Atheism in the UFP

[Sideswipe]

Depends on how you take the connotative meaning of the word "faith." At it's core, faith refers to trust, or conviction, not necessarily without cause. Compare to blind faith. A dedicated atheist may not put faith in a god, but they certainly put faith in their conviction that there is no god.

Faith is not a requirement for atheism. It's a rejection of a claim. It doesn't take anymore faith than rejecting bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, or alien abductions.

[2046]

whereas the latter is a declaration of militant certitude.

Wrong. I am sure some atheists would fit that category, but that is by no means required of atheism. You can be both agnostic and atheist at the same time.

Not by any rational scheme of nomenclature. So-called agnostic atheism is agnosticism featuring the rejection of all known deities.… agnosticism by any other name. Atheism is the rejection of deities in principle, period.

I don't see any purpose in monkeying with the definitions. That's as useful as calling oneself an atheist Christian because one rejects all deities but one.

Also, watch your quoting, please. In the last post you make it appear I am being quoted.

[Sideswipe]

I was quoting you.

Also, I don't get what your point is? I simply stated that what you describe as "militant certitude" is not a requirement of atheism.

[2046]

No you weren't. The "Depends" quote isn't me.

And my point was to contest the validity of the virtually meaningless concept of agnostic atheism. However, in fairness, I will walk back "militant" given some of the connotations.

[Cocytus]

Since the topic of real-world atheism has already been broached:

In my view it really depends on which of Darth Spock's provided definitions we use. If the evidence, or at least that evidence the individual has considered, (a vital distinction to make) is not sufficient to enable them to believe, that seems to be agnostic atheism. The individual doesn't make a claim to knowledge, but merely states a position of belief that can be revised at a later date. Gnostic atheism does make a claim to knowledge. The claim that certain things don't exist or are impossible is a leap of faith, because it requires that evidence for those things will never be produced, (if it hasn't already) and theories will never be revised, no matter how sophisticated the technology of observation becomes. Having been part of the atheist community I well recall the rhetorical devices, logical errors and blinders that restrict one's view to only that evidence which will reinforce the conclusion one already came to. I practiced the art of "debunking," an exercise in circular reasoning if ever there was one. If you assume and set out to prove something false, by definition you've already reached a conclusion, and are simply looking for evidence to support it. I drew upon the great koan of atheism: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs," which I once considered a sacrosanct scientific axiom. It isn't really. It's a rhetorical device that serves the same purpose for atheists that "God works in mysterious ways" does for Christians: allowing them to shift the goalposts. In the end, this sort of thinking is nothing more that one grand circle of logic. Phenomena that contravene prevailing theories must be the result of delusion or fraud (even to the point of engaging in conspiracy theorizing). They cannot actually exist, because the prevailing theories rule them out. And any evidence for them must meet an arbitrary, subjective standard of "extraordinariness" (that cannot be assessed empirically) before it is admitted for consideration. Question begged, logic loop complete. I asked myself a question. Could I persevere in atheism when applying the same standards of evidence to extraordinary claims that I did to ordinary ones? The answer was no. So I guess I would fall into the agnostic theist category too.

As far as Star Trek goes, people might eschew the omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent creator of the Western monotheistic tradition, but that's as far as one could go and have any credibility. The Trekverse is littered with beings that would fit most any definition of godlike. There are the Q who, aside from whatever limitations Quinn hints at in "Death Wish," can do pretty much as they please with the fabric of reality. There are the Douwd, immortal, able to create matter and energy at will, and powerful enough to sense every member of a 50 billion-strong species and annihilate them with a thought. There are the Organians, who are to us as we are to amoebae, to quote Spock. Whatever one thinks of telepathy and disembodied consciousness in the real world, their existence is unambiguous fact in Trek. There are many telepathic races, from the Betazoids to the Botha, mind-melding is common practice for Vulcans, Ira Graves transferred his mind to Data, and both Picard and Chakotay became disembodied consciousnesses and wandered about their respective ships in "Lonely Among Us" and "Cathexis."

As an aside, it's a pretty big contradiction on the part of the writers to write polemic diatribes like Picard's while simultaneously writing things that are obviously, to our current science, supernatural, but I think it reflects something in the current culture. Most people are utterly intolerant of ambiguity or uncertainty, and the need to naturalize things is so pervasive that we're content to mask ambiguity with "science-y" language that, in our minds, constitutes an "explanation." Chakotay isn't a ghost, his neural energy has been displaced. The Prophets aren't gods, they're wormhole aliens. Whatever makes you comfortable.

