# What religion (if any) are star fleet humans (of the sttng era)? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 20, 2007, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820 "2007-05-20T15:28:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Enola\_Straight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dec6dc/32.png) [@Enola\_Straight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Straight)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/21 "2007-05-20T18:32:20Z")
I would assume that Miles O’Brien is Roman Catholic and Dr. Julian Bashir is Muslim. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/22 "2007-05-20T18:49:42Z")
[QUOTE=Enola Straight] I would assume that Miles O’Brien is Roman Catholic and Dr. Julian Bashir is Muslim. [/QUOTE] I don’t know that that follows. The actor who played O’Brian is Catholic, and the actor who played Bashir is Muslim, and it looks like both the characters grew up where Catholics and Muslims respectively now live. But that doesn’t mean the characters are Catholic or Muslim, or even that those areas are Catholic or Muslim at the time the show takes place. ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Bean](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_bean/32/1760_2.png) [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/23 "2007-05-20T19:17:54Z")
Let me start by saying that I’m not a regular watcher of any Star Trek shows, so forgive me if I have this all wrong. I always figured that a lot of future people, including the Star Trek folks, were Deists of some sort. Deists do believe in a higher power but not necessarily “God” as we usually think of him. This higher power is not concerned with human affairs, so prayer and rituals are unnecessary from a religious standpoint. Deists do generally, believe, however, that there is a universal moral and ethical code. I think this jibes nicely with what we see on Star Trek. They definitely do adhere to a moral and ethical code. We don’t see them praying or going to services, but they don’t prohibit religious activity among those who find value in it. They may celebrate holidays (Christmas) or participate in rituals (weddings and funerals), but I think we can all agree that these rituals serve _human_ needs in addition to religious needs. And I agree with **Risha**. Celebrating Christmas doesn’t require Christianity–especially thousands of years in the future. I could easily see a secularized “Christmas” being celebrated for millenia, given those pesky human needs for rituals and holidays. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/24 "2007-05-20T19:27:34Z")
[QUOTE=Green Bean] And I agree with **Risha**. Celebrating Christmas doesn’t require Christianity–especially thousands of years in the future. I could easily see a secularized “Christmas” being celebrated for millenia, given those pesky human needs for rituals and holidays. [/QUOTE] We know (from “Charlie X”) that Thanksgiving is still celebrated (and has apparently achieved a standardized date) on Earth and that turkeys are still slaughtered and eaten at least until Kirk’s time. By the time of Next Gen, humans as a whole supposedly no longer exploit animals for food, although there are some humans (O’Brien’s mother for one) who still do. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/25 "2007-05-20T19:34:55Z")
[QUOTE=cochrane] Well, in the movie **Generations** Picard experiences a family Christmas with an illusory family while in the Nexus, so there is evidence that he is probably a Christian. [/QUOTE] That always struck me as an hommge to Stewart’s one man Scrooge show more than anything else. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/26 "2007-05-20T19:50:21Z")
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing] I don’t know that that follows. The actor who played O’Brian is Catholic, and the actor who played Bashir is Muslim, and it looks like both the characters grew up where Catholics and Muslims respectively now live. But that doesn’t mean the characters are Catholic or Muslim, or even that those areas are Catholic or Muslim at the time the show takes place. [/QUOTE] Are you sure Alexander Siddig is Muslim? I could swear that I read a few years ago a statement from him online saying that he was neither Muslim nor Christian. Otherwise: in TOS ep. “Dagger of the Mind,” there was mention of a Christmas party in the science lab or something. ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/27 "2007-05-20T20:01:14Z")
Well, Picard refuses to worship, or even respect, Q, who makes it abundantly clear that he is a God. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/28 "2007-05-20T20:01:48Z")
