Someone once said of the very prissy Gen. Winfield Scott that you could cover his mouth with a button.  Douthat would no doubt be very flattered to be the soulmate of a competent general.

Mouth or butthole, take your pick.  It must be hard for him to take a bath, because you can’t keep water in the tub with all that rear end suction.

I thought Avatar was pretty, but there’s a difference between a simple plot and a simplistic plot and it fell rather heavily on the latter. (And that’s not even getting into the “What these Natives need is a White Guy” aspects.)

Douchehat’s fucking problem—just like all these douchebag anti-pleasure right-wing fuck-ups—is that his classmates mocked him mercilessly in high school for being a total douchebag. He was the fucking weirdo who would come to all the high-school parties even though he knew everyone hated him. He would walk in to the kitchen and all the peeps in the kitchen would just start laughing in his face and leave the kitchen to go into the living room.

He really botches his run at making pantheism sound like a bad thing.  As he describes it, it’s only a bad thing if you’re emotionally committed to the validity of monotheism rather than, you know, finding the truth—not that pantheism is the truth, but it’s not really unappealing if you’re not emotionally invested in the outcome.

Really?  I thought Avatar was awesome.  “Dances With Wolves” with cool CGI and dragons.  What’s not to like?

The Dances With Wolves part, only worse, because this white guy doesn’t just join the tribe, he becomes their leader, because without a white guy to lead them, those noble savages can’t get anything done.

Douhat seems to confuse pantheism with animism.  Not so much that he’s incorrect on the basic handling on the meaning, but he’s trying amp up an animist interpretation of pantheism. 

Dishonest person.

I thought the native alien culture was actually pretty cool and it was understandable that you’d want to live with them.  But yeah, the “we can’t do it without the white guy!” thing made me want to shoot holes in the screen. And then there’s the point Marc made as we left the theater:

“Avatar, the sequel: The defeated Sky People show up 10 years later to show the ‘terrorist’ guerrilla fighters, a nuke is launched that wipes out the whole planet, and the movie is over in 5 minutes.”  Like with “Titanic”, there’s that giant plot hole that absolutely ruins it if you think about it.

It’s a fantastic movie. Possibly the best action picture in decades. Tight, well acted, and absolutely beautiful. Yeah, the basic plot is the same epic hero myth straight out of Campbell. Seems to have worked for the last several thousand years though.

Jeff Fecke@7: Don’t worry.  It’s completely PC now, thanks to Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai.

I’m aware that it’s the standard heroic myth, the same one used in Harry Potter, Star Wars, LOTR, etc.  The unassuming outsider discovers his true heroism when placed in this new context, and becomes the savior of the world or society or whatever.  I don’t have a problem with that storyline per se, except when it has no wonder to it and it’s tritely done.  But grafting that storyline onto what amounts to a fantasy version of a real genocide that actually happened (that of European descendents killing off Native Americans that stood in the way of Manifest Destiny), the outsider saves the day story becomes racist and offensive.

But maybe even that would have been easier to excuse if the dialogue hadn’t given me eye strain from the rolling.  “I see you”?  Really?

By the way, did Dawkins mean that as a compliment? When I read it out of context, it sounds dismissive. Read IN context it’s not much better: “Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.” I mean, this doesn’t slacken your point about Douthat’s sex-phobia, but I’m pretty sure Dawkins is using “sexed-up” to mean “covered with a very shallow and extraneous veneer.”

Avatar takes place on a planet that is eventually revealed to be conscious and thinking- which has ramifications for basically everything that happened in the movie. After all, the white guy did end up failing until the planet realized it needed to do something. The plot holes only exist because people seem insistent on thinking of it solely as some kind of social metaphor rather than also science fiction.  I mean, this is also why Douthat is wrong, it turns out there’s nothing faith based about anything going on in the movie.

Richard Dawkins has called pantheism “a sexed-up atheism.” (He means that as a compliment.)

really, Douhat? are you sure you’re reading it correctly? as generally, that term is used in the sense that changes are made that are superficial and intended to appeal to idiots, if not being outright fraud of falsely presenting the subject matter.

It’s also part of a thesis where he calls Deism “watered down Theism” which I’m pretty sure means it’s supposed to be a contrast of “recognizing everything as divine is fake atheism and denies grand gods, whereas deism is fake religious worship, as you don’t think god actually does anything”

I haven’t seen it yet. but I am looking forward to watching Ferngully in space (right down to “random white guy saves the day where the magical fairies using superpowers wouldn’t be enough”)

because cliche is one thing, and will be eye roll inducing, but fuck if it don’t look pretty and is IN THREE DEEE

As a historian, I am particularly fond of people like Douthat asserting something as historical fact without a) citing a single example as evidence, or b) acknowledging that their assertion could as easily apply to that which they are defending.  Suggesting that people in pantheistic societies led nasty, brutish, and short lives (can those making ahistorical remarks refrain from using this phrase, pretty please?) is tautological and implies that pantheists are given more to violence and other antisocial traits.  It would be pretty hard to prove that monotheism is better than pantheism by comparing India and England in the 16th century, for example. Indeed, England (and therefore monotheistic Christianity) would probably fare slightly worse in that comparison.  Unfortunately for Douthat, history doesn’t support his unfounded assertion that monotheism necessarily leads to a better society and a better life for its inhabitants.

Look, when a leaf lands on your arrow tip and you’re the spiritual apprentice, you take notice.

Of course the story was shit.  We know that in our world, the indigenous people never win.

But the world, and alien people who were, well, aliens!  On the screen!  Maybe this means we’ll have more stuff like this in the future where we get to see real fantasy races and alien species as real characters or leads.

Antigone, I got excited when I thought they were going for the double agent thing.  I love the double cross as a storyline!  But it requires more imagination than Cameron has. The intelligence he gave them was basically nothing.  Maybe getting fed the time of the attack, but that struck me as uninteresting. 

I thought they were going to use the Sky People’s extensive knowledge of the mine to conduct guerrilla missions aimed at stopping the mining and demoralizing the people, you know, what is usually the response of an outgunned population living under occupation.  But Cameron doesn’t have the imagination for it, so instead it was showdown at the big tree, with a deus ex machina (a literal one, at least the deus part) that was ripped off LOTR.  But when the trees attack in LOTR, it doesn’t feel like a deus ex machina, because the characters actually interact with them, etc.

Also, a decent double cross storyline would have created an out for the inevitable KA BLAM revenge plot hole.  You just sneak in, kill the people who don’t want to go native, and then everyone sneaks off, and when Earth makes contact, they’re baffled and afraid to return or something.

I just got back from seeing Avatar and have to agree with the people saying it doesn’t suck.  There is definitely the “white leader” aspect to the plot.  However, I think the way the movie handled it was more of a “someone who understands two worlds is more useful than someone that understands one.” 

