Science Fiction and the Christian faith: the Apologetics.com review of “District 9″

Science Fiction and the Christian faith: the Apologetics.com review of “District 9″ Click link for audio

With Peter Jackson, Neill Blomkamp has created a tragic vision of “first contact”. For more than a hundred years the storytelling genre Science Fiction has been grappling with the issues of technological advancement and the sciences in conflict with man.

Often these stories attempt a critique of the human condition and a vision of the future, things that have traditionally been the domain of religion; they have an ethic, a salvation, and an eschatology. Usually Sci fi is presented within the context of a mechanistic or naturalistic worldview and Christians have often asked whether this kind of framework is up to the moral task this genre seems to demand.

It’s hard to see anything being right or wrong, any progress of the species having any legitimacy as betterment, or the survival of humanity having any real significance when we are supposedly reducible to the chance consequence of meaningless matter in space. But we all have our little inconsistencies and perhaps the Christian worldview with its universal moral truths and inherent human value beyond being a mere accident of the universe serves better the purpose of the genre?

Science fiction writers have often used the popularity of the style as a bully-pulpit for anti-religious or even anti-christain thought, but many of the most thoughtful writers and thinkers of late have shared a deeper religious or even Christian worldview, that contributes deeply to its ultimate fulfillment. Science fiction legacies like Star Wars could almost be viewed as religious tracts, while Star Trek ever dared to go where no genre had gone before, religion being a common theme.

Film is one of the most powerful means of communication in our culture and for the Christian to neglect the language seems counter to our historic character. To be silent in film would be like the last generation failing to speak through song, or the previous generations refusing to write. We are after all a storytelling people.

What H.G. Wells was for agnosticism and cynicism perhaps C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein were for Christianity as their writing and thought were such powerful communications of a robust Christian faith in the cadence of metaphor and analogy.

Still, none of this is easy to comb through, so join us as we too continue our voyage into the unknown on the Apologetics.com Radio Show. CN

Special guest Leo Partible joins the Apologetics.com team for a show on all things Sci Fi. Dennis Alvy, Victor Sarmiento, Curtis Robinson, Josh Jacobs and staff members Lindsay Brooks and Christopher Neiswonger.

http://www.apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=380:science-fiction-and-the-christian-faith-apologeticscom-review-of-district-9&catid=43:kkla-995-fm-los-angeles&Itemid=74

I Am Legend

“I AM LEGEND”, is about a Savior. Someone peculiarly chosen to save all mankind from the disease that has taken from us the most beautiful aspects of what we are…”

When doing a Christian Movie Review one of the things most apt to reasonably measure is what the film implies, either for or against, the Christian worldview. Really, nothing is neutral or value free. Everybody has an angle. Stories are incredibly persuasive instruments of communication because they can bypass through picture and sound our usual mechanisms of critical thought and move us emotionally to side with things that we might think less of were they presented with clarity of vision. Will Smith’s newest venture, like any film, has a story to tell and many things to say that are directly relevant to Christian thought. The movie does not dodge “religion”. It embraces a simple religious theme. It is a theme so strong in the film that the only way to miss it is to simply deny it any attention. That would be a big loss though because it is a story of unusual depth.

The first thing the avid reader might do is take the position that a classic style “Monster” movie cannot possibly leave much room for depth and meaning, especially of a Christian sort. But I would argue that that is not so true as it seems. Stories like “Frankenstein” and “Dracula” and even “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, are thick with moral themes and warnings of throwing off the protections of God and moral reasoning. (At least when you read the original works.) The dangers of tampering with nature in order to Deify ourselves in some way are common enough in these tales, and not to be overlooked as a tool toward deeper reflection.

“I AM LEGEND”, is about a Savior. Someone peculiarly chosen to save all mankind from the disease that has taken from us the most beautiful aspects of what we are. With the conceit so common to those involved in the sciences a ‘Cure’ for cancer has been created. We have genetically redesigned a disease and made the genome our toy having no idea what the consequences of such boldness might be, once the little monster we created begins to make its own way. We can control it. We can make nature our servant. There are no limitations to what we should do, only to what we can do. We can re-create ourselves in an image of our own preference.

