You assume scientists and engineers are going to be atheists. Many people with good heads on their shoulders, even technical/scientific inclinations, believe. 
Religion in Star Trek
- Thread starter JarodRussell
- Start date
Yes, yes, we should settle Mars with scientists and engineers in a "foundation" of sorts. At the same time, we should settle Venus with social scientists and psychiatrists in a "second foundation". We'll limit contact between the two worlds until around the 500 year mark, and well...it may be interesting.
The doctrine of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of "science" is Karl Popper's way of ensuring that science dare not criticize reactionary ideologies for factuality or logic. Parsimony in hypotheses is good science, no matter what he says. Following this principle rules out "God" as an unnecessary hypothesis, as well as inconsistent with the way in which nature has been shown to work in centuries of experience and experiment. Experience of centuries has showed that taking "God" seriously makes you ignorant and gullible.
Getting back to Star Trek briefly, Voyager was not truly tolerant of religion in the way that DS9 was. Voyager equated religion with art, both forms that could provide moral inspiration despite being untrue. See Prime Factor in season one or Muse in season six, for example. DS9 liked to think of Bajoran religion as somehow true, rationalizable, which is BS. DS9 did In the Hands of the Prophets, while Voyager did Distant Origin. The first is dishonest and apologetic, and the second isn't. (Anyone foolish enough to think In the Hands of the Prophets was remotely honest about popular anger about antireligious teaching is invited to study the Kanawha County, West Virginia, textbook "controversy.")
Getting back off topic, but back into the thread: Technically, "God" can be dispensed with, as in some forms of Hinduism or Buddhism. But note that the supernatural is still the predominant part of those religions. The nice, refined Vedanta or Yoga types of Hinduism are far outnumbered by miracle working gurus and pilgrims bathing in the Ganges. The BJP shows the Hindu believers have the same kind of politics as the Christian believers. Every indication is that religion and racism are closely related institutions. One nation, one people, one God.
It is not politically correct to remark on the revival of Shinto in Japan but there it is. Theravadin Buddhism certainly is implicated in the Sinhala war agains the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Of course, Mahayana Buddhism gives us such things as the Dalai Lama, a human being who somehow gets good press for claiming divinity!Most Muslims reject the specific theologies and politics of the jihadis, but it is their refusal to reject religion as such that leaves them disarmed against the principles of their coreligionists, no matter how vile they are in practice. Before we feel too superior, consider how the US anti-abortion movement, which includes terrorist wing, gets a free ride.
Worst for us in the US, it is the Christian hatred for Mulsims that permits seemingly endless attacks against Mulsim nations to go by without even bothering to notice. The bigotry against Islam is so deep that it is accepted without question, for instance, that the Phillipine, Indonesian and Ethiopian governments should attack Muslims without being questioned, much less criticized. Don't deceive yourselves about the attitudes of Christian supporters of Israel: Many of them consciously look forward to all the Jews going away, back "home" to the Holy Land, where all but 144 000 who convert to Christianity will die horrible deaths.
Those Christians who have managed to privately rewrite their religion so that it neither defies science nor countenances inhumanity are personally nice, but they are a mere handful. They are "liberal" Christians but good Christians hate liberals. There is no dividing line between religious and racial bigotry. Those who will not condemn religious bigotry will end up condoning racial bigotry in disguise. That's why people can't be agnostics or crusade against the atheist intolerance of religion without joining the bigots they profess to reject.
If the future contains these kind of people, it will be backward and bestial. Or possibly a war ravaged wasteland.
Actually, if you WIKI the Dalai lama, you will see that it is a western myth that he claims divinity.
Pure buddhism is quite good, stj. It just says that your actions have consequences and you should try to limit harm to others. There MAY be something that continues after death, in some form, but this should not lead to egotism and you should concentrate on the here and now, stay alive, but be aware of others. There may be a super-rational form of buddhism in the ST universe, or maybe not.
The most important thing, I would guess, is that humans and intelligent beings survive.
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Not wishing to stop you in full flood but science fiction is a branch of fantasy. [sits down again]
And who created those ancient humanoids? Who told them to seed worlds?
Nobody ever said God has to do things the hard way: maybe he just sets things in motion that will inevitably lead to the outcome he wants.
The non-existence of God is as hard to prove as the existence of God: there is plenty of room to believe whichever you prefer.
Yeah, a bit of unfortunate word choice there.
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]BARRON: Like it or not, we have rekindled the Mintakans' belief in the Overseer.
RIKER: And are you saying that this belief will eventually become a religion?
BARRON: It's inevitable. And without guidance, that religion could degenerate into inquisitions, holy wars, chaos.
