TOS - Who Mourns for Adonais?

[Philistine]

I know Star Trek has been a little inconsistent on the subject, but does driving the last member of a Space it’s to suicide count as genocide? I mean, it’s not like he was a threat to the Federation - a “no entry” sign was good enough for the Guardian of Forever or the Talosians.

My vague understanding of Mediterranean religions before Christianity (apart from Judaism, perhaps) is that they were based on worshipping the gods “or else”, whereas Christianity was more about worshipping God “to get a better deal” (unless you count eternal damnation as “or else”).

Wrong. The OR ELSE fits monotheism more than Paganism.
Inquisitions, Crusades, Jihads and Genocides are common for One-true-God-ists, because they CARE about the ONE true Faith TM.

When the Roman Empire wanted to conquer a new province, they often started worshipping that provinces Gods more fervently than the locals did.

Why would Pagans care? Our Clan worships Zeus properly, by definition. If the Clan in the next valley also worships Zeus properly. That is nice, but if they do it wrong, so what?

Nah.

It's true that the Romans didn't demand that conquered peoples adopt their pantheon wholesale. But they did insist, absolutely, that the people under their bootheels acknowledge the deific personage of the Emperor. That started very early in the Imperial period, and they were known to get persnickety on the point.

Beyond that (WAY beyond that) we've got the curbstompings handed out to the Druids in Celtic lands, and to the Jews in Judea. The druids were EXTINCT by the time the Romans finished; Judea was almost entirely depopulated, its prior population dead or exiled, and the province renamed. And what's really notable for this discussion in particular is that both of these frankly genocidal campaigns took place almost 200 years before Constantine made the Romans Christian.

[Fianna]

Well, that's getting into the blurry area between religious cult and cult of personality.

[pilight]

The question of why do the cosmic astronauts pick Earth to pose as gods on

Sometimes they didn't. The Klingons supposedly killed their Gods. Maybe those were also cosmic space travelers posing as Gods. Vulcan mythology had many Gods, including the ones on the Stone of Gol in Gambit. Maybe they were alien pretend Gods.

[AllanO]

My grasp of comparative religion is very weak, but my sense is there is a plausible read that views religions and cults of gods like Apollo as viewing ritual worship more in terms of bribing a capricious and mercurial being than following abstract ethical principles and appealing to a stern but impartial judge. However that is not quite the case because from my limited exposure to ancient Greek plays there are principled notions of sacredness and justice that are sometimes partially associated with the gods although often somewhat independent of them. Also the concept of principle rational divinity is not wholly foreign to the Greeks in the sense that philosophers like Plato criticized popular accounts of the gods precisely for making them capricious and ruled by passions rather than rational and virtuous as they should be as perfect beings. Likewise say Christian notions of virtuous benevolent and rational God are also a result of 2000 years of theology influenced by things like Greek philosophy on traditions that depict myths not wholly unlike the capricious and passionate Greek gods,

In terms of relations of the gods to things like the afterlife and things like moral obligation I am again not sure the difference between say the Greeks and Christianity is that absolute. Plato has a venerable old many thankful that in his old age he can do proper sacrifice to the gods to make up for all the crimes and indiscretions of his youth. In ancient Greek plays gods are sometimes things of pure caprice but often key moral arbiters also. The Epicureans thought all talk of an afterlife lead to fear of death and so that religions were responsible for making men fear death anticipating punishment suffering after death and all manner of superstition and unhappiness (Epicurus argued it made no sense to fear death because where I am death is not and where death is I am not, there is literally nothing to be afraid of, not in my experience the most convincing argument but there it is). So the links between morality and religion both in terms of abstract principles and in terms of warnings of says punishment for the unvirtuous after death are not the exclusive domain of any one religion.

Likewise on religious toleration, diverse cults and religions flourished in ancient Rome, but as mentioned the Romans were happy to ban and suppress religions they found troublesome. In the case of Judaism and Christianity part of the problem is unwillingness to participate in civic religions (sacrifices to the emperor etc.) as all good members of the polity were supposed to and that stemmed from the exclusive nature of those religions (thou shalt have no other gods before me). However I am pretty sure the Greeks and Romans might not have the need to be exclusive in their worship as the monotheists and yet I am pretty sure they could decide that adherents of certain practices were basically impious wacko cultists and suppress them. So for example according to Plato one of the charges for which Socrates was put to death by Athens was that he was impious that he did not believe in the gods of the city and tried to introduce foreign gods.

