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154. What If You Had to Fake Being Genetically Modified? | Enhanced with Candace Kade
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“This gentle fantasy from Loren G. Warnemuende shows little magic or strange creatures, focusing on complex emotions and relationships.”
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Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
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Stories That Celebrate Life: ‘The Measure of a Man’

Captain Jean-Luc Picard: “Your honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life. Well, there it sits!”
E. Stephen Burnett on Jan 31, 2019 · Series: Stories That Celebrate Life
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While factions and nations seek out new ways to destroy life, stories that celebrate life ought to convict us.

This miniseries, Stories That Celebrate Life, will explore a few such fictional works.

I’ll start with perhaps the best season 2 story of Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG). In fact, it’s one of the best episodes of the series.1

In “The Measure of a Man,” written by Melinda M. Snodgrass:

[Federation starship Enterprise Captain Jean-Luc] Picard must prove [android Lt.] Data is legally a sentient being with rights and freedoms under Federation law when transfer orders demand Data’s reassignment for study and disassembly.2

Picard (Patric Stewart) legally defends Data (Brent Spiner) after another scientist, Commander Maddox (Brian Brophy), wants to deactivate and analyze the android.

Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) from "Star Trek: The Next Generation," 1989 episode "The Measure of a Man"The captain’s impassioned argument concludes with this speech, well-known to all TNG fans:

Your honor, the courtroom is a crucible. In it, we burn away irrelevancies until we are left with a purer product: the truth, for all time.

Now sooner or later, this man—or others like him—will succeed in replicating Commander Data.

The decision you reach here today will determine how we will regard this creation of our genius. It will reveal the kind of people we are; what he is destined to be. It will reach far beyond this courtroom and this one android. It could significantly redefine the boundaries of personal liberty and freedom: expanding them for some, savagely curtailing them for others.

Are you prepared to condemn him—and all who will come after him—to servitude and slavery?

Your honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life. Well, there it sits! Waiting.

Later, this prompts the judge to ponder aloud the value of presuming life and freedom.

Is Data a machine? Yes. Is he the property of Starfleet? No. We’ve all been dancing around the basic issue: does Data have a soul? I don’t know that he has. I don’t know that I have! But I have got to give him the freedom to explore that question himself.

This is a classical humanist philosophy. It proves that such humanism’s ethics are not so far from Christianity (and yet, Christianity came first). It also proves that Christianity is not alone in defending the value of confirmed human life, and the presumed value of life that just might be human.

Beside Biblical Christians stand honest sci-fi stories throughout ages, stalwart and sure. Even if by accident, they defend the sacred worth of the imago Dei, God’s image in human beings. Life is sacred. It is precious. We must not destroy it.

  1. Some of this content is adapted and expanded from my article “Honest Sci-Fi Honors Life,” Speculative Faith, Jan. 23, 2014. ↩
  2. From “The Measure of a Man” episode summary at Star Trek fan site Memory-Alpha.org. ↩
E. Stephen Burnett
E. Stephen Burnett creates sci-fi and fantasy novels as well as nonfiction, exploring fantastical stories for God’s glory as publisher of Lorehaven.com and cohost of the Fantastical Truth podcast. As the oldest of six, he enjoys connecting with his homeschool roots by speaking at conferences for Christian families and creators. Stephen is coauthor of The Pop Culture Parent: Helping Kids Engage Their World for Christ from New Growth Press (2020, with Ted Turnau and Dr. Jared Moore). Stephen and his wife, Lacy, live in the Austin area, where they help with foster parenting and serve as members of Southern Hills Baptist Church.
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Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
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