Were the Bajorans seriously dumb?

[All Seeing Eye]

Their entire society and religion revolved around the Prophets and they worshipped them as gods. Now I can understand how they may have felt that way before the discovery of the wormhole due to there only being stories and prophecys etc but upon discovery of the wormhole it was made clear the prophets were nothing more than an energy based alien species that lived inside a wormhole that could be killed by chronton beams and yet they still believed them to be Gods and that when they died they entered the celestial temple and existed with the prophets, they continued to pray to them and kept saying 'walk withthe prophets' or 'the prophets will guide you'.
Anyone else find this a little bit stupid?
I'm pretty sure that everyone on Earth whether they be muslim or chrstian or whatever would be pretty miffed if a wormhole opened in our solar system and so called god turned out to be just an alien capable of being killed with a chronoton beam.

What did the bajorans think happened to everyone else in the universe when they died? did the bajorans honestly believe that their 'gods' created them and everyone else just somehow popped up out of nowhere? did they believe the prophets were the only true Gods and chose Bajor as the chosen land?

It makes no sense to be quite honest because it was blatantly obvious they were nothing more than energy based aliens.

 

[PhoenixIreland]

If Jesus turned out to be an energy based alien along the lines of the Q who was just here for some amusement, there would still be people praising his name.
Rationality and relgion have nothing to do with each other.

The phrase Kira used summed up this stupdity "thats the thing about faith, if you don't have it you can't explain it, if you have it no explanation is nessicary".

At least the Bajorian faith was harmless, unlike the ones on earth!

 

[All Seeing Eye]

At least the Bajorian faith was harmless, unlike the ones on earth!

Yes because the Pah'Wraiths were as harmless as puppys.

 

[Smiley]

The discovery of the Celestial Temple just proved that the Prophets are vulnerable. It does not mean that they are not powerful and wise beings.

 

[Saxman1]

There are people walking this earth who believe that not only did Elvis Presley not take any drugs, but he's still alive. People will believe anything. Look at Scientology. Most of the Prophet - worshipping Barjorans in the show for the most part weren't hurting anyone. There are worse things. It was certainly an interesting look at religion, showing the pros and cons of it in a well-rounded manner. This is certainly a different or refreshing take on religion than ST had before or since, where it is usually mocked.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

The discovery of the Celestial Temple just proved that the Prophets are vulnerable. It does not mean that they are not powerful and wise beings.

But they believed the prophets literally guided them and that they became one with them after death. Its one thing to consider them wise powerful beings but another to consider them Gods that should be worshipped. Did the Bajorans believe the prophets created the universe? if not who do they believe did?
I'd be all for showing respect toward the Q and Organians but to worship them as Gods when obviously they're not is a little short sighted.

 

[Damask]

But they believed the prophets literally guided them and that they became one with them after death. Its one thing to consider them wise powerful beings but another to consider them Gods that should be worshipped. Did the Bajorans believe the prophets created the universe? if not who do they believe did?

We don't know too much about their religion or what they believed the Prophets did for them. They could have just seen the Prophets as Gods of Bajor who didn't create the universe but did create Bajor and it's people. We don't know so I can't really say one way or another. Nor could I say that dead Bajorans don't go and be with the Prophets.

What we do know is that they sent orbs to the Bajorans to guide them. That wasn't a belief. They sent their Emissary to protect them. They closed the wormhole to protect Bajor. If "The Reckoning" was correct then the Prophets would have ushered in a golden age for the Bajorans. It's just faith and to be honest if some wormhole alien did get rid of 2000 of my enemies then I might think they were gods too.


JAKE
But the same thing is happening now! All this stuff about a celestial temple in the wormhole is dumb.

Sisko studies him for a beat...

SISKO
No, it's not. You've got to understand something, Jake. For over fifty years, the one thing that allowed Bajorans to survive the Cardassian occupation was their faith. The prophets were their only source of hope and courage.

JAKE
But they weren't prophets. They were just some aliens that you found in the wormhole.

SISKO
To those aliens, the future is no more difficult to see than the past. So why shouldn't they be considered
prophets?

JAKE
Are you serious?

SISKO
My point is it's a matter of interpretation. It may not be what you believe, but that doesn't make it wrong. If you start to think
that way, you'll be acting just like Vedek Winn. Only from the other side.
(beat)
We can't afford to think that way, Jake. We'd lose everything we've worked for here...

I summarize that Fire is indeed Kai Winn!

 

[Smiley]

Well said, Damask.

