[Saquist]

Originally Posted by captainoley

The "fact" is that you called the expressions of my own beliefs superfluous, which as you know means needless or uncalled for. I do not see how my statement falls into either. I include everything that I feel will make my post clear. This is an attempt to avoid wasting pages trying to clarify a hazy statement.

No one has objected to your expressions of belief, only the way in which you project them as fact. There are very few ways in which we can actually label something as FACT. One of them is repeatedly testing reviewing. If results are consistent, if peers can emulate it, and if a universal audience can agree with the results in the majority we are provided with a scientific THEORY. You use this word as if it refutes something. If you can produce tests that can prove some of your anti-evolution hypotheses, than you may be the author of a new THEORY. Scientific Laws are few and were made long ago. There will no longer be scientific laws. The term is just not used any more. Einstein produced a THEORY of relativity a hundred years ago. No one has been able to refute it, thus the theory stands. The same applies to religion. No one can refute many of the elements of the Bible, so they stand as true in the minds of believers.

Evolution remains the predominant theory because it has not been refuted. It is supported by test after test.

You say that the Bible would be accepted as evidence in a court of law, but I don't understand how this is any different than accepting scientific writings that have passed the tests described above? If a team of experts can analyze a man charged with running his car into a house and determines that he had a minor stoke while driving, should this not be accepted? Now the same man claims that an angel ran into the street in front of him and forced him off the road, there is no way to prove or disprove what he says, so his guilt becomes difficult to determine. What can be done here?

If you don't like the analogy, then don't respond to it. I am just clarifying where my view may be indeterminable by someone on the board. There is no need to say that my view is unnecessary.

Oley

I attempted to be as factual as I could. It was my understaning that this wasn't a comparison of beliefs systems but a critique of the culture before the facts. As a result I was not expecting you to relate your own opinion on organized religion. I didn't see the relevance.

It was my assumption from the outset that you wished to be factual. However I can see that this conversation will encompass more than just factual information. Forgive the litteralness.

Facts:
Is a word which is understood but not well defined.
I'm unconcerned with any other persons definition of fact for it is simply what is generally held as undisputable. As I dictated before, I don't use fact and belief as synonyms and you should never assume that I do, did or ever will.

Concerning you statement against the Bible as any different to being accepted than science in a court of law...Perhaps you think I debate bible vs Science.
Negative. I debate evidence. It includes the possibility of a vast category of unknowns. I believe this you covered in your last post.

[Livingston]

Speaking of religion, there were some references directly to ancient religions in TOS, right? It's been along time since I've seen it, but wasn't there an episode where the crew meet Apollo, an alien who visited Earth long ago and insinuated himself as a god, the god Apollo and he's not too happy with the crew and the fact that humanity considers him more a dead religion now, a mythology? I found that interesting. It reminds me a bit of Stargate SG1. That show addresses many ancient religions. Basic idea is that aliens were the gods of early man. I always wondered what kind of impact it would have if the aliens they met were the gods of the Abrahamic religions. What if the crew of the Enterprise came across an alien that claimed to be Jehovah or Christ? These are living religions, you don't have that safety net anymore. What would it mean to find that your gods are aliens, creatures that came from the same soup of creation as yourself? What I mean is that Q himself is godlike. He seems omnipotent yet he is a product of the universe, he doesn't stand outside it, he was one of its creations. I don't know that for a fact but that's how I read it. Q, whatever he came from, long ago perhaps rose out of the same primordial soup life on earth rose out of. He takes Picard back to that moment of creation in the series finale, on Earth anyway, could that be Q's beginning? It was a nice line, "All you know, everything you ever were, came from this puddle of goo." words to that effect. The Apollo alien god of TOS, did his long forgotten ancestor come from the same primordial soup? If the Enterprise crew ever met an alien that claimed to the Abrahamic god, did he come from the same origins and what would that mean for us? Interesting questions I think.

All I can offer is that my definition of any true god would have to stand outside existence, outside everything.