The Bio-ethical implications and the warning being given is one that we can be reasonably sure will be completely ignored. What happens in today’s public square is this; common sense cautions about the consequences of artificially changing the germ-line in human beings through genetic re-design or manipulation are immediately disregarded as barbaric simple minded agrarian propaganda. Even though our current level of scientific ignorance is enormous we are not allowed to object. That we don’t have any idea what the consequences of such a thing might be in twenty or a hundred years doesn’t seem to be as lucrative a question as “What can we do, how can we do, and how can we make money on this?” We have already re-designed germs to make them weapons or war, now, how can we redesign humans to make them, “better”?

Will we make people monsters? Well, no. Of course not. That is not the point. (Well… maybe. It depends on how you measure it.) The point is that people are already monsters. The main character Robert Neville, played by Will Smith, is one of the few of those immune to the genetic correction that has the scientific understanding to try to find a cure. A cure for the cure. He survives alone, but not completely alone. He is really living in the midst of the “Dark Seekers” who live all around him, but can only survive in the lightless night, when they come out to hunt and kill and eat. I know you’ve heard this part before in other movies but they handle it pretty well. In this film it is all parabolic. The others don’t even know that they’ve lost something very important. Their reason, their compassion, their souls (so to speak). Neville’s goal is not to kill them, not to destroy them, but to “save” them, to cure them, to bring them back to the “light”.

Eventually Neville finds another immune survivor. (This isn’t really giving anything away because they show it in the previews.) The kicker is, she tells him that she was sent to him by God, because God told her that he is going to save the world. Now, this could easily turn ugly and become a needless and unprofitable attack against people of faith. Here comes the crazy religious person that always shows up in these movies with an eerie look in her eye and doom and foreboding on her lips. But they don’t go there. There’s an intense argument about God and evil, about the world John Neville lives in here, that leads to Neville’s emphatic summation, “There is no God!”, “There… Is … NO GOD!”. It’s pretty heavy, but you need to be patient. Watching someone struggle with their own suffering in the context of a loving God’s creation is never pleasant, but it is it’s place in the story that is important. Neville does not end up where he begins and what at one time he forcefully denies in another he powerfully embraces. Understanding what God is doing with the universe is not really for anybody to hand out. Our experiences are often unpleasant and sometimes horrific. But to take from this that there is no meaning, everything is accidental, and so there isn’t really any evil, and so no real problem, doesn’t seem to help. Atheistic views always end with the simple denial that the things we suffer have any real significance, and this is what leaves them morally vacuous.

(Spoiler) In the end Neville embraces his role as “Savior” (their word) and after arguing fruitlessly with his enemies to let him save them, gives his own life so that others might live and be healed of their infirmity. The narrator tells us that he gave his own life so that others might live, and that we should “let the light shine in the darkness.”

I know. It’s only a monster movie. I hope people don’t lose the good things that this film has to say amidst the blood and fangs and such, because these are good things to say, and an imaginative way to say it.

Cognative

I am legend, i am legend, i am legend, “I am legend”, “I am legend”, Will Smith, will smith, will smith, “will Smith”, “Will Smit Christian movie reviews, christian movie reviews of I am legend with will smith”, Richard Matheson, Richard Matheson, “Richard Matheson”i am legend, christian movie review, christian movie review, christian movie review

“There was just a moment where I knew that I was offending God,” he said, followed by “tears and tears” and a new resolve to use his talents honorably. Disgusted with the movie business, he almost became a jungle missionary in Brazil, until a priest told him Hollywood is a jungle, too.”

A film apart
The story and the makers behind the Bella do not come from Central Casting | Priya Abraham

“Talk to the creators of Bella, a quiet new film with a pro-life theme, and their faces often get a certain look: incredulous, even wonder-struck. Most of the time, they cannot believe their humble production has come so far.

And far it has come for a $3 million movie with an executive producer who had never made films, a director who had never made a feature-length film, and a lead actor who was jobless for three years. Last year Bella won the prestigious People’s Choice Award at the world’s largest film festival in Toronto, competing against Oscar winners such as The Departed and The Queen. In the United States it opens in 30 cities Oct. 26.

