Speaking of trying... How about you try to get informed? The very first robots... The first EVER to get that name are bio-engineered!! "Rossum's Universal Robots" by Karel Čapek (1920)
I could use less snark. And that's only the first time the term "robot" was used. It can be argued that forms of rudimentary "robots" existed prior to that time.
So could I!! You're the one who started with the "so you are trying to say" bullshit, which is quite ironic since you keep missing the point. I find you tiresome. I am done arguing with you.
When the Bough Breaks- a planet steals 5 or 6 kids and that will usher in the new generation on the planet. Up the Long Ladder- stealing cells from 2 people will prolong the entire culture because they can clone those 2. Just plain stupid when you think about how a society could be perpetuated with such a small number of people.
It would make some sense had they stole more kids but stealing Wesley is just stupid, you might as well steal adults.
In that episode I always wondered why they didn't ask for orphans from Federation planets. From other episodes, we find out there are planets that have broken down and have plenty of homeless kids (Bloodlines). Also, it was quite a coincidence that the Aldeans were humans.
I am sure kids from Tasha Yar's planet would be overjoyed to leave that hellhole and be adopted by the people of Aldea.
In Evolution, Wesley has two nanites in a container. He leaves the lid off and they somehow "escape". How do they escape from a container? They are microscopic robot devices.
I believe it was in Datalore where Picard sends Wesley off the bridge and asks Beverly to go with him. Beverly gets pissy and says, "You're taking me off the bridge!" What exactly does she add by being on the bridge instead of in sick bay. By the way, Datalore may have the worst dialogue of any episode in TNG.
Well, not. Specific things about a subgroup are what matters here: "I am a human, therefore not a mere hominid, and you have to credit me with the ability to compose opera even though this is not inherent in the generic hominid" is a relevant thing to say. The dialogue is perfectly fine as is. ...Save for the nuance that in our RW parlance, "android" would merely specify a humanlike body for the robot, whereas in Trek this technical term has gained some other aspects having to do with mental powers or whatnot (that is, Data is humanlike in thought as well as in body). But that's what happens with technical lingo ITRW, too. Timo Saloniemi
What's funny is that ST has all the religious people against them (since to all of them only god can create a mind and that it's even sacrilegious to think otherwise, humans, can merely emulate one) and most of the non-religious ones as I for one don't think that exhibiting the mere symptoms of self-awareness is a proof of it. An actor can make you believe he's feeling emotion when he's not, just as a robot can make all the gestures and moves associated with emotion without feeling any of it. The day we will be able to create self-awareness the universe will have no secrets left to us as for creating it by accident, it would be like throwing pieces of metal at random in a big box, hoping it will become a car, in fact, it's even more unlikely than that.
One I rewatched last week and stuck in my mind as weird: Suspicions: Dr. Crusher runs a murder investigation because reasons (pretty dumb by itself). Her big breakthrough in the case is99 finding evidence of tetryon particles on the body, which Data told her would specifically (hypothetically) be caused by someone trying to sabotage the shuttle *via a technobabble beam from the Enterprise*. The episode then reveals it was the dead body all along. He faked his death and sabotaged the shuttle experiment *from inside the shuttle*.
You can solve anything with technobabble and that's why when an episode rests almost entirely on it, it is kind of a cheat. Technobabble is ST's favorite Deux Ex Machina. The only interesting thing in that episode is the idea of a being without organs, IE with a myriad of microscopic organs throughout his body, like for example millions of micro-livers... It's interesting but impractical as it would mean micro veins and micro arteries coming and going from myriads of micro hearts and micro lungs... to say nothing of the micro brains (not Worf)...
I seriously don't want to start a religious debate or anything, but I'm genuinely curious which type of "religious people" are you talking about? Because not all of them feel the way you are stating here, nor are they all "against" Star Trek for this reason, especially if someone like that also believes that mere self-awareness is not a proof, like you say non-religious people tend to believe.
I am not saying that they are against ST, a good many probably like ST in spite of that. But religious people think that some things are the exclusive domain of god and among these the power to create a soul, IE a self-aware mind. That's not true of course of non-religious people. Plus I never said anything about "mere self-awareness", pay attention, please. I said that symptoms of self-awareness are not proof of it, that is it's not because a being does all the song and dance traditionally associated with self-awareness that we can conclude that he's self-aware. Just as an actor can play anger without being angry.