[Mr. Oragahn]

whereas the latter is a declaration of militant certitude.

Wrong. I am sure some atheists would fit that category, but that is by no means required of atheism. You can be both agnostic and atheist at the same time.

An agnostic person would be on the fence, a "who knows?" position, whilst theists and atheists are found on either sides of it.
I'd say let's keep the definitions simple. Anything in between, is more of this, less of that, in the way you show tolerance towards the other side.

As to bounce off of what RSA said, one can be a theist yet not practice and, in such circumstances, pretty much practically operate as any agnostic, if the opinion has little influence on daily chores and other ruminations.

There certainly are fundies on both sides. Although these days you hear about the theistic ones, I don't think it was particularly cool to oppose the brute force atheism of the Bolshevik regime in Russia.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Depends on how you take the connotative meaning of the word "faith." At it's core, faith refers to trust, or conviction, not necessarily without cause. Compare to blind faith. A dedicated atheist may not put faith in a god, but they certainly put faith in their conviction that there is no god.

Faith is certainly an allowance to be convinced of one thing without having the means to prove what you're convinced of. Otherwise, with proof in your hands, you'd have a demonstration to share. Faith is like an hypothesis without reaching the point of practical demonstration.

That said, Agnostic atheism is a thing.

Yes, that's the soft sauce version of atheism.

Personally, I find the idea of an interested party overseeing the formation of the universe, solar system, planet, etc. more likely than infinite monkeys getting lucky, and this being it. If this whole place, and all of us are the result of more than a really weird fluke, I can only think of 3 possibilities:
A) God got bored and wandered off. (Sounds like Q from All Good Things)
B) God is mean, and everything is a sick joke. (Again, Q looks guilty)
C) God had a plan, but something bad happened. Fixes forthcoming. (Which is actually what the Christian Bible indicates)

A. :) ... you'd wonder what this being would be waiting for to reboot the whole thing or eventually participate. That's probably the most depressing option, the indifference: we're ALL boring to it.
B. That is the basic teaching of gnosticism and anything demiurge related, although the maker isn't that evil.
C. Well that's the plot for Moore's reimagined Battlestar Galactica. More concretely, I don't think the Christian bible ever divulges The Plan (like a ton of religions).

Meaning, to me, that religion is at least worth investigating. I confess, I have not conducted a thorough investigation of religions other than Christianity, but you can understand my inclination to work outward from something familiar. :)
At any rate, as much as I dislike putting labels on things as a matter of oversimplification, I suppose at present I would most likely fit under the category of agnostic theist. I'll just keep digging until everything clicks, or until Armageddon rolls along. That would be a dandy of a confirmation, although I wouldn't relish the idea of getting strung up for believing in God. Nobody expects the Atheist Inquisition.

The Russians surely didn't expect it post 1918. Yet...

[Mr. Oragahn]

whereas the latter is a declaration of militant certitude.

Wrong. I am sure some atheists would fit that category, but that is by no means required of atheism. You can be both agnostic and atheist at the same time.

Not by any rational scheme of nomenclature. So-called agnostic atheism is agnosticism featuring the rejection of all known deities.… agnosticism by any other name. Atheism is the rejection of deities in principle, period.

I don't see any purpose in monkeying with the definitions. That's as useful as calling oneself an atheist Christian because one rejects all deities but one.

Also, watch your quoting, please. In the last post you make it appear I am being quoted.

Well, that murky definition of an atheistic individual as "one without a god" or "without God" is most likely largely influenced by the Christian intilligentsia, for which not having their god meant you were an atheist (and still are). So basically, even if for clarity's sake, we'd see three camps, atheism, agnosticism and theism, Christian churches usually pack the two other sides under the same umbrella: atheism, or "heathenism" maybe. :)
So that's the only way we can have that term that logically appears self-contradictory; by understanding atheism in an encompassing, generalizing way: without a god.
But that's not the defintion I dig because to me atheism is a staunch statement, with no ifs or in betweens.
It puts it squarely: there is no god, period.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Since the topic of real-world atheism has already been broached:

In my view it really depends on which of Darth Spock's provided definitions we use. If the evidence, or at least that evidence the individual has considered, (a vital distinction to make) is not sufficient to enable them to believe, that seems to be agnostic atheism. The individual doesn't make a claim to knowledge, but merely states a position of belief that can be revised at a later date. Gnostic atheism does make a claim to knowledge.