I know that Gene Roddenberry deliberately left the subject of religion vague in Star Trek. However, one third of the Earth’s population today is Christian, and I highly doubt that the majority of Christians today observe Christmas as a strictly secular holiday. And I see no reason for that to be true in only two or three hundred years. Also, Judaism is even older than Christianity, and religion is intertwined even more closely within Judaic culture. I am not a religious person myself, but I do believe religion as we know it would survive well into the 23rd or 24th century, even with hypothetical first contact with alien cultures. I would suspect the Catholic Church would recognize alien religions as legitimate interaction with the Creator, just as it today acknowledges that followers of other religions can attain knowledge of God. I’m not trying to push my beliefs on anyone here. I’m agnostic, I don’t believe or disbelieve the existence of God and I do respect other people’s beliefs, even if they differ from mine. I do acknowledge that religion has been a strong force in the world for thousands of years and do not believe it will be suddenly abandoned in only two or three centuries. If there continue to be religions in the future, I believe they will have followers within a hypothetical Starfleet. I know this is turning into a IMHO post, and if I am hijacking this thread, I apologize. Fiction is what you read into it, after all. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/29 "2007-05-20T20:03:30Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Marx died in 1883. He never lived to see a Communist revolution (unless you count the short-lived Paris Commune). [/QUOTE] I didn’t say he did: I said neither country fit his ideology of what a Communist Revolution would involve: he did consider at one point the possibility that maybe Russia could skip over a couple of historical developments, but died before deciding if it was really possible. But by and large neither country fit the mold outlined in any of his theories, and he said so. ---
**Author:** ![Khan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3ab097/32.png) [@Khan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khan)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/30 "2007-05-20T20:09:17Z")
[QUOTE=Otto] We know (from “Charlie X”) that Thanksgiving is still celebrated (and has apparently achieved a standardized date) on Earth and that turkeys are still slaughtered and eaten at least until Kirk’s time. By the time of Next Gen, humans as a whole supposedly no longer exploit animals for food, although there are some humans (O’Brien’s mother for one) who still do. [/QUOTE] The food issue is an interesting one. I remember a first season episode of TNG where Riker got all high-n-mighty on some visiting aliens for their culinary habits. If memory serves he referred to eating animals as “savagery.” In later seasons we see pictures of him as a child with a newly-caught fish, or his excitement at using “real” eggs to make omelets. In the episode where he works as an exchange officer on the Klingon ship, he prepares himself by trying some Klingon food, but I forget whether the gagh was real or replicated. Sorry for the hijack. Anyway, the one remotely explicit mention of religion among humans during the TNG era was when Sisko and Cassidy Yates were planning their wedding. Cassidy said something to the effect that she wanted “a minister” to officiate because it’s what her mother would have wanted. Sisko had suggested that a Vedek friend of his could do it, I think, so they were distinguishing between the Bajoran religion and whatever faith the minister would have been a part of. Christmas also showed up in Voyager when Q2 made the ship into a Christmas ornament to hide from Q. Still, **Risha** and **Green Bean** have a point about Christmas being arguably a secular holiday with the tree and the presents and such. I think the same could be said for Thanksgiving, even if it started out as a religious thing. I’ve always seen it as pretty secular even today. In Balance of Terror, wasn’t there a cross on the podium Kirk used for the wedding and the funeral? ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/31 "2007-05-20T20:09:25Z")
[QUOTE=Maastricht] Well, Picard refuses to worship, or even respect, Q, who makes it abundantly clear that he is a God. [/QUOTE] That’s another problem. Once it becomes obvious that there are beings which can, for all intents and purposes, do anything and everything necessary to have convinced human beings that they are gods, the case for any particular revelation collapses. This is basically the Satan paradox: any being sufficiently more powerful than human beings can induce any sort of feeling of awe or display of power or speak directly into your mind to convince you of anything. It doesn’t have to be THE God, or there even to a final overgod at all. Everything anyone thinks is God could simply be Satan leading folks astray. Once you put beings like that into active play, religion at least via revelation becomes extremely problematic. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/32 "2007-05-20T20:30:21Z")
In _ST:TOS_, Kirk conducts a wedding in the ship’s chapel, in one episode. Are the _ST:TOS_ scripts online? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/33 "2007-05-20T20:47:01Z")
