Fan response has been huge, and for the most part, most agree that I’m being pretty naive, and people are pretty much horrible to one another all over the world. You’re right, in that I currently live in a pretty progressive, integrated society. At least, compared to forty years ago. I’ve never really seen wide-spread, large-scale racism, and that’s pretty limiting.
Most other fans seem to agree that the South African discrimination against the prawns is in place of Apartheid against the blacks, instead of both occurring in this movie’s history. That makes more sense, but it’s another reason why setting the movie in South Africa hopelessly muddies the metaphorical waters. The spectre of Apartheid looms so heavily over South Africa’s history, it’s hard to just ignore it.
Anyway, I remembered something else that would have been good to see in the documentary approach, and a very good reason the prawns would be met with widespread hostility: religion.
The presence of extraterrestrial life is heretical to many forms of organized religion, who believe that God created Man in His own image. There’s nothing in those books about God creating prawns on the seventh day, and knowledge of their existence would cause global theological disillusionment, sending hundreds of millions into a crisis of faith never before imagined. Some might reform their religious texts, be progressive about the whole thing, but by and large, the prawns’ arrival is the death of God. No longer is Earth the favored planet, Man the chosen life form. Suddenly we’re shown to be inferior to a pack of bipedal roaches. You’d have mass suicides, wars, civil unrest manifesting in hate crime on an unprecedented scale. Millennial cults would spring up like weeds, fearing the appearance of these “demonic-looking” creatures as a sure sign of the end-times.
Now that’d be a documentary.
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@ 200
“I’m confused. Are you arguing that I got the wrong part of the German military, or that the Nazi movement wasn’t primarily Christian?”
1. Yes the waffen-ss and einsatzgruppen (commonly called death squads) which were both responsible for the vast majority of atrocities were seprate entities from the regular military. Whereas the regular military was loyal to the state the ss swore direct personal loyalty to hitler himself.
2. As for the nazi movement not being Christian lets look at hitlers to most powerful deputies, rudolf hess had such strong occult beliefs that he used them as reasons to go awol and parachute into England in order to attempt to negogiate a peace settlement. heinrich himmler head of the ss, geeze where to start with this guy grade A 4 layer occult nutcake. Astroligers(spellcheck!), ancient pyramid theories, ritual chambers in ancient castles, rune inscribed throne, and on and on…
If hitler was real believing Christian this would be like the Pope appointing Hare Krishnas as cardinals (no offense to any Hare Krishnas out there just lookin’ for an outlandish example)
“Are you saying Osama Bin Laden isn’t religious”
No. Are you saying all Muslims ascribe to his personal religious views and methods?
“Whatever the case, your argument that religion is the source of morality is flawed from the base to the summit. Religion failed to act as a deterrent in the crusades, the holocaust, the salem witch trials, the “witch burnings” in the middle ages, etc.”
And how many innocent lives were saved in all those incidents by religious people acting on their beliefs? More than we’ll ever know I would wager. However bad news always gets more headlines.
“…I’m simply stating that you cannot argue that religion is the source of morality when it fails to even act as a deterrent.”
Once again I point out my earlier statement I fully acknowledge no concept and or institution secular or religious will ever be a 100% effective detterent against immoral behavior, perfection is simply not attainable by human beings.
It seems the browser keeps doing 404, so this post is just a test. if it gets through, please ignore it.
Thomas, you’re generalizing about religion as if every religion were like Christianity. The Hindu’s, despite the many crazy things wrong with that religion, do not believe in a vengeful sadist watching over you like ceiling cat. The Japanese are mostly Buddhists and Shintoists, yet the murder rate in Japan puts the US to shame.
You also make this mistake:
“Think about it, if you lived in early times and stole from your neighbor, if he posed a problem to you, you could just kill him. If anyone could potentionally get you in trouble, you’d just kill them.”
This strategy wouldn’t work in a primitive society at all. You forget a few things:
1 tribal societies are /small/. Its hard for city dwellers like ourselves to quite comprehend such a lifestyle, but if you were living in a group of, say, 50 other humans, there is no way you are just going to get away with the murder of one of your fellow tribesmen. That’s a great way to get yourself ejected from the group real fast. Not a good survival strategy.
