I’ve been thinking about this lately (gee, it’s nice to be at a point in my life where I have so few worries I can think about stuff like this).
Okay, after Zefram Cochrane invented the warp drive on earth and the Vulcans made first contact, the Star Trek backstory seems to indicate that earth went through a renaissance of sorts, in time doing away with money and most forms of religion and the like. There seems to be little crime, and in the last three series (TNG, DS9, Voyager), it seems like all the non-Starfleet earthlings just sort of live their lives improving themselves.
So, what happened to the Bushmen of the Kalahari? The Indian tribes in the Amazon? The native peoples of Papua New Guinea and the like? Would they have maintained their primitive and ancient ways? Would they have been forced to get with the 24th century program? Would giving them technology be seen as a violation of the Prime Directive? Now, it’s shown in the last 3 series that there are still American Indians around, although in Chakotay’s case he uses a piece of modern technology to induce visions rather than relying on hallucinogenic plants or fasting or the like. So, did any of the books ever address what happened to non-industrialized people on earth after first contact?
Obviously it’s just a tv show and it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, just something that’s been bouncing around my head recently.
I’m under the assumption that they are left alone. Live as you like, but if you want to join us, get ready for a ride: that sort of thing. I don’t see this “perfect” society reverting to the politics that got it into the problems they had prior to First Contact.
Granted, now, Classic Trek didn’t bother with religion at all. Maybe it’s just not as divisive an issue in the future. Or maybe it wouldn’t have made for good story telling in an hour series. Original Trek was written in a time where you didn’t have to look far to find chaos and corruption, so the series didn’t have to cover those topics to be popular.
I believe the natives were left alone to frolic as they wished. The Native Americans who left Earth to colonize that planet on the Cardassian/Federation border where Chakotay grew up on did so on their own free will.
However, regarding religion, I don’t think it just disappeared altogether. Supposedly at least 1% of the population living in the Federation are Jewish (I forget the source, but this part sort of stuck out).
I’ve always found this the most unsatisfying part of Star Trek, but it’s so much a part of it that one just has to deal with it.
Okay, we get warp capability and Christianity, Judaism, and Islam die out (and seeing as how I can’t recall any Buddhists or Hindus, I guess they’re out too). These religions are currently practiced by, what, half of the world’s population. Okay, they’re gone but somehow Chakotay’s American Indian spirituality, which was probably specific only to his tribe of a few thousand people, is still going 300 years from now? I dunno, that just irks me. If Chakotay’s religion is still floating around, so should the others. True, Janeway does have some Catholic items in her Da Vinci holodeck program, but she has no belief in them. Deep Space Nine handled this better, although it’s probably the only time a Starfleet officer became a god.
Wow, I’ve just hijacked my own thread.
And the Indians moving next door to the Cardassians never made much sense to me (and I’m a huge fan of the Cardassians). Hmm, we’re a nonviolent people just looking for a place to practice our spiritual traditions and live the way of life we love. Let’s move next door to the disputed border of a race of highly defensive, militaristic atheists who despise the Federation and everything it stands for. That’s a sure recipe for harmony.
Good point. If one were paranoid, one would assume that the ST writers are still scared to present religion as having a force in the future. They’d rather sweep it under the rug. Or, they could be assuming that religion is merely superstition, which would be swept away with universal enlightenment. (So why do the Vulcans still have their rituals around logic? Why the Kolinhar?) Or, they could be just lazy and not interested. I’m betting on this one.
As to why Chakoty’s group moved out there… maybe that’s what was availiable?
Yeah, you’d think that, but they do work in quite a bit of religion. I never sensed a subtext of “geez, those Bajorans sure are a bunch of ignorami for worshipping the aliens in the wormhole” in DS9; even Dax and Odo went to the temple. Yeah, there was a feeling that the Vorta and the Jem’Hadar shouldn’t worship the Founders, but it was also made pretty clear that the Founders weren’t gods; that wasn’t exactly done with the wormhole aliens/Prophets. It’s apparently cool that the Klingons believe in an afterlife and have all but made Kahless their new god after they “killed” all their old gods. Vulcans appear to worship, although it could be more along the lines of a spiritual discipline. The Ferengi worship. Shoot, on a recent re-run I saw of Voyager, even former Borg Seven of Nine regarded an infinitely complex and organized molecule as a sort of divine perfection. The writers can do religion, it just seems they have a blind spot when it comes to the Feds, for the most part.