PICARD: Horrifying. Doctor Barron, your report describes how rational these people are. Millennia ago, they abandoned their belief in the supernatural. Now you are asking me to sabotage that achievement, to send them back into the Dark Ages of superstition and ignorance and fear? No! We will find some way to undo the damage we've caused. [/FONT]
Picard clearly equates a belief in the "supernatural" with "superstition", when they really aren't the same.
I suppose the real rub is that Picard doesn't believe in anything that is "unexplainable by natural law or phenomena": while he may not be able to currently explain .... say, how Q does most of what Q does, Picard believes that there is an explanation, and a set of laws that Q must follow.
But we all agree that what the Mintakans were getting ready to believe in was a false god, and not believing in false gods is probably a step in the right direction. If they started worshiping Picard, then the God they are praying to has no intention of answering their prayers even if he could, and their time is better spent doing something else. So we can forgive Picard his anti-religion bias.
Plenty of respected scientists have kept their minds open on the subject of religion (and superstition): Blaise Pascal's famous "wager" said that the smart money is betting that there is a God, because what you lose if you are wrong is small and what you gain if you are right is priceless. Niels Bohr famously said of nailing a horseshoe to the wall, "Of course I don't believe in it, but I am told it works even if you don't believe in it."
Only way to get rid of him is to stamp out Catholicism. Achievable, but is it really worth the effort?You think the Pope still exists in the 23rd and 24th century?
It didn't work out so good for the Romans.Games theory is an interesting branch of science: it tries to learn important things about society or the universe by studying often very simple games.
One of those very simple games was framed like this: suppose you and I have committed a crime together, and we have been brought in by police for questioning. The police don't have enough evidence, so if we both keep quiet we both go free. If one of us confesses and the other does not, the confessing one gets a very light sentence but the other gets a hefty sentence. If we both confess we both get moderate sentences.
Many strategies were tried at this game to see which produced the best chance of winning, and for a long time the leader was one called "tit-for-tat": simply, it did to you whatever you did to it last time. If you confessed this time, it would confess next time.
A few years ago, a guy programmed a computer with a variant on tit-for-tat that did even better. The variation was that the computer would occasionally "forgive you": that is, sometimes when you confessed it would not confess on you next time.
It was widely celebrated as the first scientific evidence that forgiveness was good for you: that in the long run, forgiving others helped you.
Just one example of how a scientifically minded person who has rejected religion might nonetheless decide that doing the things that appear on most religion's "Do" lists (and not doing the things on the "Don't" list) is a good idea.
One of those very simple games was framed like this: suppose you and I have committed a crime together, and we have been brought in by police for questioning. The police don't have enough evidence, so if we both keep quiet we both go free. If one of us confesses and the other does not, the confessing one gets a very light sentence but the other gets a hefty sentence. If we both confess we both get moderate sentences.
Many strategies were tried at this game to see which produced the best chance of winning, and for a long time the leader was one called "tit-for-tat": simply, it did to you whatever you did to it last time. If you confessed this time, it would confess next time.
A few years ago, a guy programmed a computer with a variant on tit-for-tat that did even better. The variation was that the computer would occasionally "forgive you": that is, sometimes when you confessed it would not confess on you next time.
It was widely celebrated as the first scientific evidence that forgiveness was good for you: that in the long run, forgiving others helped you.
Just one example of how a scientifically minded person who has rejected religion might nonetheless decide that doing the things that appear on most religion's "Do" lists (and not doing the things on the "Don't" list) is a good idea.
To paraphrase Fred from slacktivist (whose penetrating and often hilarious anti-Left Behind exegesis I heartily recommend), who was quoting someone else whose name I don't recall, "faith is belief that cannot be disproven, superstition is belief that can and has."
Belief in a transcendant God is faith, a belief in the supernatural; belief in a 6000 year old Earth or Adam and Eve is superstition.
One is reconcilable with a rational and scientific worldview, and poses no danger, nor is particularly stupid (it is pointless, and often counterproductive, but not actively dumb). The other is vile and retarded and intellectually dishonest and a whole host of other pejoratives.
Though they might trade in the same currency, I personally don't really put them on the same coin...
Belief in a transcendant God is faith, a belief in the supernatural; belief in a 6000 year old Earth or Adam and Eve is superstition.
One is reconcilable with a rational and scientific worldview, and poses no danger, nor is particularly stupid (it is pointless, and often counterproductive, but not actively dumb). The other is vile and retarded and intellectually dishonest and a whole host of other pejoratives.
Though they might trade in the same currency, I personally don't really put them on the same coin...