2 In such a tribal society, everyone is dependent on everyone else for survival. You kill someone in your group, and it turns out he was the guy who knew how to make the arrow heads you hunt with? You’re screwed!
3 You can’t kill everyone. Simple.
You act as if moral behavior arose in the time when people were living in agriculture based settlements, but I’m telling you it evolved long before then as a way to ensure cooperation among hunter gatherers, since you know, that’s how humans have lived for 90% of our existence on this earth. I’ll go a step further: I’d argue religion evolved as a parasitic trait that happened to reinforce our group cohesion at the cost of creating a status quo that in the long run actually retards the advance of civilization and on an individual holds back their development as a person. In a similar fashion there is a gene found in african populations that helps them resist malaria– by causing sickle cell anemia.
Do you really think charity groups outweigh these things? Really? I mean, if that’s all it has going for it, I can name several charities that are completely secular. Medicine Sans Frontiers, for example, one of the most noble charities I can think of, in part because for them religion is no issue.
Also, just for fun, lets compare the morality you describe to my own:
the morality you describe: “Ohs noes, Ceiling cat (who seems to be channeling the persona of my parents for some reason) wants to control my life and tell me what to do (with my body, what friends I should have, and as it so happens he doesn’t want me to murder my fellow man [unless he's one of /those/ people, of course]), and if I don’t do these things, HE’S GOING TO BURN ME ALIVE AFTER I DIE!!! I’d better do what I’m told!”
My morality: “Holy shit, this authoritarian psychopath condones torture and cruel and unusual punishment? Good grief! I’m glad HE doesn’t exist, because otherwise I’d be obligated to fight this tyrant.”
I say this with no irony whatsoever: do you really want to worship this God? This God who by your own description is far worse than than Hitler or Stalin? Really?
You’re god is Satan, dude. Not cool.
Rudolf- In a 1937 address to the local NSDAP Ortsgruppe, [Rudolf Boeckh, chief doctor of the Lutheran Neuendettelsau Asylum in Central Franconia] advocated the elimination of “life unworthy of life.” His theological justification for this course of action acknowledged that “the Creator had certainly imposed illness upon the destiny of mankind.” However, “the most severe forms of idiocy and the totally grotesque disintegration of the personality had nothing to do with the countenance of God…, we should not maintain these travesties of human form we should return them to the Creator.”
As far as Heinrich Himmler, he seemed to study occult beliefs in an attempt to gain power more than anything else. He was still raised a Roman Catholic, much like Hitler was.
And again, the movement was primarily Christian.
No, but the religion certainly doesn’t seem to be preventing the actions of his followers.
Argument from ignorance again. You have no evidence that the effect of religion on behavior has been more positive. You simply assume some sort of historical bias against religion and say “we’ll never know”. I ask you again, if religion is capable of such an effect, then why don’t we see it in the prison statistics?
That’s not the point. The point is that you argued the source of morality/ethics was religion. It obviously isn’t.
“the morality you describe: “Ohs noes, Ceiling cat (who seems to be channeling the persona of my parents for some reason) wants to control my life and tell me what to do (with my body, what friends I should have, and as it so happens he doesn’t want me to murder my fellow man [unless he's one of /those/ people, of course]), and if I don’t do these things, HE’S GOING TO BURN ME ALIVE AFTER I DIE!!! I’d better do what I’m told!”
My morality: “Holy shit, this authoritarian psychopath condones torture and cruel and unusual punishment? Good grief! I’m glad HE doesn’t exist, because otherwise I’d be obligated to fight this tyrant.”
I say this with no irony whatsoever: do you really want to worship this God? This God who by your own description is far worse than than Hitler or Stalin? Really?
You’re god is Satan, dude. Not cool.”
The gods I was trying to describe were more along the lines of early Greek and Egyptian mythology, not the Christian God. However, you are right in saying morality likely did not stem from religion, I can see I was wrong about that.