[Saquist]

The Final Frontier was the First movie in which the Enterprise was (at least) was CGI. This was vastly improved in Star Trek VI

[Livingston]

It wasn't a model? Wow! Well the backgrounds didn't have the texture of the other films, the detail, they just seemed so layered rough, the effects I mean.

You sure the Enterprise was CGI, it was shot in 88-89, I didn't realize they were using CGI for all ship shots at that point. Surely the Enterprise in VI was a model, it looked fantastic!

[Saquist]

I'll do little research on it to confirm.

[Saquist]

Final Frontier Special Effects.
Another criticism of the film is the special effects.[citation needed] The best effects house at the time was Industrial Light and Magic, which were used for most of the earlier Star Trek films, but were unavailable because of their work on the second and third Back to the Future films. It was also reported in publications at the time (e.g. Starburst magazine) that the effects requirements were so huge that ILM "priced themselves out of the market." Instead, the crew went with a much smaller company, Associates & Ferren. A common error frequently pointed out by fans is that the Enterprise-A is shown to have at least 78 decks — this would easily make it the largest ship in the history of the fleet. Shatner's newest book states that ILM's "A-Team " was working on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade while the "B-team" was working on Ghostbusters II. This led to a small company out of Hoboken, NJ, being in charge of the picture. Shatner claimed that this limited what he could do as far as extravagant effects, like hordes of warriors, a Powers of Ten opening shot, multiple rock monsters and demons in the final scene, and as a result many effects were cut due to budget restrictions.
The original end of the movie involved Kirk being chased by a rock monster hewn from the rocky terrain. This footage was scrapped when William Shatner decided that the costume looked unconvincing. Because of budget problems and delays partly caused by the expense of the costume, Shatner was unable to re-film sequences and ended up having to re-use shots of the false god's face instead. Test footage of the rock monster appears in the 2003 special edition DVD release. (The idea of the "captain" being attacked and chased by a "rock monster" was later used humorously a decade later in the 1999 Star Trek spoof, Galaxy Quest.)

[Livingston]

I read that wikipedia article when you said you thought the Enterprise in V was CGI. Still don't see anything in the article that indicates it was. I just watched a little of the second disc where they show footage of an Enterprise model for camera passes and also the sequence where the shuttle races towards the Enterprise to land, so it seems quite a bit of it was still model work. The rock monster footage is pretty funny, see why they cut it. Wonder what in the film was CGI, nothing in the extras so far seem to indicate they used CGI.

[Saquist]

I remember reading something on the CGI crap model and why the Enterprise looked like a cartoon in some scenes... Untill I find I assume I dreamed it all.

[Livingston]

Well, if you find it, post it, gotta check that out. The ship does look brighter than usual, I just figured it was cause of bad compositing.

[Elizadolots]

Livingston! Welcome to the dark side! Those who don’t hate V. I will tell you that I hold it above III with no concern at all…

Personally I don't think the being was destroyed, it's still there trapped on that planet.

[humor]Sure….’cause it’s really God! Later it sends one of its “fingers” out into space to rip that nasty Kirk dude away from his life…but, since Kirk was overall in the “good column” when it came time to total up, he got stuck in limbo.[/humor]

Laurence Lukinbill does look like Oliver Stone! Good call!

Saquist wrote:

As I dictated before, I don't use fact and belief as synonyms and you should never assume that I do, did or ever will.

“As I dictated”???? Isn’t this America and don’t we overthrow dictators?

Livingston, again! Great post! Yes, Star Trek definitely addressed religion as a concept, which is why I started this thread.

All I can offer is that my definition of any true god would have to stand outside existence, outside everything.

I think that’s a valid definition… it’s an old truism that any technology, sufficiently advanced, will appear to be magical or created by God. If we could transport a Pilgrim off the Mayflower and set him down in the average home, he would conclude he was in the presence of a God. Consider the power: to see other realms, to heat food without fire, to contact people far away with no visible connection.

Saquist wrote:

The Final Frontier was the First movie in which the Enterprise was (at least) was CGI. This was vastly improved in Star Trek VI

Thus utterly derailing the thread for no apparent reason since he has no proof of his assertion….how nice.