More here

http://www.facingthechallenge.org/contact.php



I think this captures a lot of what my criticisms are between the propaganda directed at believers.

Great find, true!

Sometimes it seems to me that the TRUTH is right in front of everyone and I wonder how people can fail to see it. What I think is it does not benefit them to see it, because if you see the truth then you will have to lie to yourself knowingly to ignore it and we do better at lying to ourselves when we don't have to acknowledge that we are lying to ourselves.

I agree immensely that we humans are eternally searching for meaning.

Religion, in a sense, provides this meaning for some but not all. Science provides a path to meaning, but again science does not provide this for everyone.

I think that in Contact, Arroway could describe her experience as spiritual.......yet she was the only one that experienced it. In essence she experienced a spiritual feeling that was over and above anything that any human had as of yet experienced.....in the movie.

Science provided the path and mechanism to bring her experience to fruition.

I tend to hold this idea as a realistic possibility........That although there may be some that claim to have had their hunger for "meaning" sated, via religion or science, may in fact be premature in their claims........for their meals have yet to be super-sized.

That there are paths being woven that will reach an apex or congruence of science and spirituality.....that we may be on the verge of discovering ,via science, the very real spirtiual nature, indeed potential, of mankind.

This idea I hold as realistically possible, by no means hints or suggests an omnipotent being or beings.......but more a truth yet to be uncovered.

Bottom line is that if this truth was uncovered we would not be searching still.....and the human race in its glorious majority is still searching, it is the extreme minority that has stopped searching.

I really liked that movie. It's too bad the religious job was a christian instead of a universal spiritualist.
It turned what would have been a movie I totally loved into a propaganda piece for the jesus crowd.

They lead you along and make you feel the joy and wonder of meeting actual aliens and then stab you in the eye with a knitting needle by saying "Jodie feels faith that she met aliens and therefore jesus died on the cross for your sins because faith = faith".

It would have been the EXACT SAME movie if the religious guy was Islamic. Would the movie still be "true"?

Great post Chauncy! I love reading your posts.

What truth?

They key sentiment here is the fact that people of the christian faith truly believe that Jesus died here on the cross for mankind's sins............by this logic....Jesus did not then go to another planet die on a cross there for that species sins, and then go die else where for that species sins.

This is why the contemplation of life existing on other planets is detrimental to contemporary christian beliefs.

To extend the christian faith, post alien discoveries, to other planets is absurd and in fact may constitute propagation of mis-information, or more plainly a lie!

The discovery of life on other planets should by all intents and purposes be an enlightening transformation of our global communities outlook of eachother and the universe.......which would be spiritual in nature.

REPO MAN!

Are the minority the people who are stuck with a 2000 year old book that have stopped searching and resent the searchers and ridicule their findings???


fullywired

I fully agree

I loved the movie...cried at the part were Jodie meets her father!!..sniff!!!

Didnt carl sagan write this movie?
one has tto think how much hollywood diddled with his script to make it more "user friendly" to the general american crowd.

Yeah that kinda bothers me as well. I wonder how he would have reviewed it?

2001 space odysey! now thats a thought provoking movie

This certainly explains somethings for me.

You know, I saw this movie only once, some years ago, and I remember bits of it. There are certain things, like certain lines and scenes that were discussed, that I do not think was understood correctly. For one thing, the line of Joss saying that we are more cut off by people, while surfing the net is plainly obvious, but I do not think that has anything to do with someone's lack of belief. It's just saying what happens to someone, who just plainly cuts themselves off from others. Is this just a point about introverting oneself?

The other point, while reading the review on the link provided, said something about the Foster's character's 18 hour trip, and only recorded static, is they are trying to say that is only Foster's character's belief. She has no proof that her journey has a fact to it. I do remember one scene, near the end, another character does point out that yeah, Foster was only gone for a few minutes, saying she was gone for 18 hours, and only recorded static. Though, this other character mentioning going through the recorded statis, and that the amazing thing was that there was 18 hours of recorded static. Showing a bit of truth, of the journey of Foster's character. What is that trying to say?

Its a while ago, but as i remember it, the novel was both more complex, and had a "different" ending, which may have been too difficult to express in visual form.

The movie was a better adaptation than some, but still fell short of the conceptual development evident in the novel. perhaps as expected, given Carl sagan's scientific background, I found the book filled with some interesting philosophical speculations and possibilities, both about earlier space travellers who built the transport system utilised, and on human reaction to the knowledge that this entity/species existed. I did not really get the feel that there was a traditional "religious element to the novel at all, but it is quite a few years since I read it.

The movie is based on an NDE.

Remeber when Arroway heard the news they were closing down the project and she took her truck out into the desert and sat at sunset looking into the desert...the movie from then on was what native Americans would call a vision quest.
Right at the end of the movie we are back looking at Arroway looking out at the desert again..yet the sun has now set.
Everything that happens between the two is a spiritual experience some may call STE/SOBE...etc...



We NDE'rs live on that island and can relate to the comment.



Exactly!