Can many fictions create a fact?

"Have I ever told you about the guy who used to live on my block? He is actually a pointy-eared, green-blooded alien, from a civilization which endeavors to function by emotionless logic."

"Um, you mean like a Vulcan, from Star Trek?"

"No, nothing at all like Star Trek, because this alien former neighbor of mine belongs to an ancient order of warriors for peace and justice who wield swords made of laser light, and have power over a mystical unifying force which suffuses the Universe."

"So.... like the Jedi in Star Wars."

"Have you not been listening? My former neighbor is obviously a real person, and not some made up 'story' derived from Star Wars, because Star Wars has no pointy-eared, green-blooded, emotionlessly logical alien. And he is obviously not some story derived from Star Trek, because Star Trek has no swords made of laser light and no mystical unifying force suffusing its Universe. Besides, there's more -- you see, my former neighbor was sent here in a spaceship as an infant, because his own planet was unstable and was going to explode."

"Okay, now this sounds like a mix of Star Trek and Star Wars and Superman."

"Don't be ridiculous -- Superman shoots freakin' laser beams out of his eyes and is vulnerable to Kryptonite, from his native planet. But my former neighbor doesn't shoot laser beams or anything else from his eyes, and isn't at all affected by Kryptonite. Plus I already told you, he has green blood. Superman doesn't have green blood. Or pointy ears. So, obviously he can't be some story derived from Superman -- I'm telling you, he's a real pointy-eared laser-sword-wielding logical alien, sent as a baby from an exploded planet to Earth, where he gains strength from our yellow sun!!"

"And you didn't get any of this from, I don't know, maybe reading some comic books? Watching TV?"

"No, I got none of this from any of that. I heard all this directly, straight from the kids of the people who lived on the house on the other side of the street, who heard it from their parents, who heard it directly from my former neighbor."

"Wait -- so, your former neighbor didn't tell you this himself? He told some other people this?"

"Tell me? No, I've never even met the guy. He moved out before I even lived there. But my other neighbors across the street, their parents knew these things about him, and their kids even wrote all this down. Years ago."

"And how do you know the parents who told the kids all this didn't, maybe, mix in a little sci-fi. Even by accident, mixing things in? Or that the kids didn't mix some of these sci-fi things in?"

"Because that makes no sense -- why would they mix anything in? Look, you're overthinking this, my former neighbor obviously isn't a fictional character because there is no fictional character which combines all of these characteristics which he's been, I stress, recorded in writing as having. I mean, look, if I tell you my former neighbor breathed oxygen and ate food, would you conclude he was a fictional mix-up because everybody else breathes oxygen and eats food?"

"But we see people every day doing those things. We don't see pointy-eared green-blooded logic-observing aliens at all, except in Star Trek and things derived from it. We don't see laser-sword-wielding force users at all, except in Star Wars or its copycats. And we don't see an alien from a doomed planet sent to Earth in a spaceship except in Superman, and knock-offs of it."

"I'm sorry, but I hardly see that as proof that what I've heard about my former neighbor is untrue. In fact, maybe you've just misremembered all your sci-fi stories."

"Well I guess we'll have to agree to disagree."

"I guess. So, hey, have I ever told you about the religion I follow?"

Pandeism and the World of Doctor Who

The Universe of Doctor Who is an odd one to consider within the context of the theological theory of Pandeism -- after all, Pandeism is logic-based, whereas the Whovian realm is perhaps somewhat more.... whimsical. A bit silly, even, not only in the behavior of its denizens, but in the operations of time and space and physics.

For the uninitiated, the world of Doctor Who centers on the adventures of the Doctor -- a Time Lord from the once-great (and now sadly destroyed) planet Gallifrey. The Doctor inhabits a time-and-space ship of sorts called the TARDIS, which externally looks like a 1960's British police box, but is enormous on the inside, and which enables him to travel to any point in time and space. This he does, fighting a variety of enemies, old recurring ones as often as new ones, and generally (though not always entirely) saving the day. In so doing, the Doctor has racked up several dozen (human) lifetimes worth of positively undreamt of experiences. The theological theory of Pandeism, on the other hand, centers on the idea of a Creator which, instead of setting forth a Universe separate from itself, wholly becomes our Universe (or, perhaps, the Doctor's Universe) so as to learn from the myriad combination of experiences of those beings which come about in such a Universe.

