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Science, Religion, or Art: There Can Only be One (According to Some Movies)
Okay, okay, I understand Drama is about Conflict. So when you make a scientist a hero in your film, you usually want to have someone oppose him (or her). And who could be better to have as an adversary of Truth than a power-hungry, know-nothing clergyman (and yes, it must be a man). In quite a number of films it seems like there is a choice between Science and Religion and there must be only one (a lot like Highlander, in that way).
In films about Galileo, like, well, 1975’s Galileo based on the play by Bertolt Brecht, the scientist is a good guy only concerned with discovering how the universe works. He really doesn’t care about religion or politics or his own personal gain; whereas the Roman Catholic Church hates science because they believe it will ultimately disprove God, the Bible, and the Creation Story. Not that the Pope, Bishops, and Priests care about the Truth of such things, but if the Church falls, they will lose their power and position — the only thing they do care about. Forget that the historical story is much more complex than that. Galileo’s main enemies were other scientists, and the church approved of much of what Galileo wrote before they condemned it. But don’t let the truth get in the way of a story about the truth.
Of course, sometimes filmmakers attacking Religion on Science’s behalf like to pretend they’re doing nothing of the sort. In 1960’s Inherit the Wind, director Stanley Kramer has Spencer Tracy’s Clarence Darrow figure solemnly hold a Bible in one hand and Darwin’s Origin of the Species in the other as if he honors both books. But this is after two hours of showing the science teacher and his lawyer as models of prudence and wisdom, and religious believers and clergymen as quacks and lunatics.
Something more recent, like The Theory of Everything (a docudrama about Stephen Hawking) present religion as a foe of science, but as such a negligible foe that our hero can dismiss it with a few minor quips.
With the advent of bigger budget (relatively) Christian films, the roles can now be reversed. In 2010’s The Genesis Code, the heroes are the people of faith, and the so called “scientists” who force evolution down the throats of our young people are villains with mustaches ripe for twirling.
2014’s A Matter of Faith features one of those dastardly college biology professors challenged to a debate on evolution by one of those humble country pastors. It’s called a “clash of worldviews,” and it’s pretty clear which side is right. (I don’t want to spoil things, but it’ll prove once and for all that something that sounds like avoloshun is a lie and kreeashunizm is true.)
I’ve been thinking about these things while writing about some of these films at Movie Churches, my blog about the portrayal of churches and clergy in film. Sadly, in much of popular culture it’s a given that science and religion are at best existing in separate worlds, but usually they are diametrically opposed worlds — one composed of people of wisdom and virtue, and the other composed of villains and knaves.
In reality, of course, many great men and women of science have been people of great religious faith. This was true in the past and continues to be so. But don’t hold your breath for any Hollywood blockbusters coming out soon depicting such a person. (Nope. Just checked. Newton is not coming to a theater near you anytime soon.)
So, Ricochet readers, what novels and/or movies have you read and/or seen that fairly represent Science and Religion? And which have royally messed up portraying either or both?
Published in General
I like this one. It nicely sends up the way in which the debate is portrayed.
“A Man for All Seasons” still holds up pretty well–for Catholics, anyway.
The worst? Whoo, a big field to choose from.
How about “True Confessions” (1981?) De Niro is good, but the plot is preposterous.
The misrepresentation most often seen of clergy is that they are absent or irrelevant at times of difficulty or tragedy. When they are present and acting, they’re usually bad guys. So it was refreshing to see a clergy person being an advocate for kindness and compassion in, of all places, the movie “Lars and the Real Girl” (about a guy who forms a platonic, loving and totally bonkers relationship with a vinyl sex doll).
There is a mystery (book) series by Julia Spencer-Fleming that I was expecting to adore, about a female Episcopal priest, Clare Fergusson, who solves mysteries in a small New England town. Doesn’t that sound like a series I’d like? The problem is that Rev. Fergusson never seems to apply Biblical or religious precepts to the sins she sees, nor to consult the ethical teachings of her putative faith. Not even when, for example, she realizes she is attracted to the married police chief and he to her. (I find myself shrieking “ten commandments? Ring a bell?” which annoys my husband, so I don’t read these books anymore.)
Even when secular writers try to be sympathetic and fair, there’s a tendency to have ministers, priests, and nuns speak in an affected God Talk, where even the need to put snow tires on the convent’s old Buick is expressed as part of His Plan.
It’s sadly funny: in the Fifties, “The Crucible” was understood as a metaphor for McCarthyism; one slander–then in the Nineties, that was stripped away, and it became just simple religious hate mania.
