____________

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) Nux Featurette [HD] Nicholas Hoult

Mad Max: Fury Road Official Trailer #1 (2015) – Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron Movie HD

Mad Max Fury Road Movie Review – Beyond The Trailer

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD Movie Clips 1-6 (2015) Tom Hardy Post-Apocalyptic Action Movie HD

I must say that I really enjoyed this movie and I have also included a very positive review of it from CHRISTIANITY TODAY below.

The background of the MAD MAX movies is the destruction of the rest of the world by atomic weapons and the aftermath of disease and survival of fittest of those still living at this point in Australia. The main lesson to learn from these series of movies is that from a humanist worldview there is nothing left except the survival of the fittest and ultimately even the human race is bound for extinction as Nevil Shute presented in his book ON THE BEACH. Francis Schaeffer discusses this book a great deal and he shows that although many people today still hold to a form of optimistic humanism, it really has no basis. Even as far back as Charles Darwin this idea has been put forth.

Darwin wrote, “Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is…” 

Francis Schaeffer observed:

Now you have now the birth of Julian Huxley’s evolutionary optimistic humanism already stated by Darwin. Darwin now has a theory that man is going to be better. If you had lived at 1860 or 1890 and you said to Darwin, “By 1970 will man be better?” He certainly would have the hope that man would be better as Julian Huxley does today. Of course, I wonder what he would say if he lived in our day and saw what has been made of his own views in the direction of (the mass murder) Richard Speck (and deterministic thinking of today’s philosophers). I wonder what he would say. So you have the factor, already the dilemma in Darwin that I pointed out in Julian Huxley and that is evolutionary optimistic humanism rests always on tomorrow. You never have an argument from the present or the past for evolutionary optimistic humanism.

You can have evolutionary nihilism on the basis of the present and the past. Every time you have someone bringing in evolutionary optimistic humanism it is always based on what is going to be produced tomorrow. When is it coming? The years pass and is it coming? Arthur Koestler doesn’t think it is coming. He sees lots of problems here and puts forth for another solution.

I got these comments below off the internet from a person who was reviewing Francis Schaeffer’s film AGE OF NONREASON:

What is the problem of taking nature as the moral standard? To answer this question Schaeffer asks us to consider the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), ”who well understood the logical conclusion of this deification of nature. He knew that if nature is all, then what is is right, and nothing more can be said. The natural result of this was his ‘sadism,’ his cruelty, especially to women.” de Sade writing in his book “Justine” says “As nature has made us (the men) the strongest, we can do with her (the woman) whatever we please.” In nature there is no right or wrong, no good or bad, and there is no basis for making those distinctions. In nature, might makes right. Can you imagine what true natural system of law would look like? Schaeffer’s conclusion is; “There are no moral distinctions, no value system. What is right? Thus, there is no basis for either morals or law.” If we are to make nature the rule, the yardstick by which we live then there is no distinction between things like cruelty and noncruelty.

THEREFORE, THE LOGICAL CONCLUSION IS SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST AND IS EXACTLY WHAT THE FILM “MAD MAX FURY ROAD” PUTS FORTH!!!!

Dan Guinn posted on his blog at http://www.francisschaefferstudies.org concerning the Nazis and evolution: As Schaeffer points out, “…these ideas helped produce an even more far-reaching yet logical conclusion: the Nazi movement in Germany.Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945), leader of the Gestapo, stated that the law of nature must take its course in the survival of the fittest. The result was the gas chambers. Hitler stated numerous times that Christianity and its notion of charity should be “replaced by the ethic of strength over weakness.” Surely many factors were involved in the rise of National Socialism in Germany. For example, the Christian consensus had largely been lost by the undermining from a rationalistic philosophy and a romantic pantheism on the secular side, and a liberal theology (which was an adoption of rationalism in theological terminology) in the universities and many of the churches. Thus biblical Christianity was no longer giving the consensus for German society. After World War I came political and economic chaos and a flood of moral permissiveness in Germany. Thus, many factors created the situation. But in that setting the theory of the survival of the fittest sanctioned what occurred. ”