As with all fictional worlds, there are several directions from which the particulars of this world allow for the pandeistic enquiry. One is in terms of what the occupants of this world believe. But belief is actually not so important (although, perhaps what the Doctor believes is more important, as we shall consider). Another is the actuality of that Universe, its physics and governing dynamics, including the actual presence (or absence) of supernatural phenomena.

What is believed

Like many science fiction universes, that of Doctor Who is well-stocked with religiosity. And, like many science fiction universes, religious belief is often shown to be errant and manipulable. Things deemed by common folk as supernatural are routinely shown by the Doctor as having a proper scientific explanation -- typically in the form of aliens pretending to be gods (or being mistaken for them; or, indeed, the Doctor himself being mistaken for one). Except that those scientific explanations are themselves quite often things which defy scientific reason. A very recent example is the episode, "The Rings of Akhaten." Here, the Doctor and his companion, Clara, visit a planetary system where instead of money, things are bartered for with items having 'psychometric' value, being the source of some emotional attachment. The denizens of this world are sending a young girl to join in an eternal chorus being sung to an especially demanding god--one which might awaken and destroy the girl if it is not placated with her singing. But something goes wrong with the song and the god awakens and threatens to devour the entire system, and then others beyond it. Fortunately, after the Doctor fails to placate it with his own life story, Clara is able to overcome this god by feeding it "the most important leaf in human history," one which allowed her parents to meet, but which now represents the infinite possibilities lost with her mother's untimely death.

And so, instead of an actual 'god,' we find in this episode that the culprit was simply a run-of-the-mill unfathomably powerful living planet which eats sentimental attachments, and can be stopped by a single leaf which happens to be imbued with infinite possibilities. Does that not sound like magic? Beneath the veneer of this being a commonsense scientific explanation, does that not smack of a wholly supernatural account springing straight from ancient mythology? But in the world or the Doctor, it is indeed routine -- one supernatural explanation explained away by another one framed as scientific. But in a pandeistic world the explanation would more likely actually be unequivocally and testably scientific, and not an equally implausible device simply dressed in scientific language.

What the Doctor believes

The Doctor's own views would be of especially remarkable weight in the Doctor's Universe because he clearly possess vastly more knowledge then the typical human can even grasp (even if he does often act as if he were confused by human romantic and sexual relationships). In "The Parting of the Ways," companion Rose Tyler has looked into the heart of the Tardis and so was being overwhelmed by having obtained the ability to see "everything. All that is, all that was, all that ever could be." The Doctor sympathetically responds, "That's what I see. All the time. Doesn't it drive you mad?"

With all of this knowledge and centuries of wisdom, it is notable that the Doctor never prays to any deity. He never endorses the truth of any scripture or doctrine, invariably immediately doubting any reliance upon supernatural explanations (and for good reason, based on his experience in the matter). But neither does the Doctor ever clearly express outright atheism.

Such is the case even when the Doctor confronts a creature claiming to be the Devil itself, in "The Satan Pit." Here, the Doctor is visiting an expedition to an 'impossible planet' orbiting a black hole. The planet turns out to be a prison for a powerful evil, one which awakens and claims to be that universal bogeyman of badness, Satan. The Doctor asks, "If you are the Beast, then answer me this: Which one, hmm? Because the universe has been busy since you’ve been gone. There's more religions than there are planets in the sky. There's the Arkaphets, Christianity, Pash-Pash, New Judaism, San Claar, Church of the Tin Vagabond. Which devil are you?" Naturally, the creature claims to be "All of them," and when the Doctor asks when was it imprisoned here, it answers "Before time and light and space and matter. Before the cataclysm. Before this universe was created." This, the Doctor doubts: "You can't have come from before the universe. That's impossible." "Is that your religion?" the creature asks. "It's a belief," the Doctor replies.

