Star Trek Quietly Broke Gene Roddenberry’s Most Sacred Rule
There is one moment in the Strange New Worlds Season 3 premiere that breaks one of Gene Roddenberry's rules for Star Trek. Captain Pike prays.
In the final moments of the episode, Pike visits the woman he loves, recently implanted with a fatal Gorn egg. He then kneels to recite The Lord's Prayer. Diehard fans of Star Trek know series creator Gene Roddenberry was a secular humanist who firmly believed religion would not survive into humanity's future. Yet the canon itself does not rigidly adhere to that view.
When creating Star Trek in the 1960s, Roddenberry imagined a future where humanity evolved into its best possible selves. Nationalism, poverty, bigotry, and dogmatic religion were all shameful relics of the past. One of his most controversial Star Trek ideas came in "Who Mourns for Adonais?" when Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew encounter a powerful alien who claims to be Apollo.
The episode is the first of many stories in this universe that pose that "gods" are just alien beings so advanced they seem like magic. However, in that same episode, Kirk tells Apollo that "mankind has no need for gods," but adds, they "find the one quite adequate."
When developing The Next Generation, he doubled down on the idea that humanity had abandoned religion. Captain Picard shows disdain for it more than once.
https://www.cbr.com/star-trek-strange-ne...erry-rule/
There is one moment in the Strange New Worlds Season 3 premiere that breaks one of Gene Roddenberry's rules for Star Trek. Captain Pike prays.
In the final moments of the episode, Pike visits the woman he loves, recently implanted with a fatal Gorn egg. He then kneels to recite The Lord's Prayer. Diehard fans of Star Trek know series creator Gene Roddenberry was a secular humanist who firmly believed religion would not survive into humanity's future. Yet the canon itself does not rigidly adhere to that view.
When creating Star Trek in the 1960s, Roddenberry imagined a future where humanity evolved into its best possible selves. Nationalism, poverty, bigotry, and dogmatic religion were all shameful relics of the past. One of his most controversial Star Trek ideas came in "Who Mourns for Adonais?" when Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew encounter a powerful alien who claims to be Apollo.
The episode is the first of many stories in this universe that pose that "gods" are just alien beings so advanced they seem like magic. However, in that same episode, Kirk tells Apollo that "mankind has no need for gods," but adds, they "find the one quite adequate."
When developing The Next Generation, he doubled down on the idea that humanity had abandoned religion. Captain Picard shows disdain for it more than once.
https://www.cbr.com/star-trek-strange-ne...erry-rule/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