Now, to every anti-religious person here who uses the Crusades and the Holocaust as the reasons for why religion is bad, you’re forgetting the primary base of Christianity- That because of Jesus Christ everyone’s sins are absolved. So, if you were a true Christian, and someone did wrong unto you shouldn’t have to do anything, because the both of you will be forgiven in the afterlife. The problem is, there are no true Christians, and you usually end up having two kinds of people- The one who demands retribution from the man who did wrong, or the man who uses eternal forgiveness as an reason for doing wrong unto the man.
Unfortunately, there’s also a third type of Christian, who I feel is the worst- The Christian who beleives that only people who beleive in their exact religion will be eternally damned. This usually stems from a lot of narrow-minded denominations, and I think it’s that type of reasoning that will sometimes eventually grows to become “these people do not deserve to live on God’s world”. If you actually knew scripture, this is one of the most horrid interpretations of “God’s will”.
Now it’s really stupid to say that the reason Christianity didn’t spark the Holocaust is because Hitler wasn’t a TRUE Christian. However, the reason the Holocaust happened is because Hitler wanted the “perfect race”- who, coincidentally, was like himself. Everyone knows that over six million Jews died in the Holocaust, but they forget that Jews weren’t the only ones who died. Homosexuals, disabled people, and people who weren’t caucasian were also killed in the Holocaust. Hitler wanted the “perfect race”, and since he was a Christian, he also happened to beleive the only good religion was Chrisitianity. As such, I wouldn’t label the Holocaust as caused by religion- religion was a factor, but overall it was more of Hitler’s determination to create a race of people like himself.
As for the Crusades, you forget two things. One, that the Church was INCREDIBLY corrupt during the Middle Ages (Again, that was the reason for the Protestant Reformatin), and two, that most people who fought in the Crusades had never read a page of the Bible. The church beleived at that time that the Bible could only be written in latin, and since most people at that time weren’t really educated, the only people who could read the Bible were the preists and monks, who as I already mentioned, were corrupted beyond beleif.
@204
“As far as Heinrich Himmler, he seemed to study occult beliefs in an attempt to gain power more than anything else. He was still raised a Roman Catholic, much like Hitler was.”
And where in Catholic theology are all these occult practices permitted? So himmler didn’t beleive in any of these occult practices he we was just going through the motions despite their cost and inconvenience. Isn’t it possible that the man had rejected his upbringing?
“And again, the movement was primarily Christian”
Despite the fact that engaging in occult practices is expressly forrbiden in Christian theology, not to mention the genocide? Was Japanese Imperialism and its resulting atrocities a Shinto movement?
If someone opens a bakery and sells you a box full of flour, eggs, sugar, and milk and tells you it’s a cake do you call them a baker or do you figure out they’re not just a sick parody of one.
“I ask you again, if religion is capable of such an effect, then why don’t we see it in the prison statistics?”
Because we don’t have thought dectors wired up all over? Because it’s impossible to record every instance of when someone has a chance to make some sort of material gain when there is is no chance of getting caught, but decides that doing so would be wrong and doesn’t do it.
I’m not going to get into the debate here in the comments section, but I’ll say this – religion has routinely survived when its precepts have been proven false. Earth used to be the only planet – religion survived that. The other planets and the sun used to revolve around the Earth – religion survived that. Our sun and our moon used to be unique, and religion survived that as well. It would survive the arrival of alien life, and might even be better off for it. Would there be unrest, hostility beyond compare? Certainly. Would it be “the death of God”? No, never.
I’ll also note this – in many ways, we expect any aliens we meet to be superior to us, or else we’d be the ones visiting them. It would take time, certainly – dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of years – but as long as both our kinds survived our hostility would eventually diminish. Coexistence, if it does not lead to destruction, eventually leads to acceptance.
Never thought the Spoony Experiment would be a good place for hot topical debate
@208
Well I like to keep it in this perspective the, Freaxx video has over 4 times the comments. Of course they’re mostly about how mind numbingly horrible it is, and I think we can all agree with that.
@206: The crusades, inquisition, witch burnings, etc, still happened despite murder being expressly forbidden in all Christian ideology. The people who participated in them were still Christian.
