Monday 13 June 2005

Chasing God

I saw this film on the weekend, after reading very positive reviews of its attempt to explore humanity's defining feature—its near universal belief in a god. The film is just an hour long, more like a final year project than a fully-blown documentary. However, the makers did have access to some great footage and some interesting religious leaders. But it is a film with a mission—to persuade the viewer that all religions are one, and that oneness of humanity is the common goal. Bizarrely, there is no mention in the film of the differences between religions, nor any examination at allof religious texts. The only point of discussion about the content of belief is a section on the different experiences of god that people have had.

This really is head-in-the-sand propaganda under the guise of tolerant spirituality. It isn't going to get us anywhere. It would have been more fruitful to explore how people with profoundly different notions of the divine (god as a person, god as a light, god as the laws of physics) can begin to talk about their differences in a meaningful way. Then we might see some progress towards human togetherness, perhaps.

Interestingly, there was no discussion of Jesus Christ at all, and that is where Christianity alpha-s and omega-s.


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