Sunshine Atheism?
Well, I've really been going on about how amazing Sunshine is as a movie, and after doing some reading on it like one does when they like something, I've come across posts saying how anti-religion it is, or how anti-religion it's supposed to be and stuff like that... I guess I could see how it could be construed that way, and I want to explain what I believe. Of course, doing that, there will be major spoilers, so I will put that behind a link for those of you who plan on watching. And when I mean "major spoilers", I mean... I'm going to give away the entire story, so don't read if you want to be surprised!
Basic story? The sun is dying. People are dispatched to reignite it. First mission mysteriously fails, so a second mission is sent. The story covers the events of the second mission. During their mission, they come in contact with the first ship. After some very, very unfortunate events resulting from their decision to change course and intercept the failed first mission, their ship is badly damaged and they're forced to intercept the first ship not only to gain a second bomb, but to maybe recover a working ship. They dock, and another series of unfortunate events leads to the discovery that there is a survivor on the first ship who claims he is on a mission from God to let the sun die, because that's what was intended.
Here enter the anti-religion bit. The insane man begins to systematically kill all the members of the second mission to prevent them from saving mankind, because God planned to kill off the human race by extinguishing the sun! Of course, reigniting it would be against God's wishes, so he can't allow them to do it. They, of course, eventually do manage to reignite the sun against all odds... And some people interpret this as a direct stab at religion. Humans decide they're not going to submit to the will of God and they save themselves. Granted, you may think this is reading too much into a science fiction story, because, hey... The guy went insane, maybe killed his own crew, and was stuck on the first ship for seven years, roasting himself with the proximity to the sun, "meditating" on the character of humans and the such. I completely agree that interpreting his ravings as true religion and interpreting the fight against this clearly insane character as a fight against God is stretching it a bit. You have to have a bad guy in these kinds of movies, I mean really. It's psychological horror!
But really, if you want to go down this path, then I'm going to be there to explain what I see when I look at it like this. I believe, that if you're a Christian, nothing that happens to you is going to be something you can't handle, even if it's a punishment. Now, this isn't to say that he's not going to let bad stuff happen. We're still post-Fall humans, and, as such, we've inherited sin and the curses related to it, so bad things are going to happen to us... If, say, you're driving down the road and you see a car headed for you and that car is in your lane, what are you going to do? You're going to swerve, right? Now, I highly doubt that after you swerve and avoid the collision, you're going to say "wow, God must have wanted me dead, but I sure showed him!" You're probably just going to head to the nearest facilities to change into a fresh pair of pants. I would contend that the fact that you survived the incident attests to the fact that God does not want you dead, and, instead, maybe even protected you by not letting the car spin out of control and plow into someone's house. Needless to say, the incident at least startled you... It got your attention. I believe that everything happens for a reason, though those reasons are rarely immediately apparent.
Let's say, right now, hypothetically, that Sunshine is real. Let's say it happened 50 years ago. (Or 500 or 5, it doesn't matter.) You could say that we survived because God wanted us dead and our collective "power" was strong enough to thwart his judgment, or you could say that He caused the problem in an effort to get our attention for some reason, but knew it wouldn't have the catastrophic effects of wiping out all life on the planet, because, after all, He allowed us to complete the mission and save ourselves, and that the crazy man on the Icarus I was nothing but that! A crazy man who was mentally unstable with his obsession with the Sun. Or it could have simply been the result of the curse of sin and that everything decays... In the Sun's case, it decays unless you give it more fuel! That's not necessarily an act of God that made the Sun die. It was a result of our sin, but we were graced with the knowledge and technology to save the Sun and save mankind! The fact that we survived means that it was God's plan for us to survive. Nothing happens without His knowing. If He didn't want the human race to survive, He would have seen to it that our ships never did the job.
Now, people died on those missions, but people die here in ways we can't comprehend or in ways we don't think should have happened. Personally, I don't think people die without a reason... As in, everything has a purpose that can be used for good. We hear about all these awful things in the news and we wonder how such a "loving God could have let that happen," but we never hear about the aftermaths. The death of a loved one could have affected the family in such a way that it brought them closed to God, or it could have provided a means for someone to do some good... And it's all too possible that the means provided were missed by the person it was intended for, too.
The deaths on the missions were the cause of simple human mistakes and the result of a madman who made the wrong choices based on the wrong desires and it had some nasty consequences. They may seem like useless deaths, and maybe they are! But that's because, somewhere along the line, Pinbacker (the insane guy) made the wrong choices. He became infatuated with the Sun and all its glory, and started to believe some very weird things. He chose to make some immoral decisions that weren't corrected and it led to some very nasty consequences. Which leads me to the fact that God doesn't force us to do anything we don't want. Now, technically, He already knows what choices we're going to choose... After all, He invented the very concepts of Time and Space... But He's not going to intervene and make us do anything. Pinbacker made some choices, be they on the ship or earlier in life, that eventually affected his very perception of reality, and there were consequences. The consequences changed what was supposed to happen, but God already knew that the changes were going to happen. It's funky when we're limited to our linear perception of time...
Let me just put it in a nutshell... The Sun was dying, whether by Divine Intervention or the simple laws of thermodynamics that states that all things decay when left to themselves. Pinbacker, captain of the first mission, by himself, made choices that not only failed his own mission and killed the members of his crew, but seriously adversely affected the members of the second mission. The fact that the second (and last possible) mission succeeded only confirms the fact that God did not intend for the human race to die out completely and allowed the mission to succeed and reignite the sun. The fact that the sunshield was damaged and Captain Kaneda lost his life was due to simple human error on the fact that we're no longer the perfect creations we were intended to be, since we inherited the sin of Adam and Eve who chose to sin.
So there you go... For all of those out there who decided that this movie is a course in atheism and decided to take it upon yourselves to look far too deeply into a science fiction story? Here's my response. I mean, it may very well be that the movie was designed to promote atheism and that God is powerless against the will of united humans, but I think the fact remains that it falls short and is far too subtle to notice unless you're actually looking for it. Still, I don't doubt for a second that it's trying to indoctrinate people with something... It's a sad fact that most movies are looking to prove some sort of point, and it's going to be nothing even remotely related to being pro-religion and Christian. Unless, of course, it is... But... There you go.
Having said all this... I still say that it's a great, artistic movie, and it ranks very highly on my list of greatest movies of all time. I think that it's even in the top 5, along with The Black Hole and Chronicles of Narnia. I would still recommend seeing it, if you can stand the blatant, sometimes icky violence and frequent F-bombs and all manner of bad language.