In the post-series novels, there are plenty of good bits about Bajoran faith and the Prophets. It all hangs together, and the Bajorans do not come off as irrational.

 

[NKemp3]

To Christians Jesus is the Son of God. Yet any man back during the time Jesus walked the Earth could have killed him with a single blade. Does that stop Christians from worshipping Jesus? No.

The great thing about the Prophets is that they are not omnipotent and can't control anything outside of the wormhole. But to the Bajorans they were considered powerful enough to be gods.

 

[Navaros]

The question "Were Bajorans seriously dumb?" is mutually exclusive with the question that this thread is actually asking, which is: "Were the Bajorans seriously dumb for believing that the wormhole aliens were Prophets?" Answer to the question: "Were the Bajorans seriously dumb?" = yes. Answer to the question: "Were the Bajorans seriously dumb for believing that the wormhole aliens were Prophets?" = no.

Also, Damask's post hit the nail on the head.

Bajorans may very well go to the Celestial Temple and become wormhole aliens when they die. The Sisko did. Therefore there is circumstantial evidence in the series that this may happen to Bajorans too.

On the other hand, it's possible the wormhole aliens just use Bajorans as pawns, in which case most of what I said in this post is invalid and Bajorans may indeed be seriously dumb for believing the wormhole aliens are Prophets after all. But there isn't enough concrete evidence in the series to prove that, other than the circumstantial evidence of the wormhole aliens acting like jerks a lot of the time.

Like the Sisko said, it's a matter of interpretation.

 

[PhoenixIreland]

Well look at it this way, if there is a god he/she/it is a non-corporial being, and the Bajorians presumabily thought they lived...up there soemwhere, the wormhole would seemto prove that.

What would bother me if I were them was that they did nothing to help them during the occupation, and had to be talked by Sisko into preventing a new occupation by the Dominion.

 

[Sci]

Their entire society and religion revolved around the Prophets and they worshipped them as gods. Now I can understand how they may have felt that way before the discovery of the wormhole due to there only being stories and prophecys etc but upon discovery of the wormhole it was made clear the prophets were nothing more than an energy based alien species that lived inside a wormhole that could be killed by chronton beams and yet they still believed them to be Gods and that when they died they entered the celestial temple and existed with the prophets, they continued to pray to them and kept saying 'walk withthe prophets' or 'the prophets will guide you'.

1) Why is that dumb? I mean, what is the definition of a god if not an energy-based lifeform? There's really nothing about the discovery of the Wormhole that would invalidate their belief in the Prophets -- and, indeed, the Wormhole seems to match their traditional description of the Celestial Temple. Really, isn't it more logical to worship a being that you know exists, and that you know exists non-linearly (and therefore is much wiser than you) than a being that has no evidence to support its existence?

2) That the Prophets can be killed doesn't mean much. The ancient Vikings believed that their gods were all destined to die at Ragnarok. It's our Judeo-Christian tradition that holds that a god must be completely immortal, but not all cultures hold to that. Indeed, it may be irrational to apply our concept of "god" to the Prophets; many cultures may worship something without believing it to be what we would call a god. Asian cultures contain a tradition of worshipping nature spirits or ancestors. So equating the worship of the Bajoran Prophets with the worship of a god (and then denouncing the Bajorans as being stupid for doing so) could arguably be an example of imposing our cultural concepts and standards upon another culture when they don't even apply.

3) I don't recall any episode establishing that the Bajorans believed that they'd go to the Celestial Temple when they died. In fact, I don't recall any episode establishing anything about belief in a Bajoran afterlife.

Anyone else find this a little bit stupid?

Actually, I find it emminently more logical than worshipping a god for whom there is no evidence.

I'm pretty sure that everyone on Earth whether they be muslim or chrstian or whatever would be pretty miffed if a wormhole opened in our solar system and so called god turned out to be just an alien capable of being killed with a chronoton beam.

Well, that's our culture's definition of "divinity" -- an all-powerful creature that cannot be killed. I suspect that many other cultures on Earth would have no real problem with that.

And, really, since God is not from Earth in Judeo-Christian theology (because He created it), God is already an alien lifeform by our culture's definition. And since everything is made of energy, it stands to reason that, even according to Christianity, God is a noncorporeal energy-based lifeform.

What did the bajorans think happened to everyone else in the universe when they died? did the bajorans honestly believe that their 'gods' created them and everyone else just somehow popped up out of nowhere?