With the exception of what the Vulcans do, and the actions of individual people like Dax, it seems the Feds can’t deal with religion, except for the American Indians who show up in each of the three recent series. Sure they talk about respect, but it would be a great Voyager drinking game to take a swill whenever Janeway says “I respect your beliefs, but…” to the Supersititious Alien of the Week.
It’s a strange blind spot they have. I love all things Star Trek, but I do recognize this as a problem in their writing.
In the issue of religion, I don’t think they have broached the topic becuase many religions beleive we are god’s image. If there were other species on other planets, they think this will debunk the beleif in god.
As for the natives, I think they would have to follow the Prime Directive. When they find a colony that had been untouched by technology, they are not allowed to disturb it’s evolutionary cycle. I think this is as well with the races on Earth.
Along the same lines Paladine was mentioning in the use of Chakotay’s American Indian spirituality, There are plenty of Am,erican Indians that still follow their taditions while living in today’s society. I don’t think that there would be a oss of these traditions.
That could very well be the reason they do it, but I still find it shortsighted, since not all Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists think this way.
Let’s make it personal. I am a fairly religious Catholic. I believe that I am made in the image and likeness of God. I do not take this to mean that God is a 30-year-old white earth woman with auburn hair and brown eyes. I take it to mean that I am a rational, ensouled, self-aware organism with a limited power of creation (if I find the right guy we can make another rational, ensouled, self-aware organism) and a capability for love, relationship, and the like. There’s more to it than that, but that’s sufficient for what we’re discussing.
Now, I do happen to know fundamentalist Protestants who believe that we are the only life in the universe. I’ve heard one on the radio who says that there are UFOs and “aliens” who pilot them, but they’re really demons. :eek: Would these guys lose their faith if the Klingons were to land tomorrow? Some would; others would re-interpret their current interpretations of scripture. And that’s just the fundies.
As for me, nothing happens to my faith if we find fish in the seas of Europa or if the Klingons do arrive tomorrow. In fact, I’d find it as evidence of the sovereignty of God–it never made much sense for me for God to create galaxies as numerous as the stars in this one galaxy and yet have us be the only life. To me, sentient aliens would be also made in the image and likeness of God. Now, there’s a number of ways to handle Christ’s atonement and the like for them, but that would be getting awfully philosophical for MPSIMS.
In short, I think there are more people of faith like me than there are people of faith like the fundamentalists I described above. I know I run into more of the former than the latter. That’s why it just doesn’t make sense that apparently the only earth religion to survive the warp drive is Chakotay’s. I would be just as much as a Catholic on Friday as I am now even if the Klingons did show up on Thursday.
[hijack] Just went back and found where you answered my question about your username in your death threat thread. I really liked that book! Definitely the best written and most absorbing Trek book I’ve read. [/hijack]
Regarding religion, I believe that the reason that ST doesn’t generally refer to religion is because Roddenbury didn’t want any reference to it on the series. If I sifted through my piles of geeky ST books, I’m sure I could find a specific quote on it. I may browse through later.
Sometimes they do an episode about religion, like Voyager’s ‘Sacred Ground’. However, in Star Trek, religious events or beliefs tends to have a scientific explanation.
Well, A Stitch in Time is the only Trek novel I’ve ever read and I worship Andrew Robinson, so I’m not objective, but I agree. What a wonderful story. If The Powers That Be were adventurous, they’d make it the next Trek movie, but I don’t think they’d ever do one that didn’t have a Starfleet focus.
I think that’s true, and I certainly wasn’t trying to start a “Why Aren’t There Any Christians on Star Trek?” thread. Really, my OP was more wondering about what happens to “primitive” societies on warp-capable planets. From what I’ve read, Roddenberry presupposes a one-world government, which makes sense, but seeing as how the UN doesn’t spend a huge amount of time now worrying about the Bushmen of the Kalahari, for example, I was wondering how the earth government of the Federation would handle the issue. As for the other point, I guess my question would be not “why no Christians in Trek?” but “why American Indian spirituality in Trek”? My response to that is that I think it’s just one of those things that would make Roddenberry spin in his grave. That’s not always a bad thing–I think the dark side of the Federation seen a few times in DS9 would have upset Roddenberry too, but it felt more real than a lot of TNG and Voyager–just something I’ve wondered about.