I view Sully as more of an Obama figure - not perfect, but a leader who arrives at a time when knowledge of just your own culture is inadequate.  One of the reasons so many people voted for Obama is the belief that we needed a leader who understands black people, white people, Muslims, Christians, elites and the working class.

Sully is only able to lead after he learns to think like and respect the Na’ve.  He led because of his cross-cultural knowledge.  The Na’ve were treated respectfully, but not as without flaws.

Avatar also treats women respectfully.  Grace is rough-edged, very good at what she does and loving - a fully drawn character.  The pilot sacrifices herself because fighting for the Na’ve is right, not because she is in love with Sully.

Women in the Na’ve were shown to be fairly equal, although with the annoying cliche that women are the keepers of spirituality and men are the chiefs.

The Dances With Wolves part, only worse, because this white guy doesn’t just join the tribe, he becomes their leader, because without a white guy to lead them, those noble savages can’t get anything done.

I’d love to see something like the Japanese, where the noble savages are overwhelmed by the White People’s obvious superiority - and buckle down, learn, and beat the shit out of them a generation later. The Japanese defeat of the Russians in 1905 changed the world.

At the same time, pantheism opens a path to numinous experience for people uncomfortable with the literal-mindedness of the monotheistic religions — with their miracle-working deities and holy books, their virgin births and resurrected bodies.

He like how he thinks this is a slam. As if being skeptical of a virgin birth and holy books that were written years sometimes decades or centuries after the fact, then are mistranslated or retranslated depending on the political or oppressive agenda of the translator is, somehow, a bad thing.

*Sorry that should be I like how he thinks this is a slam.

Amanda, as a huge Cameron fan I will admit that the visuals were awesome but the story sucked ass to the point where it started taking away from the visuals because I was rolling my eyes so much. As a black person, and as one with Native ancestry only a generation off I got downright pissed at some scenes in that movie. The corporate asshole was basically the Burke character from Aliens, and the military leader was one of the biggest cartoon villains I’ve seen. I was expecting him to start twirling a mustache. Then again, I personally hate going native stories, and in general movies where white people have to come in and save native peoples, or in modern day the white teacher/coach must uplift the poor black youth. It’s insulting.

And nothing is left for you to figure out, Cameron hits you over the head with “(mostly white) humans bad! Natives good!” As when the corporate asshole directly referred to them as “savages” or better yet, “blue monkeys”. That made me grit my teeth.

And while they attack may have been inevitable, Sully had a direct hand in the military destroying Nety’ri’s village and killing her father. But of course, he’s the white guy and he’s learned the error of his ways, they had (really odd) sex and now he’s in love and he figured out how to fly the really big bird (which, in four generations none of the Na’Vi people could figure out that tactical move? Or they all tried and just weren’t good enough?) so she forgives him and her jilted mate accepts him as their war leader. Then that guy gets killed which conveniently paves the way for Jake to be leader of the entire tribe, though he’s only been learning from them for three fucking months. It was total bullshit.

And Marc was completely right. Leaving the theater my friends and I were talking about how, since the Na’Vi have now “proven” themselves hostile Earth will have no problem sending a team back and in about ten years the planet will probably be nuked from orbit. Let’s see Eywah stop that.

One thing that I loved, and wanted Cameron to explore was the idea that the planet was its own kind of computer, or brain. THAT would be a movie I’d want to see. It was a fascinating concept that I thought was wasted.

Auguste, I take the “sexed up atheism” to be sort of a back handed compliment.  Dawkins isn’t saying that atheism is being improved on.  But he is suggesting that pantheists are on the right track and perhaps they should go over to the atheist camp, that the sexing up isn’t needed.  In the same way that he might suggest that Deists are on the right track in getting away from a personalized God and they are just a few logical steps away from atheism.  I haven’t read Dawkins extensively but based on what I have read, I think he generally disapproves of trying to come up with a Thinking Man’s Religion.  Basically, once you starting thinking, why not just ditch all religion of any sort.  Or as Count Zinzendorf said in making an argument in the completely opposite direction for completely faith based religion, “He who seeks to apprehend God with his intellect is already an atheist in his heart.” (I think I have that quote and attribution right but I wouldn’t swear to it (uh..I mean affirm). Dawkins would probably agree with the basic sentiment and urge such a person to drop the religious veneer and just accept atheism.

Shah, I agree that Douthat seemed to be going out of his way to misunderstand pantheism.  He seemed to be taking the opposite view of Dawkins that it was a “sexed up atheism”.  In Douthat’s view, it’s not a sexed up version of atheism, but a sort of blaspemous parody of religion.  Having followed the trend in Christianity towards Christian stewardship of the environment in theology, I’ve noticed that there is a sizable portion of Christianity (and not always just the Christian right) that feels extremely threatened by anything that even vaguely smells like pantheism.  They have a very hierarchical view of the universe (God, Man, Nature) and anything that upsets the separateness of those categories or the hierachy of them, tends to result in them screaming blasphemy or idoloatry.  The Southern fundametalist evangelical version of Christianity tends to be very heavy on emphasizing Old Testament stories of God and his righteous prophets smacking down heathen idolaters.  I think this tends to make them queasy about even a moderate environmentalism that is well within the mainstream of orthodox Christian tradition. 

The other way to look at this Douthat piece is just to put it within the category of traditional right wing Hollywood bashing.  Every movie gets squished into the theme of “Hollywood elitist eggheads looking down on small town folks with traditional values.”

If you can manage to make it all the way down to the bottom, Douthat I think actually does give a fairly reasonable summation of a certain type of atheism, what I would call tragic atheism, generally associated with sort of an existentialist view.

“Religion exists, in part, precisely because humans aren’t at home amid these cruel rhythms. We stand half inside the natural world and half outside it. We’re beasts with self-consciousness, predators with ethics, mortal creatures who yearn for immortality.

“This is an agonized position, and if there’s no escape upward — or no God to take on flesh and come among us, as the Christmas story has it — a deeply tragic one. “

Of course, he’s advocating religion as the cure for all that while a tragic atheist would simply say that man is both part of nature and estranged from it and that’s something we should live with.  I think pantheism sort of wants to have it’s cake and eat it too.  It’s wants to take away that feeling of man’s estrangement but without going back to that ole time religion.  This probably has a lot to with Douthat’s hatchet job on pantheism.  He feels like pantheism is offering a cure in the same way that religion is for man’s feeling of estrangement from the universe but is doing it in a way that is more palatable to a modern scientific world view in an age of increased environmental awareness.

By the way, despite the fact that it’s being cited by Douthat, I would highly recommend Lescek Kolakowski’s book, “Religion” (and any of his books for that matter).  Very nice summation of all sorts of religious arguments on various matters and not so heavy on philosophical jargon that it couldn’t be understood by the average person.

