Auteur: Andy Rennie
Beschrijving:
Gemma and I bought the unlimited cinema cards for Cineworld at the start of the month and without a doubt it has been one of the best investments we have made. I had a day off which coincided with the launch of Iron Man 2: EPIC WIN! However, Iron Man 2 wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped. I also saw Agora which was very interesting although made some strong accusations against Christianity.
Set in the 4th (I think) century in Alexandria, Egypt, the story centres around the philosopher Hypatia and her relationship with some of her students and the influence she has on the city.
As much as I enjoyed the film, I took objection to a number of challenges raised to Christianity.
Firstly, the whole film portrayed Christians as being the bad guys. Now, I don't know how historically accurate the film was but quite clearly this film had an anti-Christian agenda.
Secondly, I was disappointed that the Christians were portrayed as not being able to have a solid argument/debate. One of the first scenes introduces us to Cyrel the antagonist of the film, who decides to prove that Christianity is true by saying that whomever can walk across a fire, him or the pagan priest, proves that their god is the true god. Of course, Cyrel wins but I was disappointed at a time when there were so many great philosophers around that we could not see the Christians debate the philosophers.
In much the same way, towards the end of the film Hypatia is discussing Christianity with two of her former students, Arestes and the other one whose name I forget. Arestes argues that Hypatia must embrace Christianity to save her own life by his argument that if two are the same as a third then they are all equal, his argument being that Hypatia was as good as Arestes or the other guy (the bishop of Cyrene). Now this is a fundamental misunderstanding of Christianity. It is not about being a good person.
Hypatia's response to Areste's statement upset me though. She said that she cannot embrace Christianity because she has to think about her beliefs. I don't know whether this was meant to imply that Arestes had embraced Christianity too easily or whether it was to suggest that Christianity does not hold up to reason but however it is meant, clearly the film is suggesting that Christianity is a blind leap of faith with no possible way that it could stand to reason. This upsets me. Christianity does stand to reason. Yes there are things that are difficult to understand or believe but that does not invalidate them.
Not only do I believe that Christianity does stand up to reason, but I also believe it is the most consistent worldview that matches up to experience.
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