Then we will have to agree to differ. However you are no more correct than I am. It's rather pleasant to have a discussion in this manner without the foaming at the mouth brigade crashing through the window and knocking over the table with the good china on it.
And who created those ancient humanoids? Who told them to seed worlds?
Nobody ever said God has to do things the hard way: maybe he just sets things in motion that will inevitably lead to the outcome he wants.
The non-existence of God is as hard to prove as the existence of God: there is plenty of room to believe whichever you prefer.
Yeah, a bit of unfortunate word choice there.
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]BARRON: Like it or not, we have rekindled the Mintakans' belief in the Overseer. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]RIKER: And are you saying that this belief will eventually become a religion? [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]BARRON: It's inevitable. And without guidance, that religion could degenerate into inquisitions, holy wars, chaos. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]PICARD: Horrifying. Doctor Barron, your report describes how rational these people are. Millennia ago, they abandoned their belief in the supernatural. Now you are asking me to sabotage that achievement, to send them back into the Dark Ages of superstition and ignorance and fear? No! We will find some way to undo the damage we've caused. [/FONT]
Picard clearly equates a belief in the "supernatural" with "superstition", when they really aren't the same.
I suppose the real rub is that Picard doesn't believe in anything that is "unexplainable by natural law or phenomena": while he may not be able to currently explain .... say, how Q does most of what Q does, Picard believes that there is an explanation, and a set of laws that Q must follow.
But we all agree that what the Mintakans were getting ready to believe in was a false god, and not believing in false gods is probably a step in the right direction. If they started worshiping Picard, then the God they are praying to has no intention of answering their prayers even if he could, and their time is better spent doing something else. So we can forgive Picard his anti-religion bias.
Plenty of respected scientists have kept their minds open on the subject of religion (and superstition): Blaise Pascal's famous "wager" said that the smart money is betting that there is a God, because what you lose if you are wrong is small and what you gain if you are right is priceless. Niels Bohr famously said of nailing a horseshoe to the wall, "Of course I don't believe in it, but I am told it works even if you don't believe in it."
Only way to get rid of him is to stamp out Catholicism. Achievable, but is it really worth the effort?You think the Pope still exists in the 23rd and 24th century?
I have to point it out, but religions have stamped on science quite a bit, cos science give people power to explain and control the world and takes power away from religious people, who are a little bit power mad.
OK, Picard couldn't answer the Mintakans prayers, but can you give me any instance, any recording, any example, of when the Christian God did? Is there any proof? No, there isn't, apart from a book written 2000 years ago.
Star Trek is about rationalism and giving people power to control and explain the universe. The people in it may have some belief in another existence, but they don't whoop about it.
Well, it's opinion-based, so yeah.
Although I think there's a distinction to be made in "believing in stuff I can't show you doesn't exist" and "obstinately believing in stuff that I can."Of course, Mothra is neither. She waits on Infant Island for the call.
True, and you've pointed out a lack of balance in my comments which I would like to try to rectify:
Plenty of religious people have kept an open mind about science, too. The Jesuits taught science, and did a lot of work to disseminate it. Their reasoning was simple: The Church has nothing to fear from science since science is nothing but the pursuit of truth.
Sort of my point: if you aren't sure he's answering prayers or not, then you aren't sure if praying is a waste of your time. But if someone has asked him and he's said that he isn't, then it definitely is a waste of time.
Although there is an argument that it isn't entirely a waste of time. I believe it was an episode of House where someone (Cameron?) said to House "Do you think people thank God for things because they think he doesn't know how great he is? They do it because it means something to them."
I've begun to wonder if Clarke's Law might come into play here (the one that goes "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". According to the DS9 tech manual, there is a Hildebrant Scale for technological development, and pre-warp is a 1, the Federation is a 23 (with Cardassia being a 22 and the Dominion a 24), The Prophets are about a 90, and folks like Q are up near 100. Could it be that the Federation is simply so advanced that NOTHING looks like magic to them anymore? Might they believe in God, but not believe he is "supernatural", rather that he is bound by natural laws that apply only to beings at his level?
The Dominion's only a 24? A mastery of genetic engineering, virtual reality devices, and the Founders themselves, who can be no natural phenomenon, and they're only 1 higher than the Feds?
I think we can infer that Hildebrant lives on Earth.
And anywho a law is something that applies universally; any rational conception of an immanent as opposed to transcendent God would require it to be bound by physical law. Although even a transcendent God would be bound by logic. This is helpfully illustrated by the question "Can God microwave a burrito so hot that even he cannot eat it?" I believe it was Frank Tipler who said that God's omnipotence is not limited by being bound to logic, nor is it limited by the human capacity to spout nonsense.
