DIS - New Eden

[CharlesPhipps]

I've got to say that Chucks speech about combining religion kind of troubled me. He does realize a lot of Real Life Religions DO this and actually have it as a fundamental doctrinal issue.

Has he never heard of Unitarianism? Ecumenism.

I will say this is easily one of the best episodes of Discovery.

I thought this was an ambitious episode, albeit one regrettably leaning towards the religion being "real" in a way that I, an atheist, find offensive. However, credit for trying.

Real in what way? The locals are clearly wrong about a huge amount of their philosophy given Earth is still around. I'm actually kind of sad about it but then again, I am not an atheist so it's a "one group or the other would be getting the prize."

That said, I think that they made the wrong decision here. This is a theocracy and those NEVER end well, and it clearly has some repressive policies already. They very much SHOULD have broken the PD and used the magic mushroom drive to bring Starfleet people in to tell the colonists that Earth is a paradise now.

I think that you're confusing Iran with religious communes and hippies that have actually ended pretty well in the small term. Not every religion ends up exalting the power of the lash and fundamentalist orthodoxy. Quite of a lot of them end up exalting singing around campfires, sex, and mushrooms. I totally 100% agree with you, though, that Discovery should have told them about Earth continuing to exist. This is the same bullshit that Archer pulled on New Terra.

People are not lab experiments.

I think Chuck's being a LITTLE unfair to the society of New Eden. Religion IS different from a government and hey, when you see something that looks preeeeetty divine as we saw with the angel's appearance, there's going to be some debate and eventually come to a decision on how to interpret it. In this case they decided the best thing to do was to merge the religions. The idea of just "letting everyone believe what they want" might work fine from a theoretical standpoint, but they were the ones actually there dealing with it and needing to figure out some way of making sense of it all. Hell, they're 2 centuries removed from the actual event itself, so maybe there was a lot more infighting and whatnot that actually occurred and this is just the official history that was decided on to try to make things more hunky-dory among them.

Bluntly, putting on my "Pike's Dad has my former profession" hat, I should point out that the majority of human history does NOT work like the Catholic Church and Abrahamic Faiths in that they attempted to work out how this thing worked and everyone else was wrong. For the most part, in Ancient History and many places in the Modern World, if you find out about a new god then you just figure out how that God fits into your pantheon.

You don't assume they're idiots and worshiping a fake God.

It's how Voodoo got created.

Which makes no sense due to all of the individual stories conflicting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant

A major element of Hinduism and Buddhism is based around the unknowable and personal nature of the divine.

Re: The Non-Religious Elements of the Show

I appreciate that Pike is taking the view that a sufficiently advanced alien would be indistinguishable from a god as that is something that Gene Roddenberry used a lot (so much so that Harlan Ellison said that Gene only had one plot). Q, the Organians, and the Metrons are all variations on what a "Good Alien God" would be while we have Kirk and Spock kill "Bad Alien Gods" (usually a computer) in the Archons, Eden, and I have touched the sky episodes. There's also Picard's anti-religious rant in Who Watches the Watchers.

There's a story that the writers expected that episode to be more controversial except religious people liked it more than atheists. Why? Because impersonating a god is one of the biggest blasphemies you can commit. Personally, I'm religious and disgusted that Michael and company would falsify a miracle. Why? Because religious people believe in what they're doing is TRUE. Lying to protect that belief is monstrous.

I do note this episode is very strongly about faith and they also talk about how it applies in non-believers as well. The poor scientist guy has faith that Earth is still around purely based on his gut belief and he is rewarded for it. Michael, of course, strongly believes in an IDEAOLOGY of science that is fundamentally different from science as a tool. It's also funny because Vulcans are a race that practices heavy mysticism and ritualism while being rationalist scientists. A distinction that would bother Western audiences more than Eastern I think.

Really the best part of the season was dealing with matters of faith like Saru discovering his worldview was a lie.

[Darth Wedgius]

PICARD: If we ever needed reminding of the importance of the Prime Directive, it is now.
RIKER: The Prime Directive doesn't apply. They're human.
PICARD: Doesn't it? Our very presence may have damaged, even destroyed, their way of life. Whether or not we agree with that way of life or whether they're human or not is irrelevant, Number One. We are responsible.
RIKER: We had to respond to the threat from the core fragment didn't we?
PICARD: Of course we did. But in the end we may have proved just as dangerous to that colony as any core fragment could ever have been.

So Riker's position is that the prime directive doesn't apply to humans, and Picard's response is that the colonists being human doesn't matter. From that I think I'd take it that the applicability of the prime directive to humans could be taken either way by a reasonable officer, though of course Picard is the senior officer and his take might be given greater weight.

That Picard did act to help the colony might indicate that he agrees that the prime directive doesn't apply, but Picard has, in the past, saved one civilization and was willing to let another die, both from natural disasters, and his last set of lines in that quote contradict each other if taken literally. If they were just as dangerous as the stellar core fragment then they hardly had to respond to that threat. Leaving aside the wisdom of valuing the culture as much as the people in it, IMHO Picard is such a mess on the prime directive that I think it could be taken either way.

I don't think it is literally a contradiction to say the interference caused by the Enterprise was as dangerous as the core fragment, as I take danger in this context to mean damage. So the damage of rendering the colony non-viable is equal whether the colony was rendered non-viable by a core fragment or by the Enterprise's intervention. Even if Picard meant dangerous in the sense of risky not sure it is actually a contradiciton, the risk of rendering the colony non-viable might be equal but it might be better in terms of other dimensions to replace the risk of the core fragment with the risk of interference given that there would be more time to evacuate etc.

