By Joshua Tyler
| Updated
Star Trek has long had a complicated and changing relationship with religion. This week, it came full circle when the captain of the Enterprise got down on his knees and started reciting the Lord’s Prayer in the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 premiere.
Newer Trek fans whose only franchise exposure has been the secular extremism of Star Trek: Discovery may have been shocked by it, but long-time Trekkies shouldn’t have been.
Modern pop culture treats the grand old franchise as if it’s avowedly atheist, but that’s totally untrue. That notion comes from a line uttered by Captain Picard in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Who Watches The Watchers”.
Speaking on the state of humanity in the future, Picard rails against an irrational belief in superstition. He lobbies in favor of rational thinking, instead.
Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was an open and avowed atheist. However, when Star Trek debuted on television in the 1960s, 90% of the American population was staunchly Christian, and an atheist television program was impossible. Had it been possible, it’s doubtful Roddenberry would have done anything different. His version of Trek was designed to get people thinking, not tell them what to think.
Those early Trek episodes generally avoided directly addressing belief in God; however, what little we know of Captain Kirk’s beliefs as a character suggests that, back then at least, he was being written as a Christ believer.
In the season 2 episode “Who Mourns For Adonis,” when faced with a Greek god, Kirk says, “Mankind has no need for gods. We find the one quite adequate.”
Read that line too fast, and you might think Kirk is saying humans don’t need God anymore, but the plural form of the word is key. The line is actually a statement of faith in the kind of monotheism Christians practice.
When faced with a being claiming to be Jehovah himself in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, James T. Kirk is open to the possibility but also ready to question its validity. When that being doesn’t measure up to the one outlined in the Christian Bible, Kirk faces down lightning wrath to ask, “What does God need with a starship?”
Kirk was written as a rationalist and a skeptic first. Whatever other beliefs he held sprang from that. He was rational, moderate and maybe also Christian.
And if Star Trek has an official religion, that’s what it is. Rationalism. Not atheism.
Though Captain Picard and the Next Generation crew were atheist in their views, that too was rooted in rationalist methodology.
Things were very different in the series that followed Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Religion is the central question of that entire series, focused around a planet full of believers and a Star Trek captain, Ben Sisko, who may be a god himself.
Sisko takes a rationalist approach to his own divinity, resisting worshipers and focusing on getting things done through logical thinking. His Bajoran first officer, Kira Nerys, however, bases her entire life around religious belief. Numerous episodes of the show are spent following her as she prays in temples and communes with priests.
There’s nothing rational about Kira, but what is rational is respecting and supporting her right to believe things that provide a positive framework on which she builds her life. Without her faith, after the life of horror she’s led, Kira would fall apart.
The Federation insists on calling the gods Kira believes in aliens, but in behavior and power, they fit the definition of god as well as any being. Kira’s religion and the gods she worships are as real as the nose on your face.
Who’s to say Christopher Pike’s isn’t?
The New Atheist movement, which I helped champion in my earlier and more naive days as an online journalist, argued that God’s existence cannot be proven. Therefore, it is not rational to believe in him. Star Trek has always argued that while it’s true the existence of god cannot be proven (unless you’re Bajoran), it also cannot be disproven.
In the end, it may be that Star Trek’s view is the most rational approach. One that encourages people to embrace whichever ideas are most beneficial for their well-being, whether it’s atheism, belief, or something else.
In the 60s, Star Trek was a moderately Christian program, rooted in the best versions of those values.
In the 80s, as Atheism got going as a movement, it examined what a future without religion might be like.
In the 90s Star Trek preached tolerance and coexistence among believers and non-believers, mutual respect for each others beliefs or non-beliefs.
In the 2000s, the franchise skewed towards secular fundamentalism and a rejection of faith in favor of good vibes and projectile emotionalism.
Now here we are again, at the turning of the tide, with the Enterprise captain embracing the religion of his father and turning to God in a moment of fear and desperation.
For Star Trek, it’s a return to rational consistency after a brief period of insanity. It’s a sign that times are changing. The new atheist movement that emptied churches is weakening.
Some atheists, like me, who pushed for an all atheist world, are starting to admit that it may not have been a good idea. Others like me assumed that, if only people applied cold Vulcan logic to reality, things would get better.
It’s the kind of classic mistake Spock might have made. It fails to take into account the human factor and assumes that all people are capable of being logical. That view isn’t rational. With age and experience, the world has learned that many can’t and many won’t apply intellectually rigorous thinking. Trying to force it on them via mass media brainwashing has only led to cultural disaster.
I don’t need or want a god to moderate my behavior or guide my path, but many do. If that’s you, you’re in good company because Captain Pike does, too.
Humanity’s future is one of infinite possibilities. Star Trek is at its best when considering all of them, with a rational approach to a future of infinite possibilities in infinite combinations
