Religion: Roddenberry was right!!

[JustKate]

^ No, no - I wasn't being in the least bit sarcastic, Tuln. That particular comment made by Ryan is an argument that I've never seen before in any of the many what's-the-deal-with-religion-anyway? threads in which I've participated. You remember I said that I had seen/read it all? Not quite, apparently.

I'm not saying it's a particularly good argument (sorry, Ryan), but it's one that I've never encountered before.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

ah ok. I traced over what was going on! i read you now

 

[JustKate]

^ Oh, that's OK. Odds are actually fairly good that I might have been sarcastic - it's one of my gifts - but as it happens, I wasn't right then.

 

[uniderth]

What part in the story of Noah are we talking about that God made a mistake or changed his mind?

 

[M'Sharak]

What part in the story of Noah are we talking about that God made a mistake or changed his mind?

The flood is pretty much a global do-over. God was displeased with the way things were going and tipped over the board. Destroy everything; begin new game. Noah (being a righteous man who, it was hoped, knew how to follow instructions) was spared, along with his family.

 

[Amaris]

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.

I know this was several pages prior, but I just got back to this thread. Anyhoo, this is also how I saw it. I figure Picard respected various cultures and that includes the religions that formed them. He is, after all, a Frenchman, from a culture steeped in Catholicism and the Holy Church.

I think where his problem lies in "Who Watches the Watchers" is that this religion that has been cast aside as patently false is somehow being brought back to the detriment of the Mintakans, that even in the face of scientific explanation, the adherents of this religion hold fast to this nebulous lie instead of see the truth for what it is, that Picard is NOT God, that he is mortal, hence the quote of Arthur C. Clarke's "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". One such as Picard seems fascinated by various religions and cultures, not disdainful of them. "The Chase" has a great example of Picard's love of cultures and ancient beliefs, and our modern religions tend to fall under "Ancient Beliefs" seeing as they are a thousand to several thousand years old.

I think WWTW tries to make the case that blind acceptance of religion an denial of people and events around you, even in the face of cold hard fact, is detrimental to society and needs to be cast aside. That is how I see that episode, and as a Christian, I can say it's definitely one of my favorites.

J.

 

[uniderth]

The flood is pretty much a global do-over. God was displeased with the way things were going and tipped over the board. Destroy everything; begin new game. Noah (being a righteous man who, it was hoped, knew how to follow instructions) was spared, along with his family.

I was actually refering to specific scriptural reference. I have one in mind but I'm not sure if that is the only one.

 

[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

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.

I know this was several pages prior, but I just got back to this thread. Anyhoo, this is also how I saw it. I figure Picard respected various cultures and that includes the religions that formed them. He is, after all, a Frenchman, from a culture steeped in Catholicism and the Holy Church.

I think where his problem lies in "Who Watches the Watchers" is that this religion that has been cast aside as patently false is somehow being brought back to the detriment of the Mintakans, that even in the face of scientific explanation, the adherents of this religion hold fast to this nebulous lie instead of see the truth for what it is, that Picard is NOT God, that he is mortal, hence the quote of Arthur C. Clarke's "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". One such as Picard seems fascinated by various religions and cultures, not disdainful of them. "The Chase" has a great example of Picard's love of cultures and ancient beliefs, and our modern religions tend to fall under "Ancient Beliefs" seeing as they are a thousand to several thousand years old.

I think WWTW tries to make the case that blind acceptance of religion an denial of people and events around you, even in the face of cold hard fact, is detrimental to society and needs to be cast aside. That is how I see that episode, and as a Christian, I can say it's definitely one of my favorites.

J.

I agree, but don't forget that, if my memory serves, Picard gives the speech I was talking about so early on, it's way before the idea of Picard-as-God comes into the plot

 

[M'Sharak]

The flood is pretty much a global do-over. God was displeased with the way things were going and tipped over the board. Destroy everything; begin new game. Noah (being a righteous man who, it was hoped, knew how to follow instructions) was spared, along with his family.

I was actually refering to specific scriptural reference. I have one in mind but I'm not sure if that is the only one.

Something like this?

5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.

Genesis 6:5-8 (King James Version)

See also: RSV

 

[Amaris]

I agree, but don't forget that, if my memory serves, Picard gives the speech I was talking about so early on, it's way before the idea of Picard-as-God comes into the plot

Ah, I was thinking more toward the end. I do think, at times, that Picard has a set goal for humanity, that we are truly noble in our aspirations, and I believe there are times when he is let down by the actions of a few very non-evolved humans, particularly in Starfleet.

That being said, Picard always seemed to not care one jot about what others believed as long as it didn't seriously interfere with their duties or cause harm to another. Of course, it also seems that if people are religious in the time of TNG, and there's no reason to think otherwise, it would seem most of them keep it private unless directly asked, which is something I'm very cool with.