Later, the Doctor explains, "If that thing had said it was from beyond the universe, I'd have believed it. But before? Impossible." On closer examination, the creature's claim is indeed impractical -- it's confinement seems to hinge on technology and principles of physics which necessarily postdate the creation of our Universe. And naturally, it could not have engaged in the evils attributed to supernatural bogeymen had it been incapacitated for all those billions of years. But as to the Doctor's belief that nothing could come from before our Universe, perhaps this extends from the understanding in modern physics of time itself as a function of our Universe, with "before the Universe" itself being akin to "North of the North Pole." But if time is a function of our Universe, it would seem to follow that "beyond our Universe" is the same as "beyond time," and so the Doctor's understanding would not preclude an entity from existing outside the bounds of time itself.

What people believe about the Doctor

One theory popular amongst some fans (though derided by most) is that the Doctor is "God." (PBS even dares ask, Is Doctor Who a Religion?, though not on this point especially). Examples abound of the sort of thing which fuels this Doctor-as-deity sort of thinking. One can be found in the episode, New Earth, when the Doctor makes a life-or-death call an anthropomorphic cat nun asks, "And who are you to make this decision?" The Doctor responds, "I'm the Doctor. And if you don't like it, if you want to take it to a higher authority, then there isn't one. It stops with me."

At the end of "The Wedding of River Song," it is revealed that the Silence, a religious order, have been seeking to prevent the Doctor from answering the question "Doctor who?", believing that "silence will fall when the question is asked". According to Dorium Maldovar, the question was told in this manner: "On the Fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh, when no creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked — a question that must never be answered. The first question, the question that must never be answered, hidden in plain sight, the question that you've been running from all your life. Doctor who?" And why would this be "the first question"? Well, it may mean that the Doctor is God, or it may mean that there is no God, in which case the Doctor is surely about the closest thing to one. Or it may mean that whatever god might exist is not one to which an appeal can be taken, and one for which that would be an appropriate "first question"-- which Pandeism would be an example of, such deity having become the unanswering Universe itself.

And what is

More important than what is simply believed is what we can see of how this Universe functions. After all, people will believe all sorts of wrong things for all sorts of reasons (and, even, will come to believe right things for wrong reasons); but are there clues to its workings which coincide with a the operation of a pandeistic theological model? The Universe of Doctor Who is quite a curious place. Physics seems to function more or less coherently -- gravity and electromagnetic reactions in all the right places. But it is, naturally, a place where time travel is possible. And, interferences with the time stream seem to have varying effects on reality -- pasts and futures change, but the same people seem to show up regardless. The degree to which change occurs is inconstant, and this inconstancy is handwaved away with references to temporal polarities or the like. This is a place where things like teleportation and telepathic communication and mind-occupation can be found (in The Lodger, the Doctor demonstrates the ability to convey his own memories and experiences to another person through a head bonk).

The Universe with which the Doctor is familiar teems with alien species of most every imaginable configuration, from many different hues of humanoids to the country-sized Space Whale of "The Beast Below." These aliens equally range in disposition from friendly to murderous, with species such as the Sontarans who are dedicated to warmaking, and the dreaded Daleks, which worship hate and yearn to wipe out all life in the Universe. These beings differ from life on Earth not simply in appearance, but in a host of more arcane capacities. The Akhaten planet-being is one example. Some beings do indeed exist as nothing more than clouds of energy. Another, closer to home, is the Weeping Angels, creatures which look like old-timey grotesque statues of people, but which eat temporal energy (forcing their victims back in time by a few decades when feeding, and which are incapable of moving when anybody is looking at them). Oddly, the Doctor himself describes the Weeping Angels as a product of evolution, though what sort of evolutionary path could produce such things is well nigh unfathomable. The Daleks and another regular foe, the Cybermen, seem to be examples of transhumanism gone wrong, with efforts to augment living things technologically yielding monsters instead of marvels.