Francis Schaeffer notes that this idea ties into today when we are actually talking about making infanticide legal in some academic settings. Look at what these three humanist scholars have written:

 

• Peter Singer, who recently was seated in an endowed chair at Princeton’s Center for Human Values, said, “Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.”
• In May 1973, James D. Watson, the Nobel Prize laureate who discovered the double helix of DNA, granted an interview to Prism magazine, then a publication of the American Medical Association. Time later reported the interview to the general public, quoting Watson as having said, “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have.”
• In January 1978, Francis Crick, also a Nobel laureate, was quoted in the Pacific News Service as saying “… no newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and that if it fails these tests it forfeits the right to live.”

 

I had the opportunity to listen to a professor from Cambridge who was a student of the philosophic movies and ON THE BEACH was one of the movies that he liked very much because of its message against nuclear war. Below is a letter that I wrote him on this very issue of the prospect of a MAD MAX type existence happening.

Professor Michael Bate

_________

Below is a letter I wrote recently to Dr. Bate:

February 11, 2015

Dear Dr. Bate,

I just finished reading the online addition of the book Darwin, Francis ed. 1892. Charles Darwin: his life told in an autobiographical chapter, and in a selected series of his published letters [abridged edition]. London: John Murray. There are several points that Charles Darwin makes in this book that were very wise, honest, logical, shocking and some that were not so wise. The Christian Philosopher Francis Schaeffer once said of Darwin’s writings, “Darwin in his autobiography and in his letters showed that all through his life he never really came to a quietness concerning the possibility that chance really explained the situation of the biological world. You will find there is much material on this [from Darwin] extended over many many years that constantly he was wrestling with this problem.”

Here is a quote I ran across recently from you in your wonderful in depth interview with Alan Macfarlane :

I acknowledge completely that there is a deep mystery and we fool ourselves completely if we think there is not; I feel that the mystery is less apparent to man in the 21st century, at least in the Western world, than once it was and  I think that is a great pity; I don’t subscribe to a particular religion.  I am like my maternal grandmother who refused to say the Creed because she couldn’t bring herself to say things that she didn’t believe in; we were deeply shocked by that as children; on the other hand I can get very engaged and interested in conversations of how the sort of religion that I was brought up with could actually change to become something that one could feel at ease with; an instance of such a conversation was a man called Richard Acland who gave a series of broadcasts about religion which I found deeply inspiring; he is my grandmother’s cousin; it is a deeply unsatisfactory area of my life because I feel that I don’t make enough time for reflection.

I would agree with you that we should all take more time for reflection on the big issues of life. I noticed in your interview with Alan Macfarlane that you noted that you “saw ‘On the Beach’ with Robert Acland; a transforming moment as so outraged by the thought of nuclear annihilation that I became a rabid nuclear disarmer; went to RAF Wittering with the Cadet Corp to see what they claimed was an atom bomb; thus during the latter part of my school life I became extremely rebellious and formed a lot of good friendships among the nuclear disarmament community....I love cinema; in Australia I was offered a job as film critic for the Australian Broadcasting Commission; I had a weekly programme when I broadcast to Canberra about films and got free tickets to go to drive ins to see films like ‘Last Tango in Paris’ and comment on them; the film that made me realize this was something important was ‘The Seventh Seal’, shortly after which I saw ‘Last Year at Marienbad’ and I have never recovered.”

I love the cinema too and  also have seen the movies ON THE BEACH, THE SEVENTH SEAL and LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD and have done blog posts on them.

