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Is Star Trek anti-God?
Topic Started: Aug 27 2005, 05:06 PM (946 Views)
who
Have light saber. Will travel.
After watching all of Star Trek in both TV and movie formats I think Star Trek is anti-God. There were some spiritual episodes such as in TNG when they found a humanoid who was almost dead. When he woke up he lost his memory. He could heal and bring people back to life. Part of his race was trying to kill him but he evolved into a higher state of being in the nick of time.

Another spiritual episode was I think the last episode of TNG with Wesley, the Traveler, and the American Indians.

I can recall no episodes where the possibility of God was brought in. All the "gods" were either aliens or machines. The one episode which was very anti-God was in a TNG episode called, I think, Duck Blind. They were observing a primative Vulcan like race and were exposed. This made the people believe in God again. Picard made some speech about how upset he was that these people had advanced beyond the belief in God and now they had caused that [horrible] belief to return.

What do you think?
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Swidden
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Adm. Gadfly-at-large; Provisional wRench-fly at large
No, I don't think it is anti-God. I think Picard's commentary that you reference is more about the more primitive superstitious forms of belief. Bear in mind that I am hoping not to offend anyone, but I took this to mean that they had figured out more about the natural processes that were responsible for the way the universe works (they really had not apparently reached the level of higher mathematics yet).

Star Trek has done a very decent job over the years of trying to be respectful of belief systems. A bit of an improvement since TOS. Consider the episode "Who Mourns for Adonais?". Apollo shows up and demands that Kirk and Co. worship him. Towards the end Kirk tells Apollo that human beings find the one God quite enough. There are other references throughout TOS that comment on the concept of the Garden of Eden and how we are not there and possibly really were never meant to be so (whether by design or our own choice).

Of course you have two TOS cast movies that dealt with the subject quite up front (TMP & STV). However, you also have it to some extent in STII. Notably in the conversation between Spock and McCoy in Kirk's quarters when they are discussing the Genesis device. McCoy comments that. "According to myth the universe was created in six days. Now, 'Watch out!' Here comes Genesis, we'll do it for you in six minutes."

Then you have in STIII, Kirk's conversation with Adm. Morrow. Morrow tells Kirk he's not sure he can believe all this "Vulcan mysticism." Kirk tells him that he's not asking him to believe, only that he be afforded the opportunity to retrieve Spock's body just in case there is a soul in play here.

Trek, when it comes to religion, like it's economy, remains quite silent in some ways. It sort of stradles the fence by neither openly endorsing one thing or rejecting another. This is not a bad thing as it allows, even encourages, conversations like this to take place.
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ds9074
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Admiral
DS9 was full of references to Gods in the form of the Bajoran prophets and we saw Ben Sisko go from complete non believer (he called them wormhole aliens) who disliked his title as Emissary to someone who had a very close relationship with the prophets and believed.

We also saw how someone like Kira could have a simple but strong faith.

So Startrek certainly hasnt been afraid to portray the spiritual even if it has understandably been pretty silent on the position of any real life religions in the 24th century.
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Swidden
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Adm. Gadfly-at-large; Provisional wRench-fly at large
^^^
Exactly.

In fact, I think that is the point. Science fiction has done this very well. It creates a fictional belief system (DS9's prophets, or Star Wars Force) and allows people that might be of one belief, or perhaps no belief, learn to appreciate and respect the differences among beliefs.
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Franko
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"Who Watches The Watchers" is the episode that Who is referring to.


Strangely enough, Picard does not do or say anything that is particularily anti-God. The Mentakins have mistaken some events due to Federaton interference that have led to the mistake that their anceint mythologies are true and that Picard is some kind of sky-God. Some of them are even willing to kill Troi as a sacrifice to this new-found psychosis.

It wouldn't have mattered if this had been an exploration ship from the 700 Club.
The damage had to be undone and the Mentakins had to be shown that all they were dealing with were aliens with advanced technology. Picard had a moral obligation to set things straight and even risked death to do it. It matters little as to what the religious or spiritual disposition of Picard is.

DS9 was obviously the most spiritual of all the ST series. At no time did the series ever make fun of or belittle the Bajoran's religious customs and faith. And in a way, the "Prophets" are sort of like Gods, with Sisko as their Emissary who even experiences visions and other experiences, facilitated by the "Prophets". There is even a battle of ultimate Good versus Evil at the end which nicely mirrors the lengthy conflict between the Federation and the Dominion.

