The following dialogue from Leonardo Dicaprio’s movie Shutter Island represent a chaotic cacophonous concoction which combines many concepts and confounds them into one.
Warden: Did you enjoy god's latest gift?
Teddy Daniels: What?
Teddy Daniels: God's gift. [points to the sky] The violence. When I came downstairs in my home and I saw a tree in my living room [due to a storm], it reached out for me like a divine hand. God loves violence.
Teddy Daniels: I...I hadn't noticed.
Warden: Sure you have. Why else would there me so much of it? It's in us. It's what we are. We wage war, we burn sacrifices and pillage and plunder and tear at the flesh of our brothers. And why? Because God gave us violence to wage in his honor.
Teddy Daniels: I thought God gave us moral order.
Warden: There's no moral order as pure as this storm. There's no moral order at all. There's just this; can my violence conquer yours?
Teddy Daniels: I'm not violent.
Warden: Yes, you are. You're as violent as they come. I know this because I'm as violent as they come. If the constraints of society were lifted and I was all that stood between you and a meal, you would crack my skull with a rock and eat my meaty parts. Wouldn’t ya? Cawley thinks you’re harmless, that you can be controlled, but I know different.
Teddy Daniels: You don't know me.
Warden: Oh, but I do.
Teddy Daniels: No, you don't. You don't know me at all.
Warden: Oh, I know you. We've known each other for centuries.
[Warden stops the jeep outside the hospital and leans close to Teddy]
Warden: If I was to sink my teeth into your eye right now, would you be able to stop me before I blinded you?
Teddy Daniels: Give it a try.
Warden: That's the spirit.
This may be part of a, real, atheist conspiracy to encourage the entertainment and news media to besmirch theism. As was noted in the essay, More Evidence of Pro-Atheism and Anti-Theism Media Campaigns, the atheist activist Sam Harris stated:
I think the criticism of irrationality just has to come from 100 sides all at once. In the entertainment community, maybe you'll just have people making jokes that are funny enough and true enough so as to put religious certainty in a bad light…
I'm hopeful that journalists and people in the entertainment industry are waiting for the permission to express their doubts, and I think that permission is coming. I mean I'm trying to do what I can to engineer it in my hardheaded and boorish way.
And I feel, just from the contacts I have in both industries, that there's a profound sense of relief that comes with hearing somebody call a spade a spade.[1]
The anti-Christian pro-atheist propaganda may become more ubiquitous and subtle but for now, it is very, very easy to discern as it is like the dialogue: saturated with logical and theological fallacy and utterly uncontextual—it was clearly inserted into the movie to make a point and is not related to the story line.
Let us parse the dialogue:
Teddy Daniels: …God loves violence…Why else would there me so much of it? It's in us. It's what we are…Because god gave us violence to wage in his honor.
So, why else, besides that God loves violence, is violence a part of our nature? Well, it is true that “It's in us. It's what we are” but this is due to our sinful nature, our fallen nature. In fact, the Great Flood, the Deluge, came due post fall violence:
The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, "The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth
—Genesis 6:11-13
But was the flood not violent?
Teddy Daniels: I thought god gave us moral order.
God gave us “moral order” which means that He is not subject to the moral order prescribed for humans and that moral order contains moral violence such as self-defense, capital punishment, etc.
In fact, without that moral order we would have no basis upon which to condemn violence (any basis beyond personal preferences that are plagiarizes from the Judeo-Christian moral order to begin with).
Teddy Daniels: …God gave us violence to wage in his honor.
Generically in any and all cases? Of course, not. God gave His own chosen people certain limited instances to commit violent acts, such as war, after giving the opposing cultures centuries to repent even offer peace before engaging in some cases, etc. As a quick reference, consider Paul Copan’s article Is Yahweh a Moral Monster? or his detailed book, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God.
Now, the anti-Christian atheist activist Dan Barker has, for some odd reason, claimed that “Darwin has bequeathed what is good” and that:
…there are no action in and of themselves are always absolutely right or wrong. It depends on the context. You cannot name an action that is always, absolutely right or wrong, I can think of an exception in any case.
Is that not odd, he allows himself that luxury but continues to argue against God’s existence based on the problem of evil. Why is it that Dan Barker can think of exceptions but God is not allowed to do likewise. Indeed, God manifests some odd attributes from our perspective because we do not know what He does nor what His ultimate plans are. He is just like a parent who stands by and does nothing while a doctor stabs a child with a needle. We allow this pain and suffering because we know the grand plan, the higher purpose. Yet, all our children know is the pain and suffering.
Teddy Daniels: I thought god gave us moral order.
Warden: There's no moral order as pure as this storm. There's no moral order at all. There's just this; can my violence conquer yours?
Now we are crossing over from morality to natural selection or rather, survival of the fittest. As Richard Dawkins rightly stated, “In nature, the usual selecting agent is direct, stark and simple. It is the grim reaper.” Now, the statement “There's no moral order as pure as this storm” is committing a category mistake. The storm does not represent moral order but nature’s order: you survive the storm or you do not. To anthropomorphize: nature does not care about morality or even truth but only about survival.
Thus, indeed, on the atheist/materialist view “There's no moral order at all. There's just this; can my violence conquer yours?” Darwinian survival of the fittest, evolution not only preserves the strong but rids us of the weak.
Teddy Daniels: I'm not violent.
Warden: Yes, you are. You're as violent as they come. I know this because I'm as violent as they come. If the constraints of society were lifted and I was all that stood between you and a meal, you would crack my skull with a rock and eat my meaty parts. Wouldn’t ya? Cawley thinks you’re harmless, that you can be controlled, but I know different. …
If I was to sink my teeth into your eye right now, would you be able to stop me before I blinded you?
Indeed, without God’s moral order there is only an animalistic fight for survival. Within God’s order there would be self-defense in such as case. But what about “the constraints of society”? The implication is that he is withheld from attacking due to “the constraints of society” so, apparently, fear of judicious reproduction is the only thing stopping him from attacking.
Yet, of course, he may choose to attack and may get away with it. And this is a heavy point about morality in an atheist universe: evil is for the benefit of the evildoer who gets to enjoy it, may get away with it and in the end…nothing. No judgment, no punishment, no reproductions. Since atheism cannot provide transcendent, ultimate justice it is itself unjust.
The fact of evil, pain and suffering in the world are the very best reasons for rejecting atheism.
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[1] Brooke Gladstone, “Atheist Brigade Takes Arguments to the Tolerant,” NPR, December 15, 2006 AD
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