Religion within Star Trek

[Napoleon the Clown]

I have a feeling that First Contact may have something to do with it. I often wonder how organised religion might account for alien life. Christianity especially.

I mean, if you go through life believing there is a God who looks out for you and yours and that's about it, how the hell can you suddenly explain these pointy-earred hobgoblins that have just landed from the stars? How do they fit in to your faith? Especially when they have no idea of God or angels or whatnot when you talk to them further.

I can see a lot of religions shattering in the face of alien contact. It's entirely possible the ideas and beliefs continue, but I think they would be in a word-of-mouth, parents to children kind of way. Certainly not organised.

For instance, has anyone in ST ever made reference to someone like the Pope?

Religion has survived finding people separated from the original practitioners by great distances, I see no reason why making contact with alien life would be any different. Some religions would hold Vulcans, Romulans, Klingons, etc. to be demons. Others would simply go "Hey, new people to proselytize to!" Any that had stated there was no life outside that on our own planet would either pretend they never said that or go with the demon tactic.

People don't give up a life-long belief because of just one bit of evidence, usually. The evidence of a roughly spherical Earth didn't destroy Christianity, nor did the discovery that the geocentric model is wrong. Both were ignored by the Church until it could no longer do so, at which point they just sort of hand-waved that they were wrong on the subject.

[Baffalo]

Religion has survived finding people separated from the original practitioners by great distances, I see no reason why making contact with alien life would be any different. Some religions would hold Vulcans, Romulans, Klingons, etc. to be demons. Others would simply go "Hey, new people to proselytize to!" Any that had stated there was no life outside that on our own planet would either pretend they never said that or go with the demon tactic.

People don't give up a life-long belief because of just one bit of evidence, usually. The evidence of a roughly spherical Earth didn't destroy Christianity, nor did the discovery that the geocentric model is wrong. Both were ignored by the Church until it could no longer do so, at which point they just sort of hand-waved that they were wrong on the subject.

In some cases, the Church actually helps further the goals of science. An example would be the observatory built as an addition to the Vatican with a solar calendar that would align the noon-day sun's light with a marker, with a special marker denoting the spring equinox. The majority of the world used the Julian calendar at the time, but it was wrong and they proved it had skewed with time. And there is also an observatory at the Vatican, with priests who study the stars at night. Some would argue that this is only a modern thing, but not so.

Traditionally, it's been the scholars who kept documents such as the classical Greek works together. Without them, nothing from the Roman era would've survived, and it was usually monks who painstakenly copied manuscripts by hand. They also preserved the classical knowledge that the Earth was round, proved by the Greeks, as well as knowing the approximate size of the Earth that was amazingly close to what we measure today. Some point to Galileo and say, "They arrested him for science!" No, they primarily arrested him for trying to interpret the bible according to his observations. He wasn't letting the clergy do its job of interpreting scripture, and so that made him a heretic. Also there were mentions to calling the Pope an idiot.

The reason people assume that Columbus proved the Earth was round was because prior to this, the only route to India was around the African continent. That wasn't because they thought the world was flat, they knew better! It was because the ships didn't have the range to make it across the ocean, because they didn't know there was another landmass there. They just assumed it was open water all the way across, and so they didn't want to risk getting all the way out there and running out of supplies. Columbus wanted to go, and was convinced he could do it, so he looked around till he found another idiot who said the Earth was smaller than it was, and Columbus used that as validation to go. He lied to his crew consistently the entire way, and it was only pure luck that they spotted land before he was thrown overboard by his crew and they went home. The entire flat earth argument came from the Scopes Monkey Trial, where the proponents of evolution claimed those who wanted to believe in divine creation also believed the world was flat, and it just got stuck.

[panache]

But don't forget at the end of the processional, Angela kneels in prayer. To whom, I wonder?

She crosses herself during the episode, that kind of narrows it down.

[U-95]

(...)Before TNG, you had money, there's that comment by Kirk

I think in STIV Kirk commented in the 20th century people still uses money and later he commented in the 23rd century they don't use it.