For the record, I’m not implying that all atheists take this sort of tragic view or would even be comfortable with a phrase like “man’s estrangement from nature”.  I certainly wouldn’t put Dawkins within this camp.  Also, I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive.  One can be perfectly comfortable viewing man as both part of nature and in a sense outside it without subscribing to any sort of religious views.

Count me among those who enjoyed Avatar, and I’ve never been a huge Cameron fan.  It’s far from the best movie ever, the dialogue is bad*, there are tons of plot holes & a massive overdose of mysticism, and I think making Sully the apparent clan leader at the end really is pretty insulting.  But it’s visually amazing, the CGI acting would make George Lucas weep in shame if only he’d actually understood the concept of characterization to begin with, some of the plot details like making the mining operation a private industry/mercenary one are quite good, the protagonist is only treated respectfully by the bad guy at first, and I rather liked the feel of their little DFH avatar enclave on the margins of the operation.  Plus the few scenes that show humans and Na’vi in the same shots are pleasantly disconcerting—they really are huge.

*which reminds me of the famously crusty William Goldman’s argument that Cameron deserved Best Screenplay for Titanic, even as he fully acknowledged the howlerrific dialogue, because (said Goldman) screenplays are about narrative structures rather than characters’ words.

“At the same time, pantheism opens a path to numinous experience for people uncomfortable with the literal-mindedness of the monotheistic religions — with their miracle-working deities and holy books, their virgin births and resurrected bodies. As the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski noted, attributing divinity to the natural world helps “bring God closer to human experience,” while “depriving him of recognizable personal traits.” For anyone who pines for transcendence but recoils at the idea of a demanding Almighty who interferes in human affairs, this is an ideal combination.”

By the way, Douthat may not be aware of this, and if he is I’m sure he’s against it as well.  A fairly common interpretation of Christianity amongst those of a more liberal persuasion is that it’s appeal as opposed to other religions is it’s divinization of a man.  The Old Testament God is hard to relate to(just ask Job).  The appeal of Christianity to those religiously inclined is it’s humanistic elements.  So the same crtique that Douthat levels at pantheism, that it’s an attempt to bring God down to Earth, could just as easily be directed at Christianity.  Why is he not scandalized by allegations of the divinity of Jesus?

From Douthat’s essay, put this

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…

alongside this:

Religion exists, in part, precisely because humans aren’t at home amid these cruel rhythms [that is, the cycle of mortality, ie “nature”]. We stand half inside the natural world and half outside it. We’re beasts with self-consciousness, predators with ethics, mortal creatures who yearn for immortality.

This is an agonized position, and if there’s no escape upward — or no God to take on flesh and come among us, as the Christmas story has it — a deeply tragic one.

As nekouken said in #6, these claims stem from having adopted a Christian frame in advance and assuming what you claim to prove. I can only expand on it by pointing out that many other-but not all—faith traditions share the Christian notion that we humans are somehow intruders or castaways in this world.

But to me, it seems obvious that these allegedly defining characteristics of religion as such have mainly to do with strong social imperatives that have little to do with the reflections and impressions free individual human beings would logically have to share. Imperatives of a particular kind of society, one that places a premium on competition, organized collectively. One that emphasizes brutality toward outsiders, Others (including scapegoats hunted out from within and Othered.)

Christianity, and other traditions that have developed in parallel from other imperial, militarized societies than the Greco-Roman classical world, has other things going on than the straightforward sanctification of a dominator society.  But at the same time the Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Confucian traditions are also deeply woven into supporting and perpetuating just such societies.

Time was, not so long ago here on Pandagon, I’d have asserted that there not only can be but are other approaches to religion and that what we hate in dominant religious traditions is their aspect of apologists for clearly oppressive social orders. Nowadays I am not so sure, feeling as I do rather distant personally from personal experiences I could once construe as examples of personal spiritual encounters, and having listened to years of arguments here about how believing or pretending to believe unproven or even disproven nonsense violates intellectual integrity.

I still don’t have the visceral reaction against religion/spiritualism as such that many people here have shared having, but I remain very irritated by the kind of “spirituality” that measures its authenticity and strength by how much it is about fear, hatred, “thou shalt nots,” and rains of self-righteous fire upon the sinners and heathen.

Of course I see the revulsion Douthat invokes against sexuality as deeply bound up with the sort of power-trip cultism I’ve been sneering at. IMHO this is why we have sexism—and racism, homophobia, bigotry in general—there is this worldview that is essentially about hatred, fear and hierarchy as such, and it seeks victims to shoehorn into the roles of the damned. Rather than, that is, the notion I often see mooted here that these bigotries arise for specific, contingent reasons and then the structure of bigotry is built to accommodate them afterward.

Speaking of Douthat and his prudery, it just occurred to me what a good definition of a Biblical literalist would be:

Someone who believes every single world in the Bible must be interpreted literally, except for the Song of Solomon, which has to be interpreted metaphorically because it can’t possibly be about what it sounds like it’s about.

We are having a rational, and learned discussion about religion in here!  Wow!

Here’s a great explanation of why “Avatar” is irritating.

These are movies about white guilt. Our main white characters realize that they are complicit in a system which is destroying aliens, AKA people of color - their cultures, their habitats, and their populations. The whites realize this when they begin to assimilate into the “alien” cultures and see things from a new perspective. To purge their overwhelming sense of guilt, they switch sides, become “race traitors,” and fight against their old comrades. But then they go beyond assimilation and become leaders of the people they once oppressed. This is the essence of the white guilt fantasy, laid bare. It’s not just a wish to be absolved of the crimes whites have committed against people of color; it’s not just a wish to join the side of moral justice in battle. It’s a wish to lead people of color from the inside rather than from the (oppressive, white) outside.

Think of it this way. Avatar is a fantasy about ceasing to be white, giving up the old human meatsack to join the blue people, but never losing white privilege.

In these fantasies, the white person is absolved of their guilt as an oppressor, but they never have to live as an oppressed person, because they’re still in charge of the people of color.

Shah, seriously get off the courtier’s reply.  It’s so tedious.  The complexity of the LARP worlds created by religions don’t make their claims any more real than the vampires and elves of role playing games.  (I am using that lingo right, aren’t I?)

UltraMagnus, I thought that planet as a brain idea was cool, too, and semi-convinced Marc you could create a plausible explanation for how that would happen through evolution.  I also appreciated that Cameron conquered the uncanny valley.  The aliens were genuinely appealing to look at, despite being “off” human looking to the point where they should have been unnerving.  Which made the whole use of the white guy saves the day storyline even more irritating.  The Na’vi were quite relateable, and we didn’t need someone to make them that way.

By the way, fail on the made up words.  Na’vi? Unobtainawhat the fuck?  Subtle!

