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Am I the same entity or person from the moment I was born?

8enotto said:
Didn't Ricardo Monteban (spelling?) actually exist? He is documented in current history. He did do a good job hiding his divine powers outside of his Star Trek role.
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Are you perhaps thinking of Khan Noonien Singh played by Ricardo Mantalban, who also plays the demigod-like Mr. Rourke in Fantasy Island? Not quite the same as Q, but possibly a fun crossover. Characters such as John DeLancie's Q and Trelane ("The Squire of Gothos"), also a Q, give us some insight into Gene Roddenberry's feelings toward worshiping the purportedly almighty. They can be considered caricatures of God. They are capricious, mischievous, and error-prone—entirely unworthy of worship. Khan certainly has delusions of grandeur, but makes no claim to deistic powers.
 
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Thermal said:
*double checks that we are in Religion and Philosophy while discussing Star Trek*

*considers asking "How the hell did we get here?"*

*gives it a miss*
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The crusades were started by Turkish Star Trek fans arguing with Turkish Star Wars fans.
 
Emre_1974tr said:
No, atheism is also a religion.
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Only inasmuch as not collecting stamps is a hobby.

JayUtah said:
One takeaway would be the notion that it's a good thing no one in Starfleet apparently practices Islam.
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Or any other currently-popular religion in fact.

It occurs to me that the only actual god in the Star Trek canon who is even hinted at being real is Apollo in Who Mourns for Adonais?. The so-called "god" who needs a starship in V is clearly not a god at all. And Q is clearly not a god either, despite being near-omnipotent most of the time. The Bajoran Prophets are just an alien race that lives in the wormhole.

Star Trek is inherently atheistic in that it acknowledges no gods.
 
Olmstead said:
Surely the transporter doesn't "eat" the soul. It just releases it into whatever happens to all souls after death, which doesn't seem like much of a tragedy.

Presumably the replicas get fresh new souls or something, I don't know. Magic, magic, why be tragic?
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Ironically the way the transporter is purported to work would be impossible according to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. The transporter maintains the integrity of the matter stream down to the quantum level by exercising a degree of control that Heisenberg's formulation says is impossible. The product of knowable uncertainties in particle position and momentum (i.e., velocity) must equate to or exceed fundamental limits on observed quantum behavior. Hence the fictional design for the transporter that appears in the Star Trek The Next Generation Technical Manual (canon to the point of nihil obstat) includes a device labeled the Heisenberg Compensator. That is, it's a black box that makes the impossible possible without further detailed explanation.

As with all such conceptual design, there will always exist a line between physics and magic. Some science fiction franchises decide to push that line as far as possible into physics, but it never goes away. So certainly why can't the transporter have another black box labeled "Soul Preserver." Once you've invoked magic and sealed it inside a black box, you can just keep adding black boxes until people stop watching your show.

As I pointed out, Star Trek not only tolerates mind-body dualism, it fully embraces it. The fal-tor-pan process of reintegrating Spock's katra is not spelled out. But it is certainly couched in performative ritual even if under the hood it might turn out to be a purely physiological process. Whatever Spock's katra really consists of, it is clearly preserved during transport. Not only that, there is canonical evidence that consciousness is coherently preserved during transport. And in Star Trek lore, the Vulcan theory of mind is compatible with H. sapiens, allowing Vulcans to mind-meld with humans.

In the technical manual, Id., the emphasis on the transporter's operation at the quantum level is explicitly connected to preserving the mind, and can be reliably extended to preservation of the Vulcan katra irrespective of what Islam thinks. One possible inference is that whatever souls are, they are known in the 23rd century to be captured in quantum dynamics. Conversely, all the behavior attributed to souls is known to be phenomena captured in quantum dynamics. Nothing in atheism prevents the eventual discovery and formation of a soul as a quantum mechanics phenomenon.
 
Yet another of Emre's false hadiths, wherein he has the audacity to 'interpret' the word of god as identical to his own opinions. Emre_1974tr is a false prophet.
 
