"Life Of Pi" - Atheist Propoganda?

[changed]

I read the book awhile ago (it was recommended to me by someone in the church who had not read the last few pages of it), and I just got back from the movie. It was a very good movie - very artistically done, with a rating of "PG" so it is aimed at children... sort of like the Golden Compass... I'm now disagreeing with my two sister-in-laws about if it had an atheist message or not.

Spoiler alert!!! If reading the plot summary/end is something you don't want to do, then stop reading now .

So quick summary if you have not read/seen it-

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~

the story is about a child from India whose family owns a zoo, and decides to move their zoo to America on this big ship. In the story the ship sinks, and "Pi" (the main character) ends up sharing a life boat with a zebra (whose leg is broken) a hyena, a baboon, and a tiger. The zebra dies first, then the baboon, then the hyena - and the little boy manages to stay alive by floating behind the raft with the tiger in the boat. ... along the way there is an Island with pools of fresh water during the day, and pools of acid water during the night - made up of some strange floating mass of edible plants, with mere-cats, and Pi decides not to stay on the Island after finding a human tooth in a flower from one of the plants - that the night with acid water destroys the beauty of what the Island is during the day...sort of a "heaven/hell" Island, heaven in the day, and hell at night...

He makes it to shore with the Tiger - the tiger runs off into the jungle, and Pi is interviewed by some Japanese men who owned the ship that sank, who are trying to get info about what happened to the ship for insurance claims. Pi tells them the story with the animals and how they died, and the carnivorous Island, and the Tiger - but the Japanese men don't believe him. They tell him they need a different story, one without animals, without magical Islands, that they can use for the insurance - (Pi is the only survivor, the only one who can say what happened) so Pi tells them a different story - only instead of animals it is people - a story were he watches his mother brutally killed by the ship's cook who knows the supplies on the life-raft can't support that many people, so he decides to kill the others who were on board the raft... and then Pi kills the cook (sees himself as a tiger) and has to deal with the evil actions of the cook - but then his own evil actions too - that he is a killer just like the person he killed etc. etc.

He then asks the Japanese interviewers, which story they like better - and they say they prefer the story with the tiger - and here is where the atheist message comes into play - the book/movie is also supposed to make you "believe in God",

pg 317 in the book:

"I told you two stories that account for the 227 days in between" - yes you did "Neither explains the sinking of the Tsimtsum (ship)" - that's right "Neither makes a factual difference to you" -that's true "you can't prove which story is true, and which is not. You must take my word for it." - I guess so. "In both stories the ship sinks, my entire family dies, and I suffer" - yes, that's true "So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals" - the story with animals "yes, the story with animals is the better story... and so it goes with God."

I guess it's more of an agnostic message? that if you cannot prove anything either way, you might as well go for the "story with animals" (although perhaps deep inside you think the truth is the horror that happened with the people) - but the book, nor the movie, say which is the true account...

so I put the title as "atheist propaganda" but perhaps I should have put a different title on it - but then controversy always gets more replies so I'll leave it as is... and I guess someone who has not had a spiritual experience does find themselves in the position of the Japanese interviewers, trying to decide which unprovable story to believe?

So, the question is, would you take your kids to see this movie? or recommend it to friends? do you think it is an atheist message? or a message to agnostics that given the two choices, might as well go for the story with the animals? What do you think? Anyone else out there read/see it?

Edited November 21, 2012 by changed

[Nathair/|\]

So it's not about math?

[changed]

So it's not about math?

No, it's about a little boy who was named after a swimming pool in France - his real name is "Piscine Molitor" and kids nicknamed him **** Molitor, so he changed his name to "Pi" for short... a little sub-story in it.

Edited November 21, 2012 by changed

[Nathair/|\]

That's not as much fun.

[Ahab]

So, the question is, would you take your kids to see this movie?

I think so, at a bargain price though. I don't want to pay full price for a movie like that.

or recommend it to friends?

