John Morehead posted yesterday on the treatment of religion in Star Trek, in particular a couple of episodes from The Next Generation. He writes at the end of his post:
What I find of interest is that one of the most popular and enduring of science fiction franchises interacted with religion, and did so in the way that it did, eschewing religion in one sense, and yet retaining its value in another. It remains to be seen whether Star Trek will engage religion again in the future, but as I have noted previously, although it has skeptical and hostile stances toward religion, it has ironically become something of a religion itself among its fandom, through its optimistic humanism, the ethic of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination, and attendance at conventions functioning as religious pilgrimage for the faithful. Hopefully the Great Bird of the Galaxy would not protest too much.
Click through to read the whole thing and find out how he got there. To entice you, here is a video clip embedded in the blog post:
What I find of interest is that one of the most popular and enduring of science fiction franchises interacted with religion, and did so in the way that it did, eschewing religion in one sense, and yet retaining its value in another. It remains to be seen whether Star Trek will engage religion again in the future, but as I have noted previously, although it has skeptical and hostile stances toward religion, it has ironically become something of a religion itself among its fandom, through its optimistic humanism, the ethic of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination, and attendance at conventions functioning as religious pilgrimage for the faithful. Hopefully the Great Bird of the Galaxy would not protest too much.
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