And then there is that quite strange creature, the Doctor. Like all Time Lords, he is effectively immortal -- at least up until he gets killed by temporal radiation or alien spiders or the like enough times to use up all of his "regenerations," and so is no longer able to return with a new actor- er- face. If the exploits of other Time Lords are instructive, he has superhuman physical strength. Despite his immense arsenal of abilities, the Doctor is certainly not, by appearances, infallible or omniscient or omnipotent. In "The Waters of Mars" he attempts to prevent a fixed point in history from occurring, and fails tragically, and with great lamentation of this failure. In "The Angels Take Manhattan," he grieves for his inability to ever see companions Amy and Rory again, because his paradoxical doings with New York's time stream have made it too delicate to withstand any further intervention.

Additionally, as noted before, the Doctor is not the only Time Lord to have graced the Universe (though it seems he is now, having destroyed the rest to save the Universe from a fate worse than death). Once, there was a whole planet of them, presumably all at least possessed of the relative immortality which the Doctor enjoys. True, the Doctor seems special even amongst his fellow Time Lords -- on his trips to Gallifrey in earlier incarnations, he usually got the better of them in when they were at cross purposes. Even the Doctor's most able foe, the Master, was ultimately always defeated, even though his apparent final destruction, in "The End of Time," was essentially a self-sacrificing suicide. The event which this suicidal sacrifice prevented was the attempt of the time-locked Gallifreyans to end the Universe itself, and become beings of pure thought. This is interesting on a number of levels firstly because it unquestioningly assumes that the Gallifreyans do indeed have the ability to end the entire Universe, as well as the ability to initiate and then persist in an existence as beings of pure thought. One must wonder if this is a one-way transition -- if material beings can become thought-beings, does it not follow that thought-beings (or, perhaps' one great thought-being) can become material?

And, if the Doctor is God, then aren't those amongst his fellow Time Lords who can from time to time defeat him?

But, naturally, if Pandeism is true then, well, so are we all. And herein arises a uniquely pandeistic possibility, for perhaps the Doctor knows this (or the possibility of it), and so is simply somebody who happens to have a better handle on the power which accompanies such status (or, indeed, comes from a race of beings so empowered). Time Lords apparently gain some of their depth of knowledge, and perhaps other abilities, from a childhood ritual in which they are made to stare into an untempered schism in the time vortex, which would be a handy metaphor for looking straight into the power of a Universe-creating entity underlying all things. And, interestingly, in the episode, "The Pandorica Opens," River Song laments "I hate good wizards in fairy tales. They always turn out to be him." Would it be any surprise whatsoever if, in this reality, Jesus turned out to be the Doctor in an earlier adventure? Or indeed if Moses or Arjuna or Odysseus or Lao Tze or any other mythohistoric figure turned out to be the selfsame sojourner?

Of Chrislam and Xtianity

There has been for some time an idea that eventually Christianity and Islam would put aside their differences and merge into one super-religion, pulling up aspects of each and perhaps dominating the Earth. It has been suggested, even, that the somewhat more polytheistically inclined Hinduism could absorb both, and what the heck, throw Judaism and Mormonism and Sikhism into the mix, thus creating for the first time in recorded history a single religion commanding the fealty of a majority of the world's population. The idea is given to several different authors, who have taken different angles -- Arthur C. Clarke for example writes in his 1992 The Hammer of God (not to be confused with the Led Zeppelin biography Hammer of the Gods) of a not-so-far-future fictional Earth where "The sudden rise of Chrislam had been traumatic equally to Rome and Mecca...." growing swiftly to a hundred million adherents, abetted by cultural and economic difficulties squeezing the parent faiths.

