disenchantedbunny.

Melbourne’s ‘Global Atheist Convention’. Despite the insistence of some of my academic acquaintances that it will be great and that I should attend (which is kind of comic in itself, for some reason), I don’t think I’m going.

It’s not that I’m explicitly against a gathering of ‘like-minded’ people. Neither is it due to my conditioned response to be disgusted at large groups of people and the bureaucracy that surrounds them. It’s just that there’s only so much that they can be like-minded about, and anything past that would be an unbearable dogmatism. And yet here we have an entire convention of people who think that it is worthwhile.

Irreligiousity is the norm in Australia. Very few attend a church regularly, and even less understand the basic tenets of their beliefs.

Perhaps my fears are that this convention is just going to be a rampant Dawkins wank-fest, emboldening further pseudo-philosophy and idiotic rationalistic dogmatism that comes up every century or so. Such phenomena is often said to spark a revival in faith-based systems, given the choice of either/or that make it simple for those who aren’t believers, but who are uneducated about other ways of looking at things. The best read I’ve had all year (so far!) is a confession-style piece by former New-Ager Karla McLaren about converting from the New-Age movement to a sort of sceptical naturalism; she touches on issues of reactionary cultures better than I ever could.

It’s only since reading that best-seller, The God Delusion, that I’ve grown so distant from this supposed ‘movement’; the ill-defined philosophical terms that floated through the book was one thing (where a first year undergrad understanding of epistemology would have been sufficient), but to actually lambast VOLTAIRE for being a deist…? Voltaire, one of the greatest and boldest humanists and satirists of much religious and superstitious stupidity… this dogmatic ignorance about history, philosophy and even rationalism is inexcusable for anyone with an intellectual conscience.

But to the topic at hand, and put simply and miserly: over one hundred dollars is too much for everyday kids like myself. It is too much for anyone with a slight interest in the subject matter. It is okay for those deeply invested in this stuff, but that means that it will only be a bunch of clever people preaching to the choir.

An old joke. What walks on four legs in the morning, two at midday and three in the evening? The idea is, as everyone probably knows, that human infants crawl, adults walk on their own two feet and old people hold themselves up with a cane.

Of course, the original joke only concerns men - just one facet of stupidity found in the ancient Greek thinking. Another criticism that a Christian might level at this joke concerns the ‘footprints in the sand’ theodicy/poem: the all-loving deity is supposedly walking alongside or carrying the worshipper through tough times. This of course makes the joke a bit funnier, as it implies that Christians have more legs than ancient Greeks. That is funny, isn’t it? I’m out of touch with the current standard of jokes.

But there is a realm of secular truth to be analysed in this devotional imagery. When the sense of self is questioned or knocked about, when the foundations of our lives seem shaky, it is often nice to know there is something bigger there to hold it together. Social institutions such as the various religious seem to stick around, as history shows. They chop and change, reorganise power, and even completely alter dogma (contradiction of terms isn’t really an issue in religion). But man, do they stick around.

And now the imagery is getting disturbing. If we incorporate the pillars of our social existence into the equation – i.e. our friends, families, lovers, organisations, histories, etc – we end up with these hideous multi-limbed incestuously connected organisms that never cease sprouting more and hacking off smaller periphery limbs. Of course some limbs are a bigger part of the foundation than others. And I like this coherence-as-foundation analogy for the self despite how multi-limbed creatures are often presented in horror and/or anime.

Now imagine hacking off your own leg.

Either one, really. Even a few toes. You’re still pulling out the floorboards that hold you up.

Anyone who has metaphorically hacked off a limb knows what I’m talking about – I’ve never had the issue of hacking off an almighty all-protecting god-limb before, but I have a lot of respect for people who really have made the struggle. To completely rearrange the foundations of your life is an extremely risky and painful experience.

Take the imagery a bit further. One day you notice that one of your legs is misbehaving. All of a sudden, this aspect of your self that has supported you your entire life is looking a bit out of place. So you start testing it to see what’s wrong, and it starts to look a bit… foreign. We all have a self-defence system that acts like a toned-down Capgras delusion in relation to fending off imposters: that is a fake. It’s a lie. We don’t want to get rid of it, because it’s so possible that it’s still our leg, it just doesn’t seem to fit anymore. Eventually we start to notice that it’s affecting the rest of our bodily support. The limb has to go.

Ockham’s Razor never seems to have much of an effect on religious belief, or other factors that build up one’s identity. That’s because you need a fucking hacksaw, not a Gillette Shaver. You really just need to start hacking into it, and rip that limb off, dealing with the pain, blood and tears that come with it.

