Not terribly long ago, questioning your faith led to a pile of smoldering kindle for a slow, grisly death. Now, it only divides families and inspires death threats from a vocal minority. How far we have come.
I do not speak in jest, for I truly find this a welcome shift, from
global persecution to domestic quarrels. The United States prides itself with
its freedom of religion, which, to the dismay of many, includes the absence of
it. Of course, there still lies the debate over evolution in schools (le sigh)
and the daily impasse that politicians back with Biblical verses.
But that belongs in another
conversation entirely. When I need answers to the unanswerable, I turn to the
greats before me who wrestled these intellectual behemoths. Paine, Marx, Mencken,
the late Hitchens — who often compared Abrahamic faith to living in a
“celestial North Korea.” What they all said in their literature and — in the
latter’s case — numerous filmed exchanges stirs the pot, no question.
For me, I go a step further. I find
god in the movies. Of all people, Tim Burton captured a brilliant allegory in
his whimsical, underrated masterwork, Big
Fish. A son parses through his father’s autobiographical tall tales to
reach the truth in what he feels were narcissistic delusions. Burton juxtaposes
these fantastical flashbacks with the present day ruins of the past.
The town of Spectre, a Southern
gothic version of the lotus-eating colony in The Odyssey, existed, but without all the fairy dust. His giant
cannibal buddy was only abnormally tall. The Siamese twin entertainers he
befriended in North Korea were only sororal twins. Burton examines Biblical
myths (the Great Flood, for instance) and pagan lore to settle that, while
lacking in veracity, these stories provide morals and comfort. The Book of Mormon took up the
oft-ridiculed LDS faith with the same innocuous charge.
Last year’s controversial The Tree of Life started at the dawn of
time, asking how this — all of this — came to be. Director Terence Malick — a
Rhodes scholar who taught philosophy at MIT — anthropomorphizes images of
nebulas and supernovae with a human presence. Fast-forward to life on Earth,
where the swaying kelp on coral almost possesses a human face. Christians praised
Malick’s work as an enlightening depiction of God’s grace. The film beautifully
contemplates the miracle of life. Yet Malick does not take much stake in the
masculine “God the Father” of Michelangelo, but sees rather a pantheistic,
animist form that is all.
Then there is the most powerful
film of all time, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001:
A Space Odyssey. Kubrick held no concrete belief on religion (and neither really
do Burton or Malick). But, with all the film’s attention to science and
technology, Kubrick has conceded that, “on the deepest psychological level, the
film's plot symbolizes the search for god, and it finally postulates what is
little less than a scientific definition of god.”
An evolutionary monolith, kaleidoscopic
wormhole and neoclassical bedroom are the tools of this god. This higher power
may just be a superior alien species, but, in all of scripture, what much more
is a god than that? These (unseen) extraterrestrials ultimately transform the
fearless astronaut into one of their own, a being above man.
The key here is that the one who
dared into uncharted territory became the most powerful. The scientist would
say knowledge breeds power. The priest would argue finding god derives it. At
the core of the two sides, where is the difference? You can move towards science
and away from faith-based immortality, yet still find yourself contemplating
the meaning of infinity. Now if only we had the time on this earth to see it to
an end.
Do question what you believe. It is
whether you accept or reject such beliefs after such metacognition that holds
them to be true. Your philosophy holds true to you, and, in this case,
absolutely no one else matters.
But, if I may, share one last
thought. Religion, in a fundamental sense, was created — or found, whatever the
outlook — to cope with the depressing inevitability of death. Death and taxes,
the only sure things in life.
I seek to live and see, like the
characters of Burton, Malick and Kubrick, learning the whole time and basing
opinions on facts, not the other way around. There is simply too much already here to be
concerned about what is … there. For when you go, you may reach your maker who
will commend you for using the potential of the brain and universe he made for
you. Or, if there is nothing after it all, there is literally no time at all to
decry it, for it is nothing. And, for that moment, all the Christians, Jews,
Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Scientologists, Satanists, Pastafarians, agnostics,
atheists, Joe Pesci-ites and otherwise will all be on — no, excuse me, under — the same playing field for once.
This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.
This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.