Can’t people like Douthat take solace in the fact that movies that cast big corporations as villains are themselves made by big corporations? You’d think, if they didn’t welcome the clever misdirection, they’d at least appreciate the irony.

One more point on the Campbell heroic storyline thing: A classic aspect of that story that is missing from the white guilt fantasies that ape the “unassuming protagonist becomes a conquering hero” storyline is that the hero discovers that he’s been a member of this remarkable group all along and he didn’t know it.  So you discover that your father was a god, for instance, and then you set out on your journey.  Or you discover that you were born a Jedi.  Or that you were born a wizard.  And so your spot in this new world is your birthright. 

If we take that story and graft it onto a movie like “Avatar”, then you’re making the uncomfortable proposal that it’s the white person’s birthright to be the leader of this group of indigenous people.  No matter how well-intentioned, that’s fucked up.

Upsadasium was taken.

I did not make the courtier’s reply.  And the fact that you clearly didn’t understand that I didn’t make the courtier’s reply (I was complementing people who integrated philosophers (you know that dude who’s an archetypal atheist) into a discussion on religion) is precisely why I f*?#ing HATE getting courtier’s reply comments!  It’s just a show of ignorance.

and this is *before* I uselessly rant on the stupidity of the whole courtier’s reply phenomenon.

Short:
Argue that the tangent is irrelevant and show how.

or

Argue using the terminology and concepts used by philosphers and theologicans.

You don’t get to dismiss!  That is stupid, lazy, thinking!

Unobtainium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium

Of course, just because it’s a term that engineers use to describe ideal materials that will never be found doesn’t make the use of it in a movie any less fucking stupid.

But Cameron doesn’t have the imagination for it, so instead it was showdown at the big tree, with a deus ex machina (a literal one, at least the deus part) that was ripped off LOTR.  But when the trees attack in LOTR, it doesn’t feel like a deus ex machina, because the characters actually interact with them, etc.

I was willing to forgive this (and the whole “Eywa doesn’t answer our prayers OHWAIT yes she answers white people prayers!” bit) because I looked at the response by the planet as a immune response. The information that Grace was able to contribute to the planet-wide neural network was like the exposure of an immune system to an antigen, so that the planet was able to repel humans better. It was the first off-planet threat that Eywa had ever seen so it was also the first time that the whole planet had cooperated (thus why the deity had never seemed to take sides before.) Sully’s involvement was somewhat irrelevant; the planet would have noticed the firebombing pretty soon anyways and done something about it.

Furthermore, I’d imagine the hometree will be regrown/replaced relatively quickly by the planet’s repair mechanisms—Sully was ultimately irrelevant to the attack as well as the planetary defense. This can’t be the first time the planet’s taken some damage, and I assume that (like any other organism) it can recover from injuries.

At least, that’s what I’m willing to tell myself to make the last 1/2 hour of “hot blue chicks saved by God/white men” a less obnoxious. :p

(Of course, the planet really *will* be nuked in the near future. But whatever.)

This is an agonized position, and if there’s no escape upward — or no God to take on flesh and come among us, as the Christmas story has it — a deeply tragic one.

Of course he glosses over the tragedy of Christianity, which is that without the Grace of the Gospel, billions of people are going to spend eternity significantly worse-off than eventual return to dust.

@42: Actually, I rather like it when Science Fiction writers break the fourth wall and don’t even try to justify their Alien Space Bats. Because inevitably when screenwriters try to explain their technobabble with even more technobabble, the end result just pisses off those of us who have a high school science education who pay attention to these things.

Really, once you’ve taken a giant leap into fantasy by having the protagonist travel to another solar system you might as well throw in unobtanium as a MacGuffin and mangle the entire mind-body problem as well.

What a strange world Dawkins must live in…

You must mean Douthat here.

Douchehat’s fucking problem—just like all these douchebag anti-pleasure right-wing fuck-ups—is that his classmates mocked him mercilessly in high school for being a total douchebag. He was the fucking weirdo who would come to all the high-school parties even though he knew everyone hated him. He would walk in to the kitchen and all the peeps in the kitchen would just start laughing in his face and leave the kitchen to go into the living room.

And the horse you rode in on. Seriously.

That’s not his problem at all. His problem (and possibly yours) is that he thought that the solution was to find a different crowd of exclusionary jerkwads, fit in better with them, and spend the rest of his life being one of the cool kids pissing on everyone “below” him. With a side of outrage rather than ridicule, but that’s only because of the venue chose.

I haven’t seen Avatar and don’t plan to, but I’m having fun reading reviews and blog posts and comments about it and picturing Captain Sullenberger in the movie.

Try not to go into a fit of hysterics reading that. NIGH IMPOSSIBLE, I KNOW, but do try.

In these fantasies, the white person is absolved of their guilt as an oppressor, but they never have to live as an oppressed person, because they’re still in charge of the people of color.

The use of this repeated and annoying trope in Avatar serves as a reminder of what made District 9—for all its flaws—a refreshingly good movie: Wikus becomes a prawn, but he doesn’t become the heroic man-prawn link or lead the prawns to freedom. He suffers and his interests simply coincide with Christopher’s for a brief period so they can both get what they want.

Avatar didn’t even need a human hero: it could have been just about the Na’vi or involved a Na’vi who had previously lived or worked among the humans before leading the Na’vi against them. But as is typical with movies, the protagonist needs to be someone the audience can “relate” to, eliminating the possibility of human (or non-American) heroes in these kinds of films.

Just FYI;
“Sexed-up”, in its current British use, is not a compliment, nor does it necessarily have anything to do with sex. The new definition is “to enhance something to give it greater appeal or impact” (famously used to describe the evidence for war against Iraq).

P.S. Yes, I know that many Christians these days are closet Universalists, and likely closet pantheists as well. The problem is that the entire nativity story sort of hinges on the basic premise that humanity is estranged from God and needs a Messiah to save us from eternal damnation. The whole thing with Noah and Moses being just dress rehearsals. At least one reason I’m an Atheist is that it’s much easier for me to believe that my Grandmother’s emotional and physical pain is finally at an end than it is to believe she’s likely damned.

I remember sometime back in the late ‘80s when my father was visiting and we were trying to find a movie.

I have a habit of reading all the reviews as they come out and so knew enough about all to decide I didn’t give a shit about any. Sandwiched in between two multi-plexes pointing to the marquees, “Starring a white guy, about a white guy, about white guys, the hero is a white guy, white guy, white guy…”

It was a time, if you remember, larded with action films in which the white/male hero was given a girlfriend only so that she could be killed early in the plot, and he’d have an excuse to go on a rampage. Women weren’t just arm candy, they were arm candy to be eliminated from the story as soon as possible, twenty years after second wave feminism.

