Does anyone think it's funny that in the first episode of the extremely rational and atheistic TNG that the antagonist is for all intents and purposes, some sort of god? Also, the Bajoran religion is essentially true and Vulcans have souls.
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Is anyone in the Star Trek universe like a run of the mill Catholic or Buddhist or anything?
Maybe miles O’Brien but it’s never commented on
His belief in eternal punishment probably the only thing keeping him from going Benoit on his wife.
Legitimately HOW could you remain a catholic after meeting all sorts of aliens, interdimensional creatures and exploring space
Narnia principle - Christ has manifested in all these worlds but in different forms.
milton has satan look at other worlds with other edens on in PD. people have believed in people on mars for centuries, it’s not a new thing. I also don’t see how it contradicts anything catholics believe in. either aliens have their own christ figures or humans now have to evangelise the entire universe
>multi verse exists
>time travel exists
The odds of there being some kind of super intelligent fifth dimensional alien (aka God) that can travel time and space and has existed for all of time (being fifth dimensional and all) are really, really high.
But if it's an alien then it's not a god. At least according to the people who claim the Q aren't gods.
Really makes you wonder what a god is supposed to be if the Q don't qualify.
And even if they are gods, should you let them control your lives?
>But if it's an alien then it's not a god
a rose by any other name
If we're to be sticklers about it, a capital G "God" would need to have some semblance of omnipotence, omniscience, be immaterial and transient, and have some involvement in the creation of reality/humanity.
But then an alien from another dimension merely coding an A.I simulation (which would be our universe) could be "God".
Whatever sort of God you want to consider, if they're from outside the universe they are an alien already. If they're from outside the Earth, even, they may be, depending on how you use it. But a universe creating anything, from the point of view of anything inside a universe they created, will be an alien. Alien and God are just different catagories that can overlap or be seperate like that.
Yet you've failed to define the distinction between a god and alien and have categorised anything that can exist as an alien therefore your opinion is discarded in its entirety.
>distinction between a god and alien
>Semantics. The branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning.
Alien and God are just words anon. Specifically, english words. I hope you grasp this concept.
>The distinction between god and alien is mere semantics
Waste of good trips. Kys, moronic atheisthomosexual.
>Extraterrestrial life, alien life, or colloquially simply aliens is life which does not originate from Earth
>:GOD: the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped (as in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism) as creator and ruler of the universe
Gee golly seems to fit the definition. So yeah, you're arguing semantics.
Nah, you're just dumb; you're either incapable of defining a distinction, or you're purposely disingenuous, which is still actually just dumb.
can you literally not read? Aliens are just life not originating from Earth. Seeing as how God created Earth, he didn't originate from Earth.
can you get any more moronic.
>Genesis 1:27
>So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
God is a lifeform that not from Earth. The definition of an alien.
Lmao the terminally online atheists have buttblasted their own minds into being unable to participate in simple discussions or make simple distinctions because they're so moronic. Kys.
what the frick are you even trying to say? And how does saying God fits the definition of alien make someone an atheist?
Are you moronic? Did you not read what the definition of alien is? God didn't originate from Earth, therefore he is an alien by the definition of what an alien is. This is how words work moron.
Going to walk you through this slowly.
>is God a life form
God Created man in his own image. So yes, God is alive.
>What is an alien
Alien is a form of life that didn't originate from Earth.
>Did God originate from Earth
God is eternal and created Earth. So no, God did not originate from Earth.
God is a life form that didn't originate from Earth. Therefore, God is technically an alien by definition.
>God is alive.
IS God?
>DATA: Doctor, what is the definition of life?
>CRUSHER: (pause) That is a big question. Why do you ask?
>DATA: I am searching for a definition that will allow me to test an hypothesis.
>CRUSHER: Well, the broadest scientific definition might be that life is what enables plants and animals to consume food, derive energy from it, grow, adapt themselves to their surroundings and reproduce.
>DATA: And you suggest that anything which exhibits these characteristics is considered alive?
>CRUSHER: In general, yes.
>DATA: What about fire?
>CRUSHER: Fire?