Hang on. This is getting too far.
If agnostic atheism was already a weird concept, this one above is simply impossible. Whatever the flavour, gnosticism goes hand in hand with the claim of the existence of God.

Now, ok, the ethymological construct behing agnosticism is quite problematic...

The claim that certain things don't exist or are impossible is a leap of faith, because it requires that evidence for those things will never be produced, (if it hasn't already) and theories will never be revised, no matter how sophisticated the technology of observation becomes.

Yes, that I agree on. One could read that as a massive lack of curiosity and a form of close mindedness.

Having been part of the atheist community I well recall the rhetorical devices, logical errors and blinders that restrict one's view to only that evidence which will reinforce the conclusion one already came to. I practiced the art of "debunking," an exercise in circular reasoning if ever there was one. If you assume and set out to prove something false, by definition you've already reached a conclusion, and are simply looking for evidence to support it.

It's biased. There's no room for the possibility of being proven wrong because the goal is to always be right. Although the same applies with militant theists from the most popular religions, the kind who take things literally, but the rhetoric is different. I argued with them too, it's just that painful.
If anything, I find it interesting that the eluding question that never gets asked is what is the meaning of god.
I think many of the so called atheists, once over their nerd rage years, get tired of it and simply turn to... (and this one is going to sound awful) agnostic apatheism. Only the hardcore atheists seem to make it personnal and ego-driven.
OTOH, the more I try recall what was the most rock solid proof of the lack of existence of a god or gods, the infinite, atemporal, irrefutable proof, the more troublesome it feels like. If only on simple logical grounds. That, because the definition of god needs to be made before anything else, and only from there we can decide if such a thing could be there - and this is not even talking about being active or sleeping.

I drew upon the great koan of atheism: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs," which I once considered a sacrosanct scientific axiom. It isn't really. It's a rhetorical device that serves the same purpose for atheists that "God works in mysterious ways" does for Christians: allowing them to shift the goalposts. In the end, this sort of thinking is nothing more that one grand circle of logic. Phenomena that contravene prevailing theories must be the result of delusion or fraud (even to the point of engaging in conspiracy theorizing). They cannot actually exist, because the prevailing theories rule them out. And any evidence for them must meet an arbitrary, subjective standard of "extraordinariness" (that cannot be assessed empirically) before it is admitted for consideration. Question begged, logic loop complete. I asked myself a question. Could I persevere in atheism when applying the same standards of evidence to extraordinary claims that I did to ordinary ones? The answer was no. So I guess I would fall into the agnostic theist category too.

While I understand your point of view, please let's avoid using such horrible terms as agnostic theist, yes? :)
Unless you mean you're a theist who has espoused one of the non-gnostic religions?
Oh, agnostic is such a troubling term.

As far as Star Trek goes, people might eschew the omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent creator of the Western monotheistic tradition, but that's as far as one could go and have any credibility. The Trekverse is littered with beings that would fit most any definition of godlike. There are the Q who, aside from whatever limitations Quinn hints at in "Death Wish," can do pretty much as they please with the fabric of reality. There are the Douwd, immortal, able to create matter and energy at will, and powerful enough to sense every member of a 50 billion-strong species and annihilate them with a thought. There are the Organians, who are to us as we are to amoebae, to quote Spock. Whatever one thinks of telepathy and disembodied consciousness in the real world, their existence is unambiguous fact in Trek. There are many telepathic races, from the Betazoids to the Botha, mind-melding is common practice for Vulcans, Ira Graves transferred his mind to Data, and both Picard and Chakotay became disembodied consciousnesses and wandered about their respective ships in "Lonely Among Us" and "Cathexis."

With all at hand, and the fact that before meeting one of these species, one would say such beings cannot exist, I find it hard that a form of hardcore atheism could honestly be practiced within the confines of the enlightened UFP.
Basically, with the Organians and Douwds, what's the next frontier, really? Where does it stop?

As an aside, it's a pretty big contradiction on the part of the writers to write polemic diatribes like Picard's while simultaneously writing things that are obviously, to our current science, supernatural, but I think it reflects something in the current culture.

Well, Ronald D. Moore was behind this script iirc. The guy has a soft spot for religious themes or symbolisms.
BSG itself is littered with them, and many aren't glaring.