J.

 

[uniderth]

Yeah that's the same one I was thinking of. The version of the Bible I believe is more accurate resents this a bit differently. It states the "it repented Noah" not the LORD. So I guess that part isn't really a sticking point for me. I just wasn't sure if there was another verse in the story that I hadn't noticed.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

This video get's interesting at about 3 minutes

 

[Amaris]

^ Oh Lord, not that again!
Not you, it's just I've seen that video so many times, and it makes me laugh so many times.


J.

 

[uniderth]

I haven't ever finished part 1 of the video but I did enjoy Parts 2 and 3.

 

[Strider]

This video get's interesting at about 3 minutes

Yeah, that's interesting alright. I stopped at the Horus/Christ connections. Read up on that, every single connection they list is a fabrication. It works on the "big lie" theory where the viewer will think that even if the whole thing taken together seems far fetched, at least some of it must be true. That would be a mistake.

 

[3D Master]

The ST:TNG episode Data's Day mentioned that several crewmembers/passengers aboard the NCC-1701-D were celebrating the Hindu Festival of Lights, and that particular segment was produced while Gene Roddenberry still had a pulse.

I'm an Atheist, yet I celebrate many religious festivals. Just because one celebrates the tradition of the festival, does not mean you have believe the religion that started it - or in most cases - cannibalized it from an earlier environmentally formed tradition.

I'm totally behind the scientific approach, ie. show me the evidence. Why doesn't God show himself? Why doesn't he heal the sick? What harm would it do?

But you know perfectly well that the scientific approach doesn't work for all kinds of things. How do you know when somebody loves you? How do you know when somebody is a true friend? How do you know there's such a thing as the Big Bang? How do you know that archeologists have really translated the Rosetta Stone? All kinds of things have to be taken on faith, only some people choose not to call it that. You can guess or assume that somebody loves you based on their actions, but you don't actually have scientific proof, do you? You can accept the Big Bang theory based on the fact that people who know about such things have seen the proof, but you yourself don't know that proof, right? (And if by some chance you are an astrophysicist and have seen and understood the proof with your own eyes, then replace "the Big Bang" with some other generally accepted theory about which you don't have specialized knowledge. No nitpicking! )

The whole point of science is that we do not know how things work. We only have evidence, and theories that fit those evidence best. In essence, a close approximation to the way things are, NOT that that the way things indeed are. In fact, the best thing science can do, is tell you with reasonable certain how things are NOT. (But even that one, is iffy.)

There is not proof that there is a Big Bang, there is a evidence that supports the Big Bang theory; and a proper scientist thinks that the Big Bang is what happened because it fits the evidence best, and if new contradictory evidence becomes available, or a new theory that fits the evidence better, he will think otherwise.

This is the exact opposite of faith. Faith is believing something is true, not only when there is no evidence to support it, but even when there is evidence that contradicts it.

Well, at least, that's the way it's SUPPOSED to work. These days the average scientist is more of a priest in the dogma of Einstein, he keeps plottering on his faith that Einstein was completely right with his theory of relatively, regardless of how many evidence have already piled up to the contrary. That evidence, happily being ignored, with fingers in their ears, going "Neener, neener, neener, I don't see and hear it so it doesn't exiiiist."

 

[Ryan8bit]

Oh, Ryan...

In the first place, this isn't "logic" - it's historical fact. Believers and non-believers have been doing nasty things to each other for a very long time. Sure, there were the Crusades, but there were also the purges in Stalinist Russia.

In the second place, by your logic, as SFRabid points out, the "crime" - that is, the cause of all the trouble, according to your logic - is being different from the majority. And there are lots of ways to be different - is everyone different to be punished for nonconformity or pushed into conformity? Is that really the kind of world you want?

Originally I had added a disclaimer to my post, but then took it away for the sake of brevity (probably a mistake with people who like to assume too much, which is a large majority of the people in this thread). I realize that not all conflict is caused by religion, and that if religion didn't exist, there would be something else to have conflict over. However, regardless of that the argument is still logically sound. One side claimed that religious people made bad things happen in the name of religion. The other side flipped it around to say that anti-religious people persecuted religious people because of their religion. If religion is the cause (or catalyst) of both problems and you take it away, there couldn't possibly be a dispute over religion specifically. There could still be dispute over differences, but none would be attributed to religion.

But then you would have to get rid of race, and borders, and language variances.

These things are not comparable to religion. None of those things imply a way people should live their lives. None of those things imply answers to a lot of unanswerable questions. Had you said culture or practices I might have agreed, but these things just don't compare. The contrast between religion and non-religion isn't simply an issue of difference or diversity, but one on the fundamentals on which people base all the decisions of their lives. People don't like having the core of their being and beliefs shaken, and that's why there is such a clash with the topic of religion.

