gregor

As to other historical inaccuracies, the paper reported that one inaccuracy in the torture of Jesus involves guards throwing him off a bridge. That event was purportedly the product of a Nun's dream in the 16th century.

Doctor X

Sven:

Just a feeble joke refering to the pages of bandwidth devoted to the use of a comma in another thread. . . .

--J.D.

Bede

I thought the most powerful moment in the movie was when she meets her dead father and he congratulates her on refusing to believe that he wasn't actually dead (he is an alien in disguise in fact). That is certainly an emotional point against a religious veiw of life after death.

As for the science, well, I majored in physics and found the armwaving over how this giant machine worked most annoying. The impression is given that it builds on rather more real science than it does. Fact is, we have no evidence at all than anything like interdimensional travel is possible. But it is one of the things people often ask me about when they find I did physics.

As for The Passion, the lack of pogroms set off by Jesus Christ Superstar in which the Jews are treated very badly, and where the Sanhedren are actually dressed as modern orthodox Jews, leaves me quite relaxed about this one. Storm in a teacup and all.

B

Sven

Doctor X: The thought occured to me that this has something to do with the other thread - but I'm getting cautious because of my apparently very bad English

Hmm. I have to look at this scence again; it never occured to me that this scene was meant as a counter to religious views of an after life.

OK, this is obviously a scientific problem. But I accepted it as necessary for the plot; the remaining science shown was IMHO very good - far beyond the depiction in any other movie (except 2001 + 2010).

Beetle

I expect the effect of The Passion to be similar to all those retreats that many conservative christians regularly go on. The evangelical/fundy folks who see the movie will be "fired up for Christ" for about a week or so. Then they'll go back to being normal (whatever normal is for them, anyway).

So if you have a christian friend who's going to see the movie, avoid them for the 48 hours after the showing and you should be fine.

butswana

If my memory serves me correctly.
At the end of the book "Contact", Ellie ran out pie to some insane amout of places and found a smiley face or some shit. Not very atheistic if you ask me.

Sven

It was a simple circle. And she had to take the number in the basis of 11 instead of 10 (if my memory serves me correctly). The idea was great (to hid a circle in pi) but you're right: this suggest some greater being behind the cosmos - although Sagan probably wasn't thinking about the Christian God

Stacey Melissa

I'm writing a script for just such a movie. Granted, it's pretty unlikely it will ever be made, but I can dream, can't I? Anyway, it's a drama/tradgedy about the plight of a recently deconverted fundie, and the atheist who got him started down the path to rationality. The first act covers the emotional aspects of life for the protagonists - an atheist and a fundie - and the atheist's first interactions with the proselytizer. Act two is basically the debates between the atheist and the fundie which leads to deconversion. Not so much emotion there. Just good debate. The third act focuses more on the effects that deconversion has on former-fundie's marriage. That is the crux of the script, and it is a largely emotionally-based, tragic ending. But I don't try to pound my audience over the head, saying "atheism is definitely correct" with the ending. It's left open enough to let viewers decide that separately.

My script is something that would probably bring many freethinkers to tears, and something that could at least soften many a fundie - much like I'm guessing will happen in reversed roles with the "Passion" movie. But there is no shortage of argumentation. The Argument from Evil, Argument from Nonbelief, incompatible properties arguments, biblical criticism, Cosmological Argument, Ontological Argument, Teleological Argument, and more will all be discussed in the second act. Soften the fundies up with the emotional parts of the film, and they just might give the arguments more than a passing glance.

Would I say my script is "pro-atheism"? Not quite. With a little extra tacked onto the end, it would be, though. But I want to leave that for the audience to decide; thus my relatively open ending. (The part at the end of "Signs" where Gibson dons his old priest garb was totally unnecessary, and the movie would have been much better if the audience could have decided for themselves, without the explicit endorsement of religion by Shaylahan and Gibson.) In any case, I wouldn't want my movie advertised as being an atheist movie. It's just a drama that happens to deal with Christianity and atheism on a personal level. Of course, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell would not see it that way. It would most definitely incur their wrath.

....

My favorite movie is "Donnie Darko". In the audio commentary of the deleted scenes, writer/director Richard Kelly says that the main point of the movie is that the search for God is absurd. So it is supposed to be a pro-agnostic movie. The problem is that that message gets lost in the rest of the movie. God is only briefly mentioned a couple times in the final cut, and not much more when the deleted scenes are added back in. A couple tough questions are raised, such as one on free will, but sufficient answers are not given, and the topic quickly changes. Prior to listening to the director's commentary, it hadn't occurred to me that "Donnie Darko" was a pro-agnostic movie. I thought it was just a good sci-fi/psychological thriller based on schizophrenia and time travel.

SLD

Actually that's not true. It brings up an interesting mathematical philosophy question: given an irrational number such as Pi (and that's not "Pie"!!!! ), isn't it likely that every possible arrangement of numbers is inevitable at some point in it's decimal expansion? That is at some point in the decimal expansion of Pi you are likely to come across the very sequence of digits as Ellie comes across in the book. That and many other strange sequences that would indicate that they were "placed" there. Heck, you would even find the entire KJV in Ascii Code at some point right? Evidence of God? I think not. (unless you came across it really damn early in the sequence)

SLD

Sven

I have to agree. And when you add that she was not only searching the decimal expansion, but also some others (see my post above), it becomes even more likely that she'll finally find a circle. The likelihood of finding it "early" of course decreases with the size of the circle (number of bits).