User blog comment:Bookworm1138/The Federation: Good or Bad?/@comment-5487-20090924183043

I've been following Conflict. You do good stories. ^^

Anyway, Picard's quoting Hamlet reminded me right away of a possible third. The new-ageism "As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become" actually came from the Mormons in 1840.

Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged had a few interesting words on the doctrine of original sin. This probably informed the character's point of view at some pre-casting phase.
 * What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge--he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil--he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor--he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire--he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy--all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man's fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors they they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was--that robot, in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love--he was not man...

I've always been of the position that God alone, at least as I understand Him, has sole possession of the whole absolute truth in certain things that really really matter. Our understanding of sciences, metaphysics, etc continues to expand but will never approach that held by God.

In the ST universe, man (and certain of his neighbours) came to realize and agree upon certain fundamental truths about fair play, in many cases after some ghastly catastrophe (usually war, theirs or somebody else's) was visited upon them. For us on earth, this will be possible only when society evolves beyond war.

I opine that while the Federation Council would be cognizant of the volatile nature of religion, it does not necessarily follow that they would be actively opposed to it. Isn't it their policy, after all, to welcome all comers as they are?