New series?

posted on August 20th, 2009, 7:18 pm

I appreciated Star Trek's attempts to delve into the religious/spiritual aspects of humanity (and not just because I serve as a Lutheran pastor).  Faith, hope, trust, love...these are part of the human experience as well.

It's rather ironic--for all our attempts at being "enlightened" in Western society (or any other, for that matter), we can never seem to completely do away with the gods.  We still end up looking somewhere for meaning, purpose, direction, and hope.  To be sure, some look to human achievement to hold them up (like most of the characters in ST who, let's face it, generally lead lives of plenty)  But others, like the Bajorans, in the midst of tremendous adversity, look outside themselves to someone more who often works through earthly means.  The Cardassians in general reflect what can happen to a broken people (if I remember correctly, they were once described as a spiritual people)  The Vulcans and Romulans split over questions of absolute meaning--questions addressed in religion.

Luther once claimed that whatever we place our final hope in is what we look to as our god.  Whether the writers intend to our not, they do illustrate some of what people look to.  While I admit, I have a slant on where I would like to see that trust placed, they do nevertheless look at a major aspect of humanity by doing so, and I would be sad if they never addressed it again

posted on August 20th, 2009, 9:15 pm

i used to have the dominion taking over of ds9 episode on tape that i would watch from time to time.   i remember fast forwarding through the whole pah wraith section cause it didnt seem to fit in for some reason i couldnt put my finger on.  of course to be honest i would fast forward through pretty much everything else just to get to the goodies.

im not sure that the whole pah wraith thing was meant for religious people so much as for fantasy type people.  im not sure why they thought they had to put that in there.  most people are  just as comfortable watching fantasy as well as scifi and dont need for them to be mixed to enjoy them.   a recent trend in fantasy is the steampunk idea.  as seen in WoW and the Thief series and even in games like morrowind where they had dwemer robots.

Steam powered Enterprise, torps replaced with cannonballs! Future Here we come... 

posted on August 21st, 2009, 9:33 am

I appreciated Star Trek's attempts to delve into the religious/spiritual aspects of humanity (and not just because I serve as a Lutheran pastor).  Faith, hope, trust, love...these are part of the human experience as well.

It's rather ironic--for all our attempts at being "enlightened" in Western society (or any other, for that matter), we can never seem to completely do away with the gods.  We still end up looking somewhere for meaning, purpose, direction, and hope.   To be sure, some look to human achievement to hold them up (like most of the characters in ST who, let's face it, generally lead lives of plenty)  But others, like the Bajorans, in the midst of tremendous adversity, look outside themselves to someone more who often works through earthly means.  The Cardassians in general reflect what can happen to a broken people (if I remember correctly, they were once described as a spiritual people)  The Vulcans and Romulans split over questions of absolute meaning--questions addressed in religion.

Luther once claimed that whatever we place our final hope in is what we look to as our god.  Whether the writers intend to our not, they do illustrate some of what people look to.  While I admit, I have a slant on where I would like to see that trust placed, they do nevertheless look at a major aspect of humanity by doing so, and I would be sad if they never addressed it again

I do not consider your aspects (hope, trust, love, looking for meaning etc.) as only religious issues. I'm atheist and also confronted with these things everyday. I could do away with gods. Star Trek has been able to point these things out on other occasions, I think in TNG quite often. Faith is something else of course and clearly linked with religion. The problem in DS9 was, that they made it a too big part of the whole show. They could have made some episodes about to characterize the Bajorans, even an episode about religious fundamentalism like "Empok Nor"(I think it was the name of the episode were Dukat founded his sect) is okay. But it was just too much in my opinion.
Your Luther quote is interesting. Following that I should see my ideology as a god, although it is part of that ideology to do away with relgion. Tricky thing and sounds more evil now then it is 

posted on August 21st, 2009, 10:11 pm

True, other philosophies have struggled with these questions as well.  Nevertheless, they are still questions that are core to religion.

Overall, I thought DS9 worked with religion pretty well.  It was set on a Bajoran owned space station, with a Bajoran and later a Klingon as major characters, afterall--you can't help BUT encounter religion in such an environment.  Not unlike the situation you find throughout most of the United States. 

posted on August 21st, 2009, 10:14 pm

PS: Yeah, Luther's writings are prone to things like that.