Not much of a revelation, just an observation, but how much of sci-fi pushes the ideal that Humanity's path forward is unification?
Star Trek is a major one, and many would state it was a progressive show, and it earnestly was.
It also stated that in its ideal future, there's a Federation of like-minded extraterrestrials, and as a member species, Humanity lives in a united, post-scarcity society under a single government.
To that end, how many alien species in these stories are so inhuman, in that they have no differences, a world-wide government, a single language?
It's laughable how direct the propaganda was, and continues to be.
The conflict between the Federation and Bajorans on religion is interesting because by any reasonable definition of the word the Wormhole Aliens are gods.
Yet the Federation refuses to call them gods, instead simply calling them "aliens". Because the Federation thinks there are no gods, therefore by definition the Wormhole Aliens cannot be gods despite them having characteristics one would normally ascribe to a god.
The Richard Dawkins crowd always liked to argue that if the Christian god made some sign they'd believe in him, but I suspect the reality of what they would do is closer to what the Federation does when shown evidence of the existence of the Bajoran gods: declare them not gods but extremely powerful aliens and refuse to worship them because "aliens" are undeserving of worship.
I would defend this position in the same way that they are still not gods. They are not opnipitent, they are not omnipresent.
They are closer to the polytheist constructions of gods which effectively have little care for the earthly realm, but may bless humans with some occasional thing. They are also capable of being fallible, wrathful, vengeful, arrogant, etc.
Why should you simply worship an alien that may be biologically or technologically advanced or superior to you? No human has ever garnered such worship from a lesser animal. No human would deserve it either. Even your dog does not worship you as unfailing. In many cases, dogs assist humans. The contributes something in the relationship. Cats... well don't even consider themselves to be the lesser animal, the arrogant little shits. (I wouldn't even be surprised if we found out cats were an advanced civilization that intentionally 'returned to mokey' at this point).
There is no point in that kind of absolute worship, particularly to living beings. What makes God useful, at least in the Christian sense, is that it serves as an an inspiration to improve yourself. But enslaving yourself to the whims of another, particularly when they can't even really comprehend any suffering you may encounter, is dangerously stupid.
As you note, the ancient polytheist religions didn't really ascribe omnipresence to their gods. I think that is mostly a Christian concept (I don't even think early Judaism had omnipresence, which is why sometimes god would be surprised or caught off-guard by some action taken by someone). If for example the Greek or Roman gods were actually highly advanced aliens I doubt that would change those religions much, nor would their adherents care much.
On the one hand I agree with you, and I probably wouldn't worship such beings. And I can understand why the Federation doesn't: because most of their civilization is outside the scope of influence of the Wormhole Aliens. On the other hand I can understand why the Bajorans would worship them: because they do intervene and have intervened and are within the scope of influence of the aliens. And it's baked into their culture to such a large extent it would be difficult not to.
My point is it's a value judgment, and the whenever it came up the Federation's secularized approach to dealing with the aliens was treated as "value-neutral" and "empirical". But they very easily could have taken the opposite "empirical" approach and said "well the aliens clearly do intercede and respond based on this religion the Bajorans have constructed, and they've also declared one of our officers a 'Prophet' within that religion; so maybe there's something to taking a non-secular approach in our interactions with them"
I don't think that means they need to worship the Wormhole Aliens, but they seem to have an unusually high level of disregard for the Bajoran religion considering how often they objectively see it work. Cisco is the only one who even tries to respect it, and even he sometimes feels uncomfortable having to operate within that framework.
I think it may even be down to monotheism because it's so hard to explain how one entity could do all that crap.
Yeah, and I wouldn't disagree with that. It's reasonable, especially if you'r the alien's protected class.
There's an aspect of incentive to be grateful for a hyper-intelligent and seemingly all powerful being that actually tries to be nice to you and help you out of catastrophic dilemmas. That being said, I would still push a "don't meet your heroes" point: the closer you get to your "Gods" the more you would not be willing to just arbitrarily worship them. Distance from their subjects promotes mysticism as imagination fills the void. But the more you know of your "Gods" the more you would come to see them as simply alien.
Imagine if you actually lived in Metropolis and hung out with Superman. Why would you ever worship him if you knew the guy. He could be your friend, but not your God no matter how truly powerful he is.
The Federation, while not purely secular, is written by people who are. And not even in the good way. As anti-theist as I am, I can still respect the concept of how people use religion to orient themselves and their society. I believe they can do better because I'm one of those "God is dead and it is we who have killed him... ... ... and that's a good thing" style people.
They don't really know how to actually deal with religion properly, the best they can do is "Magic Sky fairy?", which I can understand, but is un-nuanced to a people who have a fuck-load more to go on than most religions.
"No no. Our Gods literally manipulate space-time. There is no God Of The Gaps. We know precisely how powerful they are... and it's a bit scary."