Religion: Roddenberry was right!!

[M'Sharak]

When someone thinks they know to the extent that they will derive authority from it, they frequently become dangerous to others. The non-believers must be shown or slain.

This works both ways, you know.

Since religion and belief are not automatically one and the same and may indeed be different and separate things, it worked all ways already, exactly as it was stated originally by USS_Triumphant, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here, other than A) to show an unwarranted preemptive defensiveness or B) (more likely, given the employment of winking smiley) to illustrate that you think you know something which the rest of us do not.


M', pretty sure there are more than two ways things can work

 

[Amaris]

Religion in Star Trek is a fascinating thing, really. Here we have a socially and technologically advanced people, human beings, traversing the galaxy by bending the laws of physics to travel great distances, and yet there is so much that is simply not known. Some are religious, others believe that there is a natural explanation for everything, and still there are some who follow their own path, not knowing what they might discover.

There is spirituality and religion. For all we know, out of the 1,012 people on the Enterprise-D, 300 were spiritualists, people who believed in a greater being without it being a wholesale religion. I simply don't believe that humanity, being ever so curious in this future, would stop only at the tactile level. Philosophy of the heart and of the mind, these things would also carry on, and that is why I believe even in the future, there will be many, humans included, who would seek to know the answers not readily available at the drop of a tricorder. It's human nature.

J.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

One of the things I really liked about "Where Silence has Lease" is that Picard really attempts to genuinely attempt to answer the unanswerable question. He put a lot of thought into it. I wish people today would put even a little bit of that thought into it now. Instead they take something ready made off the shelf

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Didn't Phlox attend a Catholic Mass during the 2150's?

Yep, at St. Peter's Basilica.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

The impression I got from Trek is that humans from Earth are past religion. Note Pcard's early speech in Who Watches the Watchers

 

[Cakes488]

I've been stewing on this for a while now but I believe that Gene Roddenberrys vision that by the 23rd century mankind would have moved passed the need for religion is absolutely spot-on correct.

Man would have long-ago realised that it was a complete waste of time devoting time and bizarre religous practises to a divine being that plainly doesn't exist.

Where is the evidence? There is none. (That is just my opinion and for those that disagree fair play to you and your delusions)

People tell me that no evidence is needed to believe in God and that its all based on faith.
How can I have faith in a cruel God that lets children suffer? --- what sins have they committed? NONE

Anyway rant over. I now I may be opening a sensitive can of worms here but what do people think of Roddeberrys notion that religion on Earth will be redundant in the future?

I agree with you! But unfortunately it's going to take a lot longer than a couple of thousand years to work religion out of society. Look at us still today...some humans are terribly repressed by religion and we're still fighting over who's God is the right God. We don't learn from our past so we're bound to relive it. It's very sad really....but I agree that one day there will be no religion -- we are just waaaaaaaay ahead of our time!

 

[uniderth]

I stand by everything that I posted. That said, I'm agnostic. I belive that there is something. Maybe it could be called god. I don't know. One thing I do know is that religion has little to do with it. Religion is always a man made thing, a buerocracy between man and god created by man, and its alsways something that's sold to the common people. It's always, without fail. cursumstantial. Meaning that it depends on the region and time period that a person is born into. If you were born in ancient greece, you are likely to believe in Zeus. If youa re born in South Afriica today it's unlikely you'd be A Christian. If you are born on Bajor in the 24th Century you'd believe in the Prophets and not the Klingon gods.

But your implying that all people everywhere are exactly the same. Perhaps one group of people understands things better through a certain way. A differnt group understands a different way. If God wanted people to come to know Him he would do it through the way best understood by the people being taught. Maybe that's why there are so many religions, no one religion will be the best way for every person to come to God. One of the Scriptures in the Bible I like:

Ephesians 4:11-13
11 And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:
13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:

Since I believe the Bible I believe this helps confirm my theory. It says the God gave some people apostles and some people prophets and some people evangelists, etc. It says that it will eb like this until we come to a unity of faith. I'm not trying to convince anyone to become a certain religion. Just find whatever path is best for you even it that path is a religion.

Uh, true. But of course, with science you can observe, research, and measure. You can revise and even change results. People cling to the Bible which was written long before newer evidence contradicted what was possible in the Bible.

While I believe in the Bible I also believe in modern prophets. I believe God reveals what we need to know today as it is different then what people back then needed to know. I believe the Bible is a good reference books to God historic interactions with humanity but not his absolute word.

The point you are making is interesting, but it really doesn't hold up to real scrutiny. You could once believe that babies come from storks, but obviously they don't. Religion might tell you that thunder is God bowling, but we know now what it really is.

