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 
Thank you. Spock is my favorite character and its no accident that the Vulcan salute is based, so I’ve read, on a Jewish custom. This exchange of ideas is helping me clarify my beliefs while reinforcing my faith in God and our ability, as Christians, to help each other grow. I am grateful for the opportunity to reevaluate my thinking to ensure that I always walk with God in the best way I can realizing that I’m not perfect. Only Christ is.
thank you for your enlightening and thought provoking post. First, I do not favor science over religion, but I be;believe science can be used to support religion. I understand that christianity is concerned about our soul and Jesus’s return but Jesus spends a great deal of time instructing believers and non-believers on how to live life according to God’s teachings. I believe the world’s great religions have been exploited and used to suit mankind’s purposes. This is why we’ve been unified by mankind’s worldly desires. So, when I said we use “religion to impeed our own moral development” I am merely saying that we use the Bible to justify our own actions rather than reading Jesus’s teachings and following him. Jesus realized that we are all created in God’s image and I never saw Jesus endorse violance and greed. He rebuked Peter, I believe, for cutting off a Roman Soldiers ear! All Jesus reminds us that we are created in god’s image. I’m not suggesting that the length of our life correlates with how we value life. I’m suggesting that how we treat Earth and God’s creation determins how we value life. Let’s say that scientists do find a gene directly correlated to violance. You raise excellent points. We can rely on Jesus’s teachings to tell us how to behave. Even if we are genetically predisposed to a condition, I believe environmental factors also play a role. I think science itself supports free will. I thank you for the opportunity to larify my position. E
I contend that StarTrek’s emphasis on peace is a tribute to Christianity. there is one episode, I think its bread and circuses, though I might be mistaken, where the crew encounters a civilization based on the Roman empire. One of the characters refuses to fight and repeatedly refers to the sun. At the end of the episode Kirk and crew realize that the planet is following the same history as Earth’s Roman empire. The person refusing to fight wants to follow Christ’s teaching. This is how I interpret the episode. Spock happens to be one of my favorite characters and it is no accident that the show’s producers chose to model the Vulcan salute after a Jewish custom. In this Utopia, Earth isn’t divided by war and poverty. Capitalism and money aren’t the main motivators. Science, in my view, can help us appreciate God’s creation even further!
Rebecca and Travis–I just wanted to stick my nose in for a moment and say I’m enjoying your interchange very much, though I don’t feel I have anything to add at this point.
“Peace out” and “Live long and prosper.”
While I’m still thinking about it, something might be said of the fact that Star Trek does not use the birth of Christ as a point for reckoning years or a divider between the ages of human history. In doing so, Roddenberry (for I assume this was his doing) anticipates 21st-Century embarrassment of that fact, except that he goes further than merely renaming the eras (Before Common Era, Common Era) and keeping Christ’s birth as the chronological marker. Roddenberry changes the whole dating system to one based upon the age of a star–“Star Date” is the often-used phrase–which I assume is our Sun. I don’t think this shift should be taken lightly, although it would have pragmatic uses in the world of Star Trek. It is a fundamental reorientation away from religion and toward science. Science is almost always the means by which the Enterprise’s crew achieve their goals and overcome danger. Commander Spock is surely the high priest of the new scientific religion. When religion proper is mentioned at all, it is only sometimes favorably, and always as an afterthought.
Thank you for refreshing my memories regarding the episodes. StarTrek, particularly the original series, in my view, shows the dangers of how we may use religion to impeed our own moral development and how we can abuse religion for our own purposes. I appreciate the idealistic depiction of humans as unified. A respect for life, in my view, is an important component of all religious traditions.
“how we may use religion to impede our own moral development…”
Could you give a few examples of this? I’m having a hard time either understanding it or recalling examples of it from the episodes. What I suspect you mean is that “outdated” religious dogma prevents the human race from progressing in the physical sciences, which purportedly inform our ethics. I think the key assumption here is that an increase in ethical knowledge necessarily results in an increase of ethical behavior. That view, I think, is in direct opposition to Christianity and probably most other religions.
First, it is highly suspect that the physical sciences can tell us anything really new about the human condition that would have a significant effect on our morality. Let’s say, for instance, that tomorrow scientists discover the “Violence Gene.” They determine beyond a shadow of a doubt that this gene causes aggressive behavior. What then? They are called upon to make a value judgment about it, to call it either a genetic disorder or a genetic normality. But the moment they do this, they have left the realm of empiricism (and therefore science) altogether. They go from asking “What causes this?” to “Is it good or bad?” And it is quite obvious that the judgment must be based on the scientist’s own a priori beliefs about violence. If he is a pacifist, he will call it a genetic disorder. If he believes that aggression is not inherently bad, that it is the cause of the courageous and heroic impulses, the impulse to hunt for food and defend your family from danger and pursue justice, then he will call the gene good. In either case, if the new empirical knowledge has done anything, it has only reinforced two men’s preexisting ethical stances on aggressive behavior, and done so perhaps without warrant.
But more importantly, even if new ethical knowledge could be acquired in this way, it is highly doubtful that it would be attended by an increase in ethical behavior. Moses, Confucius, Jesus, and all the great moral teachers–we have had their teachings with us for millennia, and we still don’t obey them. As for Christianity, Christ did not come to offer one more bit of good advice. He did call attention to the intentions of one’s heart in a Jewish people concerned mostly with actions, but Aristotle had already something similar with the Greeks. However, what Christ did assumed that his audience had at least enough moral knowledge to know that they had sinned against an objective Moral Law and were unable to keep it on their own. Christ did not offer some revolutionary ethical theory but rather the power to begin to obey the Moral Law and forgiveness for failing to do so.
“I appreciate the idealistic depiction of humans as unified.”
But unified in what? Nazi Germany was pretty unified. In fact, if they had been successful in stamping out the last bit of dissent, they would have been a perfect picture of unification. Unity itself is nothing unless it is to a good purpose. And, more relevant to our current discussion, human beings can be united against religion. The Tower of Babel is the prime example. It could be argued, though I’m not arguing it here, that Star Trek is another, insofar as its religion is nominal and its first loyalties are to secular humanism, scientific naturalism, and the unity of all sentient beings.
“A respect for life, in my view, is an important component of all religious traditions.”
That is either trivially true or just plain false. Of course every religion has some sort of Creator who created life on this planet and loved it. But right away we know of exceptions. Gnosticism and some eastern religions view the creation of the world (and life on it) as an accidental byproduct of deity, and the whole purpose of life is to at last free oneself from life in this world and all its attachments.
But if you mean that one of the first priorities of all religions is to ensure that people be allowed to live for as long and (in a biological sense) to the fullest extent possible, you are mistaken. The attainment of spiritual goods in this life and happiness in the next are the primary concern, and “holy war,” martyrdom, asceticism and self-abasement are the proof.