Faith and Star Trek

**Spoiler Alert**
This post discusses the plot of the new Star Trek movie.

I don't think it's any secret that American culture aggrandizes faith at the expense of reason, but I saw a particularly noteworthy example recently in the new Star Trek movie. First off, the movie was great! I encourage everyone to go see it. This is in no way meant to denigrate the movie. But it occurred to me that the message of the movie is the perfect example of the typical American attitude toward faith and reason.

Star Trek sets up its two chief characters as perfect foils. On one hand, you have Kirk. He is rash, impulsive, and defined by his emotions. His entire backstory is the scene from the previews where he, as a tween, steals his stepfather's car and drives it off a cliff. Clearly, this is not a guy who wastes a lot of time thinking. On the other hand, you have Spock. Cold, calculating, and supposedly free from emotions. His highest principal is logic.

Predictably, Kirk and Spock come to a disagreement, with the fate of Earth at stake. Kirk wants to rush headlong into battle without thinking about it, and Spock wants to contact the rest of the fleet to coordinate. All parties acknowledge that Kirk's plan has little chance of success, is entirely illogical, and will probably kill them all. But Kirk has faith (clearly not based on rationality) that his plan will work. And what do you know?! It works, Kirk is vindicated, and Spock is properly shamed into acknowledging that you have to trust your feelings sometimes. This is all done with a minimum of subtlety, even going so far as to have future-Spock advise his younger self to stop being so logical, and to have more faith, or something ridiculous like that.

This certainly makes for a compelling story. The problem is that most of America seems to think the world actually works that way. We all want to be Kirk, not Spock. We trust our emotions. We don't bother stopping to think about anything. And we don't recognize this as a bad thing. Instead, we see it as a virtue.

The problem is that trusting our feelings is probably the worst way that we can go about making decisions. Our feelings lie to us. They tell us what we want to hear. They incorporate all of our bias and prejudice.

Sadly for all the wanna-be Kirks out there, cold logic is really the best way that the human species has to make decisions. Isn't it? Is there any other reliable way?