Here we are 20 years later and white guys are still saving even the blue people. I’ll skip it (besides, I’ve read the reviews…)

Amanda, I’d love to see a full post by you about why Avatar “sucked.’

I knew that, even under the best circumstances, I personally was not likely to be a fan—which is why I’ve avoided the bloody thing like the plague.

But the hubby not only is a fan—he thinks it’s great or near-great movie with a strong lefty message.

So do let us know about the precise dimensions of the suckitude of this thing!

I love the way the right wingers/fundies get so freaked out by any book or movie that doesn’t support their worldview.

So, just got back from actually seeing it.

the thing that was weird as hell to me was the romance scene under the Anemone Tree. Kissing isn’t even a universal gesture on Earth. why the fuck does that translate so conveniently?

other than that, yeah, pretty. and cliche all to fuck.

going to see Sherlock Holmes this week, so Avatar likely won’t even be the best film of this week for me.

“(which, in four generations none of the Na’Vi people could figure out that tactical move? Or they all tried and just weren’t good enough?)”

The charitable reading is that nobody else was crazy-stupid enough to try it.  I did get really sick of the eternal! pair-bonding where you and one mate or pterodactyl or whatever pick each other and that’s it.  It’s like, really?  That makes even less sense than the symbiosis, unless you’re going for the angle where if you die, they’re not falling for that one again.

Hmmm.  I’ve never read Douthat, but I didn’t get sexphobia out of that piece. Or even a particularly pro-montheism bent, just a commentary on modern American fascination with pantheism.  I sort of liked the piece, mostly because people who romanticize nature irritate the crap the out of me.  Rape, infanticide, the tribalistic aspects of humanity that lead to our worst abuses, predation, staph, cancer, AIDS-that’s nature.  Yes, it’s also love and the tribalistic aspects of humanity that give us a capacity for compassion, but I wouldn’t say that the last bit in anyway trumps the first, if that makes any sense.

That being said, I sort of have a weakness for “White Man Goes Native” stories.  As a white American, I can’t fix what my ancestors have done, and the work to change my culture and provide some measure of support to those my people have fucked over is slow going, with victories few and far between.  The fantasy of atonement is one I can understand. 

I grok why those stories piss people off, but I’m still one of the people who needs those kinds of stories.

To each hir own, I s’pose…

I did get really sick of the eternal! pair-bonding where you and one mate or pterodactyl or whatever pick each other and that’s it.

which you rape. seriously, you violently hold them down and apply your brain-tentacle thing to their brain-tentacle orifice which binds them in domestication to you forever.

my friend, who isn’t feminist in any real sense of the word, saw the same reading.

honestly, Avatar is a disappointment because he’s spent a decade on it and it’s just… meh.

“Hmmm.  I’ve never read Douthat, but I didn’t get sexphobia out of that piece. “

Jess, just for added context, whether unfairly or not, I think sexophobia or prudery has largely been inferred based on the Chunky Reese Witherspoon stuff that’s out there on the Net.  Which comes from his memoir or whatever you want to call it about his experiences at Harvard.  He appears to have been deeply disturbed by the realization that not only do men want to have sex with women but apparently there are some depraved liberal women out there who want to have sex with men.  This is a revelation so shocking to some people that it can have the same effect as a cold shower.

@triviadude: Thanks for the context.  Also, gak.  That’s both sad and icky.

@Thom. Oh. I see where you’re coming from.  Despite being a long-time evangelical atheist, Christianity is still the Default Religion in my head.  So when I saw the phrase “Traditional Theism,” it didn’t even occur to me to think of anything else.  Totally missed that.

I like the term “the vapors” Amanda Marcotte used above.

so I looked up the “chunky Reese Witherspoon” thing, which was entirely disturbing and indeed paints Douthat as a sexophobe

but am I really the only one who thinks the phrase “I’m on the pill” SHOULD be off-putting for a one-nighter? I mean, the question “are you on the pill?” certainly killed the mood for me a few times, because of the image of untold nasty diseases crawling all over a person willing to do a one-nighter without a condom, i.e. without STD-protection

Jess, your “concerns” are noted, and if you’re sincere, then perhaps what you need to do is read Douthat in context.  jadehawk’s suggestion @ 65 will be a good starting place.

karpad, I had the same thought, but I also think it’s really hard to convey the animal domestication scene without implying rape.  The whole idea owes more to a scene where a cowboy proves his mettle by breaking the unbreakable horse more than rape, but a modern audience would have trouble even seeing the struggle between man and horse as anything but a rape metaphor.

I can’t speak for horses—-my experience with them is that it’s hard to tell if they’ve accepted their domestication or if they enjoy it—-but it’s worth noting that it’s often easy for people to take their egalitarian instincts to animals in a way that’s not good for them or the animal.  Dogs, for instance, prefer to be “broken”, aka shown who is boss.  I mean, you should be playful about it and not cruel, but the only other option is not to alpha your dog, and have a dog who misbehaves in a bid for authority.  Even my cats are much happier now that we wrestle with them during playtime and win on a regular basis. 

Which is why I decided I was more uncomfortable with the “animals=women” thing than the rape metaphor.  There’s no reason to think women wish to be dominated, which is why there’s not a playful, non-cruel way to establish dominance between human beings.

http://www.allbyer.com
Hi,Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,Here are the most popular, most stylish and avant-garde shoes,handbags,Tshirts, jacket,Tracksuit w ect…Nike shox(R4,NZ,OZ,TL1,TL2,TL3) $35Handbags(Coach lv fendi d&g;) $35,Tshirts (Polo ,ed hardy,lacoste) $16
thanks… For details, please consult http://www.allbyer.com

What a strange world Dawkins must live in, where getting laid and sleeping in on Sundays could be considered anything but hell itself.

I’d agree Dawkins must live in a strange world…after all, he’s married to a frickin’ Time Lord.

Sorry, nothing more substantive to add.

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.

Yea, take Japan for instance. Their slavish devotion to animistic Shinto and their equally slavish devotion to pantheistic Buddhism haven’t saved them from regular Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan and/or Gamera related difficulties nor have they stemmed the tide of interdimensional tentacle rape one iota. Plus the joint is absolutely crawling with ninjas.

Thom, a little harsh is putting it mildly.  I was on topic and on point, and though I *did* talk about religious differences, I was talking about them in terms of Douhat’s disengenousness.

Secondly, I’ve never had a problem with dismissing angels on a pinhead or shifting boundaries of what a lutherian believes vs what an anglican believes.  You know why?  Because anyone who’s worth a salt as a thinker can fence out that sort of bullshyte rhetorically—as in simply saying that’s not really what the discussion is about (in specific terms).  I’ve seen courtier’s reply being invoked most often when people who’ve sunk into metaphysics and epistemyology as a get out of morass free card.  Theology is fundamentally not really reductionist or rationalist, and if you’re not interested in dealing with the limitations and language of that debate (and that’s not a flaw or a defect), don’t get started.

