LINK
And of course, if I am going to post an article from Townhall, I might as well go thorugh the whole 9Yards and post some of the more wonderful clips form the Comments section...You probably don't need a long synopsis of James Cameron's half-billion-dollar epic "Avatar," in part because even if you haven't seen it, you've seen it. As many reviewers have noted, Cameron rips off Hollywood cliches to the point you could cut and paste dialogue from "Pocahontas" or "Dances With Wolves" into "Avatar" without appreciably changing the story.
In short, "Avatar" tells the tale of a disabled Marine, Jake Sully, who occupies the body of a 10-foot-tall alien so he can live among the mystical forest denizens of the moon world Pandora. Sully is sent in mufti, like a futuristic Lawrence of Arabia, to further the schemes of the evil corporate nature-rapists desperate to obtain the precious mineral "unobtainium" (no, really). Jake inevitably goes native, embraces the eco-faith of Pandora's Na'Vi inhabitants and their tree goddess, the "all mother," and rallies the Pandoran aborigines (not to mention the Pandoran ecosystem itself) against the evil forces of a thinly veiled 22nd-century combine of Blackwater and Halliburton.
The film has been subjected to a sustained assault from many on the right, most notably by Ross Douthat in the New York Times, as an "apologia for pantheism." Douthat's criticisms hit the mark, but the most relevant point was raised by John Podhoretz in the Weekly Standard. Cameron wrote "Avatar," says Podhoretz, "not to be controversial, but quite the opposite: He was making something he thought would be most pleasing to the greatest number of people."
What would have been controversial is if -- somehow -- Cameron had made a movie in which the good guys accepted Jesus Christ into their hearts.
Of course, that sounds outlandish and absurd, but that's the point, isn't it? We live in an age in which it's the norm to speak glowingly of spirituality but derisively of traditional religion. If the Na'Vi were Roman Catholics, there would be boycotts and protests. Make the oversized Smurfs Rousseauian noble savages and everyone nods along, save for a few cranky right-wingers.
I'm certainly one of those cranky right-wingers, though I probably enjoyed the movie as cinematic escapism as much as the next guy.
But what I find interesting about the film is how what is "pleasing to the most people" is so unapologetically religious.
Nicholas Wade's new book, "The Faith Instinct," lucidly compiles the scientific evidence that humans are hard-wired to believe in the transcendent. That transcendence can be divine or simply Kantian, a notion of something unknowable from mere experience. Either way, in the words of philosopher Will Herberg, "Man is homo religiosus, by 'nature' religious: as much as he needs food to eat or air to breathe, he needs a faith for living."
Wade argues that the Darwinian evolution of man depended not only on individual natural selection but also on the natural selection of groups. And groups that subscribe to a religious worldview are more apt to survive -- and hence pass on their genes. Religious rules impose moral norms that facilitate collective survival in the name of a "cause larger than yourself," as we say today. No wonder everything from altruism to martyrdom are part of nearly every faith.
The faith instinct may be baked into our genes, but it is also profoundly malleable. Robespierre, the French revolutionary who wanted to replace Christianity with a new "age of reason," emphatically sought to exploit what he called the "religious instinct which imprints upon our souls the idea of a sanction given to moral precepts by a power that is higher than man."
Many environmentalists are open about their desire to turn their cause into a religious imperative akin to the plight of the Na'Vi, hence Al Gore's uncontroversial insistence that global warming is a "spiritual challenge to all of humanity." The symbolism and rhetoric behind Barack Obama's campaign was overtly religious at times, as when he proclaimed that "we are the ones we've been waiting for" -- a line that could have come straight out of the mouths of Cameron's Na'Vi.
What I find fascinating, and infuriating, is how the culture-war debate is routinely described by antagonists on both sides as a conflict between the religious and the un-religious. The faith instinct manifests itself across the ideological spectrum, even if it masquerades as something else.
On the right, many conservatives have been trying to fashion what might be called theological diversity amid moral unity. Culturally conservative Catholics, Protestants and -- increasingly -- Jews find common cause. The left is undergoing a similar process, but the terms of the debate are far more inchoate and fluid. What is not happening is a similar effort between left and right, which is why the culture war, like the faith instinct, isn't going away any time soon.
The following as always make oyu wonder if any of these people ever saw the Movie, are are just repeating what they read form their last right-wing bullet-points E-mail
Hollywoodhas turned into a bunch of lunatic fringe radical leftwing socialist extremist. Seems every movie coming out of this cesspool these days has an underlying message of anti-capitalism and ant-christianity. Who are these demons who sit around and come up with this garbage? Michael Moron Moore, Oliver Stonehead Stone, James Cameron.
The special effects are fantastic. The message is, as Jonah points out, dredged up liberal pap.
Nobody in hollywood wants to hear a story about American values. But Americans might.
Unlike the wildly popular Christian movies that use values to drive the story, Cameron must use special effects to sugar coat a nasty message.
I was going to boycott Avatar, but then I got a letter from the Obama Stimulus Police saying I had to go because otherwise I was not holding up my end of the bargain and would need to be re-educated in Uncle Barry's Summer Camp for Right-Wing Nuts™.
As Chesterton said: A man who doesn't believe in God doesn't believe in nothing - he believes in everything.
Each country must be thought of as a Darwinian experiment in natural selection/survival of the fittest. If the USA doesn't rule the world, it will only be someone worse - like RCB says, murderers who have substituted the false God of the State for the Loving God of Creation.
Societies that so tolerate every conceivable feelgood impulse do not last. They have to stand for something to build and survive in a hostile world. Widespread encouragement of homosexuality marks the end of the national traits of character necessary for survival. What have homos built? NAMBLA (and quilts I suppose). What else do homos do in society? Destroy everything they touch.
I don't fault David #11 above, and Cameron, and the ex-nihilistic American left for taking their first tentative steps on their spiritual journeys. What do primatives always worship? rocks, trees, sky, etc. Then they evolve through human and animal sacrifice through to Christ -some being sidetracked by False Gods such as "All Mother" .
Ever notice how the Gaia movement has recreated Old and New Testaments? State of Grace, Fall (internal combustion), Profi{phe}ts (Algore), and Redemption via Sacraments (recycling, light bulbs), and a Saviour (Gene Shoemaker). It fails because it doesn't require the difficult choices necessary for character formation. And it ends up being just another mass murderer: Ban DDT for ZERO scientific reason - kill 2 million/year. Ah, yes, the American left does love its eugenics.
Is it not obvious that if God's Kingdom is to be brought forth on Earth, it is through the Christian nation USA. What other nation wins a war, and gives the spoils back to the people we've emancipated. To those who would criticize the US, what nation has done our equal?