Well, there’s always Expelled. David Berlinski’s part in the movie is terrific. Now, as for television, see certain episodes of Through the Wormhole. Particularly the ones with Frank Tippler.
A Canticle for Leibowitz.
There was a TV movie about 43 years ago called “Catholics”. It’s pretty remarkable. Set in the near-future, it depicts a conservative Catholic’s near-worst nightmare, a world where the Church’s teachings have been watered down to irrelevancy, and religion has become an EU-like racket run by an interfaith center in Amsterdam. The hero, Martin Sheen, is sent from Rome to try to regain control.
It seems to have been totally forgotten.
It was just before its time.
A Case of Conscience by James Blish did a fair job of presenting the moral dilemma faced by a Jesuit priest during an interstellar expedition. The Father Brown series by G. K. Chesterton is outstanding, although science isn’t at the forefront of most of the stories.
I have to recommend a foreign film, the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in honor of our Lutheran friends. I’m proud to say that the American Cinema Foundation had its US premiere.
Found this quote today to help understand a book I’m reading on physics. This from quantum mechanics founder, Werner Heisenberg:
In his speech Scientific and Religious Truth (1974) while accepting the Romano Guardini Prize, Heisenberg affirmed:
The Exorcist. When science and modern medicine can’t help, who you gonna call? The priests of course (anyone who guessed Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, please go to the back of the class): you can’t begin to solve your demonic possession problem until you admit you have a demonic possession problem.
I especially love the “Ms-demeanor” rather than “misdemeanor” from the judge at the beginning.
It’s on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI239cSpF_M
Thanks, Mama Toad! And BTW, “Bonhoeffer” is instant and free to anyone with Amazon Prime.
This 2005 movie, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, stars Tom Wilkinson and Laura Linney. It tells the dramatized story of the real-life Annaliese Michel, a German woman who died after undergoing exorcism, focusing on the trial of the priest.
It’s spotty, but quite compelling, especially with Linney and Wilkinson.
As for your final question, the film that comes immediately to mind as “worst treatment of science and religion simultaneously” is the egregiously tendentious, utterly pretentious bit of obscurantist twaddle known as Contact.
Yep, Aue wins the prize for Utterly Correct Excoriation. “Contact” is a pretentious piece of windbaggery with a few good moments.
BTW: Try “The Nun’s Story” (dir. Fred Zinnemann, 1958) and “Black Narcissus” for a nuanced look at nuns.
As for “best treatment of both in SF TV over the long haul” (an oddly precise category), I think Babylon Five remains the reigning champ.
And thanks for the Heisenberg quote. There are also some sound recordings of Max Plank discussing science and religion out there that I will post later today, time allowing, for those who understand German.
I don’t have a good book or movie addressing the conflict – perhaps because I have never been able to see the existence of any conflict. The existence and nature of God cannot be proven by the scientific method, but science’s failure to prove God’s existence does not (as some so-called “scientists” believe) prove God’s non-existence.
The only time an actual conflict arises is when scriptural accounts of the physical world disagree with scientific accounts. But describing the origins of the world and the life within it is the least of the tasks for religion. Religion’s realm is man’s place in that world, the soul, and morality. These are realms in which science can offer nothing.
It is my opinion that people of faith are making a mistake when they devote themselves to defending a literal interpretation of scriptural accounts of what we now call astrophysics and biology. What a strange hill to make one’s stand on, when the value and benefits of faith lie entirely elsewhere.
Old ‘Science’ joke-
One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him. The scientist walked up to God and said, “God, we’ve decided that we no longer need you. We’re to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don’t you just go on and mind your own business?”
God listened very patiently and kindly to the man. After the scientist was done talking, God said, “Very well, how about this? Let’s say we have a man-making contest.” To which the scientist replied, “Okay, we can handle that!”
“But,” God added, “we’re going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam.”
The scientist said, “Sure, no problem” and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.
God looked at him and said, “No, you go get your own dirt.”
Here’s the Max Planck video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UDeor6L288
Joseph Ratzinger, in introduction of Christianity, wastes little time on the conflict, and calls evolution, self evident. It was the beauty of the order that inspired so many of the first great scientists, a Christian notion from Bonaventure. Which Catholic academic physicist was it that said if he wanted to have a discussion with an antheist he had to go to the social science and liberal arts departments. The latter milieux fosters fiction not the scientists. Still Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas is a simple almost monk like man who battles big evil.