Most people are utterly intolerant of ambiguity or uncertainty, and the need to naturalize things is so pervasive that we're content to mask ambiguity with "science-y" language that, in our minds, constitutes an "explanation."

Depends on who are those "most people".
In a country that is quite divorced from state religions or any mainstream religion holding a considerable influence, many people I talked to, when they weren't affiliated to one of those religions, seemed rather open minded, or more like they didn't really care as their daily concerns were what mattered.
Some were soft theists, other soft atheists, not really willing to argue and perfectly admiting that their opinion was just one they took and maintained without wanting to look beyond.

Chakotay isn't a ghost, his neural energy has been displaced. The Prophets aren't gods, they're wormhole aliens. Whatever makes you comfortable.

The funny thing is that polytheism pretty much requires that all gods, minus eventually the penultimate chief, have limits.
So from there, it would seem fair to consider the Prophets gods.

[Cocytus]

Hang on. This is getting too far.
If agnostic atheism was already a weird concept, this one above is simply impossible. Whatever the flavour, gnosticism goes hand in hand with the claim of the existence of God.

Now, ok, the ethymological construct behing agnosticism is quite problematic...

I don't mean the sense of capitalized Gnosticism, but simply gnostic/agnostic as pertains to whether one claims knowledge of a particular subject. Though I think your terms of hard and soft are better.

Yes, that I agree on. One could read that as a massive lack of curiosity and a form of close mindedness.

There are members of the atheist community who are quite straightforward about condemning open-mindedness. Lewis Wolpert quite openly states that "open minds are empty minds," and Michael Shermer, somewhat less inflexible, tells us we should keep open minds, "but not so open our brains fall out." Problem is, the "brains falling out" doesn't seem to happen when the actual methods of science are abrogated, but when one allows for possibilities that are not accounted for by current theories, begging the question yet again.

It's biased. There's no room for the possibility of being proven wrong because the goal is to always be right. Although the same applies with militant theists from the most popular religions, the kind who take things literally, but the rhetoric is different. I argued with them too, it's just that painful.
If anything, I find it interesting that the eluding question that never gets asked is what is the meaning of god.
I think many of the so called atheists, once over their nerd rage years, get tired of it and simply turn to... (and this one is going to sound awful) agnostic apatheism. Only the hardcore atheists seem to make it personnal and ego-driven.
OTOH, the more I try recall what was the most rock solid proof of the lack of existence of a god or gods, the infinite, atemporal, irrefutable proof, the more troublesome it feels like. If only on simple logical grounds. That, because the definition of god needs to be made before anything else, and only from there we can decide if such a thing could be there - and this is not even talking about being active or sleeping.

I can actually understand the personal and ego-driven aspects. Many prominent media atheists have built academic, speaking, and publishing careers around being Right. Their fanboys are just that, and are Right by association.

The whole question of proof bothers me as well, since the kind of absolute proof present in deductive reasoning isn't really possible with science. The conclusions may be well supported or poorly supported, but to assert that they are absolutely True or False is to put an end to inquiry. It also requires avoiding consideration of anomalies by simply putting them in the file drawer as an Error Some Place, a "dirty test tube," as Ray Hyman put it.

I also got sick and tired of the relentless, masturbatory self-congratulation. Yes yes, you're so much better than everyone else. You're the only ones with the intellectual clarity and emotional maturity to accept our meaningless existence and eternal oblivion for what it is, you don't need Sky-Daddy telling you what's what, Jesus is Santa Claus for grown-ups, religion had its chance to run the world, et cetera. I look at these people now and think "THAT'S what I was like?"

While I understand your point of view, please let's avoid using such horrible terms as agnostic theist, yes? :)
Unless you mean you're a theist who has espoused one of the non-gnostic religions?
Oh, agnostic is such a troubling term.

Yes it is, so I guess I'm apathetic insofar as my lifestyle wouldn't really change if proof were offered for or against God. That said, I've become more of a spiritualist over the years, though the existence of spirits or an afterlife would not necessarily require the existence of God.

With all at hand, and the fact that before meeting one of these species, one would say such beings cannot exist, I find it hard that a form of hardcore atheism could honestly be practiced within the confines of the enlightened UFP.
Basically, with the Organians and Douwds, what's the next frontier, really? Where does it stop?