But as a matter of practical experience, consolidation is an unlikely path for any major faith; each is more likely to split into multiple smaller sects, and any reconciliation between sects of different faiths will tend to be far outside the mainstream of beliefs falling under the umbrella of the faith. And so, even as there are conciliatory voices today who would claim that all these different faiths are simply different paths to the same Creator, (indeed a position held, if somewhat more obliquely and indirectly by Pandeism), the greater tendency amongst the faithful is to ramp up greater indictment against beliefs discordant to their own. Even if, it turns out, those faiths fall under the broader ends of the umbrella of their own religion.

There is in fact, by the way, a faith group operating under the name 'Chrislam' and purporting to carry out the idea discussed here, attempting to meld assertedly reconcilable elements of Christianity and Islam. Or, actually, there are two groups. Both are in Nigeria. Oh, they started out as one, but had a schism somewhere along the way and are now, if not bitter enemies, passing acquaintances who don't pass up an opportunity to snipe at one another's divergent doctrines. Ironically, if unsurprisingly, this is what Arthur C. Clarke forecast for his fictional version as well. This, before a later inevitable eventual turn to a world where the only divide was between proponents of Atheism and Deism (presumptively including Pandeism).

Naturally, we might abbreviate this to Xlam (or perhaps Xslam?) by using the conventional substitution of the 'X' for Christ. People typically imagine that this arose with the intention of insulting Christians, but really the origin of the X as a substitute for Christ in Xtian, Xtianity, and, naturally, Xmas, is something of a mystery -- it might indeed have been intended by non-Christians in a derogatory sense, but it just might, as well, have been a Christian connivance. One perhaps intended simply to abbreviate, or perhaps complexly to obfuscate. The X is after all something like a leaned-over t in its resemblance to that most deathly of reminders, the cross. In some fonts (and in the multiplication sign) the lines are in fact perpendicular. And, even more interestingly, in ancient times, Jesus Christ was sometimes abbreviated by Christians familiar with the Greek alphabet with a symbol combining the letters "Chi" and "Rho" -- roughly represented in the Latin alphabet by X and P, respectively. It is very easy to see how those earnestly and noninsultingly referencing Jesus might have whittled their representation down to the point where X marks the spot.

But then again, if X means Christ, doesn't that mean our X chromosome is the Christ chromosome, the X-Acto knife is the Christ-Acto knife, and the Uncanny X-men are really the Uncanny Christ-men?

----

Further reading:

"Signs of Xmas" in Changing Signs of Truth: A Christian Introduction to the Semiotics of Communication, by Crystal L. Downing, pages 89-90.

Pandeism and the world of Sherlock Holmes

What can the fictional world of Sherlock Holmes possibly have to do with the theological theory of Pandeism? Well, really the question is, is this world consistent with Pandeism, and the answer: why wouldn't it be?


Unlike the magical world of Harry Potter and the alien-filled science fiction realms of Star Wars and of Star Trek, the world of Sherlock Holmes is utterly mundane. Like the earlier Scooby-Doomysteries, every mystery has as its resolution purely human activity -- and, indeed, even those cases brought to Holmes under the pretense of supernatural activity -- ghosts, curses, demonic possession -- are inevitably shown up as man-made manipulations of mind and matter. And so, to speak of the theological model underlying that world is to speak of a world with no especial metaphysical activity ongoing. We might just as well be speaking, then, of any such mundane world, of that of adventurers like Tom Sawyer, actioners like James Bond or Jason Bourne, the mundane mysteries of CSI and Law & Order, or any other sort of media in which things simply happen, without second thought, in accordance with the laws of physics and without any appearance of divine intervention or other metaphysical causation (or, at least, without any such appearance not ultimately debunked as being of human manufacture).


This is not to suggest that these sorts of media are absent of displays of religiosity, for they depict the real and present world, and naturally people in this world have religious beliefs, all sorts of them.