You might as well ask that of any faith. In any event, we have no information on Bajoran beliefs regarding an afterlife.

 

[-Brett-]

What did the bajorans think happened to everyone else in the universe when they died? did the bajorans honestly believe that their 'gods' created them and everyone else just somehow popped up out of nowhere? did they believe the prophets were the only true Gods and chose Bajor as the chosen land?

Next to nothing is known of Bajoran creation myths, if they even exist.

They may or may not believe exactly that. Or that the Prophets created the universe and all life in it, whether everyone else knows it or not (arrogant as hell, but that's not exactly unique to their religion). Or maybe they have a creation myth independant of the Prophet mythology. Or maybe they discarded creation mythology (if they ever had it) in favor of the Bing Bang, abiogenesis and evolution. For all the fanatacism in the Bajoran religion, we've never seen them explicitly deny scientific fact, merely reinterpret it in light of their religion. I can think of certain real religions that would become a lot more tolerable if they followed that example.

 

[PhoenixIreland]

If you look carefully the first season of DS9 did what amounted to a church and state debate episode with Keko in the classroom and weither they should segregate the bajoran kids because Keiko was calling them aliens as opposed to profits and the wormhole as opposed to the temple.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Their entire society and religion revolved around the Prophets and they worshipped them as gods.

Hey at least the Bajorans had proof their gods existed. And that they could do godlike (and useful) things, like make a whole massive enemy battle fleet go poof.

As religions go, that's a pretty smart one.

 

[Sci]

Their entire society and religion revolved around the Prophets and they worshipped them as gods.

Hey at least the Bajorans had proof their gods existed. And that they could do godlike (and useful) things, like make a whole massive enemy battle fleet go poof.

As religions go, that's a pretty smart one.

Exactly. Like I said, as gods go, I'd be more inclined to worship the Prophets than this invisible man in the sky who refuses to present evidence of his existence....

 

[Timo]

It does seem that all the Bajoran beliefs of their Prophets are justified. It also seems that the worshipping that the Bajorans practice serves a practical function that is directly tied to the true nature of those being worshipped. All they do is queue up to get a taste of the Orbs, which is the proper and practical thing to do to commune/commute with these divine beings; meditate every now and then, which is a good way to clear one's head for better Orb communications; and celebrate their good fortune time and again. Bajoran "ceremony" is even at its very worst limited to lighting a candle and wearing a certain style of (still perfectly functional) clothing, which is much better than the hoops most Earth's religions force their followers to go through.

What we're left to wonder is, what does the Bajoran God look like?

By Bajoran semantics, these Heavenly Templars we see are not "God", they are "the Prophets". Dr. Mora once distinctly gasped "My God!", though. Let's assume he was being "serious" about that, and not just repeating a foreign phrase because it sounded cool...

Do some/all Bajorans have alternate beliefs on a singular divine figure? Or does a Bajoran perhaps pick his favorite individual Prophet and call it "his God" in certain contexts?

Or is God perhaps a lesser deity compatible with the Prophets? Perhaps God is a mythological creature involved in things like creation which isn't the province of the Prophets (if indeed Bajorans believe in creation at all, as opposed to cyclicity or eternity which would better fit the nature of the Prophets anyway)? Or is the Bajoran God for real, too - perhaps another existing divine entity that the Prophets have mentioned in the passing, even if He, She or It does not have any real practical significance to the Bajorans, and doesn't make an appearance in person in DS9?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[trash80]

I think people are projecting their view of "gods" based on examples like the Christian one as being omipotent immortal beings. In fact a lot of other earlier religions regarded their gods as beings who could die and had limits to their powers and were not the creators of the universe but merely "super beings". I think the Bajorans regarded their gods in this way.

 

[Timo]

It is a bit convoluted to define God as having the four qualities of ultimate powers and intellect; moral guardianship of this world; guardianship of the afterworld; and being creator to the universe. Why would one need to have absolute powers or intellect to create the universe? And why would somebody or -thing with those powers bother with moral guardianship? Relatively few religions actually burden their deities with this holy quadrinity, going instead for setups that make more sense from the human perspective.

(Which in itself is probably a bad thing. Why should beings blessed with even one of the four attributes above be undestandable from the human perspective? We normally don't even understand our cats.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Necros]

Anyone else find this a little bit stupid?

Actually, I find it emminently more logical than worshipping a god for whom there is no evidence.

I also think their faith makes sense, though sometimes it was a bit too much for me. But maybe that's because I'm not really a guy who believes in religions.