Maybe after I see it, and in passing. I wouldn't go out of my way to mention it.

do you think it is an atheist message?

Doesn't sound like it to me. We all need to be careful about who we trust. It is kinda strange that they asked for "another" story, though, if that's the way they put it. They didn't like that one so they wanted him to come up with another story? Just because they wouldn't be able to get make any money with that story? Sheesh. Sounds like a good illustration of why we shouldn't value money all that much, when what we should want is to get at the truth.

or a message to agnostics that given the two choices, might as well go for the story with the animals?

I'd want to know what really happened, without focusing on trying to make some money.

What do you think? Anyone else out there read/see it?

I haven't read the book and as I said I haven't seen it, and I like the story you told about it.

[Mark Beesley]

So it's not about math?

Now that's funny!

[changed]

It was fun - he earns his nickname of Pi by memorizing Pi oput to 100 decimals and writing it all out in front of his classmates

the trouble is this message...

"I told you two stories that account for the 227 days in between" - yes you did "Neither explains the sinking of the Tsimtsum (ship)" - that's right "Neither makes a factual difference to you" -that's true "you can't prove which story is true, and which is not. You must take my word for it." - I guess so. "In both stories the ship sinks, my entire family dies, and I suffer" - yes, that's true "So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals" - the story with animals "yes, the story with animals is the better story... and so it goes with God."

... of coarse, this is not quite how it goes with God - it does make a factual difference to everyone if God is real or not, and you don't have to take other's word for it, you can have spiritual experiences of your own to come to the same knowledge as others who have told/written about their spiritual stories.

Edited November 21, 2012 by changed

[RadioFreeDeath]

Take what I say with a grain of salt, as I have only read the book, but I got the exact opposite message from the book and found it decently faith promoting. The focus is on the personal experience of the boy pi and how it changed him and he dealt with things to survive. Yes, at the end the japanese interviewer cannot tell the difference, but the boy can and only the boy. Like our own religious experience, it is personal to us and something that may make no factual difference to the interviewer. Like The Book of Mormon message is come and see, because you can never pass on your experience to another it is your own to know the Book of Mormon is true. Religion is not something that you can usually objectively prove with facts but is instead the experience. That was my interpretation of the book at least.

[Ahab]

Take what I say with a grain of salt, as I have only read the book, but I got the exact opposite message from the book and found it decently faith promoting. The focus is on the personal experience of the boy pi and how it changed him and he dealt with things to survive. Yes, at the end the japanese interviewer cannot tell the difference, but the boy can and only the boy. Like our own religious experience, it is personal to us and something that may make no factual difference to the interviewer. Like The Book of Mormon message is come and see, because you can never pass on your experience to another it is your own to know the Book of Mormon is true. Religion is not something that you can usually objectively prove with facts but is instead the experience. That was my interpretation of the book at least.

Very good point!

The main character in the story is the boy, I would think, so his perspective is the main point of the story, I think. He knows what happened and while he tells the interviewer it is his choice who he believes, just as it is our choice with God, it's up to them to find out what really happened. He was a witness, and he told them what happened, and just because they didn't like that story he gave them another story to choose from. God lets us choose to believe what we believe too, and if we want to believe a story that isn't true he'll allow us to do that for as long as we want to.

[Nathair/|\]

It was fun - he earns his nickname of Pi by memorizing Pi oput to 100 decimals and writing it all out in front of his classmates

That's ok then. Even a movie about pastries would be more fun than a movie about insurance claims.

[altersteve]

I heard the book and movie were both amazing. I plan on reading/watching both.

[changed]

Take what I say with a grain of salt, as I have only read the book, but I got the exact opposite message from the book and found it decently faith promoting. The focus is on the personal experience of the boy pi and how it changed him and he dealt with things to survive. Yes, at the end the japanese interviewer cannot tell the difference, but the boy can and only the boy. Like our own religious experience, it is personal to us and something that may make no factual difference to the interviewer. Like The Book of Mormon message is come and see, because you can never pass on your experience to another it is your own to know the Book of Mormon is true. Religion is not something that you can usually objectively prove with facts but is instead the experience. That was my interpretation of the book at least.

