I just thought I had to post to make it clear to people this is a movie with a religious agenda. Nothing particularly wrong with that but it's somewhat insidious to hide the fact. The well known cast helped to fool me as well as the description of the film. I thought it might be an intelligent well thought out story like The Man From Earth but I was way of the mark.
There are some ideas and thoughts expressed throughout that I would certainly agree with but as it moves into the final third we suddenly start to hear more from the "Does God Exist" apologetics approach. It's a major flaw in a film when it involved a group of so called-genius' who let seriously flawed arguments pass them by and mostly only when it is the seriously flawed arguments of the religious genius.
He spouts a typically poor argument at one point to the token disbeliever who says he refuses to believe in the unknown. Something along the lines of
"Do you know who built this building? - No" "Do you know if it is up to spec? - No" "Do you know if it is structurally sound? - No" "Thats an awful lot of belief in the unknown."
Cue smug grins all round. I can almost hear the Director's satisfaction. This kind of moment was the whole reason for the movie. This religious genius is played by the only non-actor in the bunch. Apparently he is the son of the guy who funded the movie both of them Christians.
My problem here is an atheist would surely pipe up, especially if he was a genius, and say he could soon find out the answer to all those questions if necessary but a virtual lifetime of seeing buildings not fall down is pretty damning and comforting if we seriously fear it's structural integrity.
I would expect the Director is extremely proud of a supposed entertainment of both sides of the "Does God Exist" argument blissfully ignoring the fact that the atheist side is only there so the clever Christian answers can be thrown out to the satisfaction of us all. We are not allowed any counter-argument here.
Another classic is the scientist genius who believes in God. Given one minute to prove God exists she talks about how amazing it is that the earth is positioned so that we won't burn to death or freeze to death depending on the earths angle toward or away from the sun, how so many exact factors came in to play to produce life, humanity, how we became sentient and so on. Sounds good but as soon as we can travel throughout the galaxy I'd love to have the chance of taking the Director on a whistle stop tour of an infinite universe where something like this was bound to happen at least once and show him all the planets where it didn't happen.
The final message is one of forgiveness and letting go of hate two things I have always felt strongly about and two things I think all human beings need to learn to do but I want them to learn to do it on their own. Why should we need God to do that? Not once is religion mentioned in this movie as being the cause of untold amounts of suffering in it's name. The idea that humanity has learned or can learn to forgive through God is a fallacy proved throughout history.
The movie needlessly perpetuates the idea that we can't be strong on our own. We need a crutch. That crutch is God. I can't help thinking it could have achieved so much more without this agenda. Go watch the Man from Earth if you really want food for thought.
There are some ideas and thoughts expressed throughout that I would certainly agree with but as it moves into the final third we suddenly start to hear more from the "Does God Exist" apologetics approach. It's a major flaw in a film when it involved a group of so called-genius' who let seriously flawed arguments pass them by and mostly only when it is the seriously flawed arguments of the religious genius.
He spouts a typically poor argument at one point to the token disbeliever who says he refuses to believe in the unknown. Something along the lines of
"Do you know who built this building? - No" "Do you know if it is up to spec? - No" "Do you know if it is structurally sound? - No" "Thats an awful lot of belief in the unknown."
Cue smug grins all round. I can almost hear the Director's satisfaction. This kind of moment was the whole reason for the movie. This religious genius is played by the only non-actor in the bunch. Apparently he is the son of the guy who funded the movie both of them Christians.
My problem here is an atheist would surely pipe up, especially if he was a genius, and say he could soon find out the answer to all those questions if necessary but a virtual lifetime of seeing buildings not fall down is pretty damning and comforting if we seriously fear it's structural integrity.
I would expect the Director is extremely proud of a supposed entertainment of both sides of the "Does God Exist" argument blissfully ignoring the fact that the atheist side is only there so the clever Christian answers can be thrown out to the satisfaction of us all. We are not allowed any counter-argument here.
Another classic is the scientist genius who believes in God. Given one minute to prove God exists she talks about how amazing it is that the earth is positioned so that we won't burn to death or freeze to death depending on the earths angle toward or away from the sun, how so many exact factors came in to play to produce life, humanity, how we became sentient and so on. Sounds good but as soon as we can travel throughout the galaxy I'd love to have the chance of taking the Director on a whistle stop tour of an infinite universe where something like this was bound to happen at least once and show him all the planets where it didn't happen.
The final message is one of forgiveness and letting go of hate two things I have always felt strongly about and two things I think all human beings need to learn to do but I want them to learn to do it on their own. Why should we need God to do that? Not once is religion mentioned in this movie as being the cause of untold amounts of suffering in it's name. The idea that humanity has learned or can learn to forgive through God is a fallacy proved throughout history.
The movie needlessly perpetuates the idea that we can't be strong on our own. We need a crutch. That crutch is God. I can't help thinking it could have achieved so much more without this agenda. Go watch the Man from Earth if you really want food for thought.