So I think religious ethos is rarely if ever a matter of one religious practice being all one way (all about appeasing a cosmic man-child) and another all another way (all about devotion to some abstract virtue like universal compassion) rather every religious practice is a mix of most if not all of them.

[nothri]

So Gene Roddenberry made another "crew abducted by god like being" episode.

Would you say that with Adonis he was....resting on his laurels?

[Ikiry0]

I'll admit, I'd kinda like to see modern trek characters have to deal with such an episode. It seems like Kirk killed off 90% of the space gods before anyone else got to meet them.

[Thebestoftherest]

I'll admit, I'd kinda like to see modern trek characters have to deal with such an episode. It seems like Kirk killed off 90% of the space gods before anyone else got to meet them.

Why not the roman gods, or Celtics.

[cdrood]

In terms of the brief suggestion that humans are now monotheist (we find the one sufficient). It reminds me of how the people who they run into on the 20th century Roman world of Bread and Circuses are Children of the Sun or so they think they are really Children of the Son (Son of God, Christ) as Uhura reveals when she says that in the government broadcasts to discredit them the later day pagan Romans fail to really do so. Suggesting a vaguely pro-Christian ethos to the show there also.

Now that could be all directives from the network, but I find it at least as likely that Gene and co. were in the 60s at least of some vaguely Christian non-denominational view of the "There is at most one god' sort and so put in one or two such pro-Christian plugs here and there suggesting it as an evolved state of mind. However by the time TNG comes around they get more stridently atheist/secularist. Like how the naked American patriotism of the Omega Glory gives way to a somewhat more internationalist flavour of TNG.

One obvious problem with these Ancient Astronaut gods in Star Trek is: why are they fixated on humanity, when there are any number of primitive humanoid civilizations scattered across the galaxy who would happily worship them and do orgies as needed. Why weren't they good enough for Apollo and company? Being a bit too picky if you ask me.

My problem with crazy gods episodes is that our heroes always assume that they're morally and intellectually superior than the super powerful immortal being they encounter. Right now we see how it's popular to condem the moral norms of 10 years ago, imagine a society that's existed for millions of years and then thinking they had a lot to learn from you and that there is nothing to learn from them. It's a supreme arrogance which is what the federation is known for.

I disagree they assume, rather they listen to the beings argument for a bit and decide they are unconvincing, sometimes they seem to leave open the view that there is more to discuss and more to learn. It is usually that circumstance like the aliens being hostile or something that cuts off that sort of research.

What is the alternative they could not listen to arguments? In which case they would indeed be ignoring any insight the civilizations.

Listening to the dictates of the oldest civilization you happen to come across (what you seem to be suggesting), is not a coherent directive unless the oldest civilization you come across this week has that directive, if it does not have that directive then in order to truly respect that civilization you should not adopt that directive and so on.

More seriously the flaw in your premise is that a million year old civilization may have come to a view by dint of a million years of experience, analysis and careful consideration, or they may have been really stubborn and believed the same thing for a million years out of bloody mindedness. Hence why you ask for arguments, if they basically admit the position they take is not due to any superior insight but just one they have bull headly adopted there is certainly no reason to believe it.

In this case I would argue they totally absorbed and followed the philosophy of these guys, which was apparently you should obey people who have physical power of you (hence him smiting Scotty, Kirk and so on all the time). They gained physical power over Apollo therefore Apollo should have obeyed them by the logic of his own philosophy. Not to overpower Apollo and subjugate him to their will when they had the power would have been a rejection of his philosophy.

You could say the same thing about The Borg, however. Why do they keep making a beeline for Earth when there are plenty of worlds with humans and Federation technology? They literally pass by countless worlds and target a "small blue-green planet at the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy".

[cdrood]

I spent decades thinking this episode was titled "Who Mourns for Adonis".

[cdrood]

The simple fact is the Greek/Roman gods were probably the pantheon most familiar to a 1960's American audience. There was really big "swords and sandals" craze in movies of the 50's. Many were made in Italy, like "Ulysses" starring Kirk Douglas.

It reduces the amount of exposition required to explain who Apollo is.