It's open ended, so you can make of it what you want - just that for someone who does not yet have a strong faith, it does also have the potential to allow them to justify their dis-belief in God, and to rationalize the beliefs of others as being based - not on actual spiritual experiences, but on making up a fairy tale animal story (instead of having to deal with a very ugly reality) and seeing religion as a coping mechanism.

It was well made and a fun film to see, I don't regret having gone.

[volgadon]

Tsimtsum, BTW, is a kabbalistic term.

[RobertAC]

So it's not about math?

ROTFL!!!!!!

That's what I thought when I saw the title!

[RobertAC]

Take what I say with a grain of salt, as I have only read the book, but I got the exact opposite message from the book and found it decently faith promoting. The focus is on the personal experience of the boy pi and how it changed him and he dealt with things to survive. Yes, at the end the japanese interviewer cannot tell the difference, but the boy can and only the boy. Like our own religious experience, it is personal to us and something that may make no factual difference to the interviewer. Like The Book of Mormon message is come and see, because you can never pass on your experience to another it is your own to know the Book of Mormon is true. Religion is not something that you can usually objectively prove with facts but is instead the experience. That was my interpretation of the book at least.

That's what I get from the summary too.

Religious experience is personal. We all may have a faith that certain statements in religious texts are true, but that faith cannot be proven. Is that an atheistic message? In a way. It acknowledges the limits of religion. It is not empirically verifiable. For people who want hard facts and data, God is not something you can have faith in. A very intelligent man like Stephen Hawking can explain wonderous, incredible things in our universe that seem counterintuitive to what we have experienced here on Earth, but he also comes to the conclusion that the science behind our universe disproves God.

Others can interpret these amazing facts and come to an entirely different conclusion.

[bluebell]

Take what I say with a grain of salt, as I have only read the book, but I got the exact opposite message from the book and found it decently faith promoting. The focus is on the personal experience of the boy pi and how it changed him and he dealt with things to survive. Yes, at the end the japanese interviewer cannot tell the difference, but the boy can and only the boy. Like our own religious experience, it is personal to us and something that may make no factual difference to the interviewer. Like The Book of Mormon message is come and see, because you can never pass on your experience to another it is your own to know the Book of Mormon is true. Religion is not something that you can usually objectively prove with facts but is instead the experience. That was my interpretation of the book at least.

I've only read the book as well, and i got the same message from it that RFD did.

[bcuzbcuz]

"Pi" ( π ) is a movie produced by Darren Aronofsky, in 1998, about a tormented, paranoid mathematician who seeks a key to nature's patterns. Sean Gullette plays the lead with a haunting austerity and believability. The ending will cause you to squirm in your seat.

[mfbukowski]

I read the book awhile ago (it was recommended to me by someone in the church who had not read the last few pages of it), and I just got back from the movie. It was a very good movie - very artistically done, with a rating of "PG" so it is aimed at children... sort of like the Golden Compass... I'm now disagreeing with my two sister-in-laws about if it had an atheist message or not.

Spoiler alert!!! If reading the plot summary/end is something you don't want to do, then stop reading now .

So quick summary if you have not read/seen it-

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~

the story is about a child from India whose family owns a zoo, and decides to move their zoo to America on this big ship. In the story the ship sinks, and "Pi" (the main character) ends up sharing a life boat with a zebra (whose leg is broken) a hyena, a baboon, and a tiger. The zebra dies first, then the baboon, then the hyena - and the little boy manages to stay alive by floating behind the raft with the tiger in the boat. ... along the way there is an Island with pools of fresh water during the day, and pools of acid water during the night - made up of some strange floating mass of edible plants, with mere-cats, and Pi decides not to stay on the Island after finding a human tooth in a flower from one of the plants - that the night with acid water destroys the beauty of what the Island is during the day...sort of a "heaven/hell" Island, heaven in the day, and hell at night...