Already the film has captured the imagination of mainstream critics and Christians alike. The story follows José (Eduardo Verástegui), a rising soccer star whose career upends when he runs over and kills a little girl. Years later, working as a gentle but haunted chef in his brother’s New York restaurant, he learns that friend Niña (Tammy Blanchard) is pregnant and alone. In helping her, he finds renewal.

Bella is the first production of Metanoia Films, the film company created by Verástegui, director Alejandro Monteverde, and Leo Severino, a Los Angeles lawyer. The “3 Amigos” are devout Catholics who want to create Christian-themed films to uplift and inspire. In Bella they accomplish that and more: The film has a spare but elegant cast and storyline. José and Niña deal with burdensome, life-changing hurts with an understated resilience appealing to ordinary people. There is no Hollywood redemption here, where the hero loses fame and riches but regains all in the end; instead, he gains character.

José’s internal journey is much like Verástegui’s, and to understand the story of Bella one has to understand the Mexican actor. A week before Bella’s national release, Verástegui cinched over an hour in Washington between promotional appearances and adoring fans to sit down with WORLD.

Ask Verástegui how he prepared for his role, and he begins his story not with his reading of Bella’s script, but years earlier. The son of a sugar cane farmer, Verástegui, 33, left his small town at 18 to become an actor. He rose to become a popular Mexican soap opera star, boy band singer, and a generally acknowledged sex symbol. In one music video, he appeared as Jennifer Lopez’s gypsy lover. In Latino-populated cities such as Miami, he still attracts hordes of screaming girls.

Having filled stadiums in Latin America, Verástegui wanted to make it in Hollywood. He moved to Miami, “the capital of Latin America,” and in 2003 landed—without speaking any English—the lead in Chasing Papi, a story about a man with three girlfriends. He simply memorized pages of script and winged it. But when it came time to promote the film, he grew restless. “I realized, ‘Hold on—I don’t even like this film,’” he said. “It’s been 13 years of career [ambition]—what am I doing?”

It was a question his new English language tutor, a Christian, kept pressing as well. If he loved God, he soon understood, he would be willing to die to his ambitions. “There was just a moment where I knew that I was offending God,” he said, followed by “tears and tears” and a new resolve to use his talents honorably. Disgusted with the movie business, he almost became a jungle missionary in Brazil, until a priest told him Hollywood is a jungle, too.

In Los Angeles, he turned to his Bible and turned down raunchy roles. “The next woman I kiss will be my wife,” he told his bewildered agents. They told him he would never work in Hollywood again.

“From the ’40s until today, [Latinos] have been stereotyped in a very negative way in the media, always the bandido, the criminal, the thief . . . and if you are good looking, then you are the Don Juan Latin lover,” Verástegui said. “In other words, the womanizer-liar who is using women as an object and treating himself as an object as well. Very few times you see that Latinos have the opportunity of being heroes . . . real heroes, men of integrity. A man who is willing to sacrifice to help his wife, his children, his friends, his family.”

Verástegui searched for such dignified roles, all the while wondering if he would have to create one himself. About the same time, he reconnected with Bella director and friend Alejandro Monteverde, an award-winning University of Texas film student. Monteverde slept on Verástegui’s couch and wrote the film’s script.

Just as the rent money dried up, the friends met wealthy entrepreneur Sean Wolfington, who was looking for a new project to finance. He consulted friend Steve McEveety—producer of Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ—about backing Bella. “Have you signed anything?” McEveety asked, dismayed at the director’s inexperience and tight, 3 1/2-week New York shooting schedule. “[Then] run for the hills.” But Wolfington felt drawn in, and after watching the film, McEveety later signed on as an executive producer.

Monteverde was determined to show a new Verástegui to the actor’s old fans. He wrote José’s taciturn character with a shaggy beard and baggy clothes so Verástegui could not rely on his looks.

Bella’s creators hope the film will affect the abortion debate and directly influence women considering abortions. The film has already had an indirect effect on two pregnant women. Researching his role at an L.A. abortion clinic before the shooting, Verástegui persuaded a Latino couple to keep their baby, whom they named Eduardo.

Verástegui also learned that a friend in Florida wanted his girlfriend to abort their child. Seven hours before the procedure, Verástegui talked to him over the phone and offered to adopt the child. He sent the friend a video of an abortion. The couple kept their baby girl—and named her Bella. “I was going to pay $800 to destroy this miracle,” her father said.