>DATA: Yes. It consumes fuel to produce energy, it grows, it creates offspring. By your definition, is it alive?
>CRUSHER: Fire is a chemical reaction. You could use the same argument for growing crystals, but obviously we don't consider them alive.
>DATA: And what about me? I do not grow. I do not reproduce. I am considered to be alive.
>CRUSHER: That's true, but you are unique.
>DATA: I wonder if that is so.
Serious question, a creator deity doesn't express all the qualities of what we would consider life. Maybe that's not relevant. Maybe a Yaldabaoth style demiurge would, but that's another story. Bottom line, we need to define life before we ask if God or Gods are alive.
>the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter,
>including the capacity for growth,
God created the universe, so his growth is inherit to the universe itself
>reproduction, the action or process of making a copy of something.
God created all life including man in his own image so you can say that is reproduction.
>functional activity
God is active in everyday existence in everything.
>continual change receding death.
God is the universe itself which is constantly changing. From life to death. There are animals (some jellyfish) on Earth that don't die and could be considered immortal so they don't fit this definition but we wouldn't consider them not alive.
God fits the definition of being alive.
>God created all life including man in his own image
Only man.
He also sent his only son to mankind which must really piss off the vulcans. I guess vulcans didn't need a savior.
Data would pass the test for a life form. He consumes some kind of liquid to help his body function but has a power cell that powers his body. He grew during his construction, though piece by piece. He's constantly adapting to his surroundings and can die. He has reproduced more than once in the series.
Checked. And also my least favorite phrase in the English language is "That's just semantics."
Seems like a bullshit definition designed to cater specifically to abrahamic religions.
Zeus wasn't omniscient. Hermes wasn't omnipotent. Hephaestus had nothing to do with creating humanity.
But everyone agrees that they're gods.
Hence “stickler” and “capital G”. Don’t reply when you lack basic comprehension.
>designed to cater specifically to abrahamic religions.
wut?
guess plato and aristotle were abrahamics? god is a powerful being. God is being itself
aquinas is a good example since he elaborated on aristotles definition of a capital G God. ipsum esse subsistiens, being itself subsisting. ie, God is a verb, he is pure existence itself enacting itself. so gods certainly do exist in star trek, but you can’t establish that God does
>he is pure existence itself enacting itself
Ah, the old "the universe is god" trick. Where you just point at a thing that exists, call it god, and dress it up with enough philosophical language to make it sound deep. Then you get to claim that god exists because you just gave the universe a new name, and discretely sneak your specific god of choice in through the back door while nobody is looking.
>"the universe is god" trick.
Nope, that ass-backwards. Your inability or refusal to understand metaphysics is a reflection on you, not the ideas you criticize.
Jesus can you please express this in a way people can actually understand.
From what I can tell you're saying their idea of god isn't "the universe" but "some sort of immaterial creating force that creates the universe". Which has the exact same problems as before. Except now you're pointing at the Higgs Field or something. Whatever the case, you eventually smuggle in all the normal christian mythology. Where he's suddenly a sentient being with an afterlife who wants to run our lives. Who literally manifested himself as a human being at one point.
oops, replied to the wrong person, meant to reply to
Yeah my
was dickish. Other guys is better but presumes some ideas you may not be familiar with. I do make a suggestion here
>Jesus can you please express this in a way people can actually understand.
I suggest you look up a proper description of the Argument from Motion. Aristotle's or Aquinas's refinement. If you want to get deep into the weed, you'll have to spend some time wrapping your head around Aristotelian metaphysics. Surprisingly much of the rest of your comment is pretty accurate, if not a bit reductionist.
>higgs field
No, because that’s also a condition of space and time. What the philosophers are talking about is totally unconditioned being itself, hence a verb. Your argument was that a god wasn’t a distinct thing from this, but it clearly is. A god is a discrete, contingent entity, not an infinity. It isn’t the basis of existence itself. Nobody once mentioned christianity, infact people were talking about pagan thinkers like plato and aristotle, aquinas merely developed their views. So basically, you were objectively wrong, and now you’ve pivoted to seething about a specific religion nobody was trying to prove to you- merely stating the philosophical difference between classical theism and polytheism.