Thirdly, I despise Dawkin’s influence in this debate not least because he injects a sort of tribalistic language around atheism with plenty of condescension towards everyone else who isn’t perfectly “rational”.  It seems to surprise people when it results in exclusionary assholism among atheist groups, or when people like Douthat are so easily able to use Dawkins’ language to heighten the conflict.

Lastly…courtier’s reply is a KnowNothingism.  Nobody who’s familiar in science/tech issues/history isn’t going to recognize exactly what that is about.  People who want to have a say about a hot topic without knowing anything about it.  Will is primary.  I despise such people and I despise such language.  If I am harsh?  Deal with it or tell me to shut up.  I particularly hate the math phobia and the Speak English provincialism in the social space today.  It might be funny in The Big Bang Theory or Dollhouse, but it’s just not funny in real life because many people are hurt or killed by this sort of thing—not to mention people will be hurt/killed by Climate Change denialism.  We just shouldn’t allow this crap in *any* of our discussion because it bleeds everywhere else!

How’s about tunneling? Did anybody else see the needlessness of cutting down Hometree? The human society as portrayed by Cameron had enough technical know-how to tunnel sideways without having to disturb any habitat to get at the upsadaisium(thanks, Jim Harrison) or whatever! They would be able to go low enough not even to disturb the roots, with or without Dr. Grace’s input about the native flora’s intelligence.

Tunneling would have made it possible to avoid interaction with the natives and dangerous animals, not to mention that the tunnels would have made it possible to create a human friendly, breathable environment.

The story was moot from the get-go.

LCforevah: I totally agree that tunneling would be a good solution. But since America did not tunnel in Iraq and Afganistan there will be no tunneling in Pandora. There will however be militaristic “shock and awe” campaigns and “fight[ing] terror with terror” because this movie is SUBTLE. :p

I mean, I’m all for the message of “don’t invade people and steal their stuff” but was I the only one who was like “YES I GET IT REALLY THX” when they started dropping all those “war on terARRR” lines?

Avatar’s story is essentially a poor man’s Dune. The visuals are superlative, no doubt, but the story and the dialogue are pretty awful.

Lastly…courtier’s reply is a KnowNothingism.  Nobody who’s familiar in science/tech issues/history isn’t going to recognize exactly what that is about.  People who want to have a say about a hot topic without knowing anything about it.

I disagree. The Courtier’s reply is generally used against people who are generally more widely educated about the varieties of religious faith than the average religious pundit. I rarely hear it said that Pat Robertson or Oral Roberts are fundamentally unqualified to take a position regarding God unless they address Shinto, Santeria, and Zorostratism in the same speech.

It’s not that we don’t know about the varieties of religious faith. It’s that the common themes among all of them strike us as uncompelling for reasons that we’ve already made clear. The Courtier’s Reply gives its advocates the license to dismiss atheists for ignorance of arguments that have not been presented or argued.

It’s also based on a misunderstanding of atheism. I’m not an atheist because I’ve personally wrestled with the faith claims of 7 times 7 theologians and found them wanting. I’m an atheist because I’ve come to certain conclusions about doubt and the nature of the universe. I don’t feel the need to address the concerns of 7 times 7 theologians to claim by views as reasonable and of value. And to insist that I do so is to hold me to a wicked double-standard.

Well, no shit you don’t need to address the concerns of 7 times 7 theologicans!  The issues they discuss aren’t your concerns!  And going all “courtier’s reply” when someone is bullying you about not believing in anything is singularly unlikely to be more helpfull in telling that individual to fuck off than anything else.  Which is why I would consider this angle something of a strawman.

You really just don’t have to participate in discussions about religions.  If you’re in an environment where discussing religion is socially mandatory, a good understanding of religion is extremely helpful in defending yourself in the necessary spheres sucessfully.  If you don’t know or aren’t inclined to learn, then there are other social and verbal cues that does the trick much better.  If you *do* willfully get into a discussion on religion, like say, Richard Dawkins, then you damn well better have some grasp of philosophical and theological concepts. /me shudders…  But guys, there are so many cooler, subtler, and meticulous commentators on the nature of atheism in public spaces, Why Dawkins of all people?  Because he’s less ambiguous and more of a glory hound than the people who know their shit?  D. Dennett isn’t all that dissimilar and he’s a zillion times better! 

Lastly, this stuff is just going to come up over and over and over again in all kinds of topics, from the obvious, like art, to something more subtle, like how Newton got a bunch of his ideas reading crappy alchemy books.  It’s just a part of being literate in the human experience.

Shah, what do you mean by “knowing their shit?” Which specific aspects of Dawkins’ arguments do you find unsatisfactory and how do you find him to be uninformed about religion? I don’t get your elevation of Dennett either, because while I like him a lot, I don’t think that he’s necessarily all that more up on his theology than Dawkins is. He just comes from a slightly different background.

Which is why I would consider this angle something of a strawman.

Except that it’s not a strawman when people using the Courtier’s Reply really do say that we can’t comment on statements made in the public sphere unless we address 7 times 7 variations of theism first. My use of 7 times 7 is obviously a reference to magical and unachievable numbers rather than an exact figure. Rejecting the Courtier’s Reply is a sane and reasonable thing to do when confronted with a standard that’s both unfair, and impossible because there will always be some new argument just around the corner.

If you’re in an environment where discussing religion is socially mandatory, a good understanding of religion is extremely helpful in defending yourself in the necessary spheres sucessfully.

Sure, the problem is that the double-standard is such that atheists are required to have an understanding of more flavors of religious faith than anyone else in the discussion. Which as I pointed out, is a red herring because rejection of religious faith is a consequence of atheism and not the reason for atheism. I don’t have to show religious studies credentials in order to assert that an ecological fate after death isn’t all that dismal, much less compared to the eshatology that’s traditionally at the center of the nativity myth being pimped by Douthat. Ignorance of atheistic, panetheist, deist, and buddhist views of death and dying doesn’t appear to lock Douthat out of discourse.

But guys, there are so many cooler, subtler, and meticulous commentators on the nature of atheism in public spaces, Why Dawkins of all people?  Because he’s less ambiguous and more of a glory hound than the people who know their shit?  D. Dennett isn’t all that dissimilar and he’s a zillion times better!

Now from my point of view, Dawkins gets elevated as the “spokesman” for atheism in public spaces primarily because a lot of people irrationally loose their shit over things he says and writes.

The issues they discuss aren’t your concerns!

The hell they aren’t. The bandying of unsubstantiated and highly implausible truth claims (be they of ever so rarefied a nature), when used by obnoxious, self-important ignorami such as your good self to beat people over the head with an empty pretence of “superior” “knowledge” of a field of “scholarship” whose subject matter is the empty set, are the concern of every thinking person. Even moreso is the use of said beatings to provide protective cover for far less etiolated and more directly harmful forms of dogma. Deal.

