Klingons

Klingon originally uploaded by ZoeARP via Flickr

Klingons are a race of nasty aliens in the original Star Trek TV show. They became good aliens by the time of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The fact that their physical appearance changed over time was explained in 2005 with the literary device of ‘retroactive continuity.’¹

In 2002, the Oxford English Dictionary included the word Klingon (along with Jedi from Star Wars) in both its complete and Shorter dictionaries. The following definition is from the OED:

A member of a fictional humanoid alien race featuring in the U.S. television series Star Trek and in subsequent associated series, films, publications, etc.

The OED also rightly points out that Klingon has another meaning, that of an actual language, created for the film Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) by Dr Marc Okrand.

Although not in common use, the Klingon language is learned and spoken by die hard Star Trek fans, known as Trekkies. Learning is facilitated via instructional audio tapes such as “Conversational Klingon.”

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¹ “A canonical explanation for the change was given in a two-part storyline on Star Trek: Enterprise. The two episodes, “Affliction” and “Divergence“, aired in February 2005.” (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon#Explanation_and_theories).

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Xenophanes

Gold and Ivory Artemis(?)

Originally uploaded by greekgeek

Xenophanes (c. 570 BCE)

Greek thinker born in Colophon, an Ionian Greek coastal city.

Xenophanes critiqued the cosmology of Homer, Hesiod and the popular pre-Socratic take on religion and mythology.

From his surviving fragments – and from others commenting on his work – it’s clear that Xenophanes satirized the anthropomorphic nature of the Greek pagan gods, arguing that God must be unmoving and changeless.

5. But mortals suppose that the gods are born (as they themselves are), and that they wear man’s clothing and have human voice and body. [Zeller, 524, n. 2. Cf Arist. Rhet. ii. 23; 1399 b 6.]

6. But if cattle or lions had hands, so as to paint with their hands and produce works of art as men do, they would paint their gods and give them bodies in form like their own-horses like horses, cattle like cattle. [Zeller, 525, n. 2. Diog Laer. iii. 16; Cic. de nat. Deor. i. 27.]

Arthur Fairbanks, ed. and trans. “Xenophanes: Fragments and Commentary,” The First Philosophers of Greece (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1898), p. 67.

Likewise, the early Christian writer Clement of Alexandria (2^nd – 3^rd CE) wrote in his Miscellanies 5. 109:

Xenophanes of Colophon puts it well indeed in teaching that god is one and without a body (asomatos): “There is one god, greatest among gods and men, who is not like human beings either in form (demas) or in thought (noema).”

Source » “XENOPHANES of Colophon” http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/xenophanes.html

Offering piercing criticisms of the pre-Soctratic mindset, Xenophanes nevertheless believed that we cannot be certain about anything. As such, he said that his observations were necessarily conjecture.

E. L. Hussey says that Xenophanes made the “first known attempt at philosophical theology”–i.e. thinking about faith instead of glossing over and mindlessly reproducing its cultural and historical aspects (Ted Honderich, ed., Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 1995, p. 920).

» Comparative Religion

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