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'Star Trek': What is Death?

Star Trek: The Next Generation was a Paramount/CBS television program that ran from 1987 to 1994. The basic philosophy of the series was atheistic and secular humanistic, but occasionally it went beyond the mere material. In the episode “Where Silence Has Lease,” Data, who is a highly intelligent android and being a machine cannot die, is wondering about death and asks Captain Jean-Luc Picard: “What is death?”

PICARD: Oh, is that all? Well, Data, you're asking probably the most difficult of all questions. Some see it as a changing into an indestructible form, forever unchanging. They believe that the purpose of the entire universe is to then maintain that form in an Earth-like garden which will give delight and pleasure through all eternity. On the other hand, there are those who hold to the idea of our blinking into nothingness, with all our experiences, hopes and dreams merely a delusion.

DATA: Which do you believe, sir?

PICARD: Considering the marvelous complexity of our universe, its clockwork perfection, its balances of this against that, matter, energy, gravitation, time, dimension, I believe that our existence must be more than either of these philosophies. That what we are goes beyond Euclidian and other practical measuring systems and that our existence is part of a reality beyond what we understand now as reality.

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Source:

Jack B. Sowards, “Where Silence Has Lease” Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 2, Episode 2 (11-28-88)

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