Avatar's Pantheism

Jan 5

Avatar's Pantheism

Russ Douthat has an excellent piece "Heaven and Nature" in the NYT about the pantheistic underpinnings of Avatar, the new sci-fi blockbuster courtesy of director James Cameron. He makes the argument that "pantheism has been Hollywood’s religion of choice for a generation now."

Today there are other forces that expand pantheism’s American appeal. We pine for what we’ve left behind, and divinizing the natural world is an obvious way to express unease about our hyper-technological society. The threat of global warming, meanwhile, has lent the cult of Nature qualities that every successful religion needs — a crusading spirit, a rigorous set of ‘thou shalt nots,” and a piping-hot apocalypse.

...

The question is whether Nature actually deserves a religious response. Traditional theism has to wrestle with the problem of evil: if God is good, why does he allow suffering and death? But Nature is suffering and death. Its harmonies require violence. Its “circle of life” is really a cycle of mortality. And the human societies that hew closest to the natural order aren’t the shining Edens of James Cameron’s fond imaginings. They’re places where existence tends to be nasty, brutish and short.

...

But except as dust and ashes, Nature cannot take us back.

Read the full article.

(via the Bayly Blog)

over 2 years ago Lion Kimbro responded:

A few notes.

* Far be it for Christians to segregate themselves from nature; ... "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear. And it was so. God called the dry ground 'land,' and the gathered water he called 'seas.' And God saw that it was good." "Then God said, 'Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds,' And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good." ... The Old Testament without nature is dead. Someone alive today would not be crazy to confuse Pandora (think now of the box) and Eden (think now of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Tree of Conscience.) [[Post-script: A point even Ross Douthat acknowledges, when he alludes to Pandora as an Eden.]]

* And as for Christians and the New Testament, remember too that Christ came not to condemn the world, but to save it (John 3:17); And remember too that the entire creation groans in the childbirth (Romans 8:22), a birth that is not yet complete (Romans 8:23-25.) And how many of Jesus' parables draw through nature?

So there can be no talk of whether "Nature deserves a religious response" or not, or whether anybody is "Divining the natural world" or not; We've got the very penning of Genesis for argument.

A world without nature is, quite simply, no world at all. Call me conservative, but whatever God's world is, when we cross the door to the other side of death, however many eons in the future it is, it is nothing without snow-capped mountains, brown brush and trees, yellow deserts, cool rivers, and glittering lakes.

If God's kingdom is just an endless city of vegas neon lights, I think people would prefer hell, because it must be ridden with forests, breezes, and the sunlight glittering off of seas -- that's just how deathly hell must be.

Myself, I trust that God knows what he is doing. I do not know how immortal deer and spiders will work out, and what joy there will be in eating when the cow refuses to stay on the plate, and besides, regenerates as quickly as I can poke him with a fork.

Perhaps Jesus has it right in Matthew 19:12, and I am wrong -- perhaps there will be no eating, no sex, not anything of this sort. We will be sated and never hunger. And perhaps there will be no work to do, in the world still in the making, since the angels will be our servants. And perhaps there is no night, because everything is lit up like a searing light-bulb, and perhaps there is no song because there is no contrast, and perhaps there is nothing at all. But this makes no sense to me, and -- call me a pantheist, but -- neither does a God without a nature.

Post-modern spirituality has its down points. Pantheism has its downpoints. But this is true of every -thism, including Christianity -- some git is always going to get it wrong.

People favor Pandora to our modern world not because they're trying to "escape down," but precisely because they can remember Eden -- a capacity to see that comes precisely because we have a heart and a conscience, our very gifts: trees of life and knowledge. People aspire to the wisdom of Eywa because they hear in Eywa the wisdom of God.

"It is true that today Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the movie theaters. At the head of the noisy street she cries out, in all the advertisements of the city she makes her speech: How long will you insane ones love your mechanical ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery, and fools hate knowledge?" -- Proverbs 1:20-22

The people know we are destroying the Earth, and they know we lack true community. They know.

The people know that ecologies, not just natural but personal and spiritual as well, are interconnected -- and that sin has repercussion. And they know, somehow, that as a species, we do not know that.

The people look for Eywa, for Sophia -- anyone who can teach us to do what is right. They gave up a long time ago on the churches, because the errors of churches are so obvious:

Many who call themselves Christian say, "The Bible has told me that Humanity is doomed, so filled with error that it cannot redeem itself -- heck, it'd be sin if humanity did redeem itself. So thus, lets raze, or let others raze for us, and we will get our reward in the next life. Doing right is too complicated and not worth doing; Let us just wait for the world to come. Stay far from those who strive to do right in this world, there is nothing right to do here; They must be proud mean egotists, without a spirit of God in them. They might do what is right, but do they rightly understand our scriptures? Better to understand the scriptures right than to do what is right."

This is why the people care more for Eywa: Because Eywa serves the One, but the God being sold at the church is less than Godly. For all his fallenness, there is a something in the man that wants to serve the true God, and it'll go by any avenue that works.

Cal's posterous

A little bit of me.

Avatar's Pantheism

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