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EHocking said:
The crusades were started by Turkish Star Trek fans arguing with Turkish Star Wars fans.
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That's how we got Jedi Knights Templar. Apparently the Christians did not find the 'droids they were looking for.

arthwollipot said:
Only inasmuch as not collecting stamps is a hobby.
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I prefer not collecting coins to not collecting stamps.

arthwollipot said:
It occurs to me that the only actual god in the Star Trek canon who is even hinted at being real is Apollo in Who Mourns for Adonais?.
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Indeed, but it never goes beyond suggesting that the being appearing as Apollo is just yet another highly advanced alien race, a member of which masquerades as a god for the benefit of the ancient Greeks. Of course for the sake of the story we have to accept that what the ancient Greeks wrote about as the god Apollo actually existed, as opposed to just being made up. He didn't exist as a god the way Allah is said to exist as the God in Islam. He's just another poser.

arthwollipot said:
The so-called "god" who needs a starship in V is clearly not a god at all.
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Nope. Fun fact: I've actually been to the location of the God Planet from that film. It's out past Edwards AFB in the middle of nowhere, called the Trona Pinnacles.

arthwollipot said:
And Q is clearly not a god either, despite being near-omnipotent most of the time.
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The Q are near omnipotent, but clearly not omniscient. They're also kind of jerks.

arthwollipot said:
The Bajoran Prophets are just an alien race that lives in the wormhole.
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And the Metrons, blah blah ad nauseam. The notion of a guardian race is a staple of science fiction. Humans create their gods in so many ways, some more palatable than others. No, Klatuu wasn't a Metron, but it's the same character role. Ironically The Day the Earth Stood Still was forced to include the reference to an Almighty Spirit. In the original script, Klatuu resurrects himself. But that made him too much like Jeebus according to 1950s censors.

There's also a fan theory that Guinan is a Time Lord. Her hat is her TARDIS.

arthwollipot said:
Star Trek is inherently atheistic in that it acknowledges no gods.
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The way I see it, Star Trek openly mocks the concept of gods and the worship of allegedly supreme beings.
 
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JayUtah said:
I don't think Emre believes Star Trek is factual. Despite his curious view of, well, everything, I'm willing to grant that he's using the transporter as a nothing more than thought experiment. He wouldn't be the first to do so. There's one error in the fact that he doesn't know how the transporter is said to work. But the larger error is taking away nothing more than some sort of assurance of his religious beliefs.

Quite a number of people have speculated on whether the transporter would preserve the mind or the soul, and if so by what means. There's nothing mentally ill about positing Islam-is-true as a hypothetical premise, Star Trek transporters are real as another hypothetical premise, and drawing a conclusion under those hypotheticals that Kirk and Spock will have lost their immortal souls and that consequently Allah will be unable to accept them into Paradise. We could even go on to posit that since their souls no longer exist, they won't be subject to eternal punishment either, but will likely suffer annihilation, whatever that might mean in Islam.

One takeaway would be the notion that it's a good thing no one in Starfleet apparently practices Islam. Emre's predictable takeaway is that science is evil, even when it's only fictional science.


Both religion and science fiction rely on a tremendous amount of world-building that has to achieve a certain degree of credibility. Both science fiction and religion try to comment on what society is, and what it could or should be. Both religion and science fiction (at least with the franchises) entertain vigorous debate on what constitutes canonical knowledge.

No, the TNG episode where the transporter recreates the away party as children should not be canon.


Emre simply starts every one of his pseudo-intellectual wanks with the premise that his particular flavor of Islam is obviously and incontrovertibly true. Now if you're going to speculate about how a transporter would behave in a certain corner case, you do so from the perspective that Star Trek technical lore is true. Those are your axioms. Trying to win the argument by saying, "But transporters aren't real," just gets you quizzical stares. With any such endeavor, an in-universe examination is thoroughly worthless for testing the viability of the axioms. That's not how thinking works.

