Wikipedia article on the series
(Season 2, Episode 2. Viewed the episode on 2019-08-07. It was noteworthy for me because of themes connected to religion.)
Episode Plot: What to Do with (Religiously) Unevolved
Mentalities?
In one of their missions, the USS Starship Discovery encounters
"New Eden," a religious community transported to a different planet
during earth's World War III by a "Red Angel." Discovery's crew finds
that the community has depleted their power source which condemns them to remain
in a scientifically and technologically backward situation. Besides, the
members are heavily invested in religion and in concepts such as divine revelation so much
so that they have cobbled up a religion comprised of various religious
traditions that existed on earth at the time of--what they believe--was its
destruction.
The protagonist—Commander Michael Burnham feels that it is
the Starship's crew's duty to bring the members of New Eden to a more up-to-date,
"enlightened" state and help them shed their "primitive"
religious beliefs. Her commanding officer Captain Pike on the other hand maintains that,
following the United Federation of Planets’ General Order #1, they have to
let civilizations evolve organically and not needlessly intervene and
force evolutionary development in consciousness and knowledge in any species
they encounter.
However, in the New Eden community there lives a family that
carries on a tradition of science and learning. One of its members, Jacob, has
been maintaining the loop mayday message for assistance. That was the signal picked up
by the Discovery which then brought its crew to New Eden. Jacob (and
his family) is a symbol of the scientific mind that finds itself in a
predominantly unscientific religious culture. Jacob himself strongly suspects that humanity has evolved significantly and seems to be ready for the revelation of the scientific truth.
Noteworthy for me: Captain Pike firmly maintains that the "enlightened" (the Starship's crew) have to let civilizations evolve organically and not force evolutionary
development in consciousness and knowledge.
Conversation between Captain Pike and Commander Burnham
(Here is a pertinent part of the episode's conversation
exchanges between Burnham and Capt. Pike about this issue)
B (Burnham): Anthropologically speaking (she is also "Xenoanthropologist"), they (the New Eden
people) cobbled together a new religion based on the primary
faiths of earth. Amesha (the community leader) and the others (members of New Eden) are
kin to us. They deserve to be reintegrated into modern society.
P (Pike): By their own account, they left earth in 2053.
They are subject to General Order #1. We cannot interfere in
their natural development.
- General
Order 1: "No starship may interfere with the normal
development of any alien life or society."
B: They believe earth and the human race were destroyed. They're wrong. Worse, the faith they cling to is a lie.
P: Can you prove that?
B: What I will prove is that none of this happened by some
miracle.
Later on, Capt Pike rethinks his position and goes back to talk with Jacob (the
scientifically enlightened one on Terralysium) to tell him the truth: that
earth wasn't completely destroyed and that humanity evolved scientifically in fantastic ways, etc.
My Reflections – Religion as Backward and Our Superiority
Complex
This episode struck me as very significant because it
showed, on the one hand, a civilization (New Eden) that is portrayed as
backward and unevolved in a historical epoch in which humans have already reached advanced
levels of scientific knowledge and technology such as travelling faster
than the speed of light (through warp drives). Hence, these backward
civilizations in Star Trek are called "pre-warp"
civilizations.
This particular pre-warp civilization of New Eden happens to
be deeply religious and, as the conversation above shows, Michael Burnham, the
protagonist of Star Trek Discovery, considers them as inferior and feels
that she has to "bring them up to speed" by showing and proving that
things have happened not because of any religious or supernatural reason but
because of a scientifically explainable cause.
Against her, Capt. Pike, her commanding officer (whose
father has had some religious background) firmly invokes the Federation’s General
Order #1 which states: No starship may interfere with the normal
development of any alien life or society. What that means is that
Starship crews should not forcefully interfere with the organic and natural
development process that any life-form or society should undergo on its own.
It just has to leave individuals and social groups to go through the
developmental process at its own pace and in its own time.
Applied to the New Eden situation, that means that the
starship crew members who are in possession of superior scientific knowledge, a
knowledge that discounts religious-supernatural phenomena in favour of
scientific ones, should just leave the—deemed to be—“inferior” faith-based
community of New Eden to itself in the hope that it may organically develop and
one day hopefully overcome the darkness of religion-faith and come to know the
superior scientific knowledge of post-warp civilizations.
It also happens to us that sometimes we think we are more correct and thus superior and in
so doing we consciously or unconsciously think that others are less correct
than we are or that they are in an inferior ideological or even religious
position than we. What do we do? Like Commander Michael Burnham, do we sense a
duty to "enlighten" others?
If we follow Capt. Pike's position (which reflects the
Federation's sacrosanct directive), we just have to leave unevolved entities alone
in that state and hope that, in time, at their own organic pace, they would
also come to evolve in their consciousness. Is that the best thing to do?
