Ban Religious Movies?
There is a very long thread at the Internet Movie Database message board
concerning Mel Gibson's new film The Passion:
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0335345/board/nest/1522693
The reason I
looked at this thread was that the originating post had a very provocative
subject line: "Religious Films Should Be Banned!!" Further down the
thread, the poster clarifies his original position: "All films that are
made for the sole purpose of promoting religious faith over reasoned faith
should be banned." This is perhaps the shape of things to come. If that is
true, I can only thank God that I am no longer young, and am unlikely to live
to see the full imposition of the tyranny this poster has in mind. It is
unlikely that any film made "for the sole purpose of promoting"
anything--religion, quantum mechanics, gun control, free enterprise, Esperanto,
or Coca-Cola--is likely to attract much of an audience, but I doubt that the
writer meant "for the sole purpose," but rather "having as an
explicit purpose." Assuming this reinterpretation, there were a fair
number of respondents who agreed with the writer, and a fair number who
disagreed.
Most of the
thread, however, does not involve either the aesthetics of film or the question
of free expression. Most of the postings involve controversy about religious
belief, in particular, belief in God. It touches on the origins of the
universe, the laws of thermodynamics, the theory of intelligent design, the
historic behavior of Christians and Muslims, the authorship of the Bible,
standards of sexual morality taught by Christian churches, and numerous byways
derived from these. Since most people who post to Internet message boards are young,
I assume that most of the posters are relatively young people (relative to me,
that isn't hard). Many of them cannot spell, but a few
are not entirely uninformed historically. There are atheists, former atheists
who have converted to Christianity, Christians who have become atheists. There
are Catholics who were once Fundamentalists and Fundamentalists who were once
Catholics. There appear to be some Muslims as well. There are people who attack
Christianity because it resembles Islam, and there are those who attack Islam
because it resembles Christianity. One ambitious poster rather ably summarized
St. Thomas Aquinas's arguments for the existence of God, bringing down upon
himself the scorn of the atheists. The names of Einstein, Voltaire, and Stephen
Hawking came up; so did the name and possible influence of Satan.
As far as I
can tell (I have not read every word of every post; I do not have that much
patience), the thread contains three major points of attack on monotheism in
general and Christianity in particular. The first is an attack on the existence
of God, from a claimed scientific perspective; the second is an attack on
Christian moral teaching in the area of sexuality; and the third an attack on religion in general and Christianity (and
Islam, in some cases) in particular as having been the occasion of mortal
conflict among human beings. The lines of defense to the first centered on the
argument from design, one line of argument invoking the first law of
thermodynamics to show that the universe as a whole required some outside
source. Dr. Hawking was cited to the contrary as believing that something could
have arisen out of nothing, The second line of attack
received less attention, because both the attackers and defenders of religion
realized that it could not, as religious teaching, be defended without first
upholding the defense to the first argument. The third was the occasion of some
mutual accusations between Christian and Muslim camps, but the principal answer
to the atheists on this count was that Christians (who got the brunt of the
assault) were no worse than anyone else.
Put
together, the arguments add up to an attack on religion in general and
Christianity in particular that goes back at least to the eighteenth-century
philosophes: Science contradicts the teachings of religion; science is
essential for the betterment of mankind; therefore the teachings of religion
are an obstacle to the betterment of mankind. Anything that is an obstacle to
the betterment of mankind is harmful; anything that is harmful must be
eliminated; therefore religion must be eliminated. Our critic calls this
"reasoned faith," and certainly the progression of propositions is
valid, but to be cogent, an argument must be based on true premises. However, to
convince someone of anything, e.g., the existence of God, it is not even enough
to have a cogent argument but one whose premises will be considered true by the
person to whom the argument is being made. Similarly, a valid argument may be
believed to be cogent if the premises are believed to be true, even if they are
not. No proof, therefore, will be convincing to everyone, since the premises of
any argument are themselves propositions that might be believed or disbelieved,
or might be seen as requiring proof.
The lead
atheist in the thread, a person bearing the screen name tashuu4269, is fond of
asserting that various arguments are "circular," since he believes he
can detect in the arguments, particularly the argument from design, the conclusion already present in the premise. I doubt this
assertion, but maybe I am missing something, Those who respond to him want him
to read Intelligent Design books, he wants them to read Carl Sagan. I think it
might be enough for him to read his own arguments and those of his fellow atheists.