And once it’s detached sufficiently, that’s not the end of the story. That phantom limb will be floating around your entire life. Across the room at a party. Displayed on street signs. Hovering around like something that should be there but isn’t. A sense of nothingness that wants to be filled by something specific, but all it can find are imposters.

The analogy is in the Saw movies (in part), but the lesson is obviously different. Next time you encounter someone, look at their beliefs, look at their life projects, look at their loves and hates, and remember what fucked-up multi-limbed creatures you’re dealing with here. Now step back and take a look at yourself.

Often atheists question theists about ‘faith’-based knowledge. A common retort is that atheists are also in faith about something or other. While this piece of “no you are!” reasoning is common, there are many variations. Hypothetical examples include but are not limited to rejoinders like (circle correct example):

‘You have just as much faith in evolution / your two hands / reason / postmoderndeconstructivisticdialogue / porn / science / no god (/ antimatter deities) / other’

The nice part about this is that if you haven’t already committed yourself to some untenable epistemological position, atheism doesn’t really have to entail anything of the sort. Weak atheism, as it is commonly touted, is merely the default position held by an individual who hasn’t yet found any reason to believe in god.

Weak atheism is part of a basic sceptical stance that refuses to accept beliefs on faith alone – whether evidence based, realist, verificationist, Nietzschean, or whatever we want to label the tenets of our positions. Such scepticism holds that faith is not a viable or reliable true belief forming practice.

Dennett is making this point when he talks about most theists not really believing in a god, but more ‘believing in belief’.

When translated in this manner, the “no you are too!” defence is often saying (to the weak atheist):

‘You have just as much faith in your not-having-developed-faith’

I’ll let you decide whether this is blatant circular reasoning or just a conclusion that is completely counter to where the premises lead.

By the time we’ve developed the ability to read, speak and differentiate between ourselves and others, culture has taken hold. That squishy grey mass in our brains drastically reshapes and remoulds its neural pathways quite drastically during our first decade. As machines who have evolved to learn, the environment that we find ourselves in shapes not only the information that we have access to, but the possible means by which we can encounter it. Knowing what we know now about cognitive development, it’s almost unbelievable that Freud could have had such insight with such little evidence (comparatively, of course): Freud’s Oedipus Complex is to cognitive studies what Copernicus’ heliocentrism was to Newton. We know now that the scope and possibilities available to us for the rest lives can be already predetermined to a large extent at a very early age.

The first episode of South Park’s 13th season not only acknowledges the implicit marketing strategies of so-called ‘tween’ culture, but subtly underlines the parasitic tendency of Christian culture to tap in to and appropriate our most general biologically motivated inclinations.

Sex sells. This is a well-worn advertiser’s slogan, the justification of many advertising campaigns across the ages. Only in recent decades, however, has it been increasingly popular to market sex to a presexual audience who are yet to understand such experiences. Sex does sell. But sex sells better when the target audience is already acquainted with the fundamentals of sexual desire by the time when their bodies are equipped to be influenced by such campaigns.

This understanding is taken (amongst many, many others.. *cough* Funtastic *cough) up by those who produce magazines like Australia’s Total Girl (and the American equivalent, Cosmo Girl) – and of course, as emphasised by the recent South Park, the wide-world of child entertainment embodied by Disney, including such teen icons as The Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus and the High School Musical franchise. According to the allusions of the South Park episode, the supposedly explicit message of sexual conservatism (falling alongside the joys of consumerism) is masking the implicit sexual undertones that permeate the plethora of dolls, songs and advertising campaigns marketed at these pre-pubescents. Selling the notion of sexual conservatism so thoroughly is getting these developing teens to think about and desire sexualisation, while avoiding the undertones of molestation that would otherwise be associated with an explicit marketing tactic (think, for example, of the outrage often caused by parents who deliberately dress their 10 year olds to look ‘sexy’).

Considering the ignorance at which many fundamentalist groups approach sexual education, the damage that such ignorance can cause to individuals and families is no surprise. One only has to think of abusive ministers and priests, or barbaric genital mutilations that can occur. But even the less extreme cases like Ted Haggard’s repressed homosexuality lead one to conclude that these sexual policies might be bit irresponsible.

