From Angela Watercutter’s Wired review of Prometheus, “Prometheus Poses Eternal Questions About Science and Creationism” (June 9, 2012), we learn,
In a recent interview with a group of reporters, Damon Lindelof, the Lost co-creator who worked on the Prometheus script with director Scott and writer Jon Spaihts, said the concept for the movie was to move away from Alien’s chestbursters and xenomorphs and focus on the origin of the human species and whether we have makers who share our DNA.
“This idea of creating one in one’s own image becomes a sci-fi construct as opposed to a supernatural construct or a religious construct,” Lindelof told the reporters. “I think the movie sort of dabbled in marrying those two ideas.”
That’s not to say that the R-rated Prometheus, out Friday, is some kind of a pro-creationism, anti-science allegory. It’s not. (Scott himself has professed more belief in the possibilities of aliens than god, telling Esquire “the biggest source of evil is of course religion.”) The film simply plants seeds of thought — sort of like cinematic panspermia — that will naturally lead audience members to question the origin of man, whether they’re Darwinists, creationists or something else entirely.
Watercutter is, curiously, behind the curve here.
She writes as though it is an up-to-the-minute buzz. In reality, over the last fifty years, Fred Hoyle, Francis Crick, and Leslie Orgel (origin of life researcher) all entertained the idea that extraterrestrials seeded life on Earth, and even Richard Dawkins suggests something of the kind in Expelled. Here’s a list of such prominent scientists. We hope to bring you a review of the film soon.
Also, when you hear people claiming that “no one uses the term Darwinist,” tell them this: In a review of a movie for popular culture, this reviewer who clearly isn’t up on the ins and outs of the controversy, uses the term – and assumes that her audience knows what she means.
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