Question: if you were living with tribal people who believed that lightning were thunderbolts cast down by a "God", would you be "anti-God" for trying to explain the real naturalistic basis of lightning?


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who
Have light saber. Will travel.
I agree with all of the above that there are references to the spirtual and to God. It seems, however, that every culture that believed in God was explained by some super-computer or an alien from Q to the wormhole aliens.

Just my overall gestalt from watching every Star Trek episode and movie (and some many times) is that there seemed to be a directive above the prime directive to disprove that God exists. Could just be my perception.
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somerled
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Admiral MacDonald RN
Not having read the above posts - let me inject :

* Q
* wormhole beings
* Beijorian mysticism
* non-corporial entities encounted here and there.
* Vulcan mysticism
* Klingon religious beliefs
* spirit guides

sounds like an awful lot of religion and god worshipping going on to me.

Star Trek should be athiestic , but is not.

One can only hope that 2 or 3 centuries from now that religions will all have died out. (And one the major causes of conflict will have evaporated.)

Anyway - who cares ? It is afterall excapeism and all fiction. If you want SF full of religious overtones - you have BSG , which is full of it .
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psyfi
psyfi
who
Aug 27 2005, 11:49 PM
I agree with all of the above that there are references to the spirtual and to God. It seems, however, that every culture that believed in God was explained by some super-computer or an alien from Q to the wormhole aliens.

Just my overall gestalt from watching every Star Trek episode and movie (and some many times) is that there seemed to be a directive above the prime directive to disprove that God exists. Could just be my perception.

I think that if you look at the original series, there was clear support for the idea that there was a God. But as the series progressed, I think the message became there may be a God and experiences of and/or associated with Him; we are open to this. However, we are equally open to the notion that it may all be in the neurochemistry and structure of the brain and science may eventually explain away all of these spiritual/mystical experiences.

One thing that I find interesting is that while Star Trek highlighted many diverse cultural spiritual beliefs, most of the aliens seemed to be polytheistic rather than monotheistic. The focus was on ceremony and ritual and not very strong on the metaphysical framework of the culture. Equally interesting is the idea in BSG that the humans are polytheistic while the cylons are monotheistic. I am VERY interested in where they are going to take that. I would like to find out the spiritual beliefs of the writers because that would be a big clue.
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captain_proton_au
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A Robot in Disguise

What does god need with a starship?
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psyfi
psyfi
Okay, this makes sense. I looked up the producers and writers of BSG and now the God flavor of the show makes a little more sense. Most of them are DS9 people: David Weddle, Bradley Thompson, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, Ron Moore.

Here is an interesting interview with Ron Moore on the theology of BSG. I'm only putting part of the interview here because it is long. If you want to read it all, you will need to go to: http://www.beliefnet.com/story/166/story_16650_1.html

The Souls of Cylons
Ron Moore, executive producer of Battlestar Galactica, talks about the theology behind the Sci Fi Channel series.
Interview by Ellen Leventry
Ron Moore is producer of the Sci Fi Channel series "Battlestar Galactica," based on the 1978 TV show of the same name. He spoke with writer Ellen Leventry about religious themes in the original series and the reimagined show.

Glen Larson, creator and producer of the first show, is a member of the Church of Latter-day Saints. He based much of the first series on Mormon cosmology. Was there a concerted effort to move away from that in this version?

Not specifically, no. I looked at the original series as mythos and the way it dealt with religion as sort of a global sense. I was aware that Glen had used Mormon influences and how he had created the cosmology, but I’m not that familiar with Mormon belief or practice. To me there were things that were sort of obvious, the twelve tribes, the twelve tribes of Israel.

At the beginning, I sort of assumed that the Colonials--the human beings--would have a belief system, probably polytheistic. In the original, the "Lords of Kobol" were referred to several times. But it wasn’t until the development of the miniseries when I sort of randomly gave the Cylons a belief system. I was creating the characters and working on some lines for Number 6 and I thought it was interesting if she professed a belief in a single God. I had really given her a belief in a singular God almost by accident.

I compared that with the polytheistic religion of the colonials, I started to realize that an interesting pattern was developing--the Cylons believing in the one true God and the Colonials having an older, multifaceted system of deities that was obviously patterned on the Romans. As the series went on, I started to believe that the Cylon belief was going to be a guiding principal.

People are really noticing the dichotomy between the Pagan and the monotheistic themes. It strongly parallels the rise of Christianity and the demise of paganism in the Western world.

That’s true. There was a book that I started reading about the one god driving out the many--the rise of monotheism in the Western world and how it came to displace pagan religion. Those themes were interesting to play with in the show: The dynamic whereby the pagan religious practices tended to be tolerant and tended to allow monotheistic beliefs within their own culture.

And then there came this came this notion of this outside monotheistic belief, of the one true God that could not tolerate others, that started to drive out pagan worship and that fit very nicely with what we were doing with the show. Because you had this apocalyptic moment of genocide which kicked off the entire series, of this Cylon culture that has this belief system in one god that is literally wiping out this pagan belief system and then is pursuing them across the galaxy. There was a certain resonance in history.

Some viewers say the show stereotypes fundamentalist Christians as kind of robotic, while others are saying, "This is great...pagans are finally the good guys!"

The parallels between the Cylon beliefs and fundamentalist Christian beliefs, yeah, there are certain aspects of it there, but there’s also the roots of the drama, also contains things such as Al Qaeda’s use of its religious practice to justify what it does. That’s part of who the Cylons are too, they aren’t just really stalking horses for fundamentalist Christianity. ....
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Fesarius
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Admiral
Quote:
 
What does god need with a starship?

In this case, I think the question to ask is "What does a starship need with God?"

The belief in a god (monotheistic) was definitely the case with some in TOS. But I think it was less so in TNG. The line (paraphrased) 'We find the one sufficient' comes to mind; additionally, Bones appeared to hold beliefs that were very God-oriented.
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Swidden
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Adm. Gadfly-at-large; Provisional wRench-fly at large
psyfi
Aug 28 2005, 12:02 AM
I think that if you look at the original series, there was clear support for the idea that there was a God. But as the series progressed, I think the message became there may be a God and experiences of and/or associated with Him; we are open to this. However, we are equally open to the notion that it may all be in the neurochemistry and structure of the brain and science may eventually explain away all of these spiritual/mystical experiences.

That's pretty much what I was saying earlier on in this thread. TOS was far more conventional in this matter. Although there were signs of religious tolerance even in that series. For example, in the episode "Balance of Terror." In the wedding scene at the start Kirk references "our many beliefs."

somerled
Aug 27 2005, 11:51 PM
Star Trek should be athiestic , but is not.

One can only hope that 2 or 3 centuries from now that religions will all have died out. (And one the major causes of conflict will have evaporated.


1. Since Trek is actually trying to be something of a social mirror, no it should not be atheistic.

2. In 2 or 3 centuries, I think there will still be plenty of religious belief to go around. Given that our world population at present is about 6 billion and we have a multitude of beliefs, I'd bank on their being religious belief systems for centuries to come yet.
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Coda
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Commander

I don't really see Star Trek as anti-god. If episodes give explanations for the cause of the antagonist of the story as alien or mechanical, whats wrong with that? Are you saying that, the explaination is wrong? Why couldn't it be an alien or machine?

Perhaps questioning is wrong?

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who
Have light saber. Will travel.
Although there may have been a line or two in TOS that referenced God, almost every society's belief in God, as most religions define Him, throughout all of the variations of Star Trek explain god as a super-computer or alien. To me, this is almost a deliberate attempt to destroy the belief in God. Star Trek is a science fiction show which is based on the advancement of science so this is probably to be expected. No big deal.
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WayneSTOSfan
Lieutenant
Trek/Roddenberry was VERY anti-FEDERATION GOD..

I read numerous interview that said Roddenberry was an Atheist..the TOS references were put in by "the powers that be"

TNG and Picard were a closer reflection of Roddenberry's view!!.."We don't need it"!!

ALL the references to GOD listed above were for a GOD in someone elses life..

BAjorans, Klingons

AND very Condesending at that!!

Why do you think GOD was treated with contempt in early TNG, but by DS9 was back....Cause Roddenberry was DEAD!!!and not in control any more

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