The movie Contact was on television a while back. I watched a few minutes of it, and heard the rest from the other room, where I decided my time would be better spent playing a game of Spider Solitaire… and writing this article.
I saw the film when it first hit the theaters, not long after the author's death. And I'd read the novel, too, years before. Carl Sagan was, after all, one of my personal heroes. His science books are among the most readable, and the most wondrous, I've ever read. (And if you haven't read The Demon Haunted World, shame on you.)
Wish I could say the same for his fiction. But the truth is, I didn't think Contact was that impressive of a book. It sorta dragged, for me. Nor did I think much of the movie, either, in case you hadn't picked up on that.
But this article isn't to pick apart Sagan's fiction writing skills, or to complain about the changes made from book to screen. Rather, it's to focus on one of the arguments presented in the movie.
There's a scene where the heroine, astronomer Dr. Ellie Arroway, has just voiced her opinion about the fact that there's no proof of the existence of God, and therefore (as a woman of science) she has no reason to put stock in the idea.
Her philosophical foil in the film, Rev. Palmer Joss, responds by asking her if she loved her late father. Naturally, her response is, "Yes. Very much." To which he says, "Prove it."
This is, sadly, a common "argument" against the atheist's insistence that without proof, there's no compelling reason to believe something. While it is true that it is impossible to prove that one person loves another, this does not make it a valid comparison. Ellie Arroway, like many non-believers, was flustered by the question. Yet if one takes but a moment to look at this "argument," it's easy to rip it apart.
We have, after all, a definition of love, even though it is an intangible emotion. We can give examples of love, behavior consistent with our understanding of what love is. Proof? No. But evidence. And frankly, "evidence" is the word Arroway should have used instead of "proof." Scientists don't deal with proof; they deal with evidence. It's been many years since I read the novel, and don't have a copy handy to peruse, so I don't know if Sagan used the word "proof" in the book or not. If so, he should've known better.
There is no proof in science, after all. But there's quite a lot of evidence analyzed all the time. And when dealing with the concept of love, that's what we're also dealing with. We can say, "A person who loves another will behave in such-and-such a way around them." So when we see a person acting that way around another, it is evidence of love being present.
We also have a definition (several of them, in fact) of God. We have an understanding of what God is supposed to be. That understanding may vary from one person to another, but the point is that such understanding is present.
And the real wrench in the whole argument is this: no matter what that definition is, there's still not a scrap of evidence to support the existence of that definition of God.
Forget proof. It's all about evidence.
We can show evidence of the presence of love in any number of ways. But we cannot show evidence for the presence of a deity, in any way whatsoever.
One of my biggest complaints about Contact was, in fact, that the character of Ellie Arroway was too insecure in many ways. And she allowed her religious views to be attacked, acting almost apologetic for her atheism.
A pity that Ellie did not have the attitude of another cinematic atheist, the character of Vianne in the movie Chocolat. Vianne's foil, Reynaud, made life miserable for her, but rather than being cowed by him, she stood up to him.
Ellie could have learned a lot from Vianne.
For that matter, so could we all.