But how would us knowing what lightning is and what causes it mean that there is no God behind it?

 

[Plecostomus]

But how would us knowing what lightning is and what causes it mean that there is no God behind it?

Science brings us closer to God by allowing us to understand His works better, improving our quality of life, and allowing to spend less time just surviving and more time doing spiritual stuff such as reading a translated Bible on your PDA as you take the bus to work.

If you are so inclined that is.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Yeah sure, but the real; problem with what your saying is that the discrimination runs much deeper. Often a born again Christian like my brother will often say that if you follow another path other than Christianity that might be fine but tehy won't ever be saved. Compare it to a mountain, and there is more than one path to God, each side of the mountain is a different path to God, but the problem is that if you are following one of these paths, (not you in particular, but I'm talking each path as a major religious denomination) it always must be that the other paths ...the ones other than your own, will never reach it. And the guy on another path up will say the same about you. An atheist once said sopemthing like "when you understand why you dismiss all the other gods than your own (and this could apply to paths to god) than you will know why I dismiss yours."

 

[Praetor]

I never took it to mean that there would not be a religion of any kind by the time of Trek. (Indeed, many have argued that 'faith' in science is just another disguised religion.) I always interpreted Gene's thoughts as meaning that people would grow past belittling and insulting others beliefs, religious, if any, or otherwise, and just embrace a common regard for their fellow man and woman despite their differences.

Clearly, we're not there yet.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Here is what Roddenberry said:
We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes

 

[Ryan8bit]

Since I believe the Bible I believe this helps confirm my theory.

I'm not sure I've ever seen such a close case of circular reasoning as this.

 

[M'Sharak]

The impression I got from Trek is that humans from Earth are past religion. Note Pcard's early speech in Who Watches the Watchers

TNG could be insufferably smug at times about the things humanity had supposedly "evolved" beyond needing, but I didn't get the sense that religion was one of them. His speech in that episode had to do with his own alarm at being identified as a figure part of an older superstition which the Mintakans themselves had discarded.

 

[Captain Pike]

I've been stewing on this for a while now but I believe that Gene Roddenberrys vision that by the 23rd century mankind would have moved passed the need for religion is absolutely spot-on correct.

Man would have long-ago realised that it was a complete waste of time devoting time and bizarre religous practises to a divine being that plainly doesn't exist.

Where is the evidence? There is none. (That is just my opinion and for those that disagree fair play to you and your delusions)

People tell me that no evidence is needed to believe in God and that its all based on faith.
How can I have faith in a cruel God that lets children suffer? --- what sins have they committed? NONE

Anyway rant over. I now I may be opening a sensitive can of worms here but what do people think of Roddeberrys notion that religion on Earth will be redundant in the future?

I agree completely. It is utterly beyond me why people still believe in various superstitions of any kind, let alone buy into organised religion - and I don't think we can evolve, socially, as a species, until we throw away the godbooks and take some responsibility for our own destiny.

 

[Strider]

As for those ghastly Semitic cults (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Marxism, Randian Objectivism, etc.), I would like to think that their more pathological followers were either physically exterminated, or - as inspired by Greg Bear's 1982 LitSF novel Strength of Stones - they pooled their money, bought themselves some shithole desert planet orbiting a star very far from Sol and relocated there en masse to continue engaging in their blood-splattered mythomaniacal power fantasies without bothering the neighbors.

TGT

Did you even bother typing this paragraph, or did you just shit it out?

 

[Praetor]

I would expect that statement was made with tongue at least somewhat in cheek.

And, incidentally, I have a bad feeling about the longevity of this thread.

 

[Strider]

I would expect that statement was made with tongue at least somewhat in cheek.

Let's ask him, shall we? Mr. God Thing, was your tongue by any chance in your cheek when you expressed your support for the genocide of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim peoples?

 

[kissthestar]

Religions evolve, like everything else cultural. I don't blame believers now for things done long ago.

 

[SFRabid]

... Often a born again Christian like my brother will often say that ...

At least now I understand where you are coming from. You don't agree with your brother's religion and thus you consider all religion to be a threat. You respond with an avatar and a signature designed to insult anyone that might have the slightest association with those the "corrupted" your brother. Before you can really discuss religion you need to purge yourself of the hate inside that prompts you to compare people who believe in kindness towards others with monkeys.

 

[Biggshow]

Hey, kids,

Two things:

Tuln, you should post the appropriate attribution to your quote which I believe is Bill Maher's closing monologue from "Religulous" (which I heartily suggest both believers and non-believers watch).

Roddenberry was against religion? Maybe. I feel a need to point out that the Valentine to Christianity, "Bread and Circuses", was written by Roddenberry. Just sayin'...