As Bella the movie makes the theater rounds, its creators marvel at how far they have come. Verástegui hopes this will be the first of many Metanoia films but knows he cannot guarantee its success. “Even if it doesn’t happen, what else can you ask for?” he said. “You’ve got two babies.”

Copyright © 2007 WORLD Magazine
November 03, 2007, Vol. 22, No. 40

Christians and The Golden Compass

by Kim Fabricius

While Richard Dawkins and his crack troops are busy shooting fundamentalist fish in a barrel, the Catholic League in the US, up in arms over the celluloid version of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass (the first instalment of the trilogy, His Dark Materials), is now taking steady aim at its own foot by calling for a mass boycott on this “atheism for kids.”

Hey, objects this kid, where are the Presbyterians and the Anglicans? In the novel the head of the wicked Magisterium is Pope John Calvin, while Pullman has called St Lewis’ The Narnia Chronicles “one of the most ugly and poisonous things I have ever read.” Let’s at least be ecumenical in our vilification of the film. I should be careful: the ultra-evangelical Christian Voice in the UK, infamous for its attacks on Jerry Springer: The Opera, doesn’t do irony.

Of course Pullman does have the church in his sights. Indeed he is on record as saying that “My books are about killing God.” I just hope that The Golden Compass faithfully executes the deicide that the author so imaginatively conceived and elegantly crafted in the novel.

For the death of this God would actually do the church a great service. He is the god Pullman’s mentor and fellow iconoclast William Blake, whose 250th birthday we celebrated last Wednesday, called Old Nobodaddy, who bears as little relation to the God Jesus called Abba as the straw deity that the New Atheists so tediously torch. This god, who is finally defeated in the third book of the trilogy, is a bearded old fart “of terrifying decrepitude, of a face sunken in wrinkles, of trembling hands and a mumbling mouth and rheumy eyes.” He is the object more of ridicule than indignation (one thinks of the satire on idolatry in Isaiah 44).

The real target of Pullman’s animus is not this impotent wretch but his grand inquisitors who deploy religion in the (dis)service of control and repression, the ecclesiastical authority so savagely pilloried by Blake in “The Garden of Love”:

    And I saw it was filled with graves,
    And tomb-stones where flowers should be;
    And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
    And binding with briars my joys & desires.

As Rowan Williams, a great fan of Pullman, has written: “What the story makes you see is that if you believe in a mortal God, who can win and lose his power, your religion will be saturated with anxiety – and so with violence. In a sense, you could say that a mortal God needs to be killed.”

But the narrative does more than smash empty idols, expose institutional hypocrisy, and condemn vice – “cruelty, intolerance, zealotry, fanaticism … well, who could quarrel with that?” asks Pullman – it inculcates what are decidedly Christian values. Pullman’s coming-of-age story is articulated in terms of growth in wisdom. Here is the winsome heroine, Lyra, reflecting at the very end of the trilogy on selflessness and truthfulness, the virtues it takes to create anything good, beautiful, and enduring: “We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and brave and patient, and we’ve got to study and think, and work hard, all of us, in our different worlds, and then we’ll build.” If such values are indicative of a “pernicious atheist agenda,” bring on the AOB.

Okay, Pullman’s onslaught is unrelenting, his didacticism can get the better of his art, and for a writer so knowledgeable about a literary tradition steeped in Christian faith – not only Blake and, of course, Milton (“his dark materials” comes from Paradise Lost), but also, among others, Edmund Spenser, George Herbert, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Emily Dickinson – he can be theologically quite obtuse, if not without flashes of insight.

But that’s not the point. The point, for the church, is the embarrassing mini Magisterium of Christian Pharisees and Philistines who prove the point Pullman is making. And the ultimate irony: there is nothing like a good boycott to market a product. Popcorn, anyone?

From the Blog of Ben Myers, Faith-theology.blogspot.com

http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2006/09/propositions-by-kim-fabricius.html

Beowulf Review, Part 1.