Religion, as she is depicted in the stories of Sherlock Holmes:


In the course of the Sherlock Holmes stories, there are references to Jews and Gypsies, Muslims, Hindus, and various denominations of Christians. Perhaps the most famous treatment of religion in the Sherlock Holmes canon is to be found in A Study in Scarlet, one of only four full-length Sherlock Holmes novels (the remainder of the literary contributions being short stories). It is eventually uncovered in the story that the mysterious deaths being investigated are of Mormons against whom the killer was taking revenge, for years before their community had kidnapped his love and murdered her father, forcing her into a marriage which resulted in her own death a short time later (the story attributes the girl's death to a broken heart, but implies that she was ill-treated by her forced husband, who ultimately seemed more interested in inheriting what had previously been her father's land). The treatment of Mormonism generally is of a dangerous cult which exercises rigid control over its members and condones lawlessness against outsiders, who are distrusted. Author Arthur Conan Doyle is claimed to have later privately apologized for this depiction, though this report is itself somewhat dubious.


But the general treatment afforded to religion by Sherlock Holmes and his compatriots is apathy. In one story, Holmes dismissed knowledge of astronomy as useless to his work; doubtless he would have so opined on theological questions. Holmes occasionally uses idioms incorporating religious terminology (as in, "my God" and "for God's sake," or suggesting that a doomed man is bound "to meet his maker"), and one story mentions Holmes as being on his way to a chapel (for reasons not specified). But on no occasion is Holmes shown to attend a purely religious service, utter a prayer, or explicitly voice a belief in any higher power. Indeed, in one of the earliest stories -- The Sign of the Four -- Holmes commends to compatriot John Watson a book titled The Martyrdom of Man by one Winwood Reade, which as it happens incorporates a secularist and materialist antireligious examination of world history, especially in depicting Jesus as delusional. And yet, Holmes calls this work "one of the most remarkable ever penned," which would in that day be tantamount to endorsing atheism, as much as if somebody modernly were to declare Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion to be amongst the finest books ever written.

Sherlock Holmes contemplates the meaning of life:


But even Holmes waxes morosely philosophical from time to time, as depicted in the 1892 story, The Cardboard Box:

"What is the meaning of it, Watson?" said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever."

Similarly in The Retired Colourman, Holmes decries, "But is not all life pathetic and futile? We reach. We grasp. And what is left in our hands at the end? A shadow. Or worse than a shadow -- misery." And in The Veiled Lodger Holmes declares, "The ways of Fate are indeed hard to understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter then the world is a cruel jest." Such contemplations suggests at the same time a wish to find a larger purpose to our Universe, even while rejecting all the explanations which have been considered up to that time. Holmes is equally dismissive of supernatural explanations for mundane crimes, refusing to contemplate for example the proposition that The Hound of the Baskervilles is anything but a flesh-and-blood beast, rejecting the possibility of unearthly agency again in The Adventure of the Devil's Foot, and commenting in the late-written story, The Sussex Vampire, "But are we to give serious attention to such things? This Agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. This world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply."


The television and film adaptations of Holmes' stories have tended to remain faithful to general irreligiosity of the character, or more likely to have ignored theological questions altogether. In the first Robert Downey Sherlock Holmes film, Holmes dismisses, and later disproves, an apparent miraculous resurrection from death; in Young Sherlock Holmes mystical explanations are similarly disproved as Holmes discovers hallucinogenic drugs to be responsible for seemingly supernatural experiences (and the villains are attempting to perform an ancient Egyptian ritual to boot); in the modernly-set BBC reimagining Sherlock, the character is if anything more scornful of religious beliefs and explanations.


Could the world of Sherlock Holmes occupy a Pandeistic Universe?


But all of this relates to what Holmes believes, perhaps to what Arthur Conan Doyle believes -- which is, in the larger scheme of no matter. Were Holmes depicted as a devout Christian or a devout Muslim, or a Jew or a Sikh, such depiction would not work to make real the religion believed. There may be a billion devout Christians in the world (Christians will claim there are more, but that requires some sleight of hand with who they would call 'devout') but that has never operated to convince Hindus, Jews, or Mormons of the truth of Christianity; and the same can be claimed of the comparable number of Muslims, or of Hindus, or most any denomination. That it is believed simply proves that it is believed, not even that it is rationally believable, much less true. So, whatever the religion of Sherlock Holmes or James Bond or any other figure existing in a nonsupernatural world, from Robin Hood to Rocky Balboa, the question remains whether the world which they inhabit isconsistent with a pandeistic Universe.


