Praising Allah in the trek universe

[Christopher]

^Well, it's not like the elites didn't hoard wealth under the Soviet system as it was. The fundamental weakness of Marxism is that it depends entirely on the moral perfectibility of the individual and thus has no safeguards against corruption.

There's also the People's Republic of China, which has embraced the pursuit of wealth and profit ("To get rich is glorious" -- Deng Xiaoping) while still aspiring toward communist principles. After all, what Marx actually taught is that a society needs to pass through an industrial capitalist stage before it can mature to full-fledged socialism and ultimately communism, so it's certainly possible for capitalism to exist within a state governed by Marxist principles.

 

[Sci]

^Well, it's not like the elites didn't hoard wealth under the Soviet system as it was. The fundamental weakness of Marxism is that it depends entirely on the moral perfectibility of the individual and thus has no safeguards against corruption.

There's also the People's Republic of China, which has embraced the pursuit of wealth and profit ("To get rich is glorious" -- Deng Xiaoping) while still aspiring toward communist principles. After all, what Marx actually taught is that a society needs to pass through an industrial capitalist stage before it can mature to full-fledged socialism and ultimately communism, so it's certainly possible for capitalism to exist within a state governed by Marxist principles.

It may well be true that a self-identified Marxist government could contain a capitalist economy, but the Russians have no taste for Communism/Socialism/Marxism anymore. Their elites have fully embraced crony capitalism; the old Soviet ideology simply has no popular traction, not with the people and not with the plutocratic elites that now control the Kremlin. Their ideological justification for authoritarianism these days is all about Russian nationalism.

 

[Christopher]

You're right about nationalism, but my point is that, as China shows, a nominally Marxist state can fully embrace capitalism, and the elites in "Communist" countries have always been prone to corruption and the accumulation of personal wealth. The cronyism and pursuit of personal gain among the government elites that you're talking about is hardly new in Russia; it was rampant in the Soviet Union from the Krushchev era onward, and became entrenched and institutionalized under the Brezhnev regime. The USSR hadn't actually functioned according to socialist principles for decades. Heck, that's why Gorbachev started his reforms in the first place -- not because he wanted to bring down the USSR, but because he wanted to cleanse it of corruption and make it work the way it was theoretically supposed to. But by that point the unrest resulting from the corruption had grown too deep, and once Gorbachev relaxed the rigid controls on the populace, upheavals were inevitable.

So the crony capitalism you're talking about is not an innovation, just a more overt continuation of what the Russian elites have been doing for over half a century, if not far longer. Generally, in cultures like Russia or China with long, deep histories, changing the ruling ideology doesn't really alter more than the trappings and justifications for authority. Typically a new state ends up behaving much the same way as its predecessors.

 

[BritishSeaPower]

What I was going for was the idea that "there are no atheists in foxholes."

Except, of course, that such a sentiment devalues fighting men and women who were atheists. It's a very blinkered statement and as helpful in a discussion about acceptance as a foot in the mouth.

 

[Stevil2001]

it was the New Soviet Union, formed in the 2020s when democracy failed in Russia with the rise of a new wave of ultranationalist communists.

and, you know, that's still not an entirely implausible idea...

I think Orson Scott Card uses a similar retcon to explain why the Warsaw Pact is still around in Ender's Game. In the novels written in the 2000s, it is the "New Warsaw Pact."

 

[Steve Roby]

What I was going for was the idea that "there are no atheists in foxholes."

Except, of course, that such a sentiment devalues fighting men and women who were atheists. It's a very blinkered statement and as helpful in a discussion about acceptance as a foot in the mouth.

Yeah, the idea that atheists are intellectually dishonest cowards is kind of inherent in the "no atheists in foxholes" meme. Unless it's meant to suggest that war and killing are pastimes for good religious people.

 

[Lonemagpie]

What I was going for was the idea that "there are no atheists in foxholes."

Except, of course, that such a sentiment devalues fighting men and women who were atheists. It's a very blinkered statement and as helpful in a discussion about acceptance as a foot in the mouth.

Yeah, the idea that atheists are intellectually dishonest cowards is kind of inherent in the "no atheists in foxholes" meme. Unless it's meant to suggest that war and killing are pastimes for good religious people.

Maybe now, in the intent that people have in spreading it, but that was never the original meaning of the phrase.

