Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Marc Draco on October 4, 2010 at 2:29pm

Hell's teeth, Dallas. Are you watching the same movie?

I wanted the two hours of my life back!

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on October 4, 2010 at 2:34pm

Heh! Well, like I said, it was VERY predictable, but it was still kind of a fun movie. I didn't hate it, like some I watch.

Permalink Reply by George on June 26, 2011 at 3:27pm

I thought it was kind of a silly, and a rehashing of Alien, but found it entertaining for the most part.

It's available for streaming on Netflix.

Permalink Reply by Wonderist on October 4, 2010 at 5:02pm

I wrote a review of it when it was in the theatres: Pandorum embraces anti-atheist rhetoric *spoilers*

I was disappointed with the Hollywood Atheist portrayal by Dennis Quaid. He also pulled the same act in Legion, which was totally retarded: "Sure, I've just seen demons and angels with my own eyes, but I'm an atheist, I don't believe any of this stuff!"

I get the feeling that Quaid is on a sort of anti-atheist crusade or something. His portrayals remind me of Kirk Cameron's supposedly atheist Buck Williams in the Left Behind movies.

Ruined the movie for me, I'm afraid. The retarded rendition of 'evolution' was also crap, but I could have suspended my disbelief if that were the only thing wrong with Pandorum.

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on October 4, 2010 at 5:05pm

Yeah, you know, the references to god (god be with you / godspeed) kind of bothered me. I thought how disappointing it was that it was so far in the future and they were still talking like that.

I think there were some more religious references later in the movie, but to be honest, I don't remember what they were now. I'll check out your post.

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on October 4, 2010 at 5:12pm

Quicly scanned your post. I think you are right about a lot of that stuff, and I remember that "god" scene at the end. It was annoying.

However, every story (Hollywood or not), has got to have a catalyst / scapegoat for what went wrong. In the past it was usually unbelievers and/or foreigners. Xenophobia is an effective tool for creating a bad guy. Then it turned to communists for many years.

But in the past 50 years or so (with the advent of sci fi), it is basically science that has been villanized. Science is a convenient device for creating a mutant, or a plaque, or a zombie apocalypse. I get that there has to be some kind of a catalyst, so to be honest, I don't necessarily see it as anti-science. I see it more as just a convenient device (which has, unfortunately, been run into the ground).

I would definitely like to seem more demonization of religion though.

I still enjoyed watching Pandorum, even with its shortcomings. Similarly, I like The Exorcist, even though it is nothing more than catholic propaganda. The book itself is well written.

Permalink Reply by TNT666 on October 5, 2010 at 5:33pm

Boy the trailer seemed quite exciting, but the god posts really turned me off, then your anti-science tidbit brought me back into it...

I seem to be one of the only atheist-scientists who falls into the category of: knowledge and science has brought nothing good to this world.

Pollution, biodiversity crash, global warming, market place dictatorship over humans, life in little boxes, loss of connection to nature...

Truly what has human knowledge ever contributed to life on earth but destruction of all that surrounds us? To any other intelligent life form looking down on earth, humans and the byproducts of "knowledge" can appear only as a plague.

I will surely try to rent this movie, and I'll make sure to suspend disbelief, in order to enjoy the fun...

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on October 6, 2010 at 9:05am

I agree with a lot of what you are saying here, but not completely. However, all that is really off topic. : )

The movie is not going to be one of your top ten favorites. It relies very heavily on cliche and formula. Yeah, there is a bit in it about "god" that will annoy people like us, but if you can get past this and just enjoy the adventure, it is kind of fun and intense in places. The monsters of the movie are pretty cool looking -- almost like a cross between zombies and Orcs, and the film does play off our human fear of being in a situation/environment we cannot control.

The underlying message is one of hope for humanity and the continuation of the human race...blah, blah, blah...kind of annoying...blah, blah, blah...but nothing you've not seen time and time again.

It's just sort of a fun movie to watch on a Friday night when a Bergman film is just too much to bear. It's not a classic like Alien though.

Permalink Reply by Wonderist on October 6, 2010 at 12:19pm

"I seem to be one of the only atheist-scientists who falls into the category of: knowledge and science has brought nothing good to this world."

You kind of have to put on smog-coloured glasses to come to that conclusion, though. It is not science and knowledge per se which has caused these ills directly. It is the bad application of science and knowledge, driven by human nature and our instincts and tendencies for selfishness and short-sightedness.

In other words, you have to discount all the good things that science and knowledge have brought us: Longer, healthier lives; political and social freedoms; emancipation from superstition; animal rights; environmentalism; going to the freaking Moon; looking back through time nearly 14 billion years; self-awareness of our destructive human natures (allowing the possibility we can eventually curb them sufficiently for a balanced and sustainable existence); the freaking Internet; etc. etc. etc.

