In this video, Jimmy Akin is asked whether or not the Prime Directive from Star Trek opposes Catholic Theology.
Transcript:
Hi. Uh, so I feel kind of bad because my question’s a little bit silly, but, um, in Star Trek, they have the Prime Directive, and me and my daughter were arguing about whether that would follow, like, Catholic theology as far as witnessing and that if you followed the Prime Directive.
In terms of witnessing?
Well, like, uh, preaching, teaching people about Jesus if you’re following the Prime Directive and not interfering in other, like, alien cultures.
Ok, basically, it only, the Prime Directive only applied to civilizations that hadn’t yet developed warp drive, and so if a planet, if a civilization was confined to a single planet, then you didn’t want to share information with them that would be technologically disruptive.
Later, by the time of the next generation, they had developed a more expansive understanding of the Prime Directive that’s like, don’t interfere in the natural development of a civilization, and that was always irrational. Um, there are elements to the Prime Directive that make sense, you know, you don’t want to give nuclear bombs to people who were in the Stone Age, they’re not going to be able to use them responsibly.
Um, so, you know, there are elements of truth that are reasonable to the Prime Directive, but by the time of the Next Generation, it was just being applied in all kinds of crazy ways, most notably in one of the next-gen movies where basically they’re applying the Prime Directive to a group of people who live on a planet that has magic rings that make people immune from aging, and so on.
And they’re applying it to a culture that just has a few hundred people at most in it. And the problems with the Prime Directive became so obvious that in one of the short tracks where it’s Spock’s first day on the Enterprise, he’s talking to the first officer, number one, and he asks her, has it ever occurred to you that the Prime Directive is morally indefensible?
And she’s basically, she basically says, if you care about your Starfleet career, never say that again. But that’s an acknowledgement from the writers of the show that they’ve kind of written themselves into a corner with the Prime Directive.
Now, if you take the next generation understanding of the Prime Directive of not interfering with the natural development of a culture, um, then that does potentially come into conflict with the Christian duty to bear witness to Jesus Christ. As Christians, we have a responsibility to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with everybody, and that’s going to apply, you know, presumably to people on other planets, too.
Now, that doesn’t mean you do so immediately. I could see it being reasonable to say, okay, well, this is a pre-warp civilization, so we’re not really going to tell them that we’re aliens until they’re ready for it. But then once they’re ready for that knowledge, then we would want to share the message of Jesus Christ with them as well.
You could even argue that they need the message of Jesus Christ earlier than that. So I do see that although there are elements or versions of the Prime Directive that are reasonable, that there are also versions of the Prime Directive that are going to be in conflict with the Christian duty to evangelize.
By the way, Jamie, don’t, like, feel bad about calling Catholic Answers with a moral theology question coming from Star Trek, because I don’t know if there’s a better call, a better show you could have called into it. I mean, not only is Jimmy an apologist of over 30 years, but you also, one of the podcasts you host is also about Star Trek, right?
Oh, yeah, yeah. And in general, I treat all questions straight. It doesn’t matter what the question is to me. I’ll give it a straight answer. So Star Trek, morality questions, totally fine with me.
Yeah, don’t feel bad about that, Jamie. Please call in again with all of your Star Trek moral theology questions!