Movie Discussion: The Invasion

Movie Discussion: The Invasion
Starring, Nicole Kidman

Okay, let’s get this out of the way. The movie is not a great movie. It is the 3rd remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers since 1956. Entertaining, perhaps. Brilliant, no.

We are primarily done breaking down the movie now, and ready to get busy examining some of the ideas put forth in it. Leading lady Nicole Kidman plays a psychiatrist who can prescribe a pill to solve any problem. Her son has nightmares…a pill. A patient is having trouble with her husband…a pill. You get the picture, just like a real psychiatrist. She describes herself in a pivotal conversation as a “post-modern feminist”. She also calls upon the father’s of psychology and tries to tie them to evolutionary theory in a weak attempt to explain the pathetic condition of man…war, murder, rape, greed, etc. You can tell she has trouble swallowing her own theory.

When the alien “virus” begins to infect people it becomes clear that it will make mankind into something like selfless zombies. The infected retain something of their former selves, but they act as one emotionless organism, and seek to infect everyone else, while killing those who are immune to the virus. Everyone will be sort of zombie like…that’s the downside. The upside is that wars will cease, crime will be non-existent. It becomes clear that if Nicole Kidman’s son had not been one of the immune, to be killed, she would have probably infected herself on purpose.

One thing I did like about the movie is that it fleshed out some of the primary issues in post-modern feminist thought, and postmodern thought in general. I have known a number of post-modern feminists and almost to the woman, I liked and respected them all. I think this is probably for a few reasons. First, someone who arrives at post-modern conclusions has done some thinking about life and the nature of reality and begun asking questions about how it all fits together. Second, the conclusions of post-modernism (and feminism) are impossible to consistently live out in practice and require great intelligence and determination to even attempt. This movie points that out very well….although I don’t think that was the intention.

Kidman’s character desperately wants to “fix” mankind…one person at a time. She is distraught at news of wars and violence…as we all should be. Unfortunately as an evolutionist and (apparent) atheist she has concluded that societal troubles must be caused by various and widespread psychological anomalies. Her best weapon in this battle for humanity is her prescription pad. I love this. It accurately describes the current state of modern (post-modern) psychological medicine. They have failed to accurately describe the problem, thus, their solutions are at best band-aids on surgical wounds, but typically abject failure.

The fact that a self described post-modern feminist could believably have a battle in her conscience about whether or not being zombified by an alien virus is a good thing really tells us something. She realizes that there is something very wrong with mankind and that only something very radical could be expected to solve the problem. Even in prescribing of pills, we sense her helplessness in the face of the enormous problem. This is the state of post-modernism. A philosophical system has been constructed where moral absolutes have become ambiguous (philosophically) but war is not an ambiguous evil…neither is murder…neither is rape. Like I said earlier…some smart people can pretend not to believe in absolutes (like wrong and right) but try to start a war or rape them and all of a sudden you are doing something “wrong”. When you throw reality into the mix post-modernism falls flat on its face.

As a side note: I realize there are a few obstinate idiots out there who would let me hit them in the face with a tire iron or cut off their mom’s pinky finger and say that it was not necessarily a bad thing…only undesirable from their perspective….just to prove their point….but hear me now, everyone inherently knows you are an obstinate idiot. Just as everyone inherently knows that rape and murder are evil. You are the pretender.

Of course as a Christian I join with my post-modern feminist friends in condemning rape and murder. Only I have a reason to do such a thing (they do not). I have an objective standard by which I can measure good and evil. Christians have a very cohesive and philosophically robust way of understanding how the depraved state of man and human dignity can co-exist. No other philosophy even comes close to the elegance in tying these things together as Christianity. Not even close. Unfortunately, it is often the case, that professing Christians have put much less thought into the philosophy behind their religion than the post-modern feminist has….so when they misguidedly show up at the psychiatrists office for help, they take the prescription down to the pharmacy hoping this pill will be the one that makes it all stop.

Watch this movie next Friday night if you’re bored.

Is God Necessary for Morality

Obviously you know what I think. If you are interested in seeing the issue debated...well...enjoy.

Objections to Christianity...Please Send Your Objections/Question

Here is the first question I received.

Since there is so much evil in the world how can a good "god" be in control. If god exists, he is either not "almighty" or he is a monster.

Here is the reply.

This is not a new objection to Christianity or to theism in general. It is popularly know as The Problem of Evil.

Volumes have been written and said about the problem of evil. In fact, there exists today a philosophical consensus that the objection has been disproved as a logical attack against theism. That being said, this has not yet trickled down to the popular culture or into the layman’s understanding….so I will say a few things about it here on New-Think.

Most people’s objections to the existence of evil are emotional rather than logical. How can a good God allow the rape of little children?…This is not a logic based objection, rather an emotional one. How can a good God have allowed the holocaust?

I submit that we do not sit in a position to be able to pass such judgments on God. Using the Christian presupposition, God knows the end of all things. How can we then sit in judgment on the means he uses to his ends if we do not know the ends?

Here’s an illustration: Suppose I can see into the future. I know that at 4 o’clock tomorrow afternoon you will be struck by a car at the corner of 5th and Vine. My first plan is to meet you at 3:59 at the corner of 5th and Vine and try to persuade you to leave the area immediately. Since I can see into the future I know you will laugh at me and ignore me if I approach you like this. So instead I grab you and drag you down the sidewalk for 100 feet and at 4:01 I let you go. You may think I am crazy and you will probably call the cops. Had you known my motives, however, you would be grateful. You only saw the mean, not the end.

I admit this illustration only works if you presuppose the existence of God. Something I realize an atheist is not about to do (at least consciously…they/you do it all the time in daily life though). So let’s have a look at the presuppositions of atheism.

If there is no God then there are no moral absolutes (good or evil). So really, it is absurd for an atheist to bring up the problem of evil….since in the atheist worldview there is no such thing as objective evil. True, you may say you do not like it when children are raped. But on what basis can you say that it is “evil”? Sure you didn’t like Hitler, but what objective standard can’t you point to that shows you are better than him? Just because you don’t like something or even a lot of people don’t like something doesn’t make it evil. Hardly anyone likes root canals, but they are not evil. Hitler presupposed that Jews were subhuman and that exterminating them would bring us to a glorious future. Imagine a pack of wild dogs was roaming your town devouring who they could…that is how Hitler saw the Jews. Based upon those presuppositions the holocaust was good. So you see, without an objective standard anyone can define good or evil as he or she pleases AND (this is the important part) no one is any more correct or incorrect than anyone else in their assertions.

When non-theists talk about good and/or evil they are shooting themselves in the feet and showing their own ignorance since they have to borrow a theistic frame of reference in order to even come up with an objection to theism. How embarrassing for them.

Submit Your Questions...This Means YOU!

Are you a skeptic, agnostic or athiest? Are you a Christian with unanswered questions? Do you find hard or impossible intellectual or emotional obstacles that prevent your from believing in the Christian God? Please submit your questions!

Also, if you would like to attempt to throw down a challenge in this arena that you think cannot be overcome...go for it.

I will attempt to answer all questions and/or assertions submitted. Thanks for playing.

Story Time with New-Think

New-Think reader Blip has submitted a short story based upon (and even one instance of outright plagiarism) one of the many works of philosopher Francis Schaeffer. Enjoy.

Oh....for those who cannot be bothered with the short story...enjoy the cartoons. Click cartoons to enlarge.

Our Father
by Blip

There was a time before Great-Grandfather Hegel when we lived in blissful and reasonless hope. There was cause to believe that the effect of Great-Grandfather Hegel’s ways would be to bring a great enlightenment to our people. He died still believing it, never knowing, that he had opened a door to a staircase spiraling downward, below despair.

Back then no one really questioned why others would stop to help a stranger on the side of the road or band together to defeat a common enemy. We all knew what the enemy had done was wrong. It wasn’t even worth questioning. Someone robbed the grocer, we put him in jail. Someone was elected mayor, we gave him due respect. Little Suzy got pregnant before she was married and she was surely sent away. That is the way bad girls were handled.

Great-Grandfather Hegel was correct that we weren’t seeing things for what they really were. “Things aren’t always black and white”, he was fond of saying. What of the motive of the man who robbed the store. We don’t really know everything there is to know about Suzy, either. And about our enemy…..let’s look at things from his perspective. And about right and wrong….things aren’t always black and white. In such a diverse world we need to find unity. He had great faith that reason would lead the way.

Grandpa Hegel had many many children. This is the tale of the descending spiral staircase, however, so we will focus on Grandfather Kierk (Great-Grandfather Hegel’s first son). You and I call him Grandfather, but the truth of the matter is he is the father of everything that now is. Great-Grandfather Hegel opened the door to the staircase, but Grandfather Kirk grabbed the hands of our toddler parents and ran on the path of unaided reason down the stairs for everything he was worth.

Grandfather Kierk followed the path of reason his father had begun walking so many years before. Unfortunately, he found that the path did not lead where his father had hoped. And the staircase did lead beneath despair and Grandfather Kierk did give up hope that reason would lead him to the unity that had been sought for so long.

You see, his father said everything wasn’t always black and white…and Kierk had believed it. He would find a way to explain the grocery store robber. He would find a reason to help a stranger on the side of the road. He would find them on the path of reason. But he never found his answers. Funny thing though, he still knew that the stranger should be helped….later, many of his children found this a spineless thing.

So anytime Grandfather Kierk was asked about the purpose of life or the validity of love or about any other big, meaningful question that children are fond of asking he had only one answer. The answer was that he really had no answer based upon the path of reason he had followed. To find the answer to such a question one must jump onto the path of faith, which must be leapt onto from the path of reason….because the two paths never touch. He called it the leap of faith.

Like Great-Grandfather Hegel, Grandfather Kierk also had many children. They did not get along with each other. They all searched for the cornerstone that would hold everything up and bind everything neatly together. A few of them claimed to have found it.

Uncle Jasp said that one only needed to wait for a “final experience” that would give meaning to life. He could not tell you about his “final experience” because, according to him, it was inexpressible in normal language and categories. Besides, even asking the important questions that the “final experience” answers, betrays the fact that the asker has not had a “final experience”. There was no talking to Uncle Jasp.

It should be noted, however, that many followers of Uncle Jasp (and he still has many today) began using mind altering chemicals in hopes of gaining a “final experience” in doing so. An anonymous student penned the following:

King Heroin is my shepherd, I shall always want.
He maketh me to lie down in the gutters.
He leadeth me beside the troubled waters.
He destroyeth my soul.

Uncle Sart could plainly see that we live in an absurd universe. The sum total of everything, he said, was ridiculous. He claimed that acts of human will were the only means to authenticate anything. If he saw his neighbor bleeding on the side of the road he could equally authenticate himself by carrying him to the doctor or by finishing him off with a brick to the head. Even as far down beneath despair as Uncle Sart found himself, he never chose the brick to the head…..although many who learned from him found it a convenient justification for their immoral acts. I don’t know if he found that odd.

Uncle Degger was a strange old man. He also found everything meaningless and ended up in the same place as Uncle Sart….looking for proof that his existence was authentic. He did not do it through an act of human will like Uncle Sart, though. No, he authenticated his existence by feeling the incomprehensible angst. An indefinable sense of foreboding. Dread….which is not to be confused with fear; because fear has an object. He was strangley insistent about the distinction.

And then came my generation. What were we left with? Much that was rooted in nothing. So we look back to Great-Grandfather Hegel. Was he correct in saying that things aren’t always black and white? Before him we had believed that there was wrong and right, and good and evil….without knowing why we believed that. Maybe originally there had been some reason….but no one could argue with Great-Grandfather Hegel. No one could show him any unity in the diversity he saw. No one could give him a credible source of judgment between good and bad. Just a bunch of arbitrary rules and conventions. So he opened the door, and his offspring tumbled below despair.

Our generation cries out for an answer, for authenticity, for reason….and we do not even know why we desire these things. Perhaps there is a clue in the desire itself. Who will give an answer?

1 Corinthians 1
20Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.