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Permalink Reply by Matt VDB on May 31, 2011 at 6:54pm

I'd much rather see an indictment of early Christians which was not based on fiction.

 

Comparing Agora to Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ is one of the better analogies I've seen though.

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Permalink Reply by Jim DePaulo on May 31, 2011 at 7:11pm

Agreed.  I haven't seen the film but from what I've heard it's not historically accurate and should not be depicted as such.  There is enough historically verified villainy in the history of religion that we don't need to make shit up - that is, after all, what the theist do all the time. 
Although, it's probably is as real as Gibson's strange hallucination.

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Permalink Reply by N. E. White on August 21, 2011 at 6:30pm

First off - stunning movie - HIGHLY RECOMMEND.  I will be buying it and forcing it on my family this holiday season.

 

Anyway, I'll be writing a short review on my blog, but wanted to check out what you all (of the Nexus community) thought of the movie.

 

Hypatia's story truly moved me to tears.  How many times has science taken such a loss because of religious fervor?  It's hard to count them all, and just devastating to think about it.  But, I thought the director did a disservice to his audience - it COULD have been a response to the Passion of the Christ if they had actually shown her death in a more realistic fashion (skin stripped and burned).  As it is, though still a moving story, it lacks the punch it could have had.

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Permalink Reply by Matt VDB on August 22, 2011 at 12:04am

Hypatia's story truly moved me to tears.  How many times has science taken such a loss because of religious fervor?

 

But... considering that it's a fictionalized account of what was in fact an episode of political rivalry in Alexandria, her story isn't one of those times.

Hypatia was not on the verge of scientific breakthroughs, she was not killed because she was a female scientist, and the Christians did not burn a library in the Serapeum. All of these scenes are fictional and are the product of the director Amenabar who's trying to push a (thinly veiled) ideological narrative. So if some scenes in the movie moved you to tears, that's fine, but cheer up - those scenes were probably fiction anyway.

 

This is the problem with Agora. It's marketed as a movie that is (at least for a large part) historically accurate, and so viewers think that the scenes in the movie are accurate or at least possess a kernel of truth. But they don't, and so all it ends up doing is perpetuating hoary Enlightenment myths.

 

Which is sad.

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Permalink Reply by N. E. White on August 22, 2011 at 12:30pm

Yes, sad that they didn't adhere to history, but still a wonderful film.  Anyway, it has gotten me interested in her story and I will investigate more.  Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by eric stone on August 22, 2011 at 3:45am

You might also want to read Richard Carrier's review of pagan scientific accomplishments in "Is Christianity Responsible for Science?" in John Loftus' "The Christian Delusion."

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Permalink Reply by Matt VDB on August 22, 2011 at 5:12am

And after you've read that excellent work of unbiased and peer-reviewed wonderfulness, read Ken Ham's book "The Lie: Evolution" for a treatise of evolution with about the same amount of hard-hitting academic rigour. The tone will be familiar.

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Permalink Reply by Steph S. on August 21, 2011 at 10:39pm

Thanks for the tip.  I will have to add Agora to my list of movies to watch.

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Permalink Reply by Secular Forces 2013 on August 22, 2011 at 7:11am

it's epic/longish but really cool at the same time

 

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Permalink Reply by Secular Forces 2013 on August 22, 2011 at 7:10am

super cute actress btw
and yeah, i got a lump in my throat; waste of library

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Permalink Reply by Michael Smith on August 28, 2011 at 8:53pm

I went into the movie (which is on netflix) expecting a mediocre film with an axe to grind. It definitely had an axe to grind, but was moving all the same. Atheists need more hero(in)es.

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