The outrage of Christian extremists is the best testimony of this episode's necessity and of its continuing validity, 22 years after first airing.
Sadly, fundamentalists will always miss the point. Rather than realise the foolishness of resorting to extraordinary explanations when easy ones are unavailable (as the Mintakans briefly do, believing "Picard is a god" to be the only explanation to the feats they've witnessed); they'll claim outrage and talk of "offense".
"I'm offended" is the newest way dogmatic people have found to avoid thinking, and they'll ride it out for as long as we tolerate it. They'll make up oxymora like "militant atheism" to defend the dogma, because it's easier to throw nonsensical accusations than to actually start being rational about something.
Religious shows can be counted in dozens, atheist shows are pretty rare (there's Star Trek, Star Trek and, at a push, maybe Star Trek), yet that's already too much. Any view that contradicts the precious dogma is anathema, it must be purged from our screens!
Of course, they do look for opportunities to be offended, as often as possible. If atheism is so intolerable, so vile to them; there's an easy solution, one I personally adopt towards all religious shows: not watching.
Sadly, fundamentalists will always miss the point. Rather than realise the foolishness of resorting to extraordinary explanations when easy ones are unavailable (as the Mintakans briefly do, believing "Picard is a god" to be the only explanation to the feats they've witnessed); they'll claim outrage and talk of "offense".
"I'm offended" is the newest way dogmatic people have found to avoid thinking, and they'll ride it out for as long as we tolerate it. They'll make up oxymora like "militant atheism" to defend the dogma, because it's easier to throw nonsensical accusations than to actually start being rational about something.
Religious shows can be counted in dozens, atheist shows are pretty rare (there's Star Trek, Star Trek and, at a push, maybe Star Trek), yet that's already too much. Any view that contradicts the precious dogma is anathema, it must be purged from our screens!
Of course, they do look for opportunities to be offended, as often as possible. If atheism is so intolerable, so vile to them; there's an easy solution, one I personally adopt towards all religious shows: not watching.