The new Beowulf was an evil movie. It was a full attack on Jesus Christ, and that fact should not be missed. In this regard, it should also be noted that the new Beowulf movie (I will never simply refer to it as “Beowulf,” since the original remains a Christian masterpiece) is one part of the larger attack of the new atheism. Da Vinci Code had the same “cherish the myth anyway” moral at the end of it, and I suppose the upcoming Golden Compass will echo similar platitudes.

The most striking thing about the new Beowulf movie, though, was its ugliness. Hrothgar was a fat, drunken, impotent, dolt. Beowulf was a prideful and greedy betrayer. The mead-hall was a place of debauchery rather than joy. Wiglaf seemed to embrace the eternal recurrence of greed and death. No one could have any kids, and life was always dying.

This is the atheist myth of origins.

It should be noted that the characters in the real Beowulf were fully the product of Christianity. Grendel, as the bad guy, was a descendant of Cain. Hrothgar did have kids. Beowulf killed the She-Wolf, Grendel’s mother, and went back home to reign. Wiglaf grants his aid to Beowulf as all the of the rest of the army runs away, and the noble Beowulf gives his life in the battle.

There are three major conflicts because the Christian life is always triune.

In the new Beowulf movie we note initially that Hrothgar declines to add the new Roman god “Jesus Christ” to the Danish pantheon. He gives us a Pelagian parable about how the gods only help those who help themselves, and then proceeds to show us just how that works out: dying and more death.

Towards the end of the movie Beowulf mentions that the “Christ God” has done away with all the monsters, and thus there is no room for heroes anymore. This is supposed to be dreadful. But hasn’t the movie already proven that the heroes are but fallible men? Hasn’t the movie itself demythologized the story?

The climax of the movie comes when we find out that the Song of Beowulf is a lie. It does not include the horrible sins that Beowulf committed. And that is just as it should be, we are told. History is not important. The song is important. The role that the song plays in your life is what counts.

This is atheistic moralism, but it fails to take note that the kids are tired of lies. Haven’t these guys seen Magnolia? The noble lie has run its course, and we’re not inspired by it anymore. Islam isn’t interested either. It believes it’s song. Be sure of that.

What we need is something real. A foundation for love and redemption. We need something to die for. We need something to live for.

We need the true Beowulf who renounces pride. We need the true Beowulf who kills the She-Wolf.

We’ve got enough of the ugly. We need the truth.

Review Part 2.

“A Few More thoughts on the Beowulf movie”

In the original, Beowulf lost his swimming match against Breca because of his avarice. He learns from this experience and thus renounces avarice, which is the root of all sins. The movie missed this one by about 180 degrees. Everything after this was all the consistent outworking of their inability to grasp the point. Atheism is dense and boorish. It is sad and ugly. It would do better to continue with the simple opiate-binge of Paris Hilton and super-sized colas.

The “believe the myth anyway” apologetic that the false song of Beowulf seeks to employ is no different from Tom Hanks’ character in the Da Vinci Code and the recent “Imaginationland” triology on South Park. The myth is important because of the role it plays in our personal life-stories. Beyond that there is no truth.

But doesn’t going along with this require you to know that you’re a phony? I mean, come on, you’ve already admitted that the story isn’t true! Telling people to “just go with it” isn’t going to last. Marx was better than this. Nietzsche was too. He had no tolerance for this new pretty-boy atheism. He knew the score, which is why he stormed out on Wagner. Lies are lies. Your choices are either Jesus or nihil, and no amount of flowery language is gonna change that fact. Nietzsche could deal with it (sorta). Why can’t these new moderns?

In combating this, the Christian appeals to the absolute historicity of his story. If Christ didn’t really rise from the dead, our faith is in vain. If God doesn’t really exist, we are without hope. The Bible is true- or else.

We cannot go down the road of the idealists who say that the literal-historical doesn’t matter. The earth was created in six-days. Six days, bucko. Deal with it. The genealogies in Genesis are real. The earth is about 6,000 years old from the creation of light. We believe this. Yes, all of those animals got on one single boat. It happened.

The Christian sings because the songs are true. The Christian tells his story because it is true. Good fiction needs to be true too.

The original Beowulf was true fiction. The new Beowulf movie was fake fiction. Between the two there lies a world of difference.

Beowulf

By Wedgewords

http://wedgewords.reformedblogs.com/