Roddenberry and the Biblical Allusions in TOS.

[TREK_GOD_1]

We'll agree to disagree. Given that Gene's son tells us that Gene was an atheist, given that Braga tells us that Star Trek is "atheistic mythology", given the number of series episodes and movie that I mentioned earlier (and Gene's plans for The God Thing that I didn't mention earlier), I think I have a strong foundation to say that the idea of humanity ridding itself of religion in order to better ourselves is indeed an underlying premise of Star Trek just as Braga says it is and those episodes about overthrowing tyrannical gods are not just random because it's a popular trope in science fiction. There's more to see there than that.

This thread is about Biblical allusions in TOS, not TNG or any other spin-off (or those who worked on said spin-offs) or period in the life of the franchise, so Braga's opinion is utterly irrelevant to the subject as it relates to Roddenberry and TOS. Moreover, Gene's son refers to his father beliefs as he was aware of them, but in the proper analysis of Roddenberry and TOS where Biblical reference and perception is concerned, the quoted Lou Scheimer account is the most relevant one for the period. As noted before:

In the book Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation (pg. 99), Scheimer recalled something telling, which the hardline, "Roddenberry=atheist" group did not know, or choose to ignore:

Gene got to be close to us all at Filmation. I remember when he and Majel barret had their little baby, Eugene Wesley Roddenberry jr., they invited us to the christening. He had a rabbi there, and a Catholic priest, and a Protestant reverend. He said, "There is no way that this kid is not going to go to heaven."

That was not a joke or stunt. Even if one argues that GR's invitation to the reverend, rabbi and priest implied he was not sure--he still moved in a conscious direction of faith the atheist would not even entertain.

With EWR, jr. born in 1974--long after TOS and just at the end of TAS' production, Roddenberry's statement--at one of the most important moments of his life--paints a clear picture that he was not the atheism cheerleader of latter day revisionist accounts, and certainly not during TOS' production. This explains McCoy saying "Lord, forgive me!" a moment before he Phasered "Nancy" in "The Man Trap", or the entire plot and closing lines about Christ in "Bread and Circuses," which never read like the mere offering of opinion on a parallel event (in the way one would say, "oh, they just invented the car--cool!"), but some kind of deeper recognition/connection.

Scheimer formed a friendship with Roddenberry while TOS was approaching the end of its production, which continued into the TAS era, so he--more than Roddenberry's son (who was not born yet) or Braga--knew what GR's beliefs were in the period in question. Scheimer did not say Roddenberry was an atheist, nor intended TOS (or TAS, for that matter) to present a universe where atheism was the order of the day, as it did not exist in TOS. If historical clarity and truth are desired, then the Scheimer account of EWR's christening stands as firm evidence that the man was not some hard-line atheist in that period, and if one considers religion's presence and references in TOS--a production only a few years before the christening, one can reasonably conclude Roddenberry--the man behind it all--was not at that time, either.

The Federation and Starfleet would never say that their goal is to drive religion out of the galaxy, though.

Of course not, and anyone suggesting that is Starfleet / the Federation's mandate has less than a hair's breadth of awareness that they've placed the Trek organizations in the same company with some undeniably dark actors in real world history who attempted to do the same.

TOS preceded the end of Roddenberry's life, and Braga was a toddler at the time. And a great deal of TOS were contributions from other individuals like Coon, Fontana etc. There is no denying that Kirk frequently defeated a long procession of godlike and would be godlike characters, entities, etc. but I don't see atheism as the 'underlying premise' behind that show.

Yes, and the point is that Kirk--an affirmed believer in God--never tolerated false gods. He never made some pronouncement of personal atheistic beliefs or represented the Federation as an organization guided by / selling atheism.

 

[Christopher]

I think of Roddenberry's philosophy -- and my own -- as secular humanism rather than atheism. I believe Roddenberry considered himself a secular humanist as well, which is probably where I got it from. The problem with the label "atheism" is that it defines the belief purely by what it excludes, which is entirely negative. Secular humanism is more positive than that -- it's not just disbelief in a deity, it's belief in the potential of humanity to define our own existence, achieve our own aspirations, and solve every mystery of the universe. It's the belief that humans are not children who need to be subordinate to a divine father figure, but adults -- or at least adolescents -- with the capacity to take charge of our own fate. It's not rejecting the idea of God so much as finding it unnecessary. As Pierre-Simon Laplace apocryphally said to Napoleon, "I have no need of that hypothesis."

You can read "atheism" into Trek's philosophy if you're determined to, but it's hard to miss that Trek was explicitly, vocally, and consistently a celebration of the human potential. So "secular humanism" is a much more accurate and relevant descriptor for its guiding philosophy. It's also more realistic because it takes into account the fact that Roddenberry was not the sole creator of Trek by a long, long shot. You can be a humanist whether you believe in God or not. I daresay you can be a secular humanist whether you believe in God or not, simply by not letting that belief define your entire interaction with the world and people around you.

At the very least, you can believe in God but choose to write for a TV series that's secular humanist in its approach, just as you can be an atheist but choose to write fiction in which God explicitly exists -- or, like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, can be Jewish and write about Norse gods being real. It's all fiction, after all. Sometimes it's just about telling stories, not proselytizing a belief system.

 

[mb22]

It's a shame that Gene Coon never seems to have been interviewed. It would be illuminating to know what some of his views were on topics like this. Can anyone recall anything D.C. Fontana has said or written about this?

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

I suppose it's possible that, in-universe, most of the senior staff (characters) of the Enterprise may have grown up in settings (pockets of civilization) where belief in God remained a part of the local culture, or at least under the influence of parents and mentors who had (even if society at large had rejected, ignored, never known it, etc) still maintained a strong religious tradition personally.