Star Trek: Where No Man Could Ever Go
I enjoy watching Star Trek. Not the original series (which is too cheesy for me), but The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. However, being a Christian and striving to have a biblical worldview, it is (sometimes painfully) obvious that the worldview presented on Star Trek is most definitely not a biblical one. Rather, The Star Trek worldview is founded on secular, humanistic, man-exalting philosophies, including materialism, empiricism, and relativism. Star Trek is, in fact, a paragon of such ideals. Two questions:
- What happened to God in the 24th century? It is clear that the Star Trek worldview includes nothing less than rejection of and rebellion against the God of all creation and the very universe which it is Starfleet's mission to explore. However, while, on the one hand, humanity in the Star Trek universe has abandoned all religion, on the other hand, the show, in many episodes, has encounters with deities or supernatural forces in other civilizations and worlds. And, whenever any such encounters with the seeming supernatural occur, it is shown to be either some advanced, highly-evolved form of life or the result of some initially-unknown kind of uber-advanced technology. And, there is never any though or mention of what might have created space and time themselves.
- What happened to truth in the 24th century? The Star Trek universe is one in which thousands of civilizations and species exist throughout the galaxy. The show uses interactions among morally-diverse societies and civilizations to deny and condemn the existence of any absolute truth. In a universe with no omnipotent god, neither is there truth.
"Q" (MARSHAL)
(lifts book)
Shall I quote from Hamlet?
PICARD
No. I know Hamlet. And what
he said with irony I prefer to
say with conviction.
(quoting)
"What a piece of work is man!
How noble in reason! How infinite
in faculty. In form, in moving,
how express and admirable. In
action, how like an angel. In
apprehension, how like a god... "
"Q" (MARSHAL)
(upset; interrupting)
You don't really see your species
like that?!
PICARD
I see us one day becoming that,
"Q". Is that what concerns you?
"Q" comes angrily to his feet, SLAMMING the volume down
and DISAPPEARING in a FLASH. A startled and puzzled
Picard watches him go, then turns to ponder the meaning
of "Q"'s anger.
Ironically, the philosophy of Star Trek, in exalting man, actually degrades him. For example, in the episode "The Measure of a Man," Captain Picard formally defends Lt. Cmdr. Data, an android, against charges that Data, being a machine, is the property of Starfleet and therefore may be subjected to being disassembled and experimented on by Starfleet. One of Picard's arguments is that, like Data, humans, too, are machines:
PICARD
(making his opening
statement)
Commander Riker has dramatically
demonstrated to this court that
Lieutenant Commander Data is a
machine. Do we deny that? No.
But how is this relevant? We too
are machines, just machines of
a different type. Commander Riker
has continually reminded us that
Data was built by a human. We
do not deny that fact. But again
how is it relevant? Does
construction imply ownership?
Children are created from the
building blocks of their parents'
DNA. Are they property? We have
a chance in this hearing to
severely limit the boundaries
of freedom. And I think we
better be pretty damn careful
before we take so arrogant a step.What a sad and pathetic view of man modern secular science has propogated to the world! Regarding humans as basically bags of chemicals, it makes man merely another species in the animal kingdom. What a travesty!
For more, see the interesting article, Science Fiction: A Biblical Perspective and this blog post.