In terms of that episode I took Picard's dialogue to be a kind of powerless lament, essentially going "there should be a law." I thought he was saying that he recognized they were following the rules as written, but he thought the outcome of the situation showed there was a problem with the rules as written.

That's reasonable. "We had to act because those are the rules, but we were just as bad" does fit his words there.

[CharlesPhipps]

I think Picard actually goes through a character arc from his days as a stuffy by the book officer overcompensating for his past transgressions to someone who becomes much more liberated and action-orientated as well as willing to bend the rules. Borg, Torture, and Vash will do that to you.

But I think you could also argue that Picard's devotion to archaeology and anthropology has given him a somewhat "lab specimen" view of human and alien cultures that is removed from the people involved in a way that RIker's isn't.

Picard needs a bit of a push to realize that change is a part of culture.

[Antiboyscout]

This is a theocracy and those NEVER end well,

What are you talking about? Some of the grandest and longest lasting civilizations in human history have been theocracies, some with literal god-kings. From Egypt to Indonesia. And a lot of those ended with a whimper not a bang.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

And look where they're at today. Makes ya think.

[CharlesPhipps]

And look where they're at today. Makes ya think.

Not to defend theocracies but....ancient and revered pillars of civilization that still influence us today?

[clearspira]

And look where they're at today. Makes ya think.

Many of them would still be here if the ''One True God'' people never tried to exterminate them. The Conquistadors ring a bell?

That makes me think too... namely how much much blood has been spilled for the grace of an all-loving god.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

And look where they're at today. Makes ya think.

Many of them would still be here if the ''One True God'' people never tried to exterminate them. The Conquistadors ring a bell?

That makes me think too... namely how much much blood has been spilled for the grace of an all-loving god.

And look where they're at today. Makes ya think.

Not to defend theocracies but....ancient and revered pillars of civilization that still influence us today?

And it kills me on the inside.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Alright, so we got a bunch of different religions under the same roof, not seemingly different than a sitcom but just rendered into a Star Trek episode.

First thoughts on what the review said; an understandable take on religion in general. It tends to actually develop upon the irrationality that more secular fields of thought contend with the likes of religion in general. Because, if there was no proof to decide one theological take over the other, then now you're just digging your hole deeper.

I don't think it actually invalidates the convention of religions though, which tend to cultivate humility among man in favor of the collective implications that also happen to be cosmic. Even from just what's said in the review, it seems like as a theocracy they are not particularly conclusive on the matter which is where the irrationality stems from (in my own take).

I do note that the fundamental nature of judeo christian religions as of noted in this thread and reasonably assumed about the church on the show is that a degree of ethnocentrism would likely just stack the odds in favor of the house instead of the people, but it's just as reasonable to consider that there are more considerate puritans among any tribe that would appeal to a more democratic structure.

[CharlesPhipps]

Many of them would still be here if the ''One True God'' people never tried to exterminate them. The Conquistadors ring a bell? That makes me think too... namely how much much blood has been spilled for the grace of an all-loving god.

Speaking as a religious person of those faith, it disgusts me the level of violence and bloodshed that has been done in the name of a faith of peace. The actions of the Spanish Inquisition, Crusades, and conquistidors are a dark chapter of human history. But I do think as a historian that it's a joke as an argument against religion. Genghis Khan, the Soviet Union, the Huns, Nazis, and so on show many people ready to do every bit the same and worse in the name of other ideologies.

It's an argument against religious hypocrisy but the simple fact is that history doesn't show religious violence as particularly different from any other form of violence. We are a barbaric species, according to Captain Kirk, and have yet to find a Sarek who manages to tame our inner passions.

Alright, so we got a bunch of different religions under the same roof, not seemingly different than a sitcom but just rendered into a Star Trek episode.

First thoughts on what the review said; an understandable take on religion in general. It tends to actually develop upon the irrationality that more secular fields of thought contend with the likes of religion in general. Because, if there was no proof to decide one theological take over the other, then now you're just digging your hole deeper.

I don't think it actually invalidates the convention of religions though, which tend to cultivate humility among man in favor of the collective implications that also happen to be cosmic. Even from just what's said in the review, it seems like as a theocracy they are not particularly conclusive on the matter which is where the irrationality stems from (in my own take).

I do note that the fundamental nature of judeo christian religions as of noted in this thread and reasonably assumed about the church on the show is that a degree of ethnocentrism would likely just stack the odds in favor of the house instead of the people, but it's just as reasonable to consider that there are more considerate puritans among any tribe that would appeal to a more democratic structure.

Working in academia, I note that I think we're falling prey into the exact sort of thing that other scholars would suffer in that we're missing Occam's Razor in trying to examine the specifics of people's cultural backgrounds as well as belief structures versus something that functions very straightforwardly.

A bunch of people in a church encountered a glowing red angel that rescued them from a nuclear apocalypse. A bunch of Muslims, Christians, Jews, a couple of scientists, and a Wiccan or two it seems.

In the face of what appears to be a miracle, one is very likely to react as if a miracle has happened. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and we should take a moment to note from the perspective of the 21st century humans here that this is quite fucking extraordinary. They would ask themselves why were they rescued, what made them special, and what was the purpose of it? In the face of no particular religious reason during a religious event, they'd probably decide ideology was less important and adjust accordingly.

Or to make a analogy, I am a believer in God but if I met Thor who rescued me from a burning building and took me to Asgard, I might be inclined to believe in Norse mythology or incorporate it into my worldview.