nobody", but like elsewhere in 60s Trek couldn't quite escape the prevailing culture of the time and threw in that weird Kirk line "we find the one quite sufficient" which doesn't fit with the rest of the episode at all.
Then TNG asked another question, Who Watches the Watchers? and now the focus has switched from humans to an alien race, and the message is much stronger - gods bad, science good. The show is quite explicit in viewing religion as something to be outgrown.
Then DS9 came along and tried to do something a bit less black and white, including prophetic visions and relics and theocracy. Another area that DS9 peeled away from the rest of the franchise, depicting its Captain coming to something resembling faith over the course of the series. Although throughout, even it made sure to highlight that the other Starfleet characters were skeptical.
If Discovery tackles the topic, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it is as an indictment of religion. That is the most common Star Trek approach to date. I hope they come up with something more nuanced, myself, but Star Trek has put its cards on the table on this issue before.
Then TNG asked another question, Who Watches the Watchers? and now the focus has switched from humans to an alien race, and the message is much stronger - gods bad, science good. The show is quite explicit in viewing religion as something to be outgrown.
Then DS9 came along and tried to do something a bit less black and white, including prophetic visions and relics and theocracy. Another area that DS9 peeled away from the rest of the franchise, depicting its Captain coming to something resembling faith over the course of the series. Although throughout, even it made sure to highlight that the other Starfleet characters were skeptical.
If Discovery tackles the topic, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it is as an indictment of religion. That is the most common Star Trek approach to date. I hope they come up with something more nuanced, myself, but Star Trek has put its cards on the table on this issue before.
Faith and science are far from incompatible and the false dichotomy between the two is based on ignorance as much as are the worst excesses of each. The issue comes from the false premise that each seeks or should seek the same purpose, they don't and whilst trek has commonly come down on the side of science it has done so in terms of favouring science where faith is misapplied.
Science is the (supposedly, but in reality not always) objective process of analysis of that which is testable, that which exists within the framework of the observable universe. It is value free and makes no definitive statements, merely makes provisional hypotheses open to being disproved and reassessed. It is an ongoing process and subject to change, making no statements about what should be, merely what is
Faith has a totally different purpose, it is about that which is not testable and it does assign values. One cannot prove or disprove the existence of god because he/she is by definition outside of the rules of the universe which is his/her creation, outside of that framework of testable processes of which we are a part. Science can have nothing to say here. Religions's role is largely about the values it assigns to behaviours and attitudes and whilst your own values may not be reflected by any given religion that does not detract from the fact that those values are part of religion's purview where science is silent.
Many fail to understand this, hence the perception that the two are (or should be) rival explanatory models.
