So I (obviously) love Star Trek, but one of the ways I think it fails is by upholding the idea that there is one unified “human” morality and worldview — or that, at least, there will be in a few hundred years.

It’s interesting, like, in Star Trek’s construction of the universe, all *non*-human humanoid races have their own unique thing, a specific culture and way of being, often accompanied by a religion, that defines their whole deal.

Klingons are violent! Vulcans suppress emotion!

Bajorans love seeing the future with the help of the wormhole aliens! Ferengi are obsessed with money! Cardassians... I don’t know how to describe the Cardassian vibe, but they definitely have one and it’s kinda fascist. Romulans are incredibly secretive and treacherous. Etc etc.

But humans — I mean, it’s weird. Humans are on the one hand presented as unified and universal, but on the other there’s no one strong human *thing* that you can point to. Humans are just humans, you know! Oftentimes human characters speak of “humanity” to refer to all humanoids.

I think there are times when the franchise makes attempts to push back on this: Sisko does it well with his acknowledgement that the Black American experience is different from this general “human” one, and Chakotay *could* have been a good foil as well, but... no.

Anyway I think it’s also worth really pointing out what the factors are that have supposedly brought humanity to this unified state.

There’s the elimination of poverty, which — sure, that could certainly help. But then there’s the elimination of religion, which...

I think we should set aside any question of whether eliminating religion is “good” or “bad,” because that’s not my point here.

The thing I object to, which a frequent fallacy of atheists, is that humanity - belief in god = one basic human value system and mindset.

Dawkins points to this in The God Delusion with his laughable argument that religion is the cause of (rather than justification for) most genocide and war.

But religion doesn’t *create* human difference and disagreement it. It’s just a pathway for *expressing* it.

This is why I get a little irked when people who did not grow attending religious services profess themselves to be members of some supposedly unified, universal “human” experience, because... that doesn’t make sense! There’s no such thing!

The thing I was trying to express last night which touched quite a few nerves is that religion is bound up in a lot of things beyond just a profession of faith: it is very often a culture and a value system and a peoplehood beyond whether or not you are devout.

This is obvious when we talk about, say, tribal religions: most of us perceive Indigenous folks as having a culture and a belief system and a religious practice that is tied up in their experience as Indigenous folks: a loss of that belief system doesn’t make you not Indigenous.

It’s apparent with Jews as well, owing to our historical status as a diaspora people who exist as a minority within other communities and cultures. Even if you stop believing, you are still flagged as different and still marked. It is what it is.

I understand that it is less apparent with Christianity, particularly because Christianity’s status as a missionary religion means that it has a habit of gobbling up and incorporating other culture’s practices.

The Day of the Dead is Catholic and Mexican, but merely being Catholic does not mean you have carte blanche to participate in it: it specifically grew out of the Catholic church’s desire to assimilate native Mexicans into Catholicism, and that history matters.

So I get that it’s complicated and thorny and that “Christianity” is a really complicated and diverse culture and practice owing to this legacy of global missionary work and colonialism and all of that.

But the thing that I’m really trying to point to is that when someone says, “I no longer believe in Jesus, ergo I am not Christian” is, like... okay, what are you?

It’s one thing if you actively work to align yourself with another worldview and religion by, say, converting to Buddhism or Islam or Judaism, etc — not because you now believe in a different deity, but because you’re actively reconstructing your worldview and value system.

Absent that, it feels like there’s this idea that relinquishing belief alone suddenly regresses someone to this universal human state. And, like, again: I don’t know what that is.

If I call someone a “secular Christian” or a “Christian atheist,” it’s not a pejorative. It’s because I think there is this tendency in America to wave at this idea of a general secular experience that is often very bound up in Christian tradition and belief.

And erasing or refusing to acknowledge those Christian roots, or painting them as just “broadly human,” is *terrifying* to me, in the same way that it is terrifying to me to portray whiteness as some default state of being, with Blackness or being Asian some special mod you buy.

I read an essay once about the lack of Jews in Star Trek’s vision of the future, and while I forget most of the essay I know it was pointing to this same thing: this idea that religion is just skin deep and can be wiped away to reveal some universal human state.

And I just... yeah. I don’t like that! The same way I don’t like that The Good Place (I show I enjoyed!) convinces itself that it has come up with a secular, universal vision of the after life when it’s so, so rooted in Christian ideas of what happens post-death.

Look, I love Star Trek. It’s a great show. But it does get this wrong. There’s no base mode human experience. We’re all by the cultures and world views and communities we were raised in. And religion is an inescapable part of that.

Anyway, I just did the thing where I tricked you into understanding my inflammatory world view by making you think I was writing a thread on Star Trek, so, you know, you’re welcome.

Coming back to this to say that Cardassians love family and heritage and saunas and like... I mean they're so obviously Space Nazis there's no better way to describe them. https://twitter.com/LuxAlptraum/status/1337029741224849409?s=20

Also now I’m watching Voyager and Tom and B’Elanna are getting married (??????) and between the “Here Comes the Bride” and Chakotay walking B’Elanna down the aisle* I feel like this is proving my point

* Not to mention Janeway joking about Klingon weddings as “non-traditional”

A lot of those “standard” wedding tropes are rooted in Christian tradition. In Jewish weddings, both parties are walked down the aisle by their parents, it’s not a patriarchal bestowing of the bride.

So Star Trek offers us a “post-religion” world in which Christian wedding traditions nevertheless persist as a secular default and I think that’s worth interrogating!