It's an interesting question, though--I mean, effectively, the Q are God. But they are immanent creatures (I suppose that they originated as quark-gluon life in the early universe, which is about the only way their omnipresence throughout the visible universe as well as the universe beyond the horizon is really explicable, even with super-duper-warp), and they must be bound by physical law. They're even explicitly said to be, although I hesitate to cite the source (Voyager :x ). Yet no one--at least no one we see--recognizes Q as God.
I mean, the Q are much more powerful and active than Jesus, who merely resurrected and performed minor miracles and then failed to do anything in the intervening 2400 years--which misses the point of Jesus' story, of course, but I find all non-Adoptionist Christianity, which is to say all surviving Christian sects, to utterly misplace that point. But the fact remains that all that Christianity promises, the Q could conceivably provide, and provide it now. It's almost prideful how no one (again, that we see) doesn't start worshipping the Q. Sure, they're a vengeful, callous, and arbitrary God, but that never seemed to stop primitive peoples from worshipping and anthropomorphizing natural phenomena, which were perceived precisely as vengeful, callous and arbitrary.
So anything but a fully transcendental religion, like deism (God exists outside the universe or multiverse and observes) or Tiplerian omegism (God is an asymptote at the end of history), would seem bizarre and out of place, because YHWH's interventionist God, aside from being demonstrably false, is also trumped or challenged by physical deities whose existence is proven and profoundly effect history in the present.
I think we can infer that Hildebrant lives on Earth.
And anywho a law is something that applies universally; any rational conception of an immanent as opposed to transcendent God would require it to be bound by physical law. Although even a transcendent God would be bound by logic. This is helpfully illustrated by the question "Can God microwave a burrito so hot that even he cannot eat it?" I believe it was Frank Tipler who said that God's omnipotence is not limited by being bound to logic, nor is it limited by the human capacity to spout nonsense.
It's an interesting question, though--I mean, effectively, the Q are God. But they are immanent creatures (I suppose that they originated as quark-gluon life in the early universe, which is about the only way their omnipresence throughout the visible universe as well as the universe beyond the horizon is really explicable, even with super-duper-warp), and they must be bound by physical law. They're even explicitly said to be, although I hesitate to cite the source (Voyager :x ). Yet no one--at least no one we see--recognizes Q as God.
I mean, the Q are much more powerful and active than Jesus, who merely resurrected and performed minor miracles and then failed to do anything in the intervening 2400 years--which misses the point of Jesus' story, of course, but I find all non-Adoptionist Christianity, which is to say all surviving Christian sects, to utterly misplace that point. But the fact remains that all that Christianity promises, the Q could conceivably provide, and provide it now. It's almost prideful how no one (again, that we see) doesn't start worshipping the Q. Sure, they're a vengeful, callous, and arbitrary God, but that never seemed to stop primitive peoples from worshipping and anthropomorphizing natural phenomena, which were perceived precisely as vengeful, callous and arbitrary.
So anything but a fully transcendental religion, like deism (God exists outside the universe or multiverse and observes) or Tiplerian omegism (God is an asymptote at the end of history), would seem bizarre and out of place, because YHWH's interventionist God, aside from being demonstrably false, is also trumped or challenged by physical deities whose existence is proven and profoundly effect history in the present.
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A negative assertion can't be proven. It's neither necessary nor possible to prove that leprechauns don't exist. I don't believe in leprechauns because there's no credible, rational evidence for their existence -- at least, not until someone catches one and makes the little bugger give up his pot of gold.
Well, at least they've made progress since the time of Galileo.
Indeed. Not to mention that many scientists, including Newton, were and are profoundly religious.
I'm too much of a positivist to believe in anything I can't sense with my own senses or with the aid of technology, but religion certainly was alive and well in the Federation. Perhaps most humans had abandoned organized religion, but the Bajorans certainly hadn't, and they were rather successful by and large, in spite of the occasional invasion by enemy forces, or the attempt to deny Bajoran children access to information not condoned by the elders (Vedek/Kai Winn and Keiko O'Brien's school).
I'm too much of a positivist to believe in anything I can't sense with my own senses or with the aid of technology, but religion certainly was alive and well in the Federation. Perhaps most humans had abandoned organized religion, but the Bajorans certainly hadn't, and they were rather successful by and large, in spite of the occasional invasion by enemy forces, or the attempt to deny Bajoran children access to information not condoned by the elders (Vedek/Kai Winn and Keiko O'Brien's school).
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?
Galileo was a devout Catholic throughout his life.