Science and knowledge by themselves only give us options. Which options we choose to pursue is a matter more of politics, social forces, psychology, and ultimately an unintelligent, undirected process of kill-or-be-killed evolution. Even the fact that we know this fact is due to science and knowledge. Our only hope for a better future is science and knowledge. Do you propose to give up all technology and return to a state of universal ignorance? Do you think that life would magically be better? Have you ever contemplated the word 'gigadeath'? We'd be looking at approximately 7 of them.

Whether you consider humanity a plague or a blossoming depends on how it all turns out in the end. When plants started filling up the oceans and the atmosphere with oxygen, long long ago, they were essentially poisoning the entire planet. Millions of species of organisms went extinct. They changed the global environment much more drastically than we have. But the end result was larger, more complex life. Was this a plague or a blossoming? Death happens. Extinctions happen. We should minimize them as much as possible, of course. But we cannot prevent them completely. Instead we should learn, gain as much knowledge as possible, through our best tool of science, and apply that knowledge in a constructive way to counteract our inborn destructive tendencies. The other option, returning to a dark age of ignorance where our worst tendencies are uncurbed, is far worse.

Spurning science and knowledge is the exact opposite of what we need to do, if we choose to work for the best future we can practically achieve. Instead we should be promoting science, knowledge, critical thinking, education, environmental awareness and technology, an end to widespread contagious ignorance and superstition (religion, et al.). My efforts are focused into promoting such a philosophy of life, via wonderism. That's why I have such a negative view of movies like Pandorum, which undermine public opinion of science, for no good reason.

Permalink Reply by TNT666 on October 6, 2010 at 4:06pm

Similarly, I think your world view requires smog-coloured glasses!! :)
Or maybe you're just very young?

I happen to AGREE that we need a "gigadeath" of humans, for there are far too many of us. You mention going back to the dark ages... typical retorque that I've heard so often... NO the "dark ages" to me are not limited the "middle ages" but to the entire last 2000 years. This is precisely a period I wish I was not born in. Ideally, I wish there were a couple of million humans on earth. That would put us back in balance with nature. I think possibly you have very little knowledge of biology to dare to compare a global change such as oxygen consuming plants of multiple species taking over the planet over millions of years, to us, a single species human toppling the planet in a mere couple of thousand years... you were not serious!!!!!!!! You'd like to minimise extinctions? How grand of you!!!

and just to reuse your examples for what so many people think are "good" things:
Longer, healthier lives... longer yes, healthier no, humanity is no healthier than it ever was, we get longer lives due to medications and medical interventions. Most anthropologists comparing the "health" of humans before/after sedentarisation and agriculture conclude that most aspects of human health were better, ie bone density, teeth, etc, humans died younger because life was harsher, dealing with nature can make you die before your natural death, yes indeed. Longer life has brought us beyond the natural human longevity, Consider incessant back problems which plague a majority of humans over the age of 40, cancers, and "old age" diseases. Longer life has brought us only negatives: lonelyness of aged, poverty of aged, disease of aged. That is not a fountain of youth but a fountain of death.

political and social freedoms... only necessary in a world of over population of humans and scarcity of resources which require power structures to manage. In a world of much fewer humans, the relationship to resources is quite different. As studied in pre-colonial native groups in N.America, tribes living in areas of abundance had more peaceful lifestyles than tribes living in areas with scarcer resources.

emancipation from superstition... Power tools, concepts which would barely exist were it not for human overpopulation

animal rights... you're joking right? Humans are reaching the absolute worst stage in human existence for animal rights! Agribusiness? Zoos? Marine Parks? Loss of biodiversity (death by theft of ecosystem) cold blooded pets?

environmentalism... yeah right, to undo all the shit WHO has done to the planet... US!

going to the freaking Moon... ego, bangs chest, I am a strong man, I have travelled to the moon, woo hoo! (:rolls eyes:)

self-awareness of our destructive human natures (allowing the possibility we can eventually curb them sufficiently for a balanced and sustainable existence)... we WALLOW in self-awareness! We are so incredibly self-aware that we've completely lost awareness to most everything else that does not serve humans!

the freaking Internet... probably the main plague to humanity, above biological diseases.

Removing all technology from our life is not an option, but reducing our population, gradually, through less reproductive success is necessary. Not only through less reproductive success but also with stopping this "religion" of long life. What is long life? cheating your natural death, living beyond the natural lifespan of humans. Our "self-aware" obsession with longevity is but a religious fascination, a lust for enlightenment, that which all of natures life forms have but humans have lost thanks to our huge brains.