One of the favorites, repeated in several forms, in its simplest outline goes,
"Christians have killed many people in the name of their religion.
Therefore their religion is untrue and bad." Expanded into a logical form,
this argument might be rewritten as follows:
P1. Killing
people unjustly is a moral evil.
P2. Christians have killed people unjustly in the name of their religion.
P3. Any cause in the name of which someone does something that is a moral evil
is itself a moral evil.
C1. Therefore the religion of Christians is a moral evil.
P5. The tenets of the religion of Christians state that their religion is not a
moral evil.
C2. Therefore the tenets of the religion of Christians are erroneous.
This
argument is valid, and therefore cogent if the premises are true. The most
dubious of the premises is P3, since one could find many other causes in the
name of which moral evils, even the specific moral evil mentioned here, have
been committed. But for the materialist, proposition P1 is the most
problematical. How does the materialist know that killing people unjustly is a
moral evil? How does he even come by the category of moral evil? How about the
category of justice? He denies that the coming into existence of nature is
evidence of the supernatural. One atheist quoted here sums up his belief as
"If there is no one to tell us what is right from wrong, we must use our
own intelligence and common sense to remind ourselves of the differences, and
not do nonproductive acts simply because we can." If there is no one to
tell us what is "right from wrong" then how can he say we must
do anything? It is easier for something to come out of nothing than for a
compulsion to come out of a natural fact.
Tashuu gives
a political bite to his argument by mentioning abortion:
There is no non-superstitious reason
to not allow abortion. Why should the superstitious beliefs of someone else
enter in the debate, and prevent someone I love from getting this procedure?
Debate money, debate who should pay
for abortion, debate at what point one should be allowed to have an abortion,
etc., etc., but do not tell me that an "immortal soul" factors into
the equation!
The implied argument here is that
belief in something supernatural (in this case, an immortal soul) is superstitious;
the only reason to forbid abortion is the belief that an unborn child has an
immortal soul; therefore the only reason to forbid abortion is the acceptance
of superstition. However, he appears to be prepared to allow that there might
be a "non-superstitious" reason to forbid abortion at some
"point," by which I presume he means some stage of fetal development.
On what basis that would not similarly be a basis for
forbidding any abortions? Sentiment, perhaps, since he admits that potentially
he could love someone. Moreover, if there is no non-superstitious reason for
forbidding abortion, what non-superstitious reason is there for forbidding
murder, or rape, or racial discrimination? What non-superstitious basis is
there for saying "should" as Tashuu does three times in as many
sentences?
What is
Tashuu's underlying principle?
Now, since I don't assume any happy
things about "after death", I want the best life while I'm still
living ;) For example, I'm a biological being with a finite life span, as far as
anyone can know. I'm oviously built to enjoy sex and seeing members of the
opposite sex naked.
I don't need a bunch of immoral
Christians trying to prevent me from this during my short life. Take those of
you that claim that god will provide, that we can loot the planet dry - you all
die "happy", while your children's children are left cleaning up your
mess
Even if I bought your main argument,
which is that a stick is brown because it is long, and long becuse it is brown,
thus accepting the "supernatural", Christianity would be near the
bottom of my list of religions to worship. It simply doesn't have good morals
and ethics in general.
Sex and environmentalism (if that's
what his reference to "loot the planet dry" means) seem to be
foremost in his mind. To what the beginning of the third paragraph refers I
cannot tell, but in the end he seems to be attempting a moral argument. He does
not approve of Christianity's morals and ethics--based no doubt on his own
which include not looting the planet and enjoying sex and seeing members of the
opposite sex naked. Because Christians hope for happiness after death,
therefore they do not care about their children's children; but if believes
that there is no survival after death, on what does he base his own concern for
his children's children (the ones he has not had aborted, that is)? He will be
dead as any dinosaur, and where did he get a duty to his or anyone else's
children? If he is not facing a final judgment, he could do anything he liked,
provided it gave him sufficient pleasure and precluded his own pain.
So maybe in
the end it is all about sex. Do atheists, at least Internet atheists, hate
Christianity, and are they determined to prevent its propagation, because the
moral demands of Christianity place restraints on sexual activity? In that
case, there is nothing that anyone can say that will change their minds.