2046's conclusion strikes me as being on the mark. The Federation acknowledges the existence of vastly superior entities, but doesn't feel any need to worship them or beseech favors of them (except in exceptional cases, as when Sisko asked the Prophets to destroy the Jem'Hadar fleet inside the wormhole, or Picard asked Q to save them from the Borg.) The Q are testing humanity, probably for exactly the reason Picard stated in your linked video. I think Trek humans will eventually achieve godlike powers (I think real humans will too, frankly) and that Q's purpose is actually to steadily guide them towards it. His quote about "charting the unknown possibilities of existence" in All Good Things seems to imply it. That funny little smile when he says "you'll find out?" I've always interpreted that as Q subtly hinting that, however many millions of years ago, the Q weren't too dissimilar from humans.

Jump to 4:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBwoEXlTph0

Depends on who are those "most people".
In a country that is quite divorced from state religions or any mainstream religion holding a considerable influence, many people I talked to, when they weren't affiliated to one of those religions, seemed rather open minded, or more like they didn't really care as their daily concerns were what mattered.
Some were soft theists, other soft atheists, not really willing to argue and perfectly admiting that their opinion was just one they took and maintained without wanting to look beyond.

Okay, "most people" is an exaggeration, I grant. But it seems to me a certain mindset is intolerant of uncertainty, and that this accurately describes both hard atheists and the fundamentalist crowd. Both crave an authority figure that tells them How Things Are, one looks for it in scripture and one looks for it in science. That's what really bothers me. The second you declare some scientific theory inviolable for all time you've declared an end to inquiry. Science is a method, not a set of positions, and the continued observance of the method will, as technology improves, overturn the positions. To suggest that what we know now can only be confirmed, not challenged, by future generations is as large a leap of faith as any religious conviction.

[2046]

Cocytus, I am enjoying the cut of your jib, here.

For one thing, you defined "militant" for me: "Yes yes, you're so much better than everyone else. You're the only ones with the intellectual clarity and emotional maturity to accept our meaningless existence and eternal oblivion for what it is, you don't need Sky-Daddy telling you what's what, Jesus is Santa Claus for grown-ups, religion had its chance to run the world, et cetera. I look at these people now and think "THAT'S what I was like?" "

No one expects the atheist inquisition!

Of course, being more than a touch Randroid, I take issue with "meaningless existence", but still.

As for a creator, suffice it to say that many of the US Founding Fathers were deists ... the universe was created somehow but that's about as far as divinity went, as things seem to truck on about the same whether you believe in a sky-daddy or not. As it stands now, we've peered much further back than they ever could have dreamed, to the very moment of creation, and thus pressed their rational need for deism to that same point.

Indeed, when I ponder the existence of the universe, even as a staunch defender of evolutionary science and Big Bang cosmology for the 25 years or so since my initial 'experiment' with agnosticism began, I can't help but find the notion of the universe's existence more than a little ... strange. I realize it's a bit of navel-gazing akin to pondering the existence of the number one or somesuch, but that, to me, is the big question. I'm no deist, but I understand.

Forget "why are we here?" ... I wanna know what the hell all this other shit ... shit itself and the space between ... is doing here. Whether it exploded and expanded or was always around, what the hell is existence doing existing? I don't have a satisfactory answer, nor do I anticipate one.

Star Trek never suggests an answer to that, but I daresay they probably found a satisfactory one in order for folks to roll on as they seemingly do.

Alternately, it's a touch of Rand and a touch of, to quote a lovely blonde Ukrainian of my former acquaintance when asked what atheists live for, the so-simple-its-genius answer of "just live".

[Mr. Oragahn]

I also got sick and tired of the relentless, masturbatory self-congratulation. Yes yes, you're so much better than everyone else. You're the only ones with the intellectual clarity and emotional maturity to accept our meaningless existence and eternal oblivion for what it is, you don't need Sky-Daddy telling you what's what, Jesus is Santa Claus for grown-ups, religion had its chance to run the world, et cetera. I look at these people now and think "THAT'S what I was like?"

I conjure pictures of those scientific events wherein prominent atheistic figures occupy the front row and all of them seem to revel in the sermons cast from the central stage like bes dousing themselves in queen juice, all their minds synchronized and raptured by the comforting litanies.
When you take a step back, it's kinda gross, perhaps scary, and certainly reeks off of some pedantic and massive sense of superiority.