[QUOTE=Otto] Earlier in “Who Mourns for Adonais?” Kirk flatly rejects the notion of worshipping Apollo but I can’t recall offhand if he specifically commented on the state of religion amongst humans at the time. [/QUOTE] I believe he says somehting along the lines of “We have no need for gods. We find the one quite sufficient.” In comparison, the casual Jewishness of Commander Ivanova is downright refreshing. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/34 "2007-05-20T20:59:12Z")
[QUOTE=Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor] In _ST:TOS_, Kirk conducts a wedding in the ship’s chapel, in one episode. Are the _ST:TOS_ scripts online? [/QUOTE] Unless we saw a cross or other symbol that doesn’t mean anything. The “chapel” could just be a room on the ship used for things like weddings and funerals. We’ve never seen an actual chaplain on ST (though ship’s counselors seem to serve a similiar function). Sisko did basically convery to the Way of the Prophets, but he had direct, personal knowledge of them. Whenever an alien religion is shown it usually has alot more “factual” basis than an Earthly one (of course most involve aliens or computers). Even Kahless was shown to have actually existed. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/35 "2007-05-20T22:34:41Z")
> [@Khan](#): > > I remember a first season episode of TNG where Riker got all high-n-mighty on some visiting aliens for their culinary habits. If memory serves he referred to eating animals as “savagery.” That was in “Up the Long Ladder.” Don’t recall if he used the word “savagery;” I have a vague memory of the word “enslave.” [QUOTE=Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor] In _ST:TOS_, Kirk conducts a wedding in the ship’s chapel, in one episode. [/QUOTE] Nitpick, the wedding was interrupted before the end of the ceremony (that was in “Balance of Terror” already noted). The chapel was bare of any religious ornamentation. IIRC a later captain officiated at a wedding and used words similar or identical to the words Kirk used in BoT. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/36 "2007-05-20T23:06:30Z")
[QUOTE=Otto] Nitpick, the wedding was interrupted before the end of the ceremony (that was in “Balance of Terror” already noted). The chapel was bare of any religious ornamentation. IIRC a later captain officiated at a wedding and used words similar or identical to the words Kirk used in BoT. [/QUOTE] Picard performed a marriage in a TNG episode, making the claim that “Ship captains had performed marriages since the dawn of time.” Or some other similar, and totally erronous claim. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/37 "2007-05-20T23:20:28Z")
[QUOTE=Tuckerfan] Picard performed a marriage in a TNG episode, making the claim that “Ship captains had performed marriages since the dawn of time.” Or some other similar, and totally erronous claim. [/QUOTE] There may have been something thrown in there about the days of wooden sailing ships too. Did that episode of Voyager where B’Elanna rescued her mother from _Gre’Thor_ (Klingon Hell) reveal whether B’Elanna actually visited the afterlife or hallucinated? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/38 "2007-05-20T23:32:33Z")
[QUOTE=Lobsang] **What religion (if any) are star fleet humans (of the sttng era)?** [/QUOTE] Should be obvious. They worship [the Great Bird of the Galaxy.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Bird_of_the_Galaxy) ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2007, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/39 "2007-05-20T23:41:14Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Should be obvious. They worship [the Great Bird of the Galaxy.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Bird_of_the_Galaxy) [/QUOTE] And Harlan Ellison will be _more_ than happy to tell you exactly what species of bird it is, too. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2007, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820/40 "2007-05-21T00:25:06Z")
I think a note should be made that Gene Roddenberry was an active atheist who denounced any form of religion. > [@](#): > > I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will – and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain. (Gene Roddenberry) [Ex Astris Scientifica - Religion In Star Trek](http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/religion.htm) Writer-producer Brannon Braga echoed Roddenberry’s sentiments: > [@](#): > > No, there was no consideration in giving humans, talking about God, or talking about those types of things. We wanted to avoid it to be quite frank. But we did very often explore theology through alien characters. Which frankly is much more interesting anyway. Whether it was the Bajorans and their religion or the Borg and their religion. They had the religion of perfection. That, I think, was more interesting. We want to keep Star Trek secular. The human facet of Star Trek secular." (Brannon Braga, transcript from his former website) So I think any discussion of religion in ST would necessarily derive from one’s own experience, rather than through canon. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-religion-if-any-are-star-fleet-humans-of-the-sttng-era/404820.md?page=3)