Humans would be entirely happier if we lived harder but shorther, whereas the social trend in Western civilisations is to live less but longer. IMO that is the wrong path.

Permalink Reply by Wonderist on October 6, 2010 at 8:27pm

"I think possibly you have very little knowledge of biology to dare to compare a global change such as oxygen consuming plants of multiple species taking over the planet over millions of years, to us, a single species human toppling the planet in a mere couple of thousand years... you were not serious!!!!!!!! You'd like to minimise extinctions? How grand of you!!!"

I meant exactly what I said. Cumulatively, plants have caused a much bigger change to the Earth than we currently have. Yes, we're doing it much faster, and that's incredibly dangerous, but the fact remains that we've only made a tiny fraction of the death and ruination caused by plant oxygenation -- far larger changes have happened in the past.

The main point was to illustrate that words like 'plague' are subjective, and tinted by smog-coloured glasses. Were the oxygen producing plants also a plague? I don't think you'd say they were. Perhaps I'm wrong. Do you consider plants a plague as well? Perhaps the last 3.5 billion years are a 'dark age' according to your standards?

And by the way, I have a very good understanding of biology and also ecology, thank you very much for the ad hom.

"longer yes, healthier no, humanity is no healthier than it ever was, we get longer lives due to medications and medical interventions. Most anthropologists comparing the "health" of humans before/after sedentarisation and agriculture conclude that most aspects of human health were better, ie bone density, teeth, etc, humans died younger because life was harsher, dealing with nature can make you die before your natural death, yes indeed."

Healthier, yes. When was the last time you lost a friend or loved one to bacterial infection? How many parasites would you say are living on you compared to ancient humans? Ever suffer from malnutrition or vitamin deficiency? Would you say you're taller or shorter than your ancestors only 1000 years ago, due to your easy access to essential nutrients? Ever get malaria? Polio? STDs? Cancer? A broken bone? Meningitis? The flu? Ever suffer from exposure? Dehydration? Drought? Famine?

How about violent death? What percentage of people now vs 10,000 years ago die because of violence? Strange, the stats I'm finding say it's much much lower now than then. And today, less developed societies are still more violent per capita per annum than more developed societies, even considering events like the world wars. Who'da thunk it? You're more likely to get beat up and killed in a primitive society than even the worst city in the US.

"Longer life has brought us beyond the natural human longevity, Consider incessant back problems which plague a majority of humans over the age of 40, cancers, and "old age" diseases. Longer life has brought us only negatives: lonelyness of aged, poverty of aged, disease of aged. That is not a fountain of youth but a fountain of death."

Lol. So let me get this straight: Longer lives, the prevention of early death and early disease, is actually *worse* than shorter lives and early, fatal diseases? Preventing early death is a fountain of death? That's a new one. Never heard that before. Better to starve now than to eat and be hungry later??? WTF?! You're welcome to your POV, but man it's nuts.

"political and social freedoms... only necessary in a world of over population of humans and scarcity of resources which require power structures to manage. In a world of much fewer humans, the relationship to resources is quite different. As studied in pre-colonial native groups in N.America, tribes living in areas of abundance had more peaceful lifestyles than tribes living in areas with scarcer resources."

Until their ignorant and militant neighbours living in the lands of scarcity decide that they want what the other tribes have. Then you've got war, slavery, butchery, rape, child abuse, etc. etc.

And your solution to this problem is.... more ignorance, shunning knowledge, science and understanding? WTF man? Are you really so blind?

Which societies are most peaceful? The educated ones or the ignorant ones? Google it if you don't already know.

"emancipation from superstition... Power tools, concepts which would barely exist were it not for human overpopulation"

Superstition exists in every human culture. Critical thinking only occurs in highly developed cultures -- the ones where science and knowledge are valued.

"animal rights... you're joking right? Humans are reaching the absolute worst stage in human existence for animal rights! Agribusiness? Zoos? Marine Parks? Loss of biodiversity (death by theft of ecosystem) cold blooded pets?"

Animal rights didn't exist until modern culture invented them after noticing (through science and knowledge) our close kinship with other creatures. The only reason animal rights exist at all is because of knowledge and a broader understanding of our world and its inhabitants. But you can't see that if you're wearing smog-tinted glasses. The strongest defenders of animal rights are scientists such as Goodall, Fossey, the Leakeys, etc. The more knowledgeable and scientifically minded you are, the more likely you'll be for animal rights. The more ignorant you are, the more likely you'll be against them.

