Change Your Image
![](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjQ4MTY5NzU2M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNDc5NTgwMTI@._V1_SY100_SX100_.jpg)
JDelrose
Reviews
Star Trek: Voyager: Sacred Ground (1996)
People don't seem to understand this episode. It's not bad.
Science is a belief system. Science was not always there, waiting to be plucked from the ether, but a philosophy that evolved out of many more primitive, magical, and indeed religious beliefs. The self evident nature of our scientific understanding of reality is merely our current stage of development, and also infinitely arbitrary. It's pure hubris to look upon something like alchemy and say "that's obviously fake" and then turn around and say about science "that's obviously real in all facets". Science is an approach to understanding reality, that is what the word "science" describes. Ironically, it might be described as "unscientific" to reify "science" by conflating it with "objective reality," such are the limits of language sometimes. Our approach will change, as it always has. The episode doesn't mention all this explicitly, but takes it for granted, I think. More explicitly in the episode: if faith exists as an approach to the unknown, science is one such belief system, among many potentially. Ultimately a suitably philosophical Star Trek episode, and one I think gets too much hate from people who simply aren't doing enough reflection on it, and conflating science and reality, thus viewing it as a very shallow, pseudo thought provoking, trial of faith with misleading twists and turns. It's not especially deep either, but I was surprised to see that most don't appear to be being the least bit charitable, or to even attempt to derive a coherent meaning from the episode. It's decent!