the man from earth
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
I just watched one of the most interesting and truly thought provoking movies that I have seen in a long time. The movie was called 'The Man From Earth', by Jerome Bixby, a guy I had never heard of but who it turns out makes for an interesting footnote in the history of science fiction.
The movie starts with a group of college professors getting together to celebrate the early retirement of one of their own. The retiree has decided that before he vanishes to parts unknown, he is going to tell the rest of the group the shocking truth of his life, that he is a 14,000 year old man, and over the course of the movie divulges his unique perspective on human history.
As the story unfolds, it basically becomes a 12 angry men scenario as more details of the man who currently calls himself John Oldman's life are revealed and the group attempts to put what he is telling them into something they can understand, and decide if he is crazy, lying, or telling them the truth.
Aside from some of the really interesting historical observations in the film, it is it's discussion about religion that ends up taking center stage and provides for the most interesting dialogue. It turns out that John Oldman ends up playing a fairly pivotal role in the evolution of modern religious ideology, much to his own disappointment, and it is this part of the movie that provokes the most reflection.
I don't want to give too much more away than I already have, but this movie should be required viewing for pretty much any thinking person.
And it opens up some interesting lines of thought as far as the religious references go. I am an unapologetic atheist, as anyone who has stopped by here before is likely to already know. I just have such a hard time understanding why theists have to attribute more than there already is to the natural world. I look at the universe and marvel at its breadth, depth and grandeur and I see theists as looking at the same view and saying, 'Yeah so what else is there?' I can empathize with the need for an afterlife to settle up with the innate fear of death, but once you get past that, I guess I wonder why what is just isn't enough.
But I got thinking about one of the film's premises and got to wondering about this Jesus character. On some days, I think that there might once have been some dude named Jesus who lived 2000 years ago, made a few reasonably on point comments, and was subsequently gangbanged over and over again by revisionist history and a power hungry religious empire. On other days I have thought that maybe the guy is a total fiction, fabricated completely from the minds of that same self-serving organization that still seeks to own the nonexistent souls of its members through fear. How's that for a Jedi mind trick eh? Teach the masses that they have some unknowable, unseeable eternal spiritual avatar, and then teach them that the only way to avoid that avatar spending eternity in agony is by doing exactly what you tell them to. Uh huh.
But maybe this Jesus guy was a real guy, just some regular schmuck with the idea that things could change. What if, as the film suggests, he were around now to see how his unorthodox teachings had been used and bastardized over the generations between? Would he see the many different churches grown up in his name as anything other than abominations? Would he go mad, cry, seek to repair the damage? Or would he quietly hide out, hoping that someday we might drop all the religious nonsense and get back to his original message that people just be nice to each other?
It really was that good of a movie. Every thinking person should see it at least once. And if you’re a theist that refuses to allow rational thought in for fear that it might throw that antiquated belief system into the unrelenting glare of obvious truth, then you need to see it even more.
The movie starts with a group of college professors getting together to celebrate the early retirement of one of their own. The retiree has decided that before he vanishes to parts unknown, he is going to tell the rest of the group the shocking truth of his life, that he is a 14,000 year old man, and over the course of the movie divulges his unique perspective on human history.
As the story unfolds, it basically becomes a 12 angry men scenario as more details of the man who currently calls himself John Oldman's life are revealed and the group attempts to put what he is telling them into something they can understand, and decide if he is crazy, lying, or telling them the truth.
Aside from some of the really interesting historical observations in the film, it is it's discussion about religion that ends up taking center stage and provides for the most interesting dialogue. It turns out that John Oldman ends up playing a fairly pivotal role in the evolution of modern religious ideology, much to his own disappointment, and it is this part of the movie that provokes the most reflection.
I don't want to give too much more away than I already have, but this movie should be required viewing for pretty much any thinking person.
And it opens up some interesting lines of thought as far as the religious references go. I am an unapologetic atheist, as anyone who has stopped by here before is likely to already know. I just have such a hard time understanding why theists have to attribute more than there already is to the natural world. I look at the universe and marvel at its breadth, depth and grandeur and I see theists as looking at the same view and saying, 'Yeah so what else is there?' I can empathize with the need for an afterlife to settle up with the innate fear of death, but once you get past that, I guess I wonder why what is just isn't enough.
But I got thinking about one of the film's premises and got to wondering about this Jesus character. On some days, I think that there might once have been some dude named Jesus who lived 2000 years ago, made a few reasonably on point comments, and was subsequently gangbanged over and over again by revisionist history and a power hungry religious empire. On other days I have thought that maybe the guy is a total fiction, fabricated completely from the minds of that same self-serving organization that still seeks to own the nonexistent souls of its members through fear. How's that for a Jedi mind trick eh? Teach the masses that they have some unknowable, unseeable eternal spiritual avatar, and then teach them that the only way to avoid that avatar spending eternity in agony is by doing exactly what you tell them to. Uh huh.
But maybe this Jesus guy was a real guy, just some regular schmuck with the idea that things could change. What if, as the film suggests, he were around now to see how his unorthodox teachings had been used and bastardized over the generations between? Would he see the many different churches grown up in his name as anything other than abominations? Would he go mad, cry, seek to repair the damage? Or would he quietly hide out, hoping that someday we might drop all the religious nonsense and get back to his original message that people just be nice to each other?
It really was that good of a movie. Every thinking person should see it at least once. And if you’re a theist that refuses to allow rational thought in for fear that it might throw that antiquated belief system into the unrelenting glare of obvious truth, then you need to see it even more.
Labels: atheism, movies, philosophy, scifi
posted by raistlinsghost at 11/13/2007 03:35:00 PM
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