"environmentalism... yeah right, to undo all the shit WHO has done to the planet... US!"

Again, smog-tint. Environmentalism couldn't exist without science and knowledge. Of course we have to undo the damage we're doing. How else do you propose to do that unless with science and knowledge?

"going to the freaking Moon... ego, bangs chest, I am a strong man, I have travelled to the moon, woo hoo! (:rolls eyes:)"

That's some serious smog in your eyes if you cannot appreciate the Moon landing. Are you clinically depressed or something? You might want to get yourself checked out.

"Removing all technology from our life is not an option, but reducing our population, gradually, through less reproductive success is necessary. Not only through less reproductive success but also with stopping this "religion" of long life. What is long life? cheating your natural death, living beyond the natural lifespan of humans. Our "self-aware" obsession with longevity is but a religious fascination, a lust for enlightenment, that which all of natures life forms have but humans have lost thanks to our huge brains."

Diagnosis: You've got a serious case of Naturalistic Fallacyitis. Might want to get that looked at.

What is the most effective way to reduce human reproduction peacefully? Can you say "Ed-u-ca-tion"? Google it. The most educated societies: Lowest reproductive rates. Least educated: Highest reproductive rates. Also highest infant mortality, STDs, child abuse, and lots of other forms of death and suffering.

What is your solution? To disparage science and knowledge? The very thing we need to solve these problems you're so rightly concerned about? You're shooting yourself in the foot.

And what is the alternative to long life? Why, short lives, of course. More death, more reproduction. Shorter lives also logically equal less-educated and less knowledgeable lives. Younger people making short-sighted decisions because they lack the long-view that naturally matures with age.

People with longer life-spans tend to have fewer children as well. They have more invested in their one chance at life, they invest in their futures, and take fewer risks such as unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancies. Longer life is actually one of the other good ways to reduce the population. After all, the key factor in population is not life-span but reproductive rates.

Is the planet overpopulated by sea turtles? No. What's more likely to constitute a plague: Trees with lifespans of hundreds of years, or bacteria with life-spans of hours?

"Humans would be entirely happier if we lived harder but shorther, whereas the social trend in Western civilisations is to live less but longer. IMO that is the wrong path."

You're welcome to your 'O', Hobbes. Have a nice day dying from an infected toenail.

Permalink Reply by TNT666 on October 6, 2010 at 9:09pm

I won't requote your paragraphs as your post is ridiculously hard to read... but, in general, your view is completely anthropocentric, and historically vacuous. For most of your listed achievements only date back to a couple of hundred years. You seem to think peoples before "scientific experimentation" lived horrible lives. Well they didn't. When the first explorers arrived on the East coast of N.America, they found TALL and HEALTHY and STRONG aboriginals. This Micmacs were a very peaceful tribe as resources were abundant, beyond their basic needs. This was the same for many many colonial age encounters.

People such as yourself have a huge fear of death early death, that through your smog lenses you use biblical like circular references with regards to "long living".

When you speak of Western cultures having this and that better than developping countries, you completely forget that their hardships are generally caused by OUR economical abuse of these countries, NOT that are less civilised than us. Columbia, Venezuela and Jamaica are the countries with the most murders (per capita)... do you not realise that their violence is mostly caused by us "civilised countries", through drug and tyranical economical policies.

All the riches and "perks" you attest to are from the toils of slave countries to our imperial economies.

Infected toenails... you do realise that thousands of years ago, in small communities, there were sage ones that knew which plants to apply to an infected toenail to heal it. But of course you think that peoples who preceded us knew nothing...

And by using time/lifespan analogies to discuss plagues demonstrates that you do not understand the basic definitions... Oxford: an unusually large number of insects or animals infesting a place and causing damage. If you cannot aknowledge that humans ARE an unsually large number of animals infesting planet earth and causing damage,
then your views are so biased to the further domination of Homo sapiens that this conversation is futile.
You talk as an blind optimist about how our knowledge, in the future, will improve all, without looking at the past, where we've repeatedly demonstrated that we relive the same catastrophes over and over again without learning a thing. You choose to only look at the miniature steps fowards we take without aknowledging the huge steps back we take by destroying our environment. In a couple of generations/centuries, when billions more humans inhabit this planet, and every one is eating "meal" and jellyfish as we'll have extinguished all other lifeforms you will be happier? Not me.

I'm not interested in a world where humans are all slave wagers to huge corporations, and we live like lined-up sardines in little homes, all neat, all clean, all asepticised, living in a over protective environment, where no variation from the norm is allowed.

You view our planet only in its capacity to serve humanity, instead of viewing humans as a species which has gone overboard and needs to admit that and pull out a little.

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