Religion in Star Trek
- Thread starter JarodRussell
- Start date
Hello all,
I'm new to this forum but have been following this thread closely as it's a subject that has always intruiged me ever since I started watching Trek.
Whilst I realise that Mr Roddenberry was a staunch atheist and didn't wish a portrayal of religion on the show (he once remarked, "For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain"), I found it a bit of a shame that this view was carried on by TPTB in subsequent series.
Brannon Braga said once in a Q&A session: ""No, there was no consideration in giving humans, talking about God, or talking about those types of things. We wanted to avoid it to be quite frank. But we did very often explore theology through alien characters. Which frankly is much more interesting anyway. Whether it was the Bajorans and their religion or the Borg and their religion. They had the religion of perfection. That, I think, was more interesting. We want to keep Star Trek secular. The human facet of Star Trek secular."
I do think, however, that the exploration of issues of faith and religion through alien characters and their cultures was an interesting way of showing belief and its complexities within the context of some rather difficult ethical and moral dilemmas.
I'd like to point you towards this guy's website: http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/religion.htm
He does a good job of examining religion portrayed in Trek.
I found Sisko's character from the beginning of DS9 to be interesting but I wish there had been more done in depth on the issue of faith and his perception and personal experience. I thought Kira's character had a great arc though with some of the undertones about belief and the changes she goes through.
Voyager could have presented a really interesting complex character in Chakotay (as on the webpage above mentions - perhaps the first deeply spiritual human character on Trek). However, it unfortunately was done extremely superficially in my view and what we got was some vague, New Age blather with no actual substance. The episode 'Tattoo' could have been done with more depth and more centered on the conflict of beliefs within Chakotay.
There could have been some episodes focusing on him during the seasons whereby he's in difficult moral situations that really test and challenge his faith. Instead he simply became a non-entity who went along with whatever Janeway wanted with no character development.
Enterprise had some interesting moments concerning Vulcan beliefs, but like with many other episodes in Trek, an episode such as 'Chosen Realm' (which could have been great) implies that anyone with faith and a follower of religion must be a zealot. The reason that's so filppantly given as a throwaway line about the reason why there are two peoples at war with each other comes across as shallow, petty and makes people with beliefs look like complete idiots. This is simply too one-dimensional and superficial.
Anyway...sorry, I didn't mean to go on for so long! Check out that guy's webpage on the subject. He brings up some thought-provoking points.
I'm new to this forum but have been following this thread closely as it's a subject that has always intruiged me ever since I started watching Trek.
Whilst I realise that Mr Roddenberry was a staunch atheist and didn't wish a portrayal of religion on the show (he once remarked, "For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain"), I found it a bit of a shame that this view was carried on by TPTB in subsequent series.
Brannon Braga said once in a Q&A session: ""No, there was no consideration in giving humans, talking about God, or talking about those types of things. We wanted to avoid it to be quite frank. But we did very often explore theology through alien characters. Which frankly is much more interesting anyway. Whether it was the Bajorans and their religion or the Borg and their religion. They had the religion of perfection. That, I think, was more interesting. We want to keep Star Trek secular. The human facet of Star Trek secular."
I do think, however, that the exploration of issues of faith and religion through alien characters and their cultures was an interesting way of showing belief and its complexities within the context of some rather difficult ethical and moral dilemmas.
I'd like to point you towards this guy's website: http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/religion.htm
He does a good job of examining religion portrayed in Trek.
I found Sisko's character from the beginning of DS9 to be interesting but I wish there had been more done in depth on the issue of faith and his perception and personal experience. I thought Kira's character had a great arc though with some of the undertones about belief and the changes she goes through.
Voyager could have presented a really interesting complex character in Chakotay (as on the webpage above mentions - perhaps the first deeply spiritual human character on Trek). However, it unfortunately was done extremely superficially in my view and what we got was some vague, New Age blather with no actual substance. The episode 'Tattoo' could have been done with more depth and more centered on the conflict of beliefs within Chakotay.
There could have been some episodes focusing on him during the seasons whereby he's in difficult moral situations that really test and challenge his faith. Instead he simply became a non-entity who went along with whatever Janeway wanted with no character development.