Emre's wanks always climax in a "Hooray for Islam!" conclusion. Kirk and Spock are cooked because the transporter ate their souls. Science is bad because it told them they would be okay. Philosophy is bad because it didn't predict that outcome. Islam wins again. His arguments are inevitably circular, trapped in a pattern buffer of tautology.

In the huge vat of AI slop that starts this thread, he brings up one of the classic paradoxes in the philosophy of identity and continuity. As with all such debates, the answer often depends on what axioms you set forth. Emre states the problem, dismantles one straw man cherry-picked from classical philosophy, then shows how Islam answers the question. Of course that works only because all of Islam's relevant truth claims are clearly imposed as the axioms in his AI prompt. The operative axiomatic basis of identity is Islam's animistic notion of identity, and then we're supposed to marvel about well Islam navigates the problem. Mainstream science and mainstream philosophy utterly fail to answer the question under the rules of Islam, so they should be eschewed.

Asking, "Okay, what if Islam is not true?" is the same as saying, "But the transporters aren't real." If you criticize Emre's claims by relaxing the premise that Islam isn't true, in his mind you've stepped outside the rules of the exercise.
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Wonderful summation as usual Jay!

It isn't at all ironic that an AI puddle perfectly fits in an Emre-shaped hole.
 
JayUtah said:
Are you perhaps thinking of Khan Noonien Singh? Not quite the same as Q. Characters such as John DeLancie's Q and Trelane ("The Squire of Gothos"), also a Q, give us some insight into Gene Roddenberry's feelings toward worshiping the purportedly almighty. They can be considered caricatures of God. They are capricious, mischievous, and error-prone—entirely unworthy of worship. Khan certainly has delusions of grandeur, but makes no claim to deistic powers.
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You are more correct than my fuzzy memory. My older brother is the trekkie. I only watched because he had to every day .

The show somehow had mere humans without powers defeating the bad intentions of beings far more capable. Something the Greek and Roman myths did a bit also.

Modern religions the gods always prevail but may allow us to resist.
 
Emre is a;
Thor atheist, a Wotan atheist, a Anubis atheist, a Osiris atheist, a Forgotten One atheist
Ikaris atheist, Kingo Sunen atheist, Kronos atheist, Makkari atheist, Mentor atheist, Overmind atheist, Phastos atheist, Sersi atheist, Sprite atheist, Starfox atheist, Thanos atheist, Thena atheist, Zuras atheist, Eternity atheist, Galactus atheist, In-Betweener atheist, Knull atheist, Lord Chaos atheist, The Stranger atheist, Ares atheist, Athena atheist, Hera atheist, Hermes atheist, Hercules atheist, Neptune atheist, Pluto atheist,
Venus atheist, , Skuld atheist, Urd atheist, Belldandy atheist, First Evil atheist, Glorificus atheist, Delmos atheist, Demeter atheist, Discourse atheist, Fatuus atheist, Fortune atheist, Hades atheist, Hephaestus atheist, Hermes atheist, Lachrymose atheist, Momus atheist, Morpheus atheist, Nemesis atheist, Persephone atheist, Poseidon atheist, Strife atheist, Triton , Zeus atheist, Frigga atheist, Loki atheist, Odin atheist, Hanuman atheist, Rama, atheist, Shakti atheist, Krishna atheist, Tataki atheist, Calisto atheist, Xenaatheist, Dahak atheist, Dumuzi atheist, Kernunnos atheist Mephistopheles atheist. And truly an atheist to thousands of other gods.

That he is unconvinced of these gods existence is not a religion.

Sadly for Emre, the fact is that he has no more evidence for his god belief than any of the believers of these other gods.

And as the Bard tells us, "there is the rub."
 
Olmstead said:
Surely the transporter doesn't "eat" the soul. It just releases it into whatever happens to all souls after death, which doesn't seem like much of a tragedy.

Presumably the replicas get fresh new souls or something, I don't know. Magic, magic, why be tragic?
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There is a discussion along those lines in Spock Must Die.
 