He makes it to shore with the Tiger - the tiger runs off into the jungle, and Pi is interviewed by some Japanese men who owned the ship that sank, who are trying to get info about what happened to the ship for insurance claims. Pi tells them the story with the animals and how they died, and the carnivorous Island, and the Tiger - but the Japanese men don't believe him. They tell him they need a different story, one without animals, without magical Islands, that they can use for the insurance - (Pi is the only survivor, the only one who can say what happened) so Pi tells them a different story - only instead of animals it is people - a story were he watches his mother brutally killed by the ship's cook who knows the supplies on the life-raft can't support that many people, so he decides to kill the others who were on board the raft... and then Pi kills the cook (sees himself as a tiger) and has to deal with the evil actions of the cook - but then his own evil actions too - that he is a killer just like the person he killed etc. etc.

He then asks the Japanese interviewers, which story they like better - and they say they prefer the story with the tiger - and here is where the atheist message comes into play - the book/movie is also supposed to make you "believe in God",

pg 317 in the book:

"I told you two stories that account for the 227 days in between" - yes you did "Neither explains the sinking of the Tsimtsum (ship)" - that's right "Neither makes a factual difference to you" -that's true "you can't prove which story is true, and which is not. You must take my word for it." - I guess so. "In both stories the ship sinks, my entire family dies, and I suffer" - yes, that's true "So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals" - the story with animals "yes, the story with animals is the better story... and so it goes with God."

I guess it's more of an agnostic message? that if you cannot prove anything either way, you might as well go for the "story with animals" (although perhaps deep inside you think the truth is the horror that happened with the people) - but the book, nor the movie, say which is the true account...

so I put the title as "atheist propaganda" but perhaps I should have put a different title on it - but then controversy always gets more replies so I'll leave it as is... and I guess someone who has not had a spiritual experience does find themselves in the position of the Japanese interviewers, trying to decide which unprovable story to believe?

So, the question is, would you take your kids to see this movie? or recommend it to friends? do you think it is an atheist message? or a message to agnostics that given the two choices, might as well go for the story with the animals? What do you think? Anyone else out there read/see it?

The book has been important in our home for a while now- I have not seen the movie NOR have I read the book-yet- so let me get that disclaimer out.

It has stimulated good discussions between my wife and me- she is the one who introduced me to the church -

It presents, I think (with the above disclaimer in mind) a Pragmatic look at faith and I am certainly in favor of such an approach. My discussions with my wife have helped her to understand my philosophical opinions better. It is one of my daughter's favorite books (age 23)

I think the philosophy behind it is actually anti-atheist because it shows that there is room for faith in a world obsessed with scientific proof for everything- a silly phase that Western Civilization is caught up in right now.

I don't know if the movie contains anything about Pi's spiritual journey before the zoo events but I understand the book does.

I want to see the movie but probably will not read the book. I have too much on my reading list right now- none of which are novels, frankly!

I think you will find the overall plot puts the message quite close to that movie "Contact".

The overall idea is that spiritual experiences are personal and cannot be shown to be true objectively by scientific data.

I see that idea as faith promoting- faith experiences have nothing to do with being able to prove them to anyone else.

If they were otherwise it would be possible to prove them "wrong" and they are not that kind of experience.

Edited November 22, 2012 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

That's ok then. Even a movie about pastries would be more fun than a movie about insurance claims.

Positively hilarious!

Clearly you have a warped mind- thank goodness!

[Nathair/|\]

Positively hilarious!

Clearly you have a warped mind- thank goodness!

I'm glad somebody got the pun. Should've known it would be you.

[TAO]

I gotta say Nathair, Trigun is pretty entertaining (if you like anime that is) and it relates to insurance claims. So not quite universal, but pretty close =).

