…that there is no “distributor” for this film, in the USA.
David Davis
Why do I say that? Because, with today’s internet-thingy attached to you, as you can do now, anyone with any mind so to do can view any prog, watch any film, see any page, find anything, if he has a mind to and knows what to type.
The USA is what Tony Blair referred to (a-propos of us here in the UK) as a “YOUNG COUNTRY”. As with teenagers in all time and everywhere, opinions in this straneg place called a “young country” are often strongly-held. The disagreement about them if any engenders strong feelings, and the logical basis for the more emotional ones, in particlar, is potentially – although not always – unsound. The tragically-mistaken hypothesis of “creationism” is one such. In young nations and young civilisations, people who know what they believe will believe it with ferocity. Especially in places where there is a lot of space around you physically – coming across strangers who will disagree intellectually (and with evidence to support them which they have about their persons) will be rarer than, say, in London.
That said, I do not believe that the creationist error tendency, in the USA, is or would be as strong in opposing the screening of a movie, a mere movie, as is feared. I do not think that cinemas would be burned down, for example. Nor do I think that the great movie-making installations of Hollywood over there, or Pinewood over here, nor the actual location-sets as used, would be assaulted by enraged bands of creationist Christians, or even Moslems – they too have a creationist religious legend, insofar as they might be termed a religion. Furthermore, history has shown, in particular recently, that it is physically safe to insult and offend Christians. This also is an innately bad thing, but it is a fact.
To me as a scientist (who believes in a God who represents and probably did conceive the indescribable level of Order and Logic observable in all the Universe) the creationist diversion is a tragic travesty of science, and indeed even a perversion thereof. It tragically deflects Man’s mind and inquisitiveness away from things that badly need understanding and rationalisting. If God “was Order”, and “in the beginning there was Order” (Λογος) as it says in the least-bad translation of 1. John (i) that we possess, then there is no requirement whatsoever for Him to have voluntarily sat down to “create” anything at all. He just “was” (and is, and will be always) and what was in His Mind would simply come into being in the same way.
For a scientist, to associate poor devout and fairly-far-seeing Darwin with Eugenicists, Nazis, sterilisers, Stalinists, people like Houston Stuart Chamberlain, creators of Frankensteinian monsters and the like, is a travesty of real science. Darwin was a kind, gentle and humane man, who did not even want to hurt worms if he could help it, and who never used the phrase “survival of the fittest”. If that is the implication of what eugenic socialists said he said, it is unjust.
Libertarians no more want to harm people who are perhaps less able to compete in a civilisation than others, than darwin wanted to harm living creatures. Indeed, Sean Gabb and I often say that it will be necessary to continue a publicly-funded NHS for example, for some time which might be long, even if a libertarian government were to come to power in the UK.
To assume that creation is untrue is to assume that our perception of things is as good as it gets. Yes, you do seem to accept that order could not spontaeously arise from randomness (you do?) but you think to go on to the idea of order being brought about is a waste of time? Perhaps this God of yours just decided that creating things was the way to go?
Perhaps God created liberty, and that was all.
He did say, after all, “let there be light” – as if He had perhaps no control over whether light would arrive in the system (in a thermodynamic sense) or not…? I do not know really. Who can?
If he merely created liberty as an idea, then matter and energy perhaps arrived at the least-unfavourable conditions for sentient matter, capable of knowing its own selfhood, to come into being….
I don’t know really, John.
It seems good to me to explore things with a mind that doesn’t really reach any decisions other than those that come from a desire to know the truth. There are so many things that challenge our accepted view of normality. #Infinity, there is no limit going outward or inward. It is infinite. We are a part of that. We are infinite. #Order cannot logically occur in randomness. #Time slows as one approaches 670,616,629 mph. And what is time? All time is now – when it happens.
Stuart Hameroff and Sir Roger Penrose have done some interesting exploration but seem to have decided to go for a somewhat Eastern religion explanation which I think is selling themselves short.
Personally I think the Creator and the creation are separate and different.
I do think there is a God, John, speaking as a scientist. But He did not go about doing a “rush job” (only 6 days) as it said in that Python type film.
I can’t remember its name, where the silly little buggers were trying to escape from God ‘coz they’d stolen His plans (it was a Proper Blue-Print in the film) through time-holes…”TIME BANDITS”, that’s it, I can remember it! Good movie it was, very funny and also serious at one moment.
I have to say that I never really liked the “Pythons” – I found them mostly unfunny and arch, specially that dude Cleese who I really really really REALLY CAN’T STAND, under any circumstances – he is a poser, and and empty SKULL. But “Time Bandits” was funny, probably ‘coz it did not contain him at all, as I recall.
He was as bad as ever he could be in “The Life of Brian” which is the most unfunny movie of all time imho.
Or perhaps that awfully sad one in which he was driving a Morris 1100 and was late, much worse even.
And you can forget “Fawlty Towers”, I think we ought to be expelled from the Commonwealth, the UN, the Geneva Convention, and other stuff I cant think of, for that. He even managed to un-dignify Rover 2000’s. Bugger.
Indeed, Sean Gabb and I often say that it will be necessary to continue a publicly-funded NHS for example, for some time which might be long, even if a libertarian government were to come to power in the UK.
Indeed. There will need to be a very gentle let-down from much of the welfare state. The idea, from my perspective, is for a libertarian government to allow people to escape the *need* for publicly run services.
On the other hand, we can probably abolish the state schools in the first year.
I agree, Ian. The schools, while looking threatening, are not a big problem. Practically all “state” schools could reasonably be locked down and demolished, institutionally if not physically (the buildings and surviving apparatus could be useful for a start) in about ten weeks.
The teachers, many of whom do actually have their hearts in the right place and only teach the pernicious “National” curriculum out of fear and terror of the consequences of refusing so to do right now, could be brought round.
I know many. They are ordinary individuals who do actually care, mostly, about what they do, even if they have been forced through neoMarxist training “colleges”. Many of them even do know “how to teach” (this is quite important.)
I would probably not subject most of them to the post-victory Libertarian upside-down-Gramscian-Inquisition, which I have in mind for the rest of the Enemy Class, and which I am in the act of designing. We need good teachers, like we needed good policemen in the aftermath of the Third Reich, and perhaps should have thought that we needed in Iraq in 2003.
(But I would not have done what Stalin did, and recruit most of the captured SD to the KGB in 1945, as he did.)
These days, too, knowledge resides as you and I both agree, in all sorts of non-school places and in cyberspace.