Faith and Reason
I finished watching Star Trek: Deep Space 9 recently, which means I finally get to talk about it. There may be some spoilers below, but I'll keep them out of the first part and put the rest under a cut.
Terry Eagleton's latest book, Reason, Faith and Revolution* argues that most atheists are missing the point when discussing a 'belief in God', because (according to him) what most faithful people mean when they say that they 'believe in God' is that they believe that God is good and will take care of them, and so on. I.e., they are saying they have faith IN God, as opposed to faith THAT God. I lost patience at this point because, quite obviously, any beliefs in the goodness of God are predicated on the belief that God exists. You can't postulate about the properties of x without first postulating the existence of x.
The thing about DS9, though, is that the Bajoran's gods actually exist. Really, genuinely, undisputably. Other species generally lack the Bajorans' faith in them (faith in, not faith that), referring to them as 'wormhole aliens', but at least after episode 1 there can be no doubt that, whether or not one refers to them as 'The Prophets', the creatures traditionally known as 'The Prophets' do exist.
It is very strange to me, therefore, that the supposedly scientifically-minded Federation chose to continue to regard the Bajoran religion with the same distancing scepticism it held before the undisputable proof of their gods' existence, which occurred at the beginning of the series. Now, it would be understandable to remain sceptical of the beings' status as gods, or in their intentions or supposed goodwill regarding the lives of the people of Bajor. But these are apparently creatures that are known to have accurate prescient abilities, due to existing outside of normal time (or something to that effect). And while, even so, it might make a sort of sense to take with a grain of salt or even outright ignore the Bajoran prophecies -- which are so shrouded in mystical language that they are, at the very least, difficult to interpret -- when the Prophets/Wormhole Aliens directly communicate with one of your senior officers, don't you think it would be reasonable for Starfleet to take them seriously? Instead the admirals are all "Oh, um, uh, er, we're not really comfortable with this whole 'religious' thing. We'd better go ahead with our plans as though we weren't just warned of their doom-causing by creatures that can definitely see the future." *headdesk*
I exist in normal time, though, and I am running out of it, so I'll limit myself to one quick spoiler-y observation, below the cut: SISKO IS TOTALLY JEEBUS! Interesting stuff with Kai Winn, too. I think she's the Anti-Pope. (Snuck in two observations! HA!)
* Half of this is a fantastic book: parts 1 and 2 are a hilariously acerbic and (as far as I can tell) largely justified polemic against militant atheism; but then in parts 3 and 4 he gets all religious and his arguments stop making sense.
Terry Eagleton's latest book, Reason, Faith and Revolution* argues that most atheists are missing the point when discussing a 'belief in God', because (according to him) what most faithful people mean when they say that they 'believe in God' is that they believe that God is good and will take care of them, and so on. I.e., they are saying they have faith IN God, as opposed to faith THAT God. I lost patience at this point because, quite obviously, any beliefs in the goodness of God are predicated on the belief that God exists. You can't postulate about the properties of x without first postulating the existence of x.
The thing about DS9, though, is that the Bajoran's gods actually exist. Really, genuinely, undisputably. Other species generally lack the Bajorans' faith in them (faith in, not faith that), referring to them as 'wormhole aliens', but at least after episode 1 there can be no doubt that, whether or not one refers to them as 'The Prophets', the creatures traditionally known as 'The Prophets' do exist.
It is very strange to me, therefore, that the supposedly scientifically-minded Federation chose to continue to regard the Bajoran religion with the same distancing scepticism it held before the undisputable proof of their gods' existence, which occurred at the beginning of the series. Now, it would be understandable to remain sceptical of the beings' status as gods, or in their intentions or supposed goodwill regarding the lives of the people of Bajor. But these are apparently creatures that are known to have accurate prescient abilities, due to existing outside of normal time (or something to that effect). And while, even so, it might make a sort of sense to take with a grain of salt or even outright ignore the Bajoran prophecies -- which are so shrouded in mystical language that they are, at the very least, difficult to interpret -- when the Prophets/Wormhole Aliens directly communicate with one of your senior officers, don't you think it would be reasonable for Starfleet to take them seriously? Instead the admirals are all "Oh, um, uh, er, we're not really comfortable with this whole 'religious' thing. We'd better go ahead with our plans as though we weren't just warned of their doom-causing by creatures that can definitely see the future." *headdesk*
I exist in normal time, though, and I am running out of it, so I'll limit myself to one quick spoiler-y observation, below the cut: SISKO IS TOTALLY JEEBUS! Interesting stuff with Kai Winn, too. I think she's the Anti-Pope. (Snuck in two observations! HA!)
* Half of this is a fantastic book: parts 1 and 2 are a hilariously acerbic and (as far as I can tell) largely justified polemic against militant atheism; but then in parts 3 and 4 he gets all religious and his arguments stop making sense.