I am not an expert, but I thought the the first warp flight occured after the third world war, IIRC. Perhaps one of the effects of said war was to expose many previously isolated tribes and peoples to the full force of technology and “civilization”. It is possible, I suppose, that some could have died out due to the war/after effects of war and others could have been integrated or subjugated into modern ways.
That said, there could still be some peoples who are the same as they have been for thousands of years.
As for the issue of Chakotay and his religion surviving, that could be put down to the fact that when the people colonized the planet, they would have had lots of scope to expand, and thus to evolve the religion and for it to survive. If it is the only religion on the planet, it should prosper.
This is all just WAG on my part, but it is some food for thought.
This may just have been something to make writing the episodes easier, but it always seemed to me that religion got lumped in with other things like racial characteristics, language, and clothing style: they were all specific to a particular civilization, and fairly uniform across the board. As a general rule, all Bajorans dress the same, speak the same language, look alike, and worship the Prophets. They couldn’t pick one specific religion for the Federation, so, in order for it to be uniform, there is basically NO religion.
There have been exceptions to this:
In the TOS episode on 23rd Century Rome, where there were the followers of the “Sun”, Uhura pointed out at the end that they were worshipping the “Son,” Jesus, and they looked at her like, “what the heck are you talking about?”
In Voyager, Tuvok is one of the very few black Vulcans.
There was the TOS ep, Let This Be Your Last Battlefield, with one guy who’s black on the left side of his face, and the other guy’s black on the right side of his face.
The one thing I liked is that all of the truly advanced civilizations have evolved past the necktie. Only harsh, repressive and backward societies have men wearing ties.
Anyway, yeah. The feds have a lot of respect, but no belief. Most sci-fi seems to look upon science has having all the answers, and thus religion, et al, will fall beneath the wheels of research. That seems to be what ST is saying.
As you point out, in more recent series the Feds are facing religions and faiths more and more. Let’s say, that given 30 years of advance over the original series, we know science doesn’t have all the answeres. Thus our sci-fi reflects that (Cyberpunk, for example). Now, writers put the Federation in conflict with religions that work, people who believe, and there aren’t any clear answers.
That was the interesting one! Janeway has a religious experience related to an alien culture, and at the end of the show, the doc is explaining the thing with words a mile long, and she sort of walks away from him with this abstracted look on her face and goes… “A good explanation, Doctor. Very… scientific.” In this tone of voice that clearly says, “yeah, right.”
Although Trek says that science has a lot of answers, it’s recently been moving into the territory that says it doesn’t have all of them. Witness Voy’s “Sacred Ground” discussed above, many of the more apocalyptic Sisko-As-Emissary episodes in DS9, and also one good one (which unfortunately I missed) entitled “Statistical Probabilities,” in which Bashir and a bunch of geniuses mathematically prove that the Federation will lose the war, and they keep fighting anyway (and win).
Palandine, just wanted to say how much I like your posts here, especially the one explaining your religious ideas, and how they wouldn’t be changed if we did find out there is other life out there. That’s pretty much how I feel. If there are other sentient races then I believe they have a soul like mine and were created by God too. Doesn’t mean they have to look or act like us, have the same mores or whatever.
All of the lack of religion in Star Trek goes back to Gene Roddenbury being an atheist. I’m an engineer, and I realized years ago that it was foolish to think that science could supply all of the answers in life. Modern Sci-Fi authors have also begun to realize this, which is why you find, for example, fundamentalist Christians in Alien 3.
BTW, I consider myself a pretty devout Catholic, and it wouldn’t trouble me at all to find life on another planet, even intelligent life. The aliens (assuming they’re sentient) would also be created in God’s image and likeness.
What I don’t understand is, if they got rid of the whole ‘money’ thing, why do they always buy stuff will pressed latinum or whatever. I mean, if everything is free, how can Quark even have a business at all? I could understand him having a business on a Ferengi station, but that is a federation station and they are not supposed to use ‘money’.
So what’s the deal with that?
Original Trek was written in a time where you didn’t have to look far to find chaos and corruption, so the series didn’t have to cover those topics to be popular.