Perhaps, but I doubt it. It would probably be more like someone looking for an artifact which some legend claims grants extraordinary power or eternal youth because of the influence of some god. While they may not believe in the god, they may still seek out the artifact in the hopes that it actually does carry some sort of extra-normal quality.
And even so, the presence of a few semi-Christians in the group doesn’t divorce the group from its Christian influences. The genocide against the Jews had obvious religious overtones. You can’t say that about Japanese imperialism, which had more to do with nationalism than a given aspect of Shintoism.
Your statement had nothing to do with what I asked. It doesn’t require thought detectors. The statistics show that with each and every religious affiliation, its population in the prison will reflect its population in the general public i.e., ~75% Christian populace, ~75% Christian prison populace give or take 2-3% difference. The only place we don’t see this is in the Atheist/Agnostic/Secular affiliation, where the ratio is 14%-17% general populace and 0.207% prison population (according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons).
And there IS a field of study for this subject, you know. It’s called criminology. Among all the competing theories to explain criminal behavior (social disorganization, strain theory, social ecology, subcultural theory, trait theory, social control theory, rational choice theory, etc), none of them consider lack of religion to be a significant contributing factor.
That’s just that. When it comes to moral or ethical behavior, religion is a non-issue.
@205: Oops! Guess I should have read that one first, eh? I didn’t know you’d already conceded the point. My bad.
“There was only one true Christian, and he died on the cross.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (One of my favorite philosophers, although he did sorta go crazy in his later years.)
Just to be clear, I’m not saying that Christianity is unique among religions for its part in various atrocities, or that it’s inherently bad, or that religion is inherently evil. My problem with religion has to do with its tendency to draw and accept conclusions without a significant amount of objective evidence and its resistance to change. That’s a personal preference for another debate at another time. It’s also a criticism not limited to religion. Any sort of dogma can be unhealthy. For example, Stalin and communist Russia, or Senator McCarthy and the McCarthy trials (Just to make sure I’m getting both sides of the coin, here. Can’t let my libertarian bias get in the way.). Belief systems that aren’t open to questioning can lead to abuse and control.
@210
You know I have conducted an experiment on this topic over the last couple days, I asked several people I know if they thought that hitler was a christian, now all these people are causual aquaintinces I really have no idea of there religious/philisophical leanings but the response was unanimous and went along these lines “Huh!?! are you serious?”
With all that I’m satisfied that that I really don’t need to worry about continuing this arguement, if thats what you belevie in (dare I say have faith in) there’s simply nothing I can say that will convience you. So after a tactical consideration I see nothing I have to gain or loose from this, and so I’ve decided to quit the battlefield as it were, I wish you a pleasant day.
@212:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
I just go where the evidence takes me. If you want to call that “faith” to make yourself feel better, go right ahead.
“The genocide against the Jews had obvious religious overtones. You can’t say that about Japanese imperialism, which had more to do with nationalism than a given aspect of Shintoism.”
Again, I’d accredit the Holocaust more to Hitler’s determination for a race of people like him more than I would religion.
Perhaps it’s akin to the following scenario. A man kills his wife. She was having an affair. Her life insurance policy would have left him with $10,000,000. What caused his murderous behavior? Was it the former or the latter reason? Did one reinforce the other?
I think it’s safe to say that his focus on the Jews was at least reinforced by his religious views and upbringing, if not caused by them. Antisemitism was rather popular at the time, and that had religious roots, though that was more through a schism between the Jewish and Christian communities resulting from religious doctrine rather than directly from doctrine. Christianity forbade banking as an evil practice, Judaism didn’t. The majority of the rich bankers were Jewish. You can see where that leads.
My main problem here was two-fold. 1: The assertion that Hitler was an atheist. I don’t know why people make that assertion in the face of the evidence. Whatever people may conclude from his speeches etc., the last thing he was was an atheist. While we’re on that, I’d also like to point out that Hitler didn’t even understand the theory of evolution. The version of evolution he embraced was that posited by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who suggested the predecessor to Darwin’s theory. Lamarckian evolution is as follows: Animals acquire various traits by performing and attempting tasks throughout their lives (giraffes getting longer necks by trying to reach for leaves on taller tress, for example). These traits are then passed on to their children. Hitler embraced this theory because it allowed him to justify his racial hatred on a genetic level.