I noted that you had seen the Bergman movie WINTER LIGHT. Recently I was watching the You Tube series BREAKING DOWN BERGMAN and Sonia Strimban said concerning that movie:

I think the movie is about what can human beings have faith in, and what can we hope for. The confusion of the minister Toma Ericsson (played by Gunnar Bjornstrand) is because he is supposed to be the shepherd of his flock and lead the people and show them the way and he is the one having the greatest crisis of faith. Can a belief in a greater being sustain people and if you don’t believe in the greater being then what is the meaning of your life? So what this minister is struggling with is this question, “Is God real or is God not real then what do I do?” His inability to relate to God translates into the barrenness of the rest of the film and this larger anxiety that everyone has about life and the meaning of life and can they survive.  

When I read the book  Charles Darwin: his life told in an autobiographical chapter, and in a selected series of his published letters, I also read  a commentary on it by Francis Schaeffer and I wanted to both  quote some of Charles Darwin’s own words to you and then include the comments of Francis Schaeffer on those words. I have also enclosed a CD with two messages from Adrian Rogers and Bill Elliff concerning Darwinism. SINCE SCHAEFFER MENTIONED THE MOVIE “ON THE BEACH” IT MADE ME THINK OF YOU AND THAT IS WHY I AM WRITING YOU THIS LETTER TODAY. 

In Darwin’s 1876 Autobiography he noted:

“…it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress. To those who fully admit the immortality of the human soul, the destruction of our world will not appear so dreadful.”

Francis Schaeffer commented:

Here you feel Marcel Proust and the dust of death is on everything today because the dust of death is on everything tomorrow. Here you have the dilemma of Nevil Shute’s ON THE BEACH. If it is true that all we have left is biological continuity and increased biological complexity, which is all we have left in Darwinism here, or with many of the modern philosophers, then you can’t stand Shute’s ON THE BEACH. Maybe tomorrow at noon human life may be wiped out. Darwin already feels the tension, because if human life is going to be wiped out tomorrow, what is it worth today? Darwin can’t stand the thought of death of all men. Charlie Chaplin when he heard there was no life on Mars said, “I’m lonely.”

You think of the Swedish Opera (ANIARA) that is pictured inside a spaceship. There was a group of men and women going into outer space and they had come to another planet and the singing inside the spaceship was normal opera music. Suddenly there was a big explosion and the world had blown up and these were the last people left, the only conscious people left, and the last scene is the spaceship is off course and it will never land, but will just sail out into outer space and that is the end of the plot. They say when it was shown in Stockholm the first time, the tough Swedes with all their modern  mannishness, came out (after the opera was over) with hardly a word said, just complete silence.

Darwin already with his own position says he CAN’T STAND IT!! You can say, “Why can’t you stand it?” We would say to Darwin, “You were not made for this kind of thing. Man was made in the image of God. Your CAN’T- STAND- IT- NESS is screaming at you that your position is wrong. Why can’t you listen to yourself?”

You find all he is left here is biological continuity, and thus his feeling as well as his reason now is against his own theory, yet he holds it against the conclusions of his reason. Reason doesn’t make it hard to be a Christian. Darwin shows us the other way. He is holding his position against his reason.

____________

These words of Darwin ring in my ear, “…it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress…” . Schaeffer rightly noted, “Maybe tomorrow at noon human life may be wiped out. Darwin already feels the tension, because if human life is going to be wiped out tomorrow, what is it worth today? Darwin can’t stand the thought of death of all men.” IN OTHER WORDS ALL WE ARE IS DUST IN THE WIND.  I sent you a CD that starts off with the song DUST IN THE WIND by Kerry Livgren of the group KANSAS which was a hit song in 1978 when it rose to #6 on the charts because so many people connected with the message of the song. It included these words, “All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”

 

You can hear DAVE HOPE and Kerry Livgren’s stories from this youtube link:

(part 1 ten minutes)

(part 2 ten minutes)

Kansas – Dust in the Wind (Official Video)

Adrian Rogers on Darwinism

____________________

Related posts:

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 35 Robert M. Pirsig (Feature on artist Kerry James Marshall)

_____________