Religion in the Star Trek Universe

GregB said:

Which one?

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Well, that might drag things back into the forbidden topic of actual religion (vs religions as depicted in future-world speculative fiction)!

But I was meaning to be ecumenical (in the literal "worldwide" sense):

small axe said:

We may indeed unite behind human concepts of Religion (which really aren't that different, across religions, compared to the ALIEN junk) ... concepts which may in fact be uniquely suited to HUMAN brain activity and psychology.

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As opposed to alien brains and psychology.

GregB said:

One might expect all of the "humanities" to serve as such a rallying point for human identity-- art, music, language, philosophy, history, and literature (including mythology/religion).

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I can see your point, except human history has already shown us how people can and do repeatedly use Religion as a trans-national focal point of their own self-identification and loyalty (negatively in the "clash of cultures" etc or the ethnic and national brotherhood experienced during the Pilgrimage to Mecca etc) ...

Art? Music? Literature?

Would Earthlings fight to the death with their backs to the Mona Lisa, defending her from the alien tentacled grafitti moustache scribblers?

Would we "rally round the flag" of a nice piece of Earthling music?
"Give me Polka -- or give me a raygun between the eyes, Space Monster!"

I suppose it might be possible. Stranger things might occur, under the stress of Alien/Earthling cultural collision.

What remains of the great and rich cultures of the American Indians that were swept aside by the European invaders? I'd guess mostly their languages (even those are fading out though) ... if the Indians hadn't been forcibly converted to the religions of the invaders, probably their religions and cultural-mythologies might last too.

Personally, I think the Alien cultural tsunami would roll over us and leave us pretty flattened and deflated. The native culture usually is crushed by the invader culture, I'd guess.

The STAR TREK "Prime Directive" makes good sense in THAT context, more than it does about not being allowed to "interfere" by saving worlds from destruction from an on-coming asteroid, etc.

Certainly, the most dangerous thing in human/alien contact might be to interfere with some other culture's Religion ... unless you want to rile them up really bad!

A heart-wrenching moment in the movie CONTACT is when the open-minded religious scholar makes his tough decision about Jodie Foster's atheist-scientist's suitability to represent humanity and contact alien species ...

The dilemma isn't just what WE think, but about what ALIENS might think about how we think.

Zoombie said:

There was NO way that Uhurah could have figured that they were talking about the Son of God! If the planet was ruled by the Romans, and they controlled the broadcasting, why the HELL would they be talking about their SLAVE'S religion beyond making fun of it!?

So, we're saying that she managed to find ALL the clues to make that huge deduction in what, A DAY of listening to an ENTIRE PLANET'S radio signals!?

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I'd have to disagree here. In the first place, the domination of the world by the Romans would decrease the number of broadcast feeds, one would think, to considerably less than, say, Earth's in the same time period. No competing broadcast companies, no competing nations replicating efforts, just state radio and whatever channels/programs it allows.

Second, even making fun of the slave's religion might include descriptions of their foolishness, as mockery of other belief systems frequently does in our media.

Third, if Uhura was interested in the religion, she could have programmed the computer to record all feeds and process them with keyword searches, then present the occurrences for her review. In a setting that permits the universal translator, is that really such a reach?

Could it have taken a stroke of luck for her to form that conclusion? Of course. But there is hardly "NO way" she could have formed it, within the context of the show.

FWIW, as a Star Trek author, religion is taken very seriously. One of the more fun stories ever written in the Corps of Engineer e-series was the first Jewish/Klingon wedding that had to take both Judaism and the Klingon Gods into account to organize the service. Captain Gold's wife is a rabbi and conducted the service.

Obviously every author's personal opinion on religion will come into play when discussing it, but there is no question that the Federation, the Romulans, the Klingons, the Bajorans, the Cardassians, and a whole lot of unaffiliated worlds have thriving religions and it all falls under the concept of IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations).