Thread by @AlexandraErin

Hoo... how about a quick thread about the Christian-inflected secular humanism of Star Trek?

https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1174465901913137152

So, we're told that in the future of Star Trek, the earth has no religion because humanity has evolved out of it. To a lot of smug modern-day atheists, this is a very appealing idea. It means they're right and they win.

But because there is not a neat cultural/religious divide throughout most of the human panoply, we get some uncomfortable conclusions where there are proud Scots, Frenchmen, Midwestern sons of the United States, Russians, etc.... but no Jewish people.

And while Worf can wear a Klingon ceremonial baldric and Ro can wear Bajoran jewelry, try suggesting Star Fleet might culturally accommodate a hijab and watch how fast you get brought before a court martial.

(Which Star Fleet has, despite not being a martial organization.)

I get in trouble when I suggest that there's such a thing as culturally Christian atheism or that most non-Jewish US atheists have a Christian-inflected view of religious belief that informs how they argue against it.

"Saying my atheism is a disbelief in the Christian God is offensive because it presupposes my atheism is a subset of Christianity."

Yeah, but when you go around talking about how if Jesus or Thor or Vishnu is okay with sending people to hell for taking his name in vain...?

Kirk and Picard aren't religious because the human race has rejected religion.

But they believe in God and the devil (Kirk) and the Creator (Picard) in what I'm sure they'd recognize as part of a "Judeo-Christian" or "Abrahamic" tradition... phrases used to launder Christianity.

So we've got a future in which whole cultures have been thrown away from the earth, uprooted, removed, because a Christian vision of religion is incompatible with Roddenberry's utopian future, and a Christian culture is even more hegemonic in that vacuum.

And it's very difficult to have a nuanced conversation about this in public fandom spaces because modern-day Christian hegemony doesn't recognize the divide between the Christian lens of religion existing apart from culture and how religion is otherwise a part of culture.

I mean, at least twice in Kirk's career, he rejects a powerful being's claims of godhood because said being does not measure up to a Christianized ideal of God as a supreme being. Not that godhood is impossible, no discussion of what it means.

And Jewish fans talking about how uncomfortable they are with a future that doesn't include them this aren't being ignorant about the makeup of the original cast or the roots of Vulcan culture... Nimoy drawing on his culture for the Vulcans made them richer and better...

...but it didn't fix the problems of earth culture as it's portrayed in the show.