2014-- The Year of Religious Movies?

[Ag0stoMesmer]

[...please educate me with some explanations or articles regarding the possibility of the Earth being flat.

There's a very low probability that the Earth is flat.
[spoiler]There's an explanation here about how even hypothesis that are proven false are still not able to be fully rejected.

I prefer to think of it like a courtroom, the truth is un-knowable but evidence is weighed to determine guilt. Even finding someone guilty 'beyond a reasonable doubt' still does not reveal the 'truth' though. Finding flat-earth-theory 'not guilty' doesn't mean he didn't do it, it just means there isn't enough evidence he did, there's too much doubt.

AIDS only affects gays and minorities

Whaaaa?

I think one of the best cinematic explorations of issues around who has the AIDS is here.[/spoiler]

I just have to say Ag0stoMesmer's prediction is right on the money, ...

Shame. How bad? could this be a 'Dune moment' for Aaronofsky?

Holy crap back on topic here.
Also from a Christian perspective on Noah, I want to share this article...

It surely isn't news that biblical literalism is only for nuts (believer or non-believer). Where there've always been as many interpretations as there were preachers before, I guess there are now Director's too is all.
Here's a little rant;
[spoiler]What irks me about the myth/history fence-sitting from the pope is it's just so unnecessary. Truth can obviously come from myth and fiction -the psychological truths of Macbeth or even the racial insights of Night of the Living Dead for example. The bible doesn't get -or need- any special or 'divine' allowance for this -from me at least. /rant[/spoiler]

The more I think about it, the more I see these movies -the big ones at least- as a bad sign. Hollywood's really playing safe here. Even earning nothing on the big screen we'll be seeing them every Bank Holiday for years -all about the residuals.

[mattorama12]

Here's a little rant;
[spoiler]What irks me about the myth/history fence-sitting from the pope is it's just so unnecessary. Truth can obviously come from myth and fiction -the psychological truths of Macbeth or even the racial insights of Night of the Living Dead for example. The bible doesn't get -or need- any special or 'divine' allowance for this -from me at least. /rant[/spoiler]

Your rant makes sense if we approach religion as a philosophy or principled view of morality. But many (most?) religions, including Christianity, profess to be about more than simply that. The literalism of the Bible is taken as evidence of divinity. I.E., that miracles could happen is evidence of a greater power. My point is that, if we were all empiricists looking to religion for simply moral guidance or psychological truths, the fence-sitting would be unnecessary. But we aren't (sadly).

[bowfinger]

Shame. How bad? could this be a 'Dune moment' for Aaronofsky?

It's not good. Speaking as an Aronofsky fan (heck, I even loved the Fountain), it's disappointing to say the least.

[spoiler]Once the cat is out of the bag, the final act becomes a horribly boring, predictable, uninspired, off-Broadway type family drama. And I've always hated Crowe's acting, but now I can't stand it.[/spoiler]

[CMonster]

[...please educate me with some explanations or articles regarding the possibility of the Earth being flat.

There's a very low probability that the Earth is flat.
[spoiler]There's an explanation here about how even hypothesis that are proven false are still not able to be fully rejected.

I prefer to think of it like a courtroom, the truth is un-knowable but evidence is weighed to determine guilt. Even finding someone guilty 'beyond a reasonable doubt' still does not reveal the 'truth' though. Finding flat-earth-theory 'not guilty' doesn't mean he didn't do it, it just means there isn't enough evidence he did, there's too much doubt.

AIDS only affects gays and minorities

Whaaaa?

I think one of the best cinematic explorations of issues around who has the AIDS is here.[/spoiler]

This reads like the ramblings of somebody whose education has outpaced their intelligence. Common sense needs to be applied the phrase "beyond a reasonable doubt." You are not doing that. So I won't push the point. Believe in the possibility of a flat Earth not being ruled out and perpetual motion machines, keeping buying that snake oil.

[Ag0stoMesmer]

This reads like the ramblings of somebody whose education has outpaced their intelligence. Common sense needs to be applied the phrase "beyond a reasonable doubt." You are not doing that. So I won't push the point. Believe in the possibility of a flat Earth not being ruled out and perpetual motion machines, keeping buying that snake oil.

[spoiler]The thing came up again when matt stated:

I myself am an atheist. You could argue I'm an agnostic, but I'm as agnostic about God as I am about ghosts, Superman, or a perpetual motion machine. My point is that, sure we can't know.

This is it! An athiest is just an agnostic who's using an extremely low probability of God but, science can no more completely disprove the Gods than perpetual motion or a flat earth. While we're flat-earth 'athiests', technically we're just flat-earth agnostics using a very.......

Neither 'common sense' or 'reasonable doubt' are applicable to science, the courtroom thing was just an analogy man. I'll admit my education and intelligence levels aren't very high and possibly mis-matched but, as irksome as the point seems I think it's both interesting and important. And for what it's worth, sorry I called you ignorant and 'DUM' earlier [/spoiler]

...The literalism of the Bible is taken as evidence of divinity. I.E., that miracles could happen is evidence of a greater power... But we aren't (sadly).

Thanks. Religious thought is so alien to me I sometimes forget there's more to it than the pope just being a guy and the bible just a book, all the money and power, they'll eke out authority from anywhere I suppose.

[CMonster]

'common sense' [is] applicable to science, .

Good point.

[hellboy76]

[ShogunRua]

PS- The only science I (now) know of that can 'disprove' perpetual motion (but not God!) is 'economist science'. Real science can rule out neither.

That's not surprising, considering you don't know anything about science! Thus, it's only natural you be ignorant of what many 4th graders are aware of. By the way, the field of science that disproves perpetual motion is called "thermodynamics". Sound it out if the word is too complicated for you.

[Ag0stoMesmer]

I won't take scientific advice from someone who believes economics is one any more seriously than I would from a phrenologist or astrologer.

[Stewball]

The following is a repeat post, re-posted because I don't think anybody saw it, or if they did, they deferred reflecting on its brilliance. :

The book I wish they'd put on film is the Book of Job. That's the Bible's Achilles heel. It obfuscates endlessly and still fails to address the question no revealed religion with an interactive God can: Why? Terrence Malick did a commentary on it, sort of, with The Tree of Life. I'm sure he wanted to be more blunt (ditto The Counselor and Her), but that comes under the heading of trying to make a horse drink.

Speaking of the tree of life, the Garden of Eden story in Genesis (gaining knowledge of right and wrong with the acquisition of full self-awareness; that is, awareness of ourselves, of the self-awareness of others, and of our inevitable mortality), is the best allegory in the Bible. They need to do that justice some day, but the literalists would all have a golden cow, at church, and then have to stone each other for laboring on the sabbath--especially if Adam and Eve were X rated, even though they were married. Hmmmmmm, maybe Dylan was right, "everybody must get stoned".

Ahem.

Now wait, were A&E married? Did Eve maybe cheat on him with some of those sons of God?

Could it even be called cheating (not fornication, which, btw, means absolutely nothing more than to have sexual intercourse), if they weren't married?