Humans are hardwired to believe, and brought up in societies where people "pray" for things even if they don't really believe.

To wit: if you put the staunchest athiest in a foxhole, under bombardment, with no idea whether he's about to die in fire and agony at any moment, he'll still (apart from calling for his mother) be going "Oh God, please don't let me die!" etc...

It's just human nature, and the subconscious leaping towards the social norm. As yet there's no completely athiest society that has no concept of god or prayers, and only when there is will there truly, in that sense, be athiests in foxholes.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, the idea that atheists are intellectually dishonest cowards is kind of inherent in the "no atheists in foxholes" meme. Unless it's meant to suggest that war and killing are pastimes for good religious people.

Actually I tend to see it more as saying that religion is a comforting self-delusion -- that people who are afraid for their lives may find themselves wishing for an afterlife even if they have no other reason to believe in one.

Of course, there are belief systems that include the concept of an afterlife of sorts without the concept of a personified god, such as Jainism and Theravada Buddhism. So one can be technically an atheist while still having a religious belief system.

 

[BritishSeaPower]

Except, of course, that such a sentiment devalues fighting men and women who were atheists. It's a very blinkered statement and as helpful in a discussion about acceptance as a foot in the mouth.

Yeah, the idea that atheists are intellectually dishonest cowards is kind of inherent in the "no atheists in foxholes" meme. Unless it's meant to suggest that war and killing are pastimes for good religious people.

Maybe now, in the intent that people have in spreading it, but that was never the original meaning of the phrase.

Humans are hardwired to believe, and brought up in societies where people "pray" for things even if they don't really believe.

To wit: if you put the staunchest athiest in a foxhole, under bombardment, with no idea whether he's about to die in fire and agony at any moment, he'll still (apart from calling for his mother) be going "Oh God, please don't let me die!" etc...

It's just human nature, and the subconscious leaping towards the social norm. As yet there's no completely athiest society that has no concept of god or prayers, and only when there is will there truly, in that sense, be athiests in foxholes.

While you're mostly right about its use, I take exception to the phrase "hardwired." This just isn't true. There's no belief instinct. It is an engrained, socially accepted (and in most societies, societally mandated/enforced) cultural practice. Saying belief is "hardwired" into human beings is the same as saying "Left untaught, a child will naturally speak English." It's an ethnocentric belief to think some ways of life are "natural" and "hardwired" into us. It's just not the case, someone born into this world without being taught a religious belief will not spontaneously develop anything resembling an extant world religion/belief/philosophy.

The phrase is a stereotype, cut and dried. it assumes that a people - generally assumed to be devoid of morals - will cower and revert to a religious belief. It's not at all helpful to this conversation on acceptance. You wouldn't say "There are no jews in foxholes" because they don't necessarily believe in an afterlife.

Chris's interpretation is the one many people take, but the ethnocentric grounding that somehow the sociocultural phenomena of religion is somehow a natural, instinctual part of life is problematic at best. In the realm of Trek we should be beyond talking about ways of life that are "more natural (correct/right)" and talking more about how diversity enriches us and not about justifying phrases that belittle a set of people.

 

[Lonemagpie]

While you're mostly right about its use, I take exception to the phrase "hardwired." This just isn't true. There's no belief instinct. It is an engrained, socially accepted (and in most societies, societally mandated/enforced) cultural practice. Saying belief is "hardwired" into human beings is the same as saying "Left untaught, a child will naturally speak English." It's an ethnocentric belief to think some ways of life are "natural" and "hardwired" into us. It's just not the case, someone born into this world without being taught a religious belief will not spontaneously develop anything resembling an extant world religion/belief/philosophy.

It'd come up with a new one, but a belief all the same.

So says psychology anyhow... (ISTR the instinct is called promiscuous teleology)

 

[Christopher]

BritishSeaPower, you're right that religion per se is a cultural construct. But I would say that the broader notion of belief, or at least the conception of something beyond the world we perceive, is a natural outgrowth of the way the human mind works. After all, it's in our nature to deduce patterns from observed data, to extrapolate underlying connections and causes. That's a basic part of how we think and evaluate the world. For instance, if you see a pair of glowing round things off in the darkness and hear a growling sound, it's very helpful to be able to extrapolate from those data points and realize you're being stalked by a lion. So it's a natural outgrowth of that to look at stuff that happens in the world around us and expect there to be some deeper underlying cause to it all.

