Avatar for Atheists

In case you haven't heard, conservatives are hating on Avatar. They say it's a worthless, "blitheringly stupid" anti-American, environazi, pro-indigenous polemic that's among the "dumbest movies...ever." Well, perhaps. But my favorite criticism comes from Ross Douthat in the NYT, who takes issue with the fact that the natives in the alien land of Pandora don't practice Christianity.

It’s fitting that James Cameron’s “Avatar” arrived in theaters at Christmastime. Like the holiday season itself, the science fiction epic is a crass embodiment of capitalistic excess wrapped around a deeply felt religious message. It’s at once the blockbuster to end all blockbusters, and the Gospel According to James.

But not the Christian Gospel. Instead, “Avatar” is Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism — a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world.

In Cameron’s sci-fi universe, this communion is embodied by the blue-skinned, enviably slender Na’Vi, an alien race whose idyllic existence on the planet Pandora is threatened by rapacious human invaders. The Na’Vi are saved by the movie’s hero, a turncoat Marine, but they’re also saved by their faith in Eywa, the “All Mother,” described variously as a network of energy and the sum total of every living thing.

If this narrative arc sounds familiar, that’s because pantheism has been Hollywood’s religion of choice for a generation now. It’s the truth that Kevin Costner discovered when he went dancing with wolves. It’s the metaphysic woven through Disney cartoons like “The Lion King” and “Pocahontas.” And it’s the dogma of George Lucas’s Jedi, whose mystical Force “surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.”

Perhaps we should remind Ross of the old saying: "It's only a movie." But I can see where the Na'Vi's pantheism presents some problems with the indoctrination of the children into the mythology of the Judeo-Christian faith.

If those sexy blue creatures don't believe in the virgin birth and crucifixion -- not to mention Noah's Ark and the parting of the Red Sea -- what's a fundie to do?

This actually raises an interesting theological question for hard-core Christians: Much the same as creation trumps evolution in their whacked-out Sarah Palin world, in order to affirm their own silly religious myths, they will be forced to argue that alien beings x-number of light years away would have to believe Jesus was born in Bethlehem and died on a cross in the Middle Eastern desert.