By the way, as one with a longstanding interest in medieval art, culture and history and especially in Dante, I guarantee that I have forgotten more about Christian theology at least than you’ll ever know.

The issues they discuss aren’t your concerns!

Nonsense. Douthat has chosen to directly attack my beliefs and values. Just to remind you:

Indeed, it represents a form of religion that even atheists can support. Richard Dawkins has called pantheism “a sexed-up atheism.” (He means that as a compliment.)...

This is an agonized position, and if there’s no escape upward — or no God to take on flesh and come among us, as the Christmas story has it — a deeply tragic one.

Pantheism offers a different sort of solution: a downward exit, an abandonment of our tragic self-consciousness, a re-merger with the natural world our ancestors half-escaped millennia ago.

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

Understanding the varieties of animism and pantheism strikes me as red herring here. I don’t need to be an authority on animism to defend against attacks on my beliefs regarding death and dying. And Douthat’s eschatology is both traditional and ubiquitous in American culture.

Let Death and Nature say what they will
When ashes sleep like ashes
When commanded to give answers to some Judge.
What shall I, wretch, say at that time?
What advocate shall I entreat
When even the righteous have been damned
By wars in the names of gods unknowable?
Structure of awesome majesty
Donor of sleep or wakefulness
Thou fount of random pain or pity,
Give me the innocence of sleep.

...

Merciful Time, who buries the sins of the work,
grant them rest,
Merciful Elements, from whom a new world can be
constructed, moist, blue-green and fertile,
grant them eternal rest.

—Kurt Vonnegut, Requiem Mass

After seeing Avatar in IMAX , I left the theater hoping that they remake Precious in 3D. That would be fun.

@Amanda at 66:

Hi-

I wasn’t expressing Saletan-style “concern.”  Just honest disagreement-I read the piece in a radically different way than you did and wanted to share. 

Part of why I like this blog is that, whether I agree or not, you guys almost always present a perspective I’ve not seen before-whether in the actual posts or the comments. 

I’m sorry if my comment made me look like a troll. I know it’s hard to tell, with new commenters, who’s being an arse and who’s being sincere.  I’ll try to be clearer in future.  =)

Okay, there are several responses to be made—and I did a bit of reading first…

My bee in my bonnet is this:

That the phrase “Courtier’s Reply” is what is called a Thought-Terminating Cliche, as defined by Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_cliché

Now onto comments…

Jerry Vinokurov, my mentality about Richard Dawkins (aside from disagreeing with him about various science stuff) is largely reflected by a reviewer at Eve’s Alexandra book review blog…
http://evesalexandria.typepad.com/eves_alexandria/2006/12/dawkins_on_delu.html

I do not like Daniel Dennett, again, for science reasons as well as the nature of his advocacy.  What I *do* favor him for, in comparison to Dawkins, is the greatly lessened contempt for people who don’t think like him.  I’m pretty anti-bully.

CBrachyrhynchos, I made the comment about animism because it is widely viewed by christians as primitive and unsound, to say the least.  Mix in a bunch of gooey New Age terminology as well, because you can see that his target is:

Americans [who] mix and match theology found that many self-professed Christians hold beliefs about the “spiritual energy” of trees and mountains that would fit right in among the indigo-tinted Na’Vi
—

That “spiritual energy” sentiment is not pantheistic but animist, but he is talking about people who become pantheists “as a way out”.  Douthat knows his audience and constructed his message (at least before he is grounded in the actualities of pantheism) so as to call to his intended audience’s missionary fervor, and the age old idea that WASPy christianity was a essential part of the rationality of Western supremacy.  Maybe…to you…calling out the deliberate confusion between pantheism and animism is just idle chi-chattery.  To me, understanding the differences and how it works in the context of the overall message allows me to understand that Douthat is engaged in dog-whistleing.  I think that is an important task, especially in a thread that links to his article.  You may not, so YMMV.  After all, you are under attack and have more pressing concerns.

Now, as far as the Courtier’s Reply argument goes…

Well, maybe this is just my experience in the black and womanist blogosphere.  We have to deal with a variant of the Courtier’s Reply argument all the time—one that trivializes our experiences in the name of “we’re all human and all humans are racist so knowing anything about black people is just tickytack stuff, so since we’re all the same, I think my opinion that blah blah blah (pulled out of my ass) is true.”  Most everyone in the minoritysphere has some pretty firm rules about X 101 questions/attitudes.

Or, maybe these are all my scars from encounters with global warming denialist (or holocaust denialist or any number of kinds of denialist) who, without fail, utilize some variant of Courtier’s Reply as well.  You haven’t lived life until you interact with some bright idiot of an engineer who thinks that just because he’s worked super hahd at school while softies took Shakespeare for Dummies for that worthless English degree, he knows what he’s talking about (and it’s almost always a “he”).  A good understanding of what’s going on in our cryosphere, however, requires genuine critical thinking skills that are usually skipped over (or not really absorbed—since Sokal’s Hypothesis proved that philosophy was a wanker’s game) because just about everything about it requires a wide range of fairly high level topics to understand.  Topics that are unlikely to have been covered in school or career unless you actually studied to be a climatologist!  So you usually have to study up on the topic in some way to have anything like a useably cogent understanding of the topic.  That hardass engineer does not, but hey, there’s that lovely Thought Terminating Cliche just there, waiting for use, and you wind up getting into a discussion about how paranoid you should be about climate scientists taking over the world!

Oh! and here is some commentaries by some random dude on the internet who does a fairly thorough job of demolishing the Courtier’s Reply, though he never refers to it by name.  I went with an evagelist christian, by the by, so if you’re afraid of theist cooties, by all means, avoid…

http://www.andrewrilstone.com/2007/09/everything-you-never-wanted-to-know.html

for responses to interesting comments…

http://www.andrewrilstone.com/2007/09/my-response-to-comments-raised-couple.html

He can be nutbar, but these are rather widely linked to essays (and I found them cogent, so far as it went)

And steve labonne...well, there isn’t very much to say to you, now is there?  Good Day.

And steve labonne…well, there isn’t very much to say to you, now is there?

Indeed not, since you’re too fucking stupid to understand anything said in reply to you. The next time you say anything remotely cogent on this topic will be the first time.

Well, maybe this is just my experience in the black and womanist blogosphere.  We have to deal with a variant of the Courtier’s Reply argument all the time—one that trivializes our experiences in the name of “we’re all human and all humans are racist so knowing anything about black people is just tickytack stuff, so since we’re all the same, I think my opinion that blah blah blah (pulled out of my ass) is true.” Most everyone in the minoritysphere has some pretty firm rules about X 101 questions/attitudes.

