Here‘s an interesting article. Gene Roddenberry’s personal executive assistant from 1974 until his death in 1991, says what we all knew about the Roddenberry and his Star Trek franchise, but fills in the portrait of Roddenberry-as-humanist with some interesting details. His former assistant, herself a member of the American Humanist Association board (a fact buried in the article’s second-last paragraph) describes in the article just how much Roddenberry disliked religion in any form, and how deeply he injected his personal creed into the substance of the Star Trek franchise.
I’ve put a snippet of the article below, but it made me wonder about the many flavors of humanism. The late Stanley Grenz used to make a distinction between the “modernism” of the original Star Trek series and the “postmodernism” of Star Trek: The Next Generation. (Here‘s one take on that distinction.) In the original series, the Vulcan Spock, though frequently ribbed for allowing a few cracks to show in his rational exterior, was a powerful, in-control character who got the others out of many a jam through rational deduction. In Next Generation, the android Data, though physically and intellectually powerful, spent many episodes playing the unintentional buffoon and trying to get in touch with what it meant to truly be human–emotions, sense of humor, and all.
Grenz suggested that this difference between Spock on the original series and Data on Next Generation represented a shift in the valuation of human reason from modernity to postmodernity–from the implicit modernist faith in the omnicompetence of reason to the postmodern repudiation of reason as ultimate solver of all problems.
If that’s true, then did Roddenberry himself go through phases in his humanism? Did he at some point lose faith in the capacity of human rationality for solving all problems? (Typical scene: Kirk, Spock, & a few red-shirts beam down to the planet’s surface. They discover that two alien races are at war. They shake their heads in pitying disbelief: “War? That’s so irrational! We got rid of that problem years ago!”)
Just some food for thought . . .
Here’s the beginning of the article:
If you’re a big fan of the Star Trek science fiction genre, then there’s a good chance that you’re a humanist at heart.
That’s the way that Susan Sackett, the longtime personal executive assistant to Trek franchise creator Gene Roddenberry, sees it.Ms. Sackett, who met recently with the Greater Worcester Humanists group at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Worcester, said Mr. Roddenberry was an admitted humanist who liberally sprinkled his out of this world stories about Capt. James Tiberius Kirk, Mr. Spock and the other Star Trek characters with the fundamentals of humanism — a non-theistic, or secular, approach, philosophy, or ideology.
Star Trek has been woven into the cultural fabric since the original television series aired on NBC TV in the mid-1960s. Many sociologists have viewed many of its episodes as morality plays set against the backdrop of space.The genre has been incorporated into many college studies programs.Ms. Sackett said that Star Trek, like humanism, promoted ethics, social justice and reason, and rejected religious dogma and the supernatural.
“A lot of science fiction is filled with humanism,” said Ms. Sackett. “You usually don’t run across an archbishop of Alpha Centauri.”
Finish article here.
Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians
Grateful to the dead 
I do not see any antireligious tendencies in StarTrek. Sin is acknowledged. As for paradise– I believe it is beyond life as we know it. For me, Heaven is the only paradise. I think StarTrek does an excellent job of showing that life without conflict and growth is not healthy. I noticed that this was a consistent message. Spock is my favorite character and I appreciate and respect his logical approach. I read somewhere that the Vulcan Salute is based on a Jewish salute. Is this correct?
I found a few anti-religious hints in Star Trek (though not consistently and coherently atheistic). Sure, in the episode when they run into “Apollo,” Kirk acknowledges monotheism and refuses to worship him, but in other places, there seems to be some suspicion both of the possibility of paradise and of an omnibenevolent deity.
In many episodes from the original series, the landing party might chance upon someplace which they supposed to be an earthly paradise, but which turned out to be a sham or a trap. In one episode, I recall Kirk pontificating that any sort of paradise, even if one were possible (which he doubts), would be supremely undesirable for the human race. He seems to believe that the goodness and the glory of the human race is a never-ending struggle up through both physical and moral evils, thus precluding the possibility both of salvation and heaven.
