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By Joshua Tyler
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Star Trek has long had a complex and changing relationship with religion. This week it became a full circle when the enterprise captain went down on his knees and began to recite the Lord’s Prayer in the Star Trek: A strange new worlds Premiere Season 3.
Newer Trek fans whose only franchise exposure has been secular extremism Star Trek: Discover They may have been shocked by him, but trekkies should not have been.
Modern pop culture treats the former prestigious franchise as if he were an atheist promisingly, but that’s totally untrue. That idea comes from a line spoken by the Captain Picard in the Trek Star: The next generation CHAPTER “WHO WATCHES THE WATCHERS”.
Speaking on the state of humanity in the future, Picard rails against unreasonable belief in superstition. He lobbies in favor of reasonable thinking, instead.
Star Trek’s creator, Gene Giftenberry, was an open and promising atheist. However, when Trek Star Debuted on television in the 1960s, 90% of the American population was Christian zealous, and an atheist television program was impossible. If it had been possible, it is skeptical that Rodenberry would have done anything different. His version of Trek was designed to get people to think, not tell them what to think.
Generally, those early Trek episodes avoided addressing a belief in God; However, the few we know about Captain Kirk’s beliefs as a character suggests that, according to at least, he is written as the believer of Christ.
In the season 2 episode of “Who Mourns for Adonis,” when facing the God of Greece, Kirk says, “Mankind does not need to gods. We see the one quite sufficiently.”
Read that line too fast, and you might think Kirk says that human beings no longer need God, but the plural form of the word is key. The line is actually a statement of faith in the kind of Christian monotheism practice.
In facing allegedly Jehovah himself Star Trek V: the last borderJames T. Kirk is open to the possibility but also willing to question his authenticity. When that is not measuring up to the one outlined in the Christian Bible, Kirk faces lightning wrath to ask, “What does God need with star? “
Kirk was written as a logic and suspect first. Whatever other beliefs caught from that. It was reasonable, modest and perhaps Christian as well.
And if Star Trek has an official religion, that’s it. Rationalism. Not atheism.
While Captain Picard and the next generation The crew were an atheist in their view, that was also rooted in a logical methodology.
Things were very different in the series that followed The next generation. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Religion is the central question of that whole series, which focuses around a planet full of believers and captain Star Trek, Ben Sisko, who can be a god himself.
Sisko takes a logical approach to his own witchcraft, resisting worshipers and focusing on achieving things through logical thinking. Her first officer Bajoran, Kira Nerys, however bases her whole life around religious belief. Many episodes of the show are spent following her as she prays in temples and joints with priests.
There is nothing reasonable about Kira, but what is reasonable is to respect and support its right to believe things that provide a positive framework on which it builds its life. Without her faith, after a lifetime she is led, Kira would fall apart.
The Federation insists on calling the gods that Kira believes alienBut in behavior and power, they fit the definition of God as well as any. Kira’s religion and the gods he worships are as real as the nose on your face.
Who is to say that Christopher Pike’s is not?
The new atheist movement, which I helped promote in my earlier and more naive days as a journalist on -lein, argued that the existence of God cannot be proven. Therefore, it is not reasonable to believe in it. Star Trek has always argued that, although it is true that the existence of God (unless you are Bajoran) cannot be proven, it cannot also be disproved.
In the end, Star Trek’s view may be the most reasonable method. One who encourages people to embrace whatever ideas are most beneficial for their well -being, whether it’s atheism, belief, or something else.
In the 60s, Star Trek was a modest Christian program, rooted in the best versions of those values.
In the 80s, as atheism went as a movement, he explored how a future without religion could be.
In the 90s Star Trek preached tolerance and co -existence among believers and those who did not believe, respect for each other’s beliefs or those who do not believe.
In the 2000s, the franchise departed towards secular fundamentalism and rejected faith in favor of good vibrations and projectile emotion.
Now we are again, when turning the tide, with the captain of the enterprise embracing his Father’s religion and turning to God in a moment of fear and despair.
For Star Trek, he returns to logical consistency after a short period of madness. It is a sign that times are changing. The new atheist movement that empties churches is weakening.
Some atheists, like me, who pushed for the whole of an atheist, are beginning to admit that it may not have been a good idea. Others like me assumed that if people only gave reality a cool Vulcan logic, things would improve.
This is the kind of classic mistake that spock could have made. It fails to consider the human factor and assumes everyone can be logical. That view is not reasonable. With age and experience, the world has learned that many cannot and many will use a thorough intellectually thinking. Trying to enforce them by brainwashing mass media has led to a cultural disaster alone.
I do not need or want God to moderate my behavior or lead my path, but many do so. If that’s you, you’re in a good company because Captain Pike does that too.
The future of humanity is one of infinite possibilities. Star Trek is at his best when considering all of them, with a reasonable aspect of a future of infinite possibilities in infinite combinations