And in the absence of the scientific method, that usually takes the form of some kind of spiritual or supernatural belief. A lot of that comes from another basic part of human cognition: the tendency to draw analogies, to evaluate one thing by comparison with other things we've experienced in the past. We know that we can cause things to happen by thinking about them and doing them, and we know that the animals around us do similar things, so we may conclude that other things like rivers and trees and thunderstorms have some kind of animating will just as we and the animals do -- or maybe that the whole of reality has one as well. And we notice that when a person or animal stops breathing, that animating will goes away, so maybe that will comes from an essence that's got something to do with our breath (which is why "spirit" is from the same root as "respirate"). Maybe there's something inside a living animal that isn't inside a dead one, and maybe when someone dies, that essence inside them goes somewhere else. (After all, it's hard to imagine one's own nonexistence. How can you define the perception of not being there to perceive anything? Since your own presence is the one constant in your every thought, then when people think of what happens after death, it's hard not to imagine their awareness somehow continues.)

There's also the neurological process that occurs when the parietal lobe shuts down, which leads to a loss of the sense of oneself as distinct from the rest of the universe. This can happen in deep meditation or ecstatic experiences, or as a result of starvation or exhaustion, and it gives one a sense of leaving one's body and becoming part of the universe. This could easily be interpreted as evidence of a spiritual existence beyond the body, something that can survive physical death, and it can give the sensation of there being a greater, transcendent essence underlying the universe. There's a reason why a lot of great spiritual revelations came from people who'd been fasting or trudging through the desert for a long time.

So actually, yes, the psychology that leads us to conceive of the spiritual and the supernatural is hardwired into our brains -- although religion is not, since it's a social institution that represents only one possible way of formalizing and managing those conceptions.

 

[TheAlmanac]

^Or a folk singer from London named Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam).

Well, that's different, because he changed his name to an Arabic one after converting to Islam, just as Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, Ferdinand Alcindor, Jr. became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, etc. I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about people who have non-Arabic names while being Muslim -- or who have Arabic names and aren't Muslim (there have always been and still are a lot of Arab Jews and Christians).

In that case, you shouldn't have used the former Mos Def as an example, since he now goes by the name Yasiin Bey. (He has given over permission to use the name "Mos Def" to Stephen Colbert. )

 

[captcalhoun]

the statement about there are no atheists in foxholes is more an arguement against foxholes than against atheists, i'd say...

besides, if i was in a foxhole under bombardment, i'd be more inclined to be thinking, "f*k this, i'm going to get the f*k out of here and kill that f*king mortar crew."

or, at least, "i don't want to die."

 

[Christopher]

In that case, you shouldn't have used the former Mos Def as an example, since he now goes by the name Yasiin Bey.

I was unaware of that.

 

[Nerys Myk]

In that case, you shouldn't have used the former Mos Def as an example, since he now goes by the name Yasiin Bey.

I was unaware of that.

I thought it was just a new stage name, like Puff Daddy to P. Diddy.

 

[xortex]

Just wondering what a Jew would say say in a foxhole. Oye ves? Oh, me, oh, my life. Would you ever find a Jew in a fox hole?

Someone mentioned a non religious society and said pre-egrarian ones existed at one time. I'm not buying this. Belief has to be hard wired to a certain extent even if it's a pagan one or believing in oneself like Kira Nerys, etc. Religion and philosophy are something different.

I too would like to see more Christian themes brought up in Trek too. Too much darkness. TOS was bright and uplifting.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Just wondering what a Jew would say say in a foxhole. Oye ves? Oh, me, oh, my life. Would you ever find a Jew in a fox hole?

Seriously???? Jews worship God, so if they called upon any deity in English, it would be God.

Yes, no Jew has ever been in the military, gone to war or had to be in a foxhole.

 

[Thrawn]

It's xortex. I can't recall a single one of his posts ever making sense. Aren't we all ignoring him by this point?

 

[Therin of Andor]

Just wondering what a Jew would say say in a foxhole. Oye ves? Oh, me, oh, my life. Would you ever find a Jew in a fox hole?

There is absolutely no need for this type of post on a Star Trek BBS.

 

[GalaxyClass1701]

Well just read the lady Vangard which was amazing but I always assumed Katami was a Muslim. Not that it Matters!!

Also where are all this Muslim praising this was the first time I've seen an openly Muslim character?