No aquinas (and aristotle) are explicitly not equating the universe with God. They’re saying the universe is a series of contingent entities that is parasitic on the active force of existence which brings them into being. They’re saying the somethingness instead of nothingness everything is contingent upon is immaterial and eternal, basically, it’s pure act. The universe is still a discrete entity predicated on this. It’s not a pantheistic argument
>God is a verb
I found this phrase intriguing (and open to abuse). I find that it is often attributed to R. Buckminster Fuller, who seems to have had some surprisingly Thomistic views on Goad and man. Might read more about the man.
>immaterial
Friendly reminder that no one ever interpreted the biblical “made man in His own image“ to mean anything other than that God has an actual humanlike body until the Greeks got a hold of the Bible and post-Jesus israelites like Maimonides took their cues from abstract philosophy.
>Science proves God
C H E C K M A T E
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>some sort of god?
There are numerous reasons why pic rel would not even come close to considering Q "to be what man calls God." Most of them better than anything Picard offered.
>Legitimately HOW could you remain a catholic after meeting all sorts of races, interdimensional israeli shapeshifters and exploring terra incognita
homie the current Pope said israelites go to heaven despite outright rejecting Christ.
>this planet has people with scrunched up noses on it how tf does god exist!
Chakotay seems to be a practicing red indian.
Clearly implied is the premise that no one is getting past the religion filter, that will exist in post-earth galactic civilization.
Yeah, but energy beings and mind pattern transfer are somehow scientifically existing things.
Q is presented as a rational and likely being in an advanced, FTL-capable galaxy with dozens of sentient races.
>Also, the Bajoran religion is essentially true and Vulcans have souls.
It's a "Enterprise encounters a civilization it's jealous of and attempts to destabilise them for their own selfish benefit" episode.
it's called science fiction not science truth
No, there’s a reason science fiction and fantasy get grouped together.
“Science fantasy” is more accurate but never caught on.
Forgive me for invoking a TV Trope but Star Trek is full of Flat Earth Atheists
The Bajoran religion is more of a, "This race is so advanced and beyond our understanding they appear to be gods" type of thing, and the Bajorans worship them as such. They aren't literal gods
The area around Bajor seems ripe with fourdimensional timefrickery if you go by the episodes, this is probably just stupid fanwank but the idea that the Wormhole aliens are really far-future bajorans that evolved into the Prophets seems like a reasonable theory all things considered
JUST the first episode? Black person, the entirety of Star Trek is filled with spiritual anti-materialism, it's just made by midwits who don't really understand that belief and ideology are two separate things.
higher dimensional beings like Q flat out disprove materialism in the star trek universe. they wouldn’t be the sort of phil zombie fedora atheist that exists today, more like empiricism based agnostics
>there being more material than we currently can observe disproves materialism
>there being more material than we currently can observe disproves materialism
cretinistic deluxe materialism that cannot possibly see past its own nose or smell anything other than its own farts
to be fair they are pretty rank farts
Matter doesn’t need to have been created.
what can i say, except: you're welcome
i'm just an ordinary demiguy
One of my favourite episodes is in TOS when they literally went to a Greek God's planet, the gods were powered by worship, and they just nuked them, because the gods wanted them to force them to stay and worship them so they wouldn't die
Gods are absolutely real in the Star Trek verse, they are just being killed, and not by tech, by lack of faith
Am I the only one who would set up a system of worship to keep the greek gods alive? They contributed a lot to our culture as a species
Enterprise/Starfleet just ruin anything they're jealous of or don't understand fully. Recurring theme
Wesley broke the rules of that planet and should have been summarily executed.
Absolutely
It also HAS to work in a symbiotic relationship and the geek god said as much
Is not like they want the worship and do nothing
They wanted to please the crew, so they would stay (But they didn't wanted to get pleased that's why he tried to force them), ,and with more worship they would get more magical powers to do bigger for their flock and so on
It's like you are paying in worship for some magic service
It's so reasonable that the StarFleet wouldn't tolerate it
Is that the one where Kirk tells the gods (or aliens posing as gods or whatever) that "We have one God and He seems to be working out just fine for us"
yeah that's the one
Going to assume you already are aware of the followup episode.
