It doesn’t, really - they’re pretty explicit that by the 24th century humanity has given up on religion (save for the occasional person who joins an alien faith), but other species - notably the Klingons, Bajorans, Ferengi and Vulcans - have not. And the Bajoran and Vulcan religions have empirical proof - and (Trek-verse-)scientific explanations for them. ie, The Bajoran Prophets were n-dimensional aliens, and the Vulcan katra arguably an artifact of Vulcan telepathy.
Which is pretty much what I already said. Read the whole post.
Don’t forget the episode where Kirk is impressed that a planet has its own Jesus. It’s the one where the Roman empire has 1960s modern technology.
Voyager treated Chakotay’s animal spirit religion as valid. Torres ate her animal guide.
Babylon 5’s take was better - they had a character who was Jewish.
Do all Trek Dopers go to heaven?
I’m enjoying the details being filled in around my vague post. Keep it coming!
I always thought that pararoman ep ending was a bit contrived, even for TOS. What are the chances that there would be another Sun/Son language glitch? (Still not as bad as Yangs vs Koms) Had the Universal Translator become canon yet by that ep?
Kirk even became a medicine man himself. Well, Kirok did. Never saw if he had a spirit guide during his amnesia.
I could look it up myself, but since I’m here …
Presumably the men chosen are already flag officers? I would think being head of Starfleet Medical would be at least a 3 star post, Vice Admiral. So if there was a vacancy I am sure Starfleet had a large pool of Rear Admirals to fill the same, Crusher is at least 3 ranks too junior and does not have the proper experience. If you have anything resembling a coherent career path for medical officers, then after being CMO of a Starship you get promoted to being head of a hospital at a starbase (a captains rank) then head medical officer for a fleet, then head of a division only then do you get Starfleet Medical itself.
My own fanwank is that she was transferred to undertake some further training at Starfleet medical, perhaps heading up a new research project (not the whole medical corps of Starfleet) and that it was always supposed to be temporary duty, her permenant assignment was always the Enterprise and that is why she let Wesley stay on board.
Those kinds of things make some scenes of the original series practically unwatchable.
I’m going to go out on a limb and posit that the universal translator works way more like very good human translators than the presently available commercial translator programs.
When you translate a poem or fiction from another language, if you’re very good, you find some way to convey (seamlessly) an idiom in another language by use of an idiom in the “target” language. It’s incredibly difficult to do well, and it’s one of the reasons that people say “Oh, the ______ translation; well that’s no way to read [important book not written in English.]”
There’s a widespread misconception that the search for the best translation is merely a search for the version that’s most free of errors, which is a very clerical exercise (in the sense of clerks, not clerics.)
Now, if I remember the “explanations” I’ve heard, Trek characters from other planets all speak English because they have universal translators on ship and built into their com badge thingies.
So more properly the “sun” worshipers were worshiping the “son” because of the pun inserted by the Universal Translator, which understood the English idiom and supplied the pun for the crew’s benefit. Perhaps on their own planet the evolution was from a water deity to the daughter of an all-mother goddess, and they were homophones or close to it. The translator would have supplied the equivalent idiom to convey the fuller sense of the idiomatic whole.
I’m not sure I have the energy to apply this to the Yangs and the Coms, especially given the appearance of the American flag somewhere along the way… not to mention the clumsy reading (which Captain Canada corrects) of the preamble to the constitution.
But it was a different era… you couldn’t put an extra stumbling block in front of people when they were already struggling with “What’s wrong with Wagon Train on Earth? Why do you have to do it in space?” Subtlety wasn’t the first item on the agenda back in the day (not that it was later.)
And then in TNG, they find a language that’s ALL idiom and metaphor. And Paul Winfield dies again. 
Yeah that one that consists of “[Name] and [Name] at [Place Name].” Apparently the universal translator couldn’t make anything of it except the conjunctions and prepositions.
Darmok and Jalad at Tenagra.
Sokath, his eyes unconvered.
Heck, Skip Homeier died twice just in TOS.
Technically Mark Lenard’s died three times across all of Trek, though his Sarek death was off-camera.
No, it’s not.
You said they ‘go back and forth’ on religion. They do no such thing.
They are completely consistent in the treatment of religion, save for the evolution of opinions between the 23rd and 24th centuries - humans have, by and large, abandoned it, whereas other species have not. It’s completely consistent in this, and its treatment of the alien religions - they’re interesting quirks of the alien cultures, which generally have a negative, or at best neutral effect on the culture as a whole, or they have actual rational scientific, rather than supernatural, bases - and still, often, have a negative effect on the culture as a whole.
But, we understood his last words.
wrong generation, but still kind of funny. from George Takei’s fb feed: https://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/581989_488920684470723_1976799350_n.jpg
You don’t need all that. You just need the original language term being translated as son worshiper, and the crew hearing it and assuming that it was the more common sun worshiper. In fact, you kinda need the UT to be dumber than normal translators, not realizing the ambiguity.
What did Kirk say to Apollo?
“We find the one God quite enough!”
Well seriously, what would you expect him to say on 1960’s television?