In 1616 he was ordered to refrain from teaching the Copernican hypothesis. In 1611 he met cardinal Maffeo Barberini who became his financial patron and made one of his poems a Catholic hymn in praise of Galileo. When Barberini was elected Pope Urban VIII, Galileo dedicated Il saggiatore to him, (In Il saggiatore Galileo incorrectly stated that comets are a play of light rather than real objects).The following year the new Pope hinted that the prohibition would no longer be in force. Six years later Galileo publish a book supporting Copernican. He was tried and conviction by the Inquisition in 1633, living the rest of his life under loose house arrest in his villa.
The court's "threat" against Galileo wasn't torture and death, it was excommunication, he faced being thrown out of the church.
Despite his trial and conviction, he did not reject either religion or the church, but only the attempt of authorities to stifle investigation of scientific matters.
In 1616 he was ordered to refrain from teaching the Copernican hypothesis. In 1611 he met cardinal Maffeo Barberini who became his financial patron and made one of his poems a Catholic hymn in praise of Galileo. When Barberini was elected Pope Urban VIII, Galileo dedicated Il saggiatore to him, (In Il saggiatore Galileo incorrectly stated that comets are a play of light rather than real objects).The following year the new Pope hinted that the prohibition would no longer be in force. Six years later Galileo publish a book supporting Copernican. He was tried and conviction by the Inquisition in 1633, living the rest of his life under loose house arrest in his villa.
The court's "threat" against Galileo wasn't torture and death, it was excommunication, he faced being thrown out of the church.
Despite his trial and conviction, he did not reject either religion or the church, but only the attempt of authorities to stifle investigation of scientific matters.
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Ironically, however, Galileo adhered to the position of another prominent Catholic--St. Augustine--when it came to the relationship between Scripture and science, which was that all Scripture should NOT be taken literally. The leaders in charge of the church at the time were corrupt and enamored of their own power...that much is obvious, just as certain modern people ignore Augustine's wise words about science.
Here's what St. Augustine had to say, and I think it's just as true today as it was then--in fact, it's even MORE applicable:
"Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances,... and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, lest the unbeliever see only ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn."
- St. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim (The Literal Meaning of Genesis)
Augustine then continued to say this--which is exactly what has happened in this thread as a result of the wacky scientific positions some have tried to justify by a literal interpretation of the Bible. Obviously this is written in a point of view favorable to core Christianity. But Augustine had it right when it comes to how people will react to such an embarrassing display of ignorance:
""The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field in which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although "they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.""
So the irony is that the church ignored what should have been its own wisdom, just as some are doing to this day. (Even more ironic was that Augustine, even with the title of his book, was suggesting a much freer interpretation of Genesis than what some hold to these days!)
Here's what St. Augustine had to say, and I think it's just as true today as it was then--in fact, it's even MORE applicable:
"Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances,... and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, lest the unbeliever see only ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn."
- St. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim (The Literal Meaning of Genesis)
Augustine then continued to say this--which is exactly what has happened in this thread as a result of the wacky scientific positions some have tried to justify by a literal interpretation of the Bible. Obviously this is written in a point of view favorable to core Christianity. But Augustine had it right when it comes to how people will react to such an embarrassing display of ignorance:
""The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field in which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although "they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.""
So the irony is that the church ignored what should have been its own wisdom, just as some are doing to this day. (Even more ironic was that Augustine, even with the title of his book, was suggesting a much freer interpretation of Genesis than what some hold to these days!)
Something just occurred to me, that I thought was sort of funny, given how much ire is directed toward the monocultural, planet-of-hats, one-religion-if-any-religion aliens in Trek and elsewhere.
But I wonder if, from an aliens' perspective, we'd be thought of as considerably more diverse--to an alien, half the population of the human race might as well be categorized as adherent to multifarious, yet minimally-different strains of Judaism, with much or most of the other half adhering to variants of Hinduism. Over 80% of the species belongs to one of two religions, with the vast majority of the remainder being Chinese, probably placing over 95% of believers on the planet into only three distinct religious schools.
It's sort of bizarre, to look at the world through that kind of far-away lens.
But I wonder if, from an aliens' perspective, we'd be thought of as considerably more diverse--to an alien, half the population of the human race might as well be categorized as adherent to multifarious, yet minimally-different strains of Judaism, with much or most of the other half adhering to variants of Hinduism. Over 80% of the species belongs to one of two religions, with the vast majority of the remainder being Chinese, probably placing over 95% of believers on the planet into only three distinct religious schools.
It's sort of bizarre, to look at the world through that kind of far-away lens.
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