Star Trek is full of magic, psychic powers, godlike energy beings, and other spiritual mumbo jumbo.
It's effectively a fantasy setting. Complete with elves. (vulcans)
The first episode was so weird it turned me off TNG the first time.
The TNG pilot was the first piece of Star Trek media I ever sat down to watch and I had the same reaction. Glad I stuck with it though and Q ends up being a really good antagonist.
Q isnt even an antagonist, TNG both started and ended with him, he was the facilitator for the Borg, he allowed Picard to grow as a person in many ways, and he steered humanity onwards to become literal masters of the universe. Q was, without exaggerating, the linchpin of TNG
>Does anyone think it's funny that in the first episode of the extremely rational and atheistic TNG that the antagonist is for all intents and purposes, some sort of god
No, TNG's entire theme is White Christian universal humanism being tested by an ammoral, cold, science based galaxy full of threats and people who don't play by those rules.
I find it exactly fitting
also it's TNG lore that an ancient alien species created humans and all other humanoid aliens in their own image. Which is why all the aliens are just slight variations of humans. So if God created man in his own image, he created the aliens that created man.
>Does anyone think it's funny that in the first episode of the extremely rational and atheistic TNG that the antagonist is for all intents and purposes, some sort of god?
No. A recurring theme Gene Roddenberry liked to pursue was "Man finds God or God-Analogue, man outwits and/or punches God in the dick." See also:
>Gary Mitchell, toward the end
>Trelane
>Plato's Stepchildren
>the blue boi at Sha-Ka-Ree
>Q
>Nagilum
Ol' Gene was probably too old for the "No Gods No Masters" phrasing, but he really did think humanity would be a self-propelling wheel a la Nietzche.
Q feels like a leftover from TGN season 1 trying to be like ToS.
From what I understand, most of the S1 TNG scripts were holdovers from a scrapped new series using the original TOS cast that was going to air in the early 1980s (or late 1970s, I forget). So you had a show in the late 80s using scripts meant for characters from the 1960s written by guys born in the 1930s - explaining sort of outdated stuff like the Wakanda planet and whatnot.
Anon, you just quoted RLM word for word
>Wakanda planet
Upsets people because they're reminded how little progress Black folk made. Star Trek comes across civilizations that are basically humans from centuries ago all the time and it's never an issue when they're white.
You know ecelebs copy all their material from the internet, right? They do nothing but regurgitate fact and popular sentiment.
>explaining sort of outdated stuff like the Wakanda planet and whatnot.
It's funny since, if I remember correctly, the script didn't actually specify that it was supposed to be a black planet. Either way, doesn't surprise me. Outside of a few gems like Measure of a Man most of them feel like bad Tos season 3 Episodes.
Hi Rich Evans, its me your friend from the internet
I personally believe that God is something similar to Azathoth and is a blind seething nuclear chaos that is just spouting out creation akin to a white hole. May not even be sentient. Why does creation have to be? Most of creation isn't sentient. Maybe we're an anomaly. The brain is the only organ that consciously thinks and yet every organ manages its own affairs quite well.
I personally think this is how Vulcans would view the universe and they find it liberating. Romulans, too, but they use it as an excuse to be amoral.
They commonly interact with things that Neanderthals would call “god,” not to mention they themselves are things Neanderthals would call god.
The point of the episode is humanity telling what is ostensibly God to frick off.
Gods are just aliens, bro. And magic is just technology that hasn't been figured out yet.
Reminder: atheism isn’t just not believing god doesn’t exist, it’s also not trusting god, not believing god has what’s best for humanity at heart.
>it’s also not trusting god, not believing god has what’s best for humanity at heart.
that is dystheism, not atheism
Nah. “I don’t believe in God” has multiple meanings.
>extremely rational and atheistic TNG
crypto-schizophrenic society of deluxe materialists with good manners
It just means that if you want to alienate Trekkies you just need to act religious.
The show is brainwash material.
The technology is real.
I had it all revealed to me years ago.