They love to score cheap points against the literal descriptions of gods in the source books, but I don't think they ever get challenged by capable yet seclusive people, who may have better things to do because they may not be interested in converting masses at all.

That said, I've become more of a spiritualist over the years, though the existence of spirits or an afterlife would not necessarily require the existence of God.

It would "only" require the existence of appropriate rules codified in the mechanics of this universe and I guess, eventually, some kind of transitional realm for such things to happen in conjunction with the lives and actions of mortals.
This part, I think, has always been highly speculative.

The Q are testing humanity, probably for exactly the reason Picard stated in your linked video.

Interestingly enough, this is precisely what the God of Old and New Testaments is entitled to, too; testing. And testing, he does a lot.
In fact, when you consider that Yahweh/Yehovah is detached from his "Creation", he's ought to be a lesser god, since a true, one and absolutely complete "top spot" God would by definition certainly comprise everything that is. We'd be dealing with something very close to pantheism, instead of the monotheism as understood through the judeo-christian prism.
The following logic would therefore require that anyone ready to recognize this Yahweh entity as a god, at least within the confines of those sacred books, would also have little reasons to deny a "Q" such status in regards to their extremely potent abilities.

Jump to 4:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBwoEXlTph0

Ha, all lines are too good to be skipped. :)
What is fantastic is that none of what is heard precludes the existence of some ultimate, all encompassing force, but it certainly tells a story much different than the mainstream soup religions serve to hastily satisfied minds across the globe.
It's quite more profound than whatever meagre cursory look would allow to consider.

All in all, I think I got my answers regarding my initial query.

[Lucky]

I remember that TNG episode where Picard pissed off Q by telling him he was absolutely 300% convinced that one day humans would be gods, or something along those lines.

You really should do more research before making grand statements. Why not simply track down the quotes you're thinking rather then shift the burden of proof?

It's a funny atheism. There's a claim that god does not exist, but that there's clearly a spot left for one or more to exist.

In other words, it's a circumstantial, temporary atheism.

You're really going out of your way to piss people off aren't you?

Religion is generally a background thing, and usually personal.

As far as Picard was concerned, sure.

This is about all we know about Picard's personal religious beliefs, and possibly Starfleet's.

PICARD: Doctor, you believe the Mintakans are capable of harming Counsellor Troi? 


BARRON: They are not normally a violent people but these are extraordinary circumstances. They're trying to comprehend what they believe to be a god. 


PICARD: Recommendations? 


BARRON: The Mintakans wish to please the Overseer, but they can only guess what he wants. They need a sign. 


PICARD: Are you suggesting? 


BARRON: You must go down to Mintaka Three. 


RIKER: Masquerading as a god? 


PICARD: Absolutely out of the question. The Prime Directive 


BARRON: Has already been violated. The damage is done. All we can do now is minimise it. 


PICARD: By sanctioning their false beliefs? 


BARRON: By giving them guidelines. Letting them know what the Overseer expects of them. 


PICARD: Doctor Barron, I cannot, I will not, impose a set of commandments on these people. To do so violates the very essence of the Prime Directive. 


BARRON: Like it or not, we have rekindled the Mintakans' belief in the Overseer. 


RIKER: And are you saying that this belief will eventually become a religion? 


BARRON: It's inevitable. And without guidance, that religion could degenerate into inquisitions, holy wars, chaos. 


PICARD: Horrifying. Doctor Barron, your report describes how rational these people are. Millennia ago, they abandoned their belief in the supernatural. Now you are asking me to sabotage that achievement, to send them back into the Dark Ages of superstition and ignorance and fear? No! We will find some way to undo the damage we've caused. Number One, tell me about this group's leader. 


RIKER: Nuria. Exceptionally clear-minded, sensible. The Mintakans trust her judgment. If we can convince her that you are not a god 


PICARD: She might be able to persuade the others. 


BARRON: And how do you propose to convince her? 


PICARD: She believes the Picard is a magical figure. I'm going to show her how the magic works. I'm going to bring her aboard.

Q: Welcome to the afterlife, Jean-Luc. You're dead. 


PICARD: Q, what is going on? 


Q: I told you. You're dead. This is the afterlife, and I'm God. 


PICARD: You are not God. 


Q: Blasphemy! You're lucky I don't cast you out, or smite you or something. The bottom line is, your life ended about five minutes ago, under the inept ministrations of Doctor Beverly Crusher. 


PICARD: No. I am not dead. Because I refuse to believe that the afterlife is run by you. The universe is not so badly designed. 