In one of the movies (which, however, was written by Shatner, not Roddenberry), the only “God” there seemed to be was a remarkably selfish and petty deity trapped in the center of the galaxy, who needed a man-made ship to escape, and who was willing to take it at whatever cost to the crew.
I believe that humanism and most kinds of theism (but especially Christianity) are inherently antagonistic. Star Trek may have been an attempt to reconcile them or at least maintain both views simultaneously, but in several places I think the creators’ humanism prevailed over the religious element.
One author suggests that Star Trek is a militaristic society with significant military influence and imperialism which can be opressive. See The Canadian National Newspaper: Star Trek storyline linked to New World Order
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2010/12/10/03436.html. I agree with Susan Sackett’s assertion that the original series promotes humanistic ideals and favors rational thinking and reason. However, other authors contend that Star Trek is filled with references and critiques of social events and political issues of the day. I see StarTrek as an idealistic world where we are united. However, we are still flawed even in this ideal world. Prejudice, death, and suffering still exist. I think all StarTrek series confronts central concepts– reconciliation between differing cultures groups, and individuals and a balance between security and liberty. Reason may not always prevail as evidenced by the Marquis in the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. Even McCoy and Spock clashed philosophically. For me, StarTrek promotes social justice for humanity with its emphasis on reason, natural rights, liberty, and creativity. Religion is not absent, in my view. Roddenberry recognized how we have used religion to devide ourselves. By emphasizing order and peace over division and dealing with conflicts of human nature and emphasizing the best attributes of religion, namely, an end to division and strengthening of a culture, StarTrek promotes humanism and diverse religious perspectives.
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Have you seen “How William Shatner Changed the World”? Or maybe it’s “How WS Saved the World,” or something like that. It was ubiquitous on satellite television a few weeks back. Now, when I watched Star Trek as a child, I was quite intrigued by the heroes in space theme – science fiction may be a phase of developing a mature curiosity. And I noticed that there was no chapel on the ship, no churches on the planets, and no ministers or priests, except the bad guys who sacrificed young people to some bizarre machine-god. I’m surprised my parents let me watch such a programme!
Christians are not rationalists. We can be “rational” in the popular sense, but we certainly don’t need a provable explanation for everything.
I am a Christian and a rationalist. Certainly we don’t need a provable explanation for everything, only for those things which fall within the sphere of rational inquiry. But I maintain that that sphere is far larger than some Christians believe. For instance, I think that the existence of God can be established based on some of the classic proofs for God (e.g., Thomas Aquinas’ Cosmological Argument). More importantly, our grounds for believing in Christianity must be more than subjective personal experience (although I do not disparage those who, by fortune or nature, cannot believe on any other terms), but also historical and archeological evidence. If Jesus’ body had been found right where it was supposed to be in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea or the reports of His miracles had been soundly refuted by eyewitness testimony, would any of us still be a Christian?
I strongly object to the assumption which identifies rationalism with humanism and irrationality with religion. Ever since the so-called Enlightenment, thinkers have made use of (or at least paid lip service) to reason without acknowledging the only grounds upon which thoughts could justifiably be considered rational. C.S. Lewis said it best:
“One absolutely central inconsistency ruins [the popular scientific philosophy]. The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears… unless Reason is an absolute[,] all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based” (“Is Theology Poetry?”)
It is a patent absurdity, therefore, to assume the validity of reason without also granting its metaphysical underpinnings, and even more absurd that scientific empiricism is thought to be a self-evident proposition. One cannot validate the scientific method by using it; using it presupposes its validity, which must be established on a priori (i.e., non-empirical) grounds. Interestingly enough, I was involved in a recent debate on this.
I have always loved Spock and thought that, in spite of all the crap he got for it, his strict logic and rationalism was correct. Although I did notice the promotion of religious pluralism in one episode, I didn’t see any obviously anti-religious elements in the old shows, except perhaps for the recurring motif that any apparent human paradise is a cheat and a lie, and the assertion that what we call sin is actually the aggressive impulse in human beings which needs to be restrained but present in order for leadership, or at least that it was merely the “making mistakes” which leads to the improvement of the individual and the species.