Pantheism or the respect of Nature and not the worship of nature is the default belief system of the human race. Long before we had popes and bishops wearing 20 yards of silk each in the name of the homeless guy – what’s his name? – Jesus, we had nature. And let’s not forget the Creator of nature.
No doubt, James Cameron, native of Canada, having lived through a few Canadian winters has a healthy respect for nature.
His film Avatar is opening a panadora’s box of meaningless tangents. These tangents are mostly of religious symbolism more so than dogma. It never the less scares the Bejesus out of the institutional Christian church because the respect for nature is something that can fall through the cracks and before you know it Druidism and Wicca will reemerge to compound the dying stake share of paying customers in church on Sunday.
Basic fact is that Christianity as a religion is at war with Nature. Avatar only in some ways in a symbolic manner rubs up against and causes friction with the established order of perception where religion is concerned.
Being a good OLD TIME Christian means you are at war with nature. Being at war with nature makes you a “GOOD” Christian. Or so it has gone since Constantine's time.
When you see the typical southern cracker Senator like Jim DeMint against Nature and or climate change, his spiel is part of the hidden dogma of Christianity and has been so since the beginning of that religion.
Which leads us back to an old question. Which came first, the teachings of Jesus or the teachings of the church?
There are two Christianities. Not the east and west thing with orthodox versus roman.
The two Christianities has to do with the teachings of the radical revolutionary Jesus and his message of balanced economics and LOVE as opposed to the totalitarian reformed Roman Army religion of Constantine, founder of the Roman church. Ancient Rome was always at war with nature. Christianity as an official vehicle of Rome is at war too with nature to this day.
The Book of Revelation as a book of Propaganda for the Roman Army/Church is a propaganda message of pacification to the natives. You are with us or against us. If you are against us – expect only Roman Hell to come your way.
Also, the western, Roman and or default calendar I have to say is the universal calendar now on the planet. Every major mcountry in the world including Muslim countries had secular 2010 New Year celebrations or at least in their major cities.
I say universal in a sense of commerce in terms of dating e-mails, letters of credit, date of trades etc. Every regional culture and Islam still has its own regional or exclusive calendar system co-existing next to the Roman Gregorian Calendar – default calendar of global convenience.
The Romans, starting with Julius Caesar, used this same or standardized calendar based solely on numbers. No more of the “move your army between the new and full moon" stuff. Move your army in ten days, period. Move it from Point A to Point B, period.
No more feminine lunar calculatons. No more farmer’s calendars. Armies take what farmers grow. Armies do no grow food anymore. No need for a nature or natural calendar. Sounds like parts of this echoes to this day with the present American/corporate global Empire.
The Romans and their armies crashed their roads through forests and waterways the locals considered sacred in any Pantheist sense. The quickest way to any place on a map is on a straight line. Those old nature religions got obliterated by the Roman Army. Nobody really knows what these old religions really believed. Only bits and pieces or historical rumors of these old beliefs come to us to this day.
Which brings us back to Avatar. Avatar as a word is Hindu Symbolism for the god Vishnu coming to earth. I guess when the Vatican criticizes this Cameron movie they are trying to deflect other religions and their symbolism and commonality as in Jesus as an Avatar and or human form of Nature and or God.
Also the tree of souls in the movie harkens back to the tree of Life theme common in every native culture on the planet.
From the comments in the article below:
The real "Nav'vi"--"Nav'vi" is Hebrew for "prophet"--railed against the nature worshipers of Canaan, because they "fertilized" the ground with human blood (including children of up to 4 years old).Geez! Now even the Jewish angle is being played into the interpretation of a fantasy movie as a vehicle to promote religion.
If you sit down and analyze Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, you could write volumes on hidden religious and Pantheistic meanings. Why go there ?
Sometimes a movie is just a movie to paraphrase Freud.
The science fiction movie ''Avatar'' borrows themes from many religions.
The big religious question the movie raises can be put this way: Will we see creation hierarchically or ecologically -- governed from above or through mutual interdependence?Also, I always thought that an avatar was something like the image I use on my Internet profile. But what do I know?
The movie preaches the latter, that a network of energy flows through all things, that disturbing natural balance leads to disaster.
Christianity has sometimes been called a religion of colonizers, despoilers and decimators of native peoples.
You really are giving too much credit to James Cameron who made Titanic. Cameron’s Titanic was a typical Hollywood formula movie with too much success as hype and a thin script thrown in. The gimmick in that Cameron film, which I waited to see on cable TV, was a hidden treasure, the necklace, and the sets and costumes, some extraordinary character actors like Kathy Bates and a puckish Leo. Kate of course is one in a million
We are talking James Cameron here. James "Terminator" Cameron. What religious symbolism did Arnold secretly tell us about? Let’s stop Americanizing the process and mistaking financial success for intelligence, fine film making, good literature or deep religious symbolism.
The religion of money and greed taints everything these days to the point where it is poison like Midas’ gold.
I fear that the new emerging GREEN(secular)RELIGION wants to makes Avatar more than it really is by playing to the Pantheism tune spun off from the Vatican recently.
Americans are dumb enough these days. Don’t make a cottage industry of trying to explain to them the common sense symbols or religious symbols in front of them. They either understand or they don’t. Do we have to FOX NEWS spoon feed them and explain PC and RC (religiously correct) reality to them? So long as they have the price of a movie ticket, let them and their herd in. Green in the form of money and is all they have to worry about.
I have avoided Avatar. My college age son assured me that he enjoyed it. Good. I perceived this new gimmick to be another Hollywood Video Game version of reality thingy with dancing blue monkeys.
I will probably end up seeing it on cable, sans 3-D glasses, when I have insomnia and hopefully the tired Hollywood formula of John Smith and Pocahontas will put me to sleep. Shamans always bore me too.
And at its very confused fused roots of origin, Christianity IMHO is in eternal war with nature (hostility to all things non-Roman) to mention one of several possible Intervention issues.
