Your opine: Did Kai Winn go to Bajoran Hell?
- Thread starter Photon
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I thought that was it!
Does the show ever mention the Bajoran concept of afterlife?
There is no heaven. There is no hell. Religions are invented to explain the unexplainable and to give life meaning.
Except we're talking about a fictional universe.
Where the understanding is that it's our reality in the future. Once you establish the "reality" of your fiction, you're bound to it.
We know Bajorans light candles for the dead, although it's not established whether they believe the dead appreciate this, or whether they just think the living do.
Bajoran religion was formed before the Bajorans actually visited the Celestial Temple much; even the Orbs only appeared about 10,000 years before the events of the show, and Bajoran (mono)culture is supposedly much, much older than that. Yet there might be ideas about nonlinearity of time in the Bajoran religion - many Earth ones have those, chiefly because life on Class M planets really is cyclic rather than linear in fundamental nature. The concept of "the dead not really being dead" might well exist free of the burden of the concept of "afterlife", then: the dead die, but there's no past or future so they aren't gone but instead live right "now".
Our best look at Bajoran treatment of death might be "The Next Phase", where Ro Laren, self-presumed dead, quotes Bajoran belief in a purgatory-type stage where the dead briefly exist as spirits and make peace with their former existence. What (if anything) follows is never established, though (LaForge mentions afterlife, but Ro doesn't really react to that). Certainly no heaven vs. hell type choice causes worry in Ro!
Not exactly. Historically, it might be the future of our grandfathers, but that history has significantly diverged from ours in the 1960s already. And the universe itself is massively different from the get-go, including warp drives and Vulcans. There's no particular reason to disbelieve in Biblical tall tales in a universe where the God Apollo did exist for real!
Timo Saloniemi
Bajoran religion was formed before the Bajorans actually visited the Celestial Temple much; even the Orbs only appeared about 10,000 years before the events of the show, and Bajoran (mono)culture is supposedly much, much older than that. Yet there might be ideas about nonlinearity of time in the Bajoran religion - many Earth ones have those, chiefly because life on Class M planets really is cyclic rather than linear in fundamental nature. The concept of "the dead not really being dead" might well exist free of the burden of the concept of "afterlife", then: the dead die, but there's no past or future so they aren't gone but instead live right "now".
Our best look at Bajoran treatment of death might be "The Next Phase", where Ro Laren, self-presumed dead, quotes Bajoran belief in a purgatory-type stage where the dead briefly exist as spirits and make peace with their former existence. What (if anything) follows is never established, though (LaForge mentions afterlife, but Ro doesn't really react to that). Certainly no heaven vs. hell type choice causes worry in Ro!
Not exactly. Historically, it might be the future of our grandfathers, but that history has significantly diverged from ours in the 1960s already. And the universe itself is massively different from the get-go, including warp drives and Vulcans. There's no particular reason to disbelieve in Biblical tall tales in a universe where the God Apollo did exist for real!
Timo Saloniemi
Not exactly but basically. ST has always, in its various eras/forms been pitched to the audience as "the future". That is, the future of the audience that existed when that show/movie was made.
I'm not sure that redemption/repentance are essential parts of Bajoran religion. When Winn had her crisis of faith, she turned to Kira, but it was Kira who insisted that redemption was possible. If it were an importance teaching, I would expect that religion's foremost authority would be able to discuss, if not write whole treatises, on the subject.
How so? TOS may have attempted this once or twice, but all the spinoff shows were stuck with the universe TOS had established, so all of them make references to a fictional past that is in the past of the audience yet dramatically diverges from their real past.
As regards the subject matter, afterlife ITRW is one of those safely supernatural things that (unlike "the reason thunder makes noise" or "how life came to be") runs no risk of being subjected to verification or rebuttal. So there might well be heaven and/or hell ITRW, and it's just the upcoming years, as described in Trek, that will reveal their existence (probably as a cruel Q test or Trelane joke or something).
Timo Saloniemi
I wonder if some future Bajorans come to think she was just fulfilling a role the Prophets gave her in their plan to deal with the Pah-Wraiths and so don't regard her as harshly. .... Except does anybody alive in Star Trek know what actually happened down in the Fire Caves? Or did Sisko simply go missing one day.
I'm pretty sure I remember references to the dead being with the Prophets. I don't know that there's a Hell for evil people, but it seems reasonable that Winn could've gone to the Pah Wraiths.
And we didn't get any impression that the dead were actually with the Prophets whenever we saw them, so that could well be a false belief.
And we didn't get any impression that the dead were actually with the Prophets whenever we saw them, so that could well be a false belief.
Kai is stuck with Gul Dukat in the wormhole aliens version of a nonlinear hell.
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I think you shouldn't state an opinion as fact.
In most science fiction universes they come up with sciencized versions of the 'immortal soul' which exist within the physics of the universe. Trek has the katra which is basically a soul. And in other episodes (Lonely Among Us, Cathexis, etc) it's clear that the conscious essence of a person is not bound to the physical brain.
In Trek lore, thought exists as a component of space and time (Haven, Where None Have Gone Before, Remember Me, also implied by existence of empathy and telekinesis). Thus in the a Trek universe it seems very likely that thought patterns continue to exist after death.
Technically the statement that there exists no afterlife is not a statement of opinion but an unconfirmed hypothesis.
In Trek lore, thought exists as a component of space and time (Haven, Where None Have Gone Before, Remember Me, also implied by existence of empathy and telekinesis). Thus in the a Trek universe it seems very likely that thought patterns continue to exist after death.
Technically the statement that there exists no afterlife is not a statement of opinion but an unconfirmed hypothesis.
^ Yes, Trek has shown certain mechanisms for consciousness to survive death or to exist separately from the body.
And within the context of the Trek universe, the Bajoran belief system came from experiences with orbs and the wormhole aliens, verifiable phenomena which were interpreted by the linear-thinking Bajorans as spiritual visions and deities.
So if there is a Bajoran afterlife, what would be the mechanism for Bajoran consciousnesses to be transferred there?
Kor
And within the context of the Trek universe, the Bajoran belief system came from experiences with orbs and the wormhole aliens, verifiable phenomena which were interpreted by the linear-thinking Bajorans as spiritual visions and deities.
So if there is a Bajoran afterlife, what would be the mechanism for Bajoran consciousnesses to be transferred there?
Kor
Trek has always had calculated ambiguity when it comes to spiritual matters. They always leave a scientific out to every religious experience and religious out to every exposed false belief. Take Emanations and Sacred Ground.
It's hard to guess how Bajoran belief works. The prophets don't consider life to end, they just see the whole life at once. The Bajoran concept is probably linear and something similar to eternally feeling the love of the Prophets. Whether the Prophets actually usher Bajoran consciousness to the afterlife? We don't have enough information because of the calculated ambiguity.
It's hard to guess how Bajoran belief works. The prophets don't consider life to end, they just see the whole life at once. The Bajoran concept is probably linear and something similar to eternally feeling the love of the Prophets. Whether the Prophets actually usher Bajoran consciousness to the afterlife? We don't have enough information because of the calculated ambiguity.
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