Humans seek to dominate each other. Period. Blaming religion is going through life with blinders on.

Who ever blamed all war and conflict squarely on the shoulders of religion? I certainly didn't.

 

[Captain X]

Re: Religion: Roddenberry was wrong!!

I've been stewing on this for a while now but I believe that Gene Roddenberry's vision that by the 24th century mankind would have moved passed the need for religion is absolutely wrong.

Man would have long-ago realized that it was a complete waste of time devoting time and effort into a question that can't be answered, and antagonizing people who don't believe the same things they do. But the point is that religion has existed for thousands of years and wouldn't go away in only a few hundred just because a few atheists have butt hurt over something that wouldn't affect them in a secular society anyway.

Where is the evidence? The Sisko, that's where. That and the little references spread throughout about holidays being celebrated. (That is just my opinion and for those that disagree fair play to you and your delusions)

People tell me that evidence is needed to believe in God and that it isn't all based on faith.
How can I have faith in a cruel God that lets children suffer? --- what sins have they committed? NONE That's totally all the proof I need that God doesn't exist, but it doesn't matter because when it comes right down to it no one really knows. So really if people would stop giving a shit what god or gods other people believe in, or if people didn't believe in any gods at all, then humanity might have more of a chance peacefully existing together the way Roddenberry imagined, without forcing anyone really give up anything.

Anyway rant over. I now I may be opening a sensitive can of worms here but what do people think of the chip on Roddenberry's shoulder that religion on Earth should be redundant in the future? And if Star Trek is so anti-religion, why are so many alien religions shown to have some kernel of truth to them (i.e. the Bajoran Prophets)?

 

[JustKate]

Originally I had added a disclaimer to my post, but then took it away for the sake of brevity (probably a mistake with people who like to assume too much, which is a large majority of the people in this thread). I realize that not all conflict is caused by religion, and that if religion didn't exist, there would be something else to have conflict over. However, regardless of that the argument is still logically sound. One side claimed that religious people made bad things happen in the name of religion. The other side flipped it around to say that anti-religious people persecuted religious people because of their religion. If religion is the cause (or catalyst) of both problems and you take it away, there couldn't possibly be a dispute over religion specifically. There could still be dispute over differences, but none would be attributed to religion.

It might be logically sound, but that doesn't make it just or right. You're saying that conflicts are the fault of religion even if it's non-religious people that are doing the persecuting?

What the...?!? So it's religion's fault that Hitler persecuted the Jews and religion's fault that the Roman Empire persecuted Christians (and before you say, "Oh, that's because of religion," I'll just step in and say, nope - the persecution was politically motivated) and religion's fault that Stalin persecuted...well, pretty much anybody, really?

Yeah, right.

The cause of disputes is people - not religion itself or a lack thereof, but the way so many people try to browbeat other people into agreeing with them or who, if something has gone wrong, look to find somebody "different" to blame. If there weren't any religion, something else would be bound to come along that somebody would think worth causing trouble over - diet, language, national origin, schooling, sexuality, gender, and then of course there's always good ol' race. And if nothing did, there are people who would invent a reason. To quote Dr. Suess, "The Star-Bellied Sneeches had bellies with stars/the Plain-Bellied Sneeches had none upon thars."

The kind of people who want to dominate or denigrate other people simply because they disagree with them or because those other people are different in some way would do so even if there were no religion - and the reason is that that sort of person is just looking for an excuse to feel superior or make other people feel inferior. If somebody wants to find a reason to look down on a certain segment of society, that person will find a reason. Hitler and his minions managed to find all kinds of people that they considered worthy of persecution - Jews, gypsies, gays, Poles - and you'll notice religion (although actually it was really ethnic - you didn't have to be a practicing Jew or even the child of practicing Jews to be considered a danger to the State) wasn't the criteria for most of those groups.

But you go ahead and think that if that horrible religion stuff were erased from the world, people would automatically cease to be bigoted. You're absolutely wrong, but you of course have a perfect right to think it.

 

[Ryan8bit]

But you go ahead and think that if that horrible religion stuff were erased from the world, people would automatically cease to be bigoted. You're absolutely wrong, but you of course have a perfect right to think it.

Holy shit, did you even read what I wrote? You definitely fall into that category of people I described that assume too much. Nowhere did I ever say that without religion people would not still be bigoted or that the world will be some utopia. Do not place words in my mouth or assume that I have some imaginary position you concocted.

You're saying that conflicts are the fault of religion even if it's non-religious people that are doing the persecuting?

If non-religious people are persecuting religious people because of their religion, then yes, I would posit that without religion that particular disagreement would not exist. Again, a disclaimer for those who like to make hasty assumptions: That does not mean that disagreements would never happen, that people wouldn't still fight over things, or that they might not just try and persecute each other for varying reasons.