I rather like that idea of yours about the religion, Spoony. I wish now the movie had put that into play, it would have been great.
It’s sad, but not surprising, that everyone has completely missed the message of this film. This is because you all ascribe to the politically correct view of South Africa – whites as evil murderous oppressors, blacks as innocent victims.
This film was made by a white South African whose family had been driven from South Africa by the ANC (the ruling party that took over after the whites abandoned apartheid). The central metaphor in this film is his family’s own oppression at the hands of the post-apartheid government.
To summarize:
Whites came to South Africa with vastly superior technology.
Those whites were abandoned by all the other white countries including their homeland.
Since then, those whites have been endlessly extorted, tortured, and murdered by the black majority.
Sound familiar?
Yes, the movie had to be dolled up to obfuscate this theme, and at least appear on the surface to fit the politically correct depiction of South Africa. But you can’t ignore the obvious: this movie is about natives abusing foreigners, not foreigners abusing natives.
If you don’t believe me, do a little research. The conditions in South Africa right now are so bad that Canada just granted refugee status to a white South African for racial persecution. Say what you will about the Boers, they were never as bad as the ANC.
@218: Do you have a reputable source for these accusations?
Actually, I don’t think this would cause much in the way of religious upheaval, except from already-extreme groups; Nicholas of Cusa speculated on the existence of life on other planets, and Catholic dogma holds that “made in God’s image” is a reference to free will, not physical appearance. Also, religious views are addressed here: the Nigerian gangsters are invoking animistic beliefs when they eat the aliens in the hopes of gaining their power.
Also, “the evils of organized religion” is a topic so grossly overused in speculative fiction that it makes the racism metaphor seem distinctly less stale by comparison.
Well, it finally happened: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/09/21/nigeria.film.outcry/index.html
Someone should have mentioned that to Ozymandias before he went and made the squid.
The vatican has issued a statement begin 2009 that they acknowledge the fact that we might not be alone in the universe.
It’s sad, but not surprising, that everyone has completely missed the message of this film. This is because you all ascribe to the politically correct view of South Africa – whites as evil murderous oppressors, blacks as innocent victims.
This film was made by a white South African whose family had been driven from South Africa by the ANC (the ruling party that took over after the whites abandoned apartheid). The central metaphor in this film is his family’s own oppression at the hands of the post-apartheid government.
To summarize:
Whites came to South Africa with vastly superior technology.
Those whites were abandoned by all the other white countries including their homeland.
Since then, those whites have been endlessly extorted, tortured, and murdered by the black majority.
Sound familiar?
Yes, the movie had to be dolled up to obfuscate this theme, and at least appear on the surface to fit the politically correct depiction of South Africa. But you can’t ignore the obvious: this movie is about natives abusing foreigners, not foreigners abusing natives.
If you don’t believe me, do a little research. The conditions in South Africa right now are so bad that Canada just granted refugee status to a white South African for racial persecution. Say what you will about the Boers, they were never as bad as the ANC.
hey spoony, i disagree a little with the prawn/god/7th day thing causing worldwide doubt. Many Christians believe in other life on other worlds, although no one can imagine exactly what…If I can believe in angels and demons as real, yet invisible forces, why can’t i believe that He made other things on other worlds? I can’t put God in that Box.
Let me add another comment along the Religious lines. When I read that I am made in the image of God, i read that to mean that I am a sentient being with free will and higher reasoning beyond the base instincts. The existence of Alien life would do nothing to my faith, neither strengthen or weaken it.
I don't know why so many people assume that the Christian faith teaches that there are no aliens. Perhaps it has to do with the old stereotypes that we are all backwards hicks.
Let me add another comment along the Religious lines. When I read that I am made in the image of God, i read that to mean that I am a sentient being with free will and higher reasoning beyond the base instincts. The existence of Alien life would do nothing to my faith, neither strengthen or weaken it.
I don’t know why so many people assume that the Christian faith teaches that there are no aliens. Perhaps it has to do with the old stereotypes that we are all backwards hicks.
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