Q: Very well. If you really require more evidence of your post-mortem status, I guess I'll just have to provide you some.

PICARD: Come. 


WESLEY: Captain. 


PICARD: Can you tell me what manoeuvre this is? 


(on the PADD we see five ships go into a circle, cross each other's paths and light up a five pointed star) 


WESLEY: It's a Kolvoord Starburst, sir. 


PICARD: Five ships crossing within ten metres of each other and igniting their plasma trails. One of the most spectacular and difficult demonstrations of precision flying. It hasn't been performed at the Academy team in over a hundred years. Do you know why? 


WESLEY: It was banned by the Academy following a training accident, sir. 


PICARD: An accident in which all five cadets lost their lives. I think that Nicholas Locarno wanted to end his Academy career in a blaze of glory. That he convinced the four of you to learn the Kolvoord Starburst for the commencement demonstration. If it worked, you would thrill the assembled guests and Locarno would graduate as a living legend. Only it didn't work, and Joshua Albert paid the price. Am I correct? Cadet, I asked you a question. Am I correct? 


WESLEY: I choose not to answer, sir. 


PICARD: You choose not to answer? But you've already given an answer to the inquiry, and that answer was a lie. 


WESLEY: I said the accident occurred after the loop. It did. 


PICARD: What you neglected to mention was that following the loop your team attempted a manoeuvre that was the direct cause of the crash. You told the truth up to a point. But a lie of omission is still a lie. Do you remember the day you first came aboard this ship? Your mother brought you on the Bridge. 


WESLEY: Yes. 


PICARD: You even sat in my chair. I was annoyed. Presumptuous child playing on my ship. But I never forgot how you already knew every control, every display. You behaved as though you belonged on the Bridge. And then later when I decided to make you an acting ensign, I was convinced you could be an outstanding officer. I've never questioned that conviction, until now. The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth. Whether it's scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth. It is the guiding principle upon which Starfleet is based. If you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened you don't deserve to wear that uniform. I'm going to make this simple for you, Mister Crusher. Either you come forward and tell Admiral Brand what really took place, or I will. 


WESLEY: Captain 


PICARD: Dismissed.

The truth is what matters to Picard and Starfleet above all else, and to that end, blind faith is considered a bad thing.

[Darth Spock]

Could I persevere in atheism when applying the same standards of evidence to extraordinary claims that I did to ordinary ones? The answer was no. So I guess I would fall into the agnostic theist category too.

But it seems to me a certain mindset is intolerant of uncertainty, and that this accurately describes both hard atheists and the fundamentalist crowd. Both crave an authority figure that tells them How Things Are, one looks for it in scripture and one looks for it in science.

It's biased. There's no room for the possibility of being proven wrong because the goal is to always be right.

A. :) ... you'd wonder what this being would be waiting for to reboot the whole thing or eventually participate. That's probably the most depressing option, the indifference: we're ALL boring to it.

All these thoughts underscore my personal feelings on the matter, the last underlined bit framing it all perfectly. I found myself rolling along contentedly, when I had the unsettling realization that, being perfectly happy with my religious beliefs, I wondered if I had actually given due consideration to the possibility of those beliefs being wrong.

... I can't help but find the notion of the universe's existence more than a little ... strange. I realize it's a bit of navel-gazing akin to pondering the existence of the number one or somesuch, but that, to me, is the big question. I'm no deist, but I understand.

Forget "why are we here?" ... I wanna know what the hell all this other shit ... shit itself and the space between ... is doing here. Whether it exploded and expanded or was always around, what the hell is existence doing existing? I don't have a satisfactory answer, nor do I anticipate one.

I don't expect a satisfactory answer either, not in the foreseeable future. Moreover, I really don't see the nuts and bolts "how" of the universe providing a definitive answer to the question of God. Fascinating and worthwhile in its own right, but not really helpful for the "why." As the relevance of God, and by extension religion has more to do with "why" than "how," I find myself going back to that for some sort of explanation as to why an interested creator would be apparently absent. What complicates this approach is the cross-pollination of so many different religious beliefs over time, such as the popular concept of immortal souls floating off to the netherworld.

More concretely, I don't think the Christian bible ever divulges The Plan (like a ton of religions).

I suppose not in a detailed fashion, but at least it isn't open ended. It will either reach fulfillment at some point or prove itself wrong and irrelevant.