But this implicit sexual advertising has been promoting the Christian faith from the very outset. In his thoroughly derisive book The Antichrist, Nietzsche pointed out that the very Christian tendency to deride bodily desires and functions as dangerous has been (rather counter-intuitively) one of the reasons that the religion has spread so prominently. The in-your-face anti-sexuality campaigns involved in conservative religious preaching produces even greater sexual desires. Denying our basic functions instead of harnessing them, Christianity has produced beings who build up such a resistance against their bodies that these thoughts are always eating away at their minds – more so than a healthy teenager who isn’t scared to jack it a few times a week – thus reinforcing the belief that such thoughts are dangerous and reinforcing allegiance to the religion.

At one point, the ‘Christian Union’ at my university put up posters with ‘SEX’ written in large bold letters, across half the page. Apparently, they were advertising a campaign to get people to think responsibly about sex. It wasn’t the first thought that came to the minds of people walking past. Not all publicity is good publicity. The so-called ‘new atheist’ movement (Dawkins et al) has also been criticised of throwing believers into a position of either/or: deny any shred of religious experience until it becomes verifiably credible, or recognize the supposed arational nature of their beliefs and move closer to the fundamentalist way of thinking about these things.

Not everyone can be sceptics. Foster doubt where you can. There is no point having expectations that will never be achieved – or worse, lead some to the opposite of what you aim.

The Fray – You Found Me

I found God on the corner of 1st and Amistad
Where the West was all but won
All alone, smoking his last cigarette
I said, “Where you been?” He said, “Ask anything.”

Where were you, when everything was falling apart?
All my days were spent by the telephone that never rang
And all I needed was a call that never came
To the corner of 1st and Amistad

Lost and insecure, you found me, you found me
Lying on the floor, surrounded, surrounded
Why’d you have to wait? Where were you? Where were you?
Just a little late, you found me, you found me.

But in the end everyone ends up alone
Losing her, the only one who’s ever known
Who I am, who I’m not and who I wanna to be
No way to know how long she will be next to me

The early morning, the city breaks
And I’ve been calling for years and years and years and years
And you never left me no messages
You never sent me no letters
You got some kind of nerve taking all I’m worth

Why’d you have to wait, to find me, to find me?

—————————————————–

In the song ‘You Found Me’ (thankfully for sceptical fans of their music, one of the most boring songs on the album), The Fray have performed the age-old trick of asking a question and then assuming that it has been answered by definition of it being asked. Let me explain.

Every believer, unless they’re die-hard fundamentalist crazy, goes through some period of doubt and uncertainty in their belief. And it is quite understandable as to why this should be so. The picture that the first verse paints of modern society (the ‘west’) is one where deities do not belong to nations, cultures or sects. Reformation has come and gone, and in the modern world different aspects of holy texts hold different weight even in the tightest of communities. One Nation Under God slides to the question of ‘which god’? The concept of a god is ‘all alone’, separated from the communal bonds that held it in place for so long (Paul’s understanding of how to spread these memes is surpassed by no-one else in history). Even deities end up alone in the end. Secularism is the starting point of modern education.

The chance meeting on the street shows the nature of modern belief: one-on-one. Mentioning ‘Amistad’ not only conjures up images of the modern notion of freedom of the individual (even, of course, choosing one’s own deity), but the Spanish word loosely means ‘friendship’. Religious belief now rests in the hands of the individual, and the social structures of church and family play less of a role in the formation of individuals than they ever have (not that it shouldn’t be even less – but that’s besides the point).

So when something terrible eventually befalls someone of faith – in this case, losing someone who knows you better than you know yourself – the famous problem of evil occasionally arises one way or another. What kind of loving, omnipotent deity can only offer ad hoc support, after the event? What comfort is there in knowing that you can lean back on faith, now that the worst has already come and past us by? God sure does work in mysterious ways.

But the question here is only one of method, not the deeper metaphysical one that has perplexed most pontificating creature from the early Greeks to us: the problem of consistency between the attributes of omniscience and infinite love. God = all powerful, not really caring enough to help? Or, God = all loving, but not powerful enough to help out? You all know the drill. Wow, tension.

But the chorus drones on and on with ‘you (presumably his god) found me’, and the opening line is the prominent ‘I found god’ (For anyone who knows the very basics of writing an essay, this means a lot). It was nice of him to stop by, but why did he wait so long? Oh, but a necessary condition of being able to question his methods of finding me is that he exists – I didn’t ask why he never found me, but why he’s so shit at it. Method becomes unimportant; God exists, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to question his methods of assistance in the first place.