Enterprise had some interesting moments concerning Vulcan beliefs, but like with many other episodes in Trek, an episode such as 'Chosen Realm' (which could have been great) implies that anyone with faith and a follower of religion must be a zealot. The reason that's so filppantly given as a throwaway line about the reason why there are two peoples at war with each other comes across as shallow, petty and makes people with beliefs look like complete idiots. This is simply too one-dimensional and superficial.
Anyway...sorry, I didn't mean to go on for so long! Check out that guy's webpage on the subject. He brings up some thought-provoking points.
Chakotay had some interesting attributes at the beginning of Voyager, he was a man of faith, a leader of the Maquis and the first officer of the Voyager. TPTB made the decision to push Chakotay's faith and his Maquis-ness into the background. His faith was mention maybe once per season, usual in a episode where he wasn't a secondary character. De-emphasizing Chakotay's personal qualities, including his faith, resulted in a much less interesting man.
I don't know how much of it was intentional, but the Humans of Star Trek were not simply atheistic or agnostic, they were Secular Humanists - even the few that showed any religious leaning like Chakotay.
Many people make the mistake of thinking of atheism as a complete worldview when it is not. If a person is an atheist, all that tells you about them is what they do not believe. It says nothing about what they do believe. Atheists may be Nihilists, Objectivists or often, Secular Humanists. A core conviction of Secular Humanism is that we are beholden to nobody. We fly or fall depending on our own abilities and choices. That worldview seems dominant in the 23rd-24th century which is why it makes perfect sense that there is little but lip service paid to the Abrahamic religions or anything similar to them.
Many people make the mistake of thinking of atheism as a complete worldview when it is not. If a person is an atheist, all that tells you about them is what they do not believe. It says nothing about what they do believe. Atheists may be Nihilists, Objectivists or often, Secular Humanists. A core conviction of Secular Humanism is that we are beholden to nobody. We fly or fall depending on our own abilities and choices. That worldview seems dominant in the 23rd-24th century which is why it makes perfect sense that there is little but lip service paid to the Abrahamic religions or anything similar to them.
Rejecting organized religion does not = atheism.
An excerpt from Susan Sackett's book:http://www.well.com/~sjroby/godthing.html
Although the earlier quote of Roddenberry's is harsh, I'm still very thankful that none of the Star Treks delved very deeply into religions, and am glad to know that Roddenberry had spiritual beliefs and experiences, and was wise enough to mostly keep Jesus & Friends out of Star Trek. Thank you, Gene.
But also makes abundantly clear why the studio wouldn't touch The God Thing. It would have been like when John Lennon said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, maybe even better.
Nothing in the post you quoted suggested that Galileo didn't have a run-in with the catholic church, so why are you begging excuse? That makes it sound as if you disagree with the post you quoted, while it appears that you merely had something interesting to say on the same topic.
Forgive me, but didn't Galilieo have a big run-in with the catholic church? Didn't they threaten to torture and kill him? And just settled for imprisonment? And did God back them up with a thunderbolt? Perhaps this bible thing is not a true translation of Gods will?? Ot maybe some people here on earth, are not totally faithful conduits?
Something interesting I would like to say: as far as I know, the Catholic Church never asked Galileo to renounce what he had said, they simply asked him to stop saying it. Contrary to the popular version of it, they didn't actually deny that he was right, but felt that the change must be broken to the public gently lest they freak out. Or, in a slightly less friendly view, one might say that they wanted to avoid seeming fallible in the eyes of the populace, so they intended to change the doctrine slowly so that no single generation would see how much it had changed.
Galileo, however, felt that when one has discovered The Truth(tm), one is obliged to share it with everyone one meets.
Neither position is without faults.
Interesting.
I had not really taken Trek's lack of mention of real-world religions as any kind of agenda. It is, after all, fairly normal for TV characters to have at best a vague spiritual life.
Religion is a landmine in our culture. For every person out there who'll go "cool, he's Lutheran like me" there's one who will go "DIE heretic!". But if a character's religious life is never mentioned, each person in the audience is free to assume the character's faith parallels his own.
There are exceptions to this, of course.
First, there are the people who will boycott the show because the characters are not provably religious (and probably not of the correct faith). However, these are a small minority of the potential audience, and you can't please them all.
Several successful dramas or sitcoms have had characters who were definitely of a particular faith. Usually, that faith was either Jewish or Catholic, and usually that character is "lapsed" or non-practicing. Their faith is more a statement about their family background than about their spiritual beliefs, and the adherents of other faiths can believe that the character is rejecting the "false beliefs" he was raised with and moving towards "the truth".