And the answer in all of these cases is indeed that it is. For, although Pandeism fully accounts for miracles and other apparently metaphysical or supernatural events, and so would account for the magic of Harry Potter's world, the Jedi powers exhibited in the world of Star Wars, and the superpowered and telepathic aliens often encountered in Star Trek, none of these sorts of things arerequired in Pandeism. They are simply accounted for, if they exist.


It is entirely possible to conceive of a world -- indeed, of this world -- where no miracles, no telepaths, no supernatural events of any sort exist, where all reports ever made of such are theconsequence of coincidence, mistake, hallucination, imagination, or deception, and yet where the fundamental explanation for the existence of our Universe, at all, is pandeistic Creation. Even if all other religions are disqualified in such a world, where all of their reported miracles and wonders and fancies are by default simply false, Pandeism may yet be true.


In the final analysis (and in the world of Sherlock Holmes, there always is a final analysis), it is even somewhat surprising that Sherlock Holmes, to whatever degree he speculates on religious questions, has not come to contemplate at least Deism (which was well known in his day), if not the more obscure Pandeism, or some comparable variation of Pantheism. But, then, if the orbits of the planets are of no matter to Holmes, perhaps these even greater orbits would be of even less interest.

Pandeism and the world of Star Trek

Does the world of Star Trek operate consistently with the theological model of Pandeism? Well, any longtime watcher of Star Trek will have observed the general lack of religiosity expressed by the main characters of that series, its heroes, the starship sojourning personnel of the United Federation of Planets. This is often observable as well with various of the other spacefaring species whom the Federation types contend with. This flows from the convictions of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who believed that there would in the future be no room in human society for what he perceived as the divisive peculiarities of religious systems. According to one of Roddenberry's closest collaborators, 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.

Even after Roddenberry's death, the perpetuators of his work more or less held to that principle. Ronald D. Moore, Another collaborator, wrote, "Gene felt very strongly that all of our contemporary Earth religions would be gone by the 23rd century, and while few of us around here actually share that opinion, we feel that we should leave this part of the Trek universe alone."


Expressions of religious belief in Star Trek:


Commentary on theistic manifestations of religiousness in fact is largely confined to two types of beings shown in the shows and (to a much lesser extent) in the flicks.


First, there are the ignorant, non-spacegoing civilizations. These peoples are religious simply because of their primitive gullibility and impressionability, and this is highlighted by the fact that such planetbound primitives are as likely as not to attribute godhood or a like level of worshipfulness toward any wayward Earth-human astronaut who crashlands in their vicinity. Though not necessarily focused on the fickleness of faith, in "A Piece of the Action" an entire world models its behavior on 1920s gangsters based on a book left behind by Earthers who went missing on that planet a century ago. The book is explicitly considered "holy" by the tommy-gun-toting terrestrials. Another episode, "Patterns of Force," sees a visiting Starfleet professor able to convince an entire planet to emulate the Nazi model (though he meant only to capture the efficiency of that system, its proponents end up recreating the genocidal aspects as well). Indeed, wherever a group of primitives is shown to worship a godlike source of power, or even a powerful being claiming to be a god, it is always shown to be something scientifically explcable and disposable.


