by Christopher Barr
“For my own part I
would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his
dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon,
who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade
from a crowd of astonished dogs – as from a savage who delights to torture his
enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse,
treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest
superstitions.” - Charles Darwin
Noah tells the
fictional, not historic story of a man that has been tasked by the creator of the
world to build an ark in preparation for a mass flooding of the planet.
The creator, because of man’s selfishness, misuse and abuse of his creation,
decided to flood the world to cleanse it of all its wickedness. Behind
all the biblical proportions lies a story about obedience, obsession and death,
where a man edges the border of his own sanity to complete what's required of him. Noah
was about responsibility and follow through, regardless of the cost personally,
it was about survival’s guilt as Noah was forced to watch all of earth’s
sinners wash away into the deep, making this film about destruction but also
about rebirth.
The film was
beautifully shot and the acting was top notch. I loved the haunting score
and the visual effects were stunning. I especially liked a scene where
Noah told the story of creation to the five other people on the ark just after
the flood hit. The story was of the big bang of science leading into the
evolution of many species on earth, and ending with the Garden of Eden to make
the religious people happy, seeings this allegory is from their lesson book . It looked great and they showed during the
very early stage of our planet, an asteroid hitting the earth creating the
moon which was visually stunning to see. Also the quick editing bouncing from species to species was
mesmerizing.
Noah played out like a
fictional tale just in the same way as Batman does. It is a story based
on a story and in both cases they arrived through the imaginations of men.
In one of the more visceral
scenes I’ve seen in recent years, Noah goes to the city to scout wives for his
sons when he stumbles upon the atavistic true nature of men ripping apart each
other. Noah watches in horror as swarms of scavenging people turn savage
as they fight for food. It is there that Noah sees the true nature of men
as he sees himself among them, finally realizing that he too is part of this
failure.
This realization leads
to the most interesting aspect of this film and that is; we must all die in
order for the world to live on. This is when the environmental themes of
the film push us to the reality of the current state of the planet today and
the future of tomorrow. This ended up being my favorite part of Noah the
film and Noah the character, where he realized what truly needs to be done to
save this planet; the extinction of humanity.
Noah’s nemesis in the
film, King Tubal-cain saw this planet as a garden for men to feast and do
whatever they wish because they are men. He was the selfish greedy
bastard that represents what’s wrong with man and his progress trap that he’s
tangled himself up in, costing the environment its land, seas and animals to
suffer. But his one and only argument is because we are men we are
entitled, period. Like in most major religions, this sentiment is shared, because they feel their god, the creator of the universe, made them in his image, they are entitled to hold dominion over this planet and with that entitlement they are killing it with ignorance.
“Clearly the person
who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the church
teaches.” - St. Thomas Aquinas
I would argue that the
debate over whether or not god created the universe is one grounded firmly in
absurdity. It’s about filling a space with fantasy because our current
understanding of reality can’t fill that space. The creationists’ debate
is; if you can’t prove to them that evolution is a fact or that the universe
wasn’t created by an all-knowing architect than they must be right in saying that
it was. They are fuelled by their desire for completeness where science is
all too aware of the huge gaps in our understanding of the universe and our
planet.
What creationists are
not willing to do and what scientists are is remove themselves from the
equation when regarding the origins of anything. Darwin’s theory of
Evolution wasn’t a theory about him, his feelings and his inevitable death.
It was about the origins of the species that have and do exist on this
planet. Evolution isn’t motivated by desire like religions pontificate,
which I find ironic because the message that is often praised by indoctrinated religious
people is there tolerance and open-mindedness; they believe they are right
without ever supporting that ‘fact’.
Language was an
invention of man and with it came a vaster knowledge of the space outside our
heads, outside our homes, outside our villages and towns and the world
alike. What we know and understand about the world we owe to the creation
of language. But we also owe the fantasy about the world to language as
well, through our narcissistic desires to be number one, the reigning species
on this planet; we have created a story of our superiority that can be only debated
within the symbolic world of language itself.
In the beginning was
the word….
Our inability to
understand something outside the parameters of language hasn’t stopped us from
fictionalizing our past to make our present tolerable. Creationists’ have
zero supportable evidence that validates their version of the origins of
humanity, so their weapons of defense are ignorance of knowledge and science,
as they corner atheists disproving evolution because that’s all they
have. Atheists do have evidence on their side, they have evolution and a
multitude of scientific discovery at their fingertips but yet they are
susceptible to debate because religious people have blind faith. In other
words, they obey the lazy man’s pseudoscience; the Book of Genesis, where the story of Noah derives.
The problem is that we
are scared of the enormous vastness of the world outside the safety of our
religious fantasy. Science at this point has no idea what occurred before
the Big Bang did, other than theories about multi universes swirling around in
bubbles of even more multi universes. Religion has taken science’s
inability to answer some of those fundamental questions about the universe as
justification for the existence of their creator.
In the end the debate
is far simpler than people let on; science is evidence based and religion is
not. Science searches desperately to disprove itself, religion says there
is no other word than the word in their book. So the debate isn’t really
a debate about religion versus evolution at all, rather it’s a debate about
simple-mindedness versus intelligence, ignorance versus logic. The problem here
is simple-thinking people are unable to rise to the level of intelligent people to have
a debate grounded in reason and logic. Conversely, the intelligent people
are unable to drop to the likes of simple people and expect to win a debate,
especially with people that would die for their religion, that they themselves
often don’t even understand because of that simplicity.
Generally the real
debate is limited by the language with which it is presented. The
limitation of one’s language hinders a person’s ability to argue the problem
they see before them. So because the debate of religion version evolution
is one within language, the conversation is more often than not, lost in
translation.
While science maintains
its cosmic humility the theists are spreading the gospel of a socially
acceptable power-structure in which under the auspices of this imaged
superpower. What they have done in their
minds is place themselves in the position of god, which excuses them from
unreasoned, unfounded bigotry and pre-judgement by removing the necessity to
justify their views or that they can and should be challenged in their
opinions. Their belief in God allows
them to have a little bit of their assumed God’s divine power, with the ability
to do whatever they choose and to define morality to suit themselves.
Therein lies the fundamental problem with human beings
on this planet; we destroy everything. The Story of Noah ended with an
optimist message of hope but I think it wasn’t what it seemed. I think it
was a wink much in the same way Kevin Costner winked at the end of JFK to the audience
to smarten up and fight for the truth. Noah’s wink is his message of hope
failed as we look at the world today with it’s over consumption leading to mass
extinction. I don’t think the film did end with a positive look, but
rather a slap in the face to its audience to get their heads out of the sand of
their religious dogma, and see that the metaphorical flood is coming and there
aren’t any lifeboats in sight.
“Although the time of
death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to hell or (what
would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven.
I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears
of death, I am thankful to atheism.” - Isaac Asimov