Mostly on comedies, sometimes the writers want to bring in elements of their own life-experience that are deeply tied to their own faith, so they have the character(s) share that faith. Again, seems to be mostly Catholics and Jews.
Sometimes the central character is based on a real person, as with Seinfeld.
And lastly, in a special category all its own, there is the show Seventh Heaven: yes, specifying which faith the family follows will cost us viewers, and we're okay with that, because we aren't here to sell Coca-Cola (by attracting as many viewers as humanly possible), we're here to tell morally uplifting stories of a family and the issues they struggle with. If we weren't, we'd have created Baywatch.
On American television, characters tend to follow one of the following faiths (in order from my opinion of most common to least common):
1)I dunno: he never goes to church (or temple), but he also never says he doesn't. Have they done an episode set on a Sunday?
2)Non-specific Protestant sect.
3)Jewish
4)Catholic
5)Muslim, so we can do stories about how tough it is to be a Muslim, since everybody assumes you're a terrorist.
6)Non-specific polytheistic faith, probably played for comic relief.
So I never found it particularly odd that most characters on Star Trek fit into group 1; most people on TV do, after all.
I disagree. Trek would have been ruined by bringing any modern religion into it in any way. Just go church my man... leave Trek secular and thoughtful.
There are assumptions in American TV that if you are religious and from this group therefor you're of this faith, Latins are automatically Catholic, all Arabs are Muslim, all Israelis are Jewish, East Asians are Buddhist and if you're from the "sub-continent," Hindu.
Bridge officer Lt. Rhada is wearing a bindi, a traditional Hindu symbol, on her forehead (TOS: "That Which Survives").
Unless the actress showed up for work already wearing it, the Bindi would have been applied by the make-up department. Either a spot of make-up or a adhesive dot. This would have been the decision of the director I believe (Herb Wallerstein). Unless D.C. Fontana put it in the original story.
If there is a God, and I don't know, cos he has never spoken to me and I am not a conduit for him; I don't think he would mind us going into space and discovering new worlds. I don't think he minds us improving our science. I think he would want us to be a bit suspicious of other aliens with better science setting themselves up as a God. I think, that other aliens should find God on their own, without us going on a converting mission.
__________________
'You're not the first person to be confused, frightened or sickened by human behaviour. Many men have felt the way you do. Happily, some have kept a record of their thoughts' - The Catcher in the Rye.
__________________
'You're not the first person to be confused, frightened or sickened by human behaviour. Many men have felt the way you do. Happily, some have kept a record of their thoughts' - The Catcher in the Rye.
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7) Mormon
I think that Trek can still be "thoughtful" at the same as showing people with faith. The show could still have shown them going through personal struggles attempting to reconcile their beliefs with whatever situation their in or interaction with another character.
I'm certainly not talking about a crew of Jesus people on a mission to "convert" alien races - no.
Perhaps it's just me, but I simply find it a bit unrealistic to have a starship where there isn't at least one Jew, Hindu or Muslim crewmember. That's just my personal thought.
I'm certainly not talking about a crew of Jesus people on a mission to "convert" alien races - no.
Perhaps it's just me, but I simply find it a bit unrealistic to have a starship where there isn't at least one Jew, Hindu or Muslim crewmember. That's just my personal thought.
In fairness, at least in real life, that's just educated guessing at work. Sure, I know Egyptian Coptics and an irreligious Indian guy who doesn't even know his own actual ethnicity, but they're outliers and it's as reasonable to assume that a Latino is Catholic or an Iranian is a Shiite as it is to assume an American is some kind of Protestant or a Swede is an atheist or apatheist.
I suppose in creating a character, an "odds are" approach doesn't necessarily have to apply, since the creator is the God of that universe, and can make one of the last five Zoroastrian Iranians or one of the millions of Pentecostal Latins at their whim, but it all depends on what kind of character you're creating--a different religion than the majority can provide some good opportunity for anomie, whereas a fully-integrated member of any given society is likelier to profess to the spiritual beliefs of the majority.
You saw a Mormon on TV? Where?
(I'm mostly kidding. I know there was one on House for a while, and I've seen some western TV Movies where the major characters were members of the Church of Latter Day Saints. Still, they are rarer than the Amish.)
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