I've been watching a few Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes now, and it is fun stuff. Captain Jean-Luc Picard may not be quite as cool as Captain Kirk, but his strict, serious demeanor does grow on you. However, any keen observer would notice that Star Trek is subtly pushing forward an agenda.
To quote Star Trek: Enterprise's Producer, Brannon Braga, ""In Gene Roddenberry’s imagining of the future [...] religion is completely gone. Not a single human being on Earth believes in any of the nonsense that has plagued our civilization for thousands of years. This was an important part of Roddenberry’s mythology. He, himself, was a secular humanist and made it well-known to writers of Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation that religion and superstition and mystical thinking were not to be part of his universe. On Roddenberry’s future Earth, everyone is an atheist. And that world is the better for it.""
Sad indeed that Mr. Roddenberry would think like that. Worse yet that instead of keeping it to himself, he actually tried to enforce this view in his series. In many episodes of the original Star Trek series and the subsequent Star Trek: The Next Generation, oppressive "gods" are shown to be outsmarted by humans and eventually revealed to be false gods. These deities turn out to be mere aliens, supercomputers or other suitably advanced, but not at all divine, beings. Naturally, it's up to the crew of the Enterprise to shake the primitive, oppressed people out of their false convictions and stand up for themselves.
A few examples can be found on this ="http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/religion.htm">website.
It's sad that such a positive and egalitarian series would end up being hypocritical by discriminating religion. So it's not alright to make fun of other races, but it's fair game to mock the faiths of billions of people in the world?
Mr. Roddenberry failed to realize that religion is neither oppressive nor self-destructive. A majority of the world's population live in relative peace despite adhering to a wide variety of faiths. There may be a few black sheep in the world, but one should focus on the positive majority of religious people and see that in actuality, they're progressive, nice people who get along with everyone else. Make no mistake though, I do not wish for Star Trek to begin promoting any one faith or even religion in general. To be truly equal and fair, Star Trek should remain secular, not atheistic.
Still there's plenty to like in Star Trek and I have come to love the series very much. Let's just hope that new director JJ Abrams never resorts to a false god story in his adaptations of Star Trek.