This leads into the second, for there are as well various superpowerful beings who often masquerade as deities. In "Who Mourns For Adonais," the Greek God Apollo shows up and, in addition to displaying his various powers of growing to a massive size, grasping an entire starship in his projected grip, and shooting lightning bolts from his fingertips, reveals that the ancient myths were true in a manner of speaking -- for he and his kind visited Earth centuries before and inspired humanity to its belief in gods. Notably, Captain Kirk hints at a continuing monotheism, declaring to Apollo, "Mankind has no need for gods. We find the one quite adequate." But although a deity from a now extinct religion is used here, the implication is inescapable that the miraculous powers inspiring modern religions may similarly have been simply the mundane abilities of advanced extraterrestrials. And, beyond Apollo Star Trek featured other entities such as the superpowerful Organians, Trelane (aka "The Squire of Gothos"), the Q continuum, and the entity claiming to be 'God' in "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" (but who apparently needs a starship to escape the planet he occupies). Trelane and the Q (especially given fan speculation and even an official novel marking Trelane as a wayward Q) certainly seem to have more than sufficient power to pull off every miracle ever reported on Earth -- even the creation of Earth itself -- reinforcing the possibility that the 'old' religious beliefs of man are simply the toyings of superevolved alien beings.


There are exceptions to these patterns of belief, if roughly hewn. The Klingons are shown in the later series to have a complex religious structure, including belief in an afterlife for heroes, something similar to the Norse idea of Valhalla. Much of the "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" series involved the intrigues of Bajoran religion, which was driven by the presence of an intergalactic wormhole near Bajoran space, which humans considered an anomaly and Bajorans accredited with prophecy-fulfilling theological significance. There are, as well, nontheistic manifestations of religion and religion-like thinking. Vulcans, who are most strongly characterized by their adherence to logic, are shown to have system of ritual and symbolism which is described by outsiders as 'Vulcan mysticism,' and which entails some portion of their population being engaged in clearly priestlike and monk like rules. And, there appear some symbolic vestiges, at least, of the old Earth beliefs. In the closing scenes of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" Montgomery Scott pounds out "Amazing Grace" -- traditionally a Christian hymn -- on the bagpipes to mourn the death of Spock. Occasional episodes showed presumptively Hindu female personnel adorned with the bindhi on the forehead, traditionally a symbol of that faith. But both of these examples might simply be secular carryovers from traditions no longer carrying religious import, as with the modern giving of candy on Halloween.


Metaphysical phenomena in Star Trek:


But the question here need not rely upon what is believed by denizens of the world of Star Trek. For as has been noted before, many things are or have been believed in human history which are necessarily untrue, oftimes simply absurd. Star Trek is somewhat extraordinary even relative to other science fiction series (which are often simply about action going on with cool technology and alien races) in that Star Trek is fundamentally about an intense pursuit of knowledge itself. The very reason we've ventured forth to the stars there is to learn scientific truths (which, it has been observed before, are compatible with a pandeistic Universe). But within the Star Trek world there are phenomena at play which do seem to require a metaphysical explanation. Beings of pure energy exist. Amongst several races in this Universe, fairly physics-defying exhibitions of telepathy -- instantaneous, and faster than light across vast distances -- are displayed. Between the second and third films, it is revealed that Spock was able to transfer his entire personality and body of knowledge into McCoy's brain with a few seconds of face-touching mind meld action. And in these instances, the Universe of Star Trek operates consistently with the principles of a pandeistic Universe.


Indeed, Pandeism would go far to explain the characteristics of the world of Star Trek. Earthly monotheisms do not do so well in this regard, for they tend to claim universality, even as the world of Star Trek is one with many civilizations far removed from Earth which have consequently never received the revelations which would be expected from an involved universal deity. But Pandeism especially predicts that there ought to be many intelligent civilizations, and that they would find some way to technologically overcome the distance between the stars so as to be able to interact, and generate the infinite potential of diversity of experiences to be found in such interactions -- the experiences for which our Creator is theorized to have set forth our Universe. Even the most godlike beings of Star Trek's reality -- beings which would have no difficulty convincing population such as the ancient Earth civilizations to worship them as the 'all-powerful' deities of our religious traditions -- are not gods in any divine metaphysical sense, but are simply very advanced products of the same sort of process of evolution and technological advancement as has brought man to his present point. And it is indeed within the expectations of Pandeism that our Universe promises to bring us however much further.