Some Thoughts on Prometheus

by Benny Mattis

[SPOILER ALERT]

I saw Ridley Scott's amazing Prometheus today, and it was as thrilling as I expected.  There was, however, an unexpected theme--that of faith and its relationship with science.

Scott made sure we saw that the heroine, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, had faith.  She was one of the very few people on the expedition who weren't completely cynical in the beginning, and held an attachment to her cross necklace despite scorn from the android David and patronizing disbelief from her boyfriend Charlie.  But was this a message specifically endorsing Christianity?  Has Ridley Scott started taking cues from Focus on the Family?  I don't think so.  The faith that Dr. Shaw acted on in the movie had nothing to do with Jesus in particular, but was placed in the mission she was on.  I think her cross necklace was just a reminder that there is a faith shared by naturalists and supernaturalists alike--faith, that is, in the interpretability of reality.

Science itself is not justified by mere science.  As shown in the movie, it can lead to disastrous consequences, and there is no guarantee that answers will be obtained.  In fact, inductive reasoning--the cornerstone of a naturalistic worldview--would lead one to doubt the efficacy of any kind of scientific investigation.  Take DNA, for example:  Up until the structure of DNA was first discovered (presumably by Crick and Watson), nobody had ever before succeeded in doing such a thing.  Every discovery, every new invention of humanity, is a violation of the inductive premise that what has never happened in the past will continue not to happen in the future.  To put in so much work towards something that may not even be possible to achieve requires great faith in one's own ability to discover the truth.

Even more important than one's own ability to discover the truth is the discoverability of truth itself.  This is where science and religion share the faith that is missing from Nietzsche and others who say that "There is simply no true world."  "Not all perspectives are equally valid," say the scientists.  "We strive for objective truth."  And what is the religious call to compassion and love for all but a call to view things from God's eyes, being fully aware of the suffering of others around the world?  In a way, the scientist and theist (I know they aren't mutually exclusive categories) are both just trying to submit their own perspectives to a God's-eye view of the world.  The theist thinks that this perspective has been instantiated in at least one existing mind already; the atheistic scientist, on the other hand, in a way believes in God without believing that God exists.  It's the faith shared by these people--the belief without evidence in the potentiality of an obtainable "true" perspective--that separates Dr. Shaw from David the android, who doesn't understand why she keeps seeking answers in the face of unimaginable horror.

However, it was also faith which led the decrepit Peter Weyland to awaken the evil aliens in hopes that they would grant him eternal life.  Weyland, a perfect foil to young female Shaw, exemplified the dark side of faith.  He was not engaged in an analysis of evidence, but a flight from it--the whole mission is a result of his inability to accept death, and he ignores Shaw's warnings about the violent intentions of their newfound extraterrestrial Engineers.  Like the religious fanatic who 'wouldn't want to live in a world where [holy book X] was not true,' Weyland's insatiable lust for eternal life leads him to bring about the destruction of his ship and almost of the entire human species.  Living in what Jean-Paul Sartre called "Bad Faith," Weyland is continually in a state of lying to himself.

But where does Prometheus come into all of this?  Prometheus was the Titan who tried to bring fire from the gods to the humans, putting them on equal ground.  Is Dr. Shaw Prometheus in this story, saving Homo sapiens from its very creators and forever seeking forbidden truths with the faith she has in humanity's potential?  Or is Weyland the typical Prometheus, who tries to get fire from the gods but ends up being brutally punished by them (and rightly so)?  Maybe the two of them are supposed to be representative of Prometheus as a noble hero and Prometheus as an arrogant fool--two possible spins on the original story.  In any case, I thought the movie was worth a watch.