The Q are testing humanity, probably for exactly the reason Picard stated in your linked video.

Interestingly enough, this is precisely what the God of Old and New Testaments is entitled to, too; testing. And testing, he does a lot.
In fact, when you consider that Yahweh/Yehovah is detached from his "Creation", he's ought to be a lesser god, since a true, one and absolutely complete "top spot" God would by definition certainly comprise everything that is. We'd be dealing with something very close to pantheism, instead of the monotheism as understood through the judeo-christian prism. The following logic would therefore require that anyone ready to recognize this Yahweh entity as a god, at least within the confines of those sacred books, would also have little reasons to deny a "Q" such status in regards to their extremely potent abilities.

I don't know if the universe living outside of God's "head" or somesuch would automatically translate into Yahweh/Yehovah being a "lesser" god, although I wouldn't expect the literal finger snapping theatricality of the Q's magic trick brand of omnipotence. Past that, I'd think any creation consisting of sentients with free will provides the first clue as to what could have gone wrong with a perfect creation. Shifting into the confines of Star Trek's established canon though, I don't think any Earth religion's version of God would hold up. I mean, they've pretty much spelled humanities origin out. The mysterious, chicken-or-egg ancient humanoids from The Chase seeded a bunch of worlds, and then the Q, the Picard, and the Mighty Enterprise enabled the spark of life to occur on Earth.

As an aside, it's a pretty big contradiction on the part of the writers to write polemic diatribes like Picard's while simultaneously writing things that are obviously, to our current science, supernatural, but I think it reflects something in the current culture. Most people are utterly intolerant of ambiguity or uncertainty, and the need to naturalize things is so pervasive that we're content to mask ambiguity with "science-y" language that, in our minds, constitutes an "explanation." Chakotay isn't a ghost, his neural energy has been displaced. The Prophets aren't gods, they're wormhole aliens. Whatever makes you comfortable.

Yeah, there are no "gods" in Star Trek, but there are many god-like "aliens."

[Mr. Oragahn]

I remember that TNG episode where Picard pissed off Q by telling him he was absolutely 300% convinced that one day humans would be gods, or something along those lines.

You really should do more research before making grand statements. Why not simply track down the quotes you're thinking rather then shift the burden of proof?

What? Could you have the decency of at least reading the thread please? You're really late.
Besides, what is that nonsense about shifting the burden of proof?
You make it sound like I was making a super outrageous claim I was ought to defend at all costs, when it fact it was a simple question about a thing that happened in Trek and of which I had clouded memories.

It's a funny atheism. There's a claim that god does not exist, but that there's clearly a spot left for one or more to exist.

In other words, it's a circumstantial, temporary atheism.

You're really going out of your way to piss people off aren't you?

Religion is generally a background thing, and usually personal.

The only one getting pissed here is you. For some reason.
Cut the stalking btw, thx.

As far as Picard was concerned, sure.

This is about all we know about Picard's personal religious beliefs, and possibly Starfleet's.

some quote

The truth is what matters to Picard and Starfleet above all else, and to that end, blind faith is considered a bad thing.

Picard, in what would seem at first pulled straight from some superatheist textbook:

"PICARD: Horrifying. Doctor Barron, your report describes how rational these people are. Millennia ago, they abandoned their belief in the supernatural. Now you are asking me to sabotage that achievement, to send them back into the Dark Ages of superstition and ignorance and fear? No! We will find some way to undo the damage we've caused. Number One, tell me about this group's leader. ?"

Note the apparent idea that one cannot be rational about the supernatural.
Question: is it blind faith to believe in what is noted as to exist, but is not explained?
For one, if you claim that all that surrounds us is the definition of god (god as an all-encompassing, all-thing being, as per some definitions of pantheism), you'd say it's definitely there, although you don't understand the mechanics. Somehow, there would be nothing supernatural about it, when nature = god. No need to go above it, as super more than implies.
Supernatural is a term that largely stems from the judeo-christian and later islamic mind state, where creation is one thing, and god is detached and above that.
Not all religious systems abide by this dogma. AS it turns out, mainstream atheism has largely been an opposition to this judeo-christian worldview.

"PICARD: No. I am not dead. Because I refuse to believe that the afterlife is run by you. The universe is not so badly designed."

Rather god/creator compatible. In fact, a line of dialogue that would totally fit in the mouth of a deist.
Things are not that sharply cut.