This is an article I wrote for the StarFleet International Fan Club in March 2013.
Copyright belongs solely to me - DO NOT use without my permission.
Comparison of the Vulcan philosophy of A'Tha and the Terran philosophy of Deism.
What is A'Tha?
What is Deism?
We all know who SPOCK is, right? That half Human, and half Vulcan alien from Star Trek. I fell in love with the Vulcans and their logic, when I first began watching the original Star Trek series during re-runs in the 1980s. This was before Captain Picard and The Next Generation began.
The Vulcan concept of A'Tha is described as Immanence. Immanence refers to a Divine Presence. This Divine Presence created the Universe.
The Terran philosophy of Deism refers to Nature's God, or as some adherents call it, a Supreme Creator or Designer, who designed the Universe.
On the surface both of these philosophies are very similar if not identical.
I would like to trace my journey to Deism and compare my beliefs in Deism with those of A'tha in order for you to understand why Vulcans have no problems believing in a divine presence and yet choose to suppress all emotion and live by logic alone.
I was raised in a Protestant family, attending church every week, but always having trouble accepting what I was told. None of it ever made logical sense to me, not even as a child.
I can still remember being at a church camp as a 10 year old, raising my hand to "Ask Christ into my heart" and doing this only because it was expected of me, and not because I truly believed. By the time I was 16, I was asking myself and my pastor a lot of hard questions, especially about things that were mentioned in the Old Testament. All my pastor could say was, "You have to have more faith."
My problem, was that I had no faith at all. On my 18th birthday I told my parents I no longer believed and that I wanted to stop attending church. They said no, and as long as I was living with them, I had to abide by their rules. The next 12 months were very miserable as I continued to attend church but no longer believed.
On my 19th birthday, I told my parents that I really truly did not believe in their religion anymore and that I really wanted to stop attending church. To my surprise, this time they said yes. So I promptly stopped attending church.
I spent my early 20's reading a lot of books about religion, about apologetics, and also many anti-religious and anti-christian books as well. Eventually I came to the conclusion that there was no physical evidence of heaven and hell. These imaginary concepts were just used as a fear factor to control people. Once you removed them from the equation, everything else, was worth nothing.
So I told myself that I believed in a supreme creator because the universe and our bodies were just too complex to have come together by "Accident" as evolution claims.
But I rejected all other tenets of the christian religion - heaven, hell, the bible, the resurrection, the miracles of the New Testament, and a personal relationship with God.
As an consequence of no longer believing in heaven or hell, I also now believe that there is NO afterlife. Just as we had no conscious or sense of self before we were conceived and born, so I believe we will have no conscious or any sense of self after we die. The only way I can describe death, is like falling asleep and staying asleep and there will be no dreaming. Religion says there is a reward in the afterlife. Logic and Reason says there is not.
One of the biggest reasons why religion even developed, was to answer the question of why are we here and what is our purpose. That is something that each person must discover for themselves. It is quite possible that there is NO divine purpose for our existence.
Evolution claims that human bodies took billions of years to develop - and then promptly contradicts that statement by saying that Neanderthal man showed up between 300, 000 and 600,000 years ago. That is less than 1 million years. So where was man before that time? That missing link is still missing.
Some 20 years after determining my own personal beliefs, I came across an article about the founding fathers of the USA and this article described what the founding fathers believed in. These beliefs matched mine almost exactly. The article said that this belief was called Deism. I was stunned to discover that finally I was not alone and that my belief in a supreme creator did have a name.
Based on my own experience, I firmly belief that humans are born with an innate sense of logic and reason (Deism calls this god-given reason), but this is soon drowned out by the religion with which most children are indoctrinated when they are very young. It has to be a very strong willed human, who rejects the religion they grow up with, and who chooses to travel a different road.
In the novel Spock's World, written by Diane Duane, and published by Pocket Books in 1988, the Vulcan concept of A'tha was mentioned. The word A'tha is said to be the oldest word in the Vulcan language. It has been translated as meaning The All.
Spock described A'tha as Immanence. Immanence is the divine body of God or of the Divine Creator. The Creator is expressed throughout the universe by the laws of gravity, the laws of physics and chemistry, and by e=mc squared.
Image from the movie - Hackers - 1995
I liken the above image as being immersed in logic and reason - it is all around you and within you. It is part of your psyche. If you accept it as true, then you will attain a state of calmness and tranquility. Which explains why Vulcans never do anything in a rush. Everything they do is decisive, and done with the utmost efficiency.
Because Vulcans are born with an innate sense of logic and reason, they do not try to drown out this logic and reason with some made up explanation of why the universe does what it does. They already know. This is the basis of all Vulcan life.
The Vulcan concept of C'thia adds to this knowledge. C'thia is where one searches for the truth and accepts exactly what one finds, as it stands. If your hypothesis is not proven, then you must reject that hypothesis. Vulcans will not make up a truth based on someone's personal impressions and perceptions. Unlike humans who frequently do.
Some people claim that C'thia is the idea that requires the suppression of emotion. It is not. It merely stands for the idea of total truth and not doing anything to change that truth.
Since the universe is governed by the laws of physics, gravity and e=mc squared, it stands to reason that these laws were designed by an intelligent designer or creator. These (almost) perfect laws could not have spontaneously arisen out of chaos and entropy (such as the Human theory of evolution would have you believe).
It takes faith to believe in something you cannot see, hear, smell, touch or feel. But it is perfectly reasonable to believe in something that you can see, touch and feel. Such as the Universe that we live in. Thanks to the Hubble Telescope, we humans can see stunning new images of this wonderful Universe on a regular basis. Since this Universe runs on laws we can trust, it is logical to accept that there is a designer.
A'Tha and Deism are not based on faith but on logic and reason.
Deism describes Reason as being - The mental powers used with forming conclusions or inferences based on facts.
Does this not also describe the Vulcan idea of Cthia - or the absolute truth?
Bibliography
http://deism.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ReasonNotReligion
http://startrekvulcanology.blogspot.ca/2010_08_01_archive.html
(A review of the Novel - Spock's World)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spock%27s_World
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/A%27Tha
http://stad.wikidot.com/vulcan
http://www.adherents.com/lit/Na/Na_503.html
http://www.adherents.com/lit/Na/Na_504.html
(Religion in Literature - specifically Star Trek novels)
http://sarek-story.blankespoor.org/Ice%20and%20Fire.htm
(A fan fiction story that describes a'tha in some detail)
in the TV series and the movies, Spock has stayed very quiet on the matter of Vulcan religion and A'Tha. Religion and Beliefs are a very private matter - which is as it should be. Deism also follows that same thinking - that religion is private. Which is why we Deists are not out on the streets prosetylizing or preaching to others about this philosophy. If anyone asks us questions, we are more than happy to answer them. But we do believe that people must find Deism on their own, using their own reason and logic to do so. Deism is not something you can beleive in just because you are told to accept and believe in it.
The following is a link to a short film about Einstein and his beliefs. He was quoted as saying that he did not believe in a personal god, which is the foundation of the christian and catholic religions. He also said that he admired the structure of the Universe insofar as our human minds could understand it - Albert Einstein and God