The thing is, yes I am a fucking expert. I spent more time in the pews reciting the Doxology and the Apostolic Creed than I did in graduate school. I spent more time as a member of a church than any job I’ve held. (My time as an atheist only just now rivals my experience as a Christian.) I’m better qualified to talk about Douthat’s rhetoric than I am to talk about life under the Bush Regime, and no one ever says, “Well, you can’t talk about George Bush as a President unless you are an expert at American history and the government of Sweden as well.” That isn’t just me talking out of my ass because I’m a voracious reader, it’s because I have more than a decade of experience living, breathing, worshiping, and expressing Douhat’s arguments.

I was looking forward to reading this after reading Roger Ebert’s review of it.  Ebert made me feel like I shouldn’t just watch the movie, I should make love with it.  But I’ve seen enough movies about white dudes saving the day that I don’t need to watch another one, even if it is really pretty.

One question, though.  I like the movie Titanic and I don’t notice any giant gaping plot hole, possibly because I usually like watching after toking some.  Can someone explain what it is?

Tunneling would have made it possible to avoid interaction with the natives and dangerous animals, not to mention that the tunnels would have made it possible to create a human friendly, breathable environment.

nevermind that if you want to interact with them, there’s plenty to get them interested. The comment about “they don’t want what we’ve got. Blue Jeans etc” kind of misses something humanity had to offer:
Space.

like “yours is a culture that prides courage, curiosity, wisdom and experience. Join us and you’ll get all of that you can handle. you’ll return to your Tree-Brain with experiences beyond anything you could imagine. You’ll see attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. You’ll see C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tannhauser gate. Join us, share them with The People, or all these moments will be lost to time, like tears in the rain.”

Well, I’m not actually asking people to be experts, per se.  I don’t think anyone other than those theist sophist really are.  All that’s really asked for is basic knowledge of 101 material, and if you make a more detailed probe, that you promote and defend it with roughly the same level of contextual knowledge.  No one actually needs something like Courtier’s Reply to stop sophistry, just basic rhetoric and perhaps a willingness to search the intertubes.

I really don’t care that anyone is some kind of expert in whatever, because all I care about is preserving areas of discourse that isn’t leveraged.  It does no good simply to take that privilege from theists and give them to atheists because the part that makes people abusive is intrinsic to people and not intrinsic to specifically religious people.  De-privileging religious people has to go to an arena where all are heard according to the merits of his or her speech.  Maybe that is a naive sentiment, but it’s one of a few hopes in what is a pessimistic, misanthropic mindset, so let me have it!

Also, very well, you know your prayers and you know your doctrines, now, can you apply that to the discussion at hand?  I said that Douthat was deliberatly confusing pantheism with animism.  You said that the distinctions were irrelevant.  Thus I clarified exactly what I thought was happening and what Douthat intended (in his assault on syncreticism in the guise of a movie review, more or less), and what his expectations were for audience reactions.  Now, with your better credentials, what do you think of it?  Still not worthy of attack in detail?

Heh…This is one of the really great things ‘bout them intertubes and Wikipedia.  There just isn’t a blanket excuse for ignorant ranting anymores.  I spent quite a bit of time reading before I made that last response, and I think I’m better off for it.  Kind of like the time I went substance dualism…wha? and then read the Stanford Philosophy website page and double checked my impressions…

Well, the problem with tunneling is the same problem with deep-shaft mines here on Earth. If you don’t give a shit about the environment (because it’s not your home anyway) strip-mining offers better return on the investment and larger volume, assuming that you can find the minerals conveniently close to the surface. Of course, deep-shaft mining arguably is only marginally less of a blight than strip-mining, because that excavated rock has to go somewhere.

Well, I’m not actually asking people to be experts, per se.

Except that is exactly what the Courtier’s Reply does. Here is how it works:

Me: In my experience, Douthat misunderstands atheism and understates the dismal prospects of his own belief systems.

The Courtier: Yes, but what about people who don’t believe in hell? How can you talk about religion or claim to be an atheist if you do not fully understand ...? You just can’t have an opinion regarding this unless you understand the distinctions between Douthat and ....

It does no good simply to take that privilege from theists and give them to atheists because the part that makes people abusive is intrinsic to people and not intrinsic to specifically religious people.

Yes, because we are all immoral creeps if we don’t have a faith.

De-privileging religious people has to go to an arena where all are heard according to the merits of his or her speech.

So, how does having a double standard in which theists are free to express the most profoundly ignorant slanders of me and mine, while I’m required to show expert understanding of theology to utter an opinion aid in this?

If your privilege centers on insisting on arbitrary and high credentials to block people out of a conversation, then perhaps its one you shouldn’t have.

ou said that the distinctions were irrelevant.  Thus I clarified exactly what I thought was happening and what Douthat intended (in his assault on syncreticism in the guise of a movie review, more or less), and what his expectations were for audience reactions.  Now, with your better credentials, what do you think of it?  Still not worthy of attack in detail?

I think that Douthat considers syncreticism bad because it potentially leads to worldviews that are practically or morally equivalent to atheism. But that’s just my experience talking.

Geez, Cameron can’t even wink at the audience (“unobtanium”) without people being all pissy about it.

Maybe “MacGuffanium” would have made you happier? >|^P

I would have preferred “awesometasticum.”

I hate to break the amazing “white guy” bubble some of you have mustered.  I would compare this effort more with western civilization’s domination of the Americas.  The friendly natives races can’t really stand against technology, hence why they required the marine who had intimate knowledge.  Could you argue that they didn’t need him spiritually? Eh, it’s a movie.  Take a seat and enjoy.  Course I am a dreaded white man, so maybe you need me to hold your hand still?

The “white guy” rub gets under my skin as well, for both the reason that it is used continuously in movies and then that I personally am lumped into this ethical conundrum due to your nature of shortsighted attacks based on skin.  Would it have still been an issue if they got Denzel Washington or an Asian actor?

To be on topic….Cameron made a movie who’s most interesting line was something like “it’s real touchable faith.”  Which is the quickest way out of dealing with real issues within religion, faith, and anything else dealing with it.  It puts it squarely in the realm of reality which makes destroying them more a scientific study than a moralistic stand.  Cameron decided to make a kid’s movie, good for sci-fi flick but don’t go looking for deep meaning.

Actually Chet, Wes Studi is Cherokee, but it doesn’t dilute your point. All the Na’Vi are voiced by non-whites.

What’s really creepy is when the colonel gives a pep speech to his troops before the attack, and there are so many actors of color playing characters who look happy to go exterminate the Na’Vi and their home. Is it supposed to be okay, then? Is it supposed to make white boy hero more palatable?

Saw it for the second time last night. Decided it was bad because there were insufficient GLBT Na’vi.