[Calm]

Hmmm...seems I need to watch Trigun again as I am only vaguely remembering the insurance link (I guess insurance isn't a visual enough attribute, my memory being very visually oriented). Been about 10 years I guess. Probably didn't help it was also a 'marathon' session with the DVDs borrowed from a friend.

[TAO]

Hmmm...seems I need to watch Trigun again as I am only vaguely remembering the insurance link (I guess insurance isn't a visual enough attribute, my memory being very visually oriented). Been about 10 years I guess. Probably didn't help it was also a 'marathon' session with the DVDs borrowed from a friend.

Haha... yeah... well... I dunno, I've always thought the bit with insurance was just great... I thought it was hilarious to stick that in a futuristic western. Of all the things they lost going from one planet to the other... and yet, they didn't lose the idea of insurance companies XD.

[tyler90az]

It was fun - he earns his nickname of Pi by memorizing Pi oput to 100 decimals and writing it all out in front of his classmates

the trouble is this message...

"I told you two stories that account for the 227 days in between" - yes you did "Neither explains the sinking of the Tsimtsum (ship)" - that's right "Neither makes a factual difference to you" -that's true "you can't prove which story is true, and which is not. You must take my word for it." - I guess so. "In both stories the ship sinks, my entire family dies, and I suffer" - yes, that's true "So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals" - the story with animals "yes, the story with animals is the better story... and so it goes with God."

... of coarse, this is not quite how it goes with God - it does make a factual difference to everyone if God is real or not, and you don't have to take other's word for it, you can have spiritual experiences of your own to come to the same knowledge as others who have told/written about their spiritual stories.

I read the book awhile ago and I remember it promoting faith. That line you underlined even promotes faith. Maybe not one particular faith but following a faith in general.

[Honorentheos]

I read the book awhile ago (it was recommended to me by someone in the church who had not read the last few pages of it), and I just got back from the movie. It was a very good movie - very artistically done, with a rating of "PG" so it is aimed at children... sort of like the Golden Compass... I'm now disagreeing with my two sister-in-laws about if it had an atheist message or not.

...

So, the question is, would you take your kids to see this movie? or recommend it to friends? do you think it is an atheist message? or a message to agnostics that given the two choices, might as well go for the story with the animals? What do you think? Anyone else out there read/see it?

May I offer a view from outside that of a believer's?

First, let me say I loved the book when I read it back in 2004. And I will say this about the movie - I would pay money to see it again in IMAX 3D. It is visually stunning in a way that is well-integrated into telling a compelling story. Ang Lee really did the book justice.

Regarding the question in the OP: I am former LDS but now agonistic while leaning strongly atheistic regarding religious dogma. My wife and I left the church before our daughter was old enough to be baptised. She's now a young pre-teen. Earlier this year she asked me what you call someone who doesn't believe in God. When I said, "an atheist" she replied, "Then that's what I am." We've had many discussions about religion and her position to it since then. My biggest fear is that she aquires a dogmatic anti-religious mindset that is no different than any other form of fundementalism. Much of our discussion has revolved around why, despite my unbelief, I value religion and still read scriptures if from many different groups. Don't get me wrong, I am more than ok with her being an atheist. But I'm concerned that she be knowledgeable about religion and why I don't think it's productive to be dismissive of it.

We went as a family to watch Life of Pi, prior to which I had only told her was that it was about a boy stuck on a boat with a tiger. She loved the movie. Afterward, we talked about it off and on all day.

When I asked her which story she preferred, she said, "The one with the tiger of course."

"Even though it isn't as logical as the other story?"

"Just because it wasn't logical doesn't mean it wasn't that way for him."

"True. True."

Anyway, thought you might appreciate a different perspective. Take from that what you will. I think it's open ended enough that any parent should be ok with the talk about God. I do think some younger kids might have problems with some of the scenes, though. There is a tiger in it, afterall, and it eats meat. They do a good job of getting the point across in a PG manner, but it certainly isn't G rated for a reason.