8enotto said:
You are more correct than my fuzzy memory. My older brother is the trekkie. I only watched because he had to every day .
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I'm fortunate to hob-nob among Star Trek royalty. My company is one of the sponsors of the local fan expo, and through that sponsorship I've made a number of friends who work (or worked) on the shows as they come to meet their fans. I get that it's not everyone's cup of Earl Grey—hot. Whatever your fandoms may be, love them and respect those of others.

Honestly I wasn't sure what you were reaching for. Ricardo Mantalban did play a fallen angel (Mr. Rourke in Fantasy Island) endowed with supernatural powers. While not strictly science fiction, his character addresses the common theme, "What if you could have whatever you wanted?" The Q address that, as do the Krell and Harry Potter. Even Wesley Crusher punched out as a newly minted demigod.

Yes, that was Ricardo Mantalban's real chest as Khan, albeit with a little help from makeup. It wasn't a prosthetic. Ricardo was kind of a gym beast. What do we learn from that character? Khan is a product of aggressive eugenics, which is rooted in racism as an ideology. In the fictional Star Trek timeline, the debate over eugenics rose to the level of armed conflict. This underscores the Us v. Them theme that seems to underpin almost every religion. The purpose of religion is to establish in-groups and out-groups. The genetically superior superhumans are the in-group. But also Khan represents the Mohammed, St. Peter, Joseph Smith, and L. Ron Hubbard character. Khan is a charismatic leader that amasses a dedicated following that he objectively doesn't deserve.

The Eugenics Wars at first were said to have occurred in the 1990s. That sounded good in the 1960s, but eventually the franchise had to contend with real life creeping up on the fanciful future. Thankfully timeline fracture and manipulation is part of Star Trek, although not strictly a wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey. But we've managed to push the Eugenics Wars ahead in the timeline. And this raises a relevant issue. Among science fiction franchises that allow timeline manipulation, you have various hypothetical rules. Broadly, one is that the timeline is fragile and must be preserved at all costs, while another is that the timeline is inherently resilient. Star Trek can't decide which one it is. It has the temporal Prime Directive (i.e., the fragile timeline) but it also embraces the notion that the Eugenics Wars were inevitable. And at one point, Spock quotes Erlichmann to fellow Vulcan Valeris, admonishing her to have faith that the universe will unfold as it should. Vulcan philosophy apparently embraces the resilient timeline theory, or at least a sense of predestination that should appeal to Muslims.

Why not have faith that the properly unfolding universe can include a model of identity and continuity that allows you to beam up and down while keeping your soul intact? As someone noted up-thread, if Allah can safeguard the soul through the various observable pitfalls of ordinary life, why not through a particular flavor of teleportation? The answer, of course, is that Emre has no interest in actually exploring these concepts. His predetermined endpoint is an excoriation of mainstream science and philosophy. With that end in mind, a Star Trek transporter represents to him a travesty from science that religion should probably find a reason to abhor.

8enotto said:
The show somehow had mere humans without powers defeating the bad intentions of beings far more capable. Something the Greek and Roman myths did a bit also.
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I agree. One of the persistent themes in Star Trek is the triumph of humanity over the purportedly supernatural, which is always somehow fatally flawed. Often this comes from humans exhibiting a stronger character than the allegedly more noble races. The essential nobility of the human race is one of the tenets of Roddenberry's atheism. They need no gods to guide them in the paths of true righteousness.

Conversely the mid-to-late seasons of Next Generation were criticized for relying too much on essentially the same deus ex machine as Greek and Roman theater, producing unsatisfying drama. They'd spend three acts building up some conflict or dilemma, and then the answer is just to reconfigure the deflector dish to emit an inverse bogon pulse or whatever that clears it right up. The only real amusement in the episode is an English actor playing a French captain playing an American detective on the holodeck. As soon as the show made a god of technology, it ceased to entertain. It ceased to be credible.
 
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