Sigh. Catch 22: he exists if it seems he does, he exists if it seems that he doesn’t. The reason that it seems like god doesn’t exist sometimes is because god necessarily exists!

It’s not that this style of argument can’t work. For example, the proposition ‘I am using a sentence in English’ becomes necessarily true once asked: the very act of bringing this thought into existence makes its truth logically necessary.

The sleight of hand occurs when we move away from the serious question (the problem of evil) by an analysis of the attributes of the very being that is being called into question. This sort of ontological magic trick dogmatically presupposes that existence can be guaranteed not only without good reason (i.e. mysterious ways), but against the very evidence of pointless suffering that show its attributes to be seemingly conflicted. In the example cited above the individual’s act of thinking/saying presupposes the proposition’s necessary truth, but here, the only act involved is prior belief in a god, a stand-alone proposition that is devoid of any act but itself. Whereas in the first example the requisite is in the doing, the argument inherited from Anselm merely presupposes what it sets out to show. Questions of faith go unanswered, belief stands on its own head to show how tall it is.

It seems quite obvious to me why the ontological argument has only ever convinced people who are already convinced. But ‘just a little late’ is by definition too late for an all-loving, all knowing, all powerful deity.

It’s hot down here in the lower parts of Australia, with bush fires that have managed to burn up a large portion of the state that I live in. While giant infernos got within a couple of hundred metres to my girlfriend’s farm back home we sit in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, and ash is filling the air from the other large fires that are thankfully much further away.

No one I know has died, but friends of friends have. Death toll is huge. Someone I know had their family home completely destroyed and many others are still threatened. All in all, the atmosphere is uneasy and it’s pretty apparent what a terrible thing has happened over the past week and a bit.

So this is apparently global news (an early Al Jazeera article referred to Gippsland, a large section of the state of Victoria , as a ‘town’ - but it’s the thought that counts). News that’s also spreading around rather quickly is that a previous Family First Candidate (the largest Australian political party that preaches supposed ‘Christian Values’ Danny Nalliah has put the fires down to the work of satanically corrupted individuals that are the result of Victoria’s abortion laws. The media release can be found here.

These types of crazy-ass politically motivated prophesies happen pretty much everywhere there is a natural disaster or a large loss of life. We all hear about them. But it’s not because they’re widespread. There is no rapidly expanding circle of devout fundamentalism devouring the average Australian’s religious inclinations. A huge pool of donations have been collected by charity events, media promotions and corporate donations, not to mention the many religious organisations such as the Salvation Army that do their massive part (almost $50million AUS, last I heard). There’s always only a small batch of these people who prefer to spout a message of anger over the overwhelming majority who preach compassion among people.

So is it that these fundies have louder voices? No doubt that communities who endorse such a message are tightly nit; fundamentalist religious communities, in order to keep their strict readings of texts, are usually pretty self-confined, hostile to outside influences (Yes, Harry Potter will lead your children to pagan religions). A close community speaking with one voice can often evoke a lot of noise.

The other side of the coin is that this sort of message is just disgusting to a majority of people. News like this spreads not because it has a positive message of God that people can hold on to, but the idea that someone can try to sell their religiously motivated political snipes on the suffering of others causes a revolt in the taste of many. Even conservatives like the people at Fox news react this way to such groups. While it’s one thing to ignore/downplay the problem of reconciling the suffering caused by such an event with an all-loving deity, it’s another to think that such carnage can be the result of a completely unrelated political event that the suffering communities were probably not even fully aware of (also, it’s safe to say that most smaller communities scattered across Australia hold associations to some Christian denomination). Even the Old Testament Yahweh would blush at such an accusation.

So as the fundamentalists keep giving themselves a bad name, let’s be thankful that even religious moderates are on the side of us various species of rationalists and naturalists (most of the time). Long live separation between church and state!

And let’s all feel sorry for Danny Nalliah, who probably won’t have many friends left for a while (even former Australian Treasurer Peter Costello has given himself a bit of distance from his old friend).

I started writing this blog during my undergraduate because I thought it would help me write in general. To get the ball rolling, etc. I was never really that good at writing when I was younger, as maths always seemed more attractive to me. So if I ever couldn’t motivate myself to write an essay, I’d just pick some random topic that I’d had a thought or two about the previous week and rant about it for a few hundred words. I didn’t really expect anyone to ever come here.

But for some reason, a post on Tom Delonge, the whiny singer and sloppy, untalented guitarist from the recently reformed Blink-182, has gotten a handful of replies. Now a google search on Tom Delonge and Christianity places me in the second position. The internet has deemed me to be an expert on this relationship (despite only a few sentences on the matter; the post was actually reflecting a little on some of the +44 lyrics).

Without this blog I would have never figured out that I have an innate ability to make Canadians angry. Now I’m picking up this detail in my everyday life all the time.

So congratulations to me! for doing something I had no intention of doing, and doing it so well. I might even put it on my resume.

Having just finished this fucking philosophy thesis that has been keeping me from loving the internet like I should, a friend recommended me a recent horror film called The Ruins. And it wasn’t bad. To start with, it had that guy from 100 Girls, which is favourite b-grade, pseudo-intellectual teen comedy of all time. I mean, that’s good, but it’s not very scary. And including people from the cast of Pulse was never, ever, ever going to help the success of the movie.

But how many times do we have to sift through the same story in a different setting? The past 20 years of horror movies haven’t seen too much innovation in the genre (disregarding, of course Scream and it’s partner in crime, Scary Movie 1). Apart from an intensification of gore, the storylines consist of ‘regular’ people (just like you and me!) that somehow end up in bizarre situations where their reasonable beliefs are devoured by some supernatural or currently-unexplainable-by-our-science creature that has somehow managed to evade not only scientists but batshit insane cryptozoologists for centuries. This supernatural mystification, that giant Other lurking in the background - and it has to be the background, for how else would it be unexplainable?? - is pretty much essential as a plot device. Otherwise, how can we get scared?? How many Saw-esque movies based entirely on gritty special effects and gore scenes are we gunna have to watch before we get bored? Looking at the imdb database of top rated horror movies, the most recent horror film that sits in the top 50 seems to be Evil Dead II, the other two notable exceptions being Grindhouse and Sean of the Dead, which are both parodies of the genre in a sense. This is surely saying something. But what????

The first answer that comes from the lips of many friends: aren’t you just fucked up? This shit is brutal, man. But you’ve spent so much time on the internet and researching strange social fetish groups (religion included, of course) that you’ve become desensitized to the brutality! But the words just make me think of Metalocalypse and how funny death by metal can be. Is parody all that’s left here? We all laugh at Nazi jokes, even if the methodological slaughtering of Jews was the worst tragedy of the reasonable and industrial modern world. If parody is all that’s left, this cynical, jaded apathist won’t be disappointed - it may even be worthwhile.

But a man like myself who so often falls into inconsistent banter cannot rest content at this though - why do I keep watching if every story has been told over and over in the back of my mind? It is not true that every supposed horror film I’ve witnessed in the past few years has been full of crap. Of course it’s not. But when I think to the ones I hold in esteem, what is the link? Audition was the most recent addition to my favourites collection, and among recent non-parodical horror Cannibal Holocaust and Devil’s Rejects sits up there too, despite my not liking it at all at first. Takashi Mike has given me a few good cringes and laughs, to be honest. But it’s hardly fair to group him with other western gore/horror directors.

There’s a decent theory spinning around my mind about this: we educated westerners have forgotten how to be scared. We’ve grown so accustoms to the clichés of genre that we can predict every movement that is made on the screen. Of course the critical girl is going to die. Of course there’s going to be a male who scarifies himself in hope that some weaker character can escape, and of course there’s going to be that shot that so obviously hints that this redemptive hope can never be realised. Either that, or like the fucking bastardization of I am Legend we are presented with some ridiculous eutpoian religious salvation. And this deluded hope is obviously enough to tide over most of the people who watch movies like this. The money makers are the films that play on many people’s greatest fear: that we will not be saved from death, that there is no salvation for any of us. A few may offer a happy conclusion in some redemptive state, but the horror has been looked into; the temporary status of life, the futility of redemption. But for us educated bunch, believing something in spite of evidence is more than a little silly. Hence, our horror films are parodies of the great alien invasions or supernatural travesties of decades past.

But does this mean that there is no redemption for horror?? Are we condemned to be the reclusive ironists of the film industry? I think not. And the reason I think this is that what we know is a hell of a lot scarier than what we do not know. The recent success of the prominent new-atheist movement attest to this: the fact that there are a billion people out there who would kill you for their gods is fucking scary. The Dionysian brutality of human nature will always be scarier than whatever bullshit ’supernatural’ theme that the modern monotheistic majority can throw at us. And if this is too ‘brutal’, too fucked up for your liking, than maybe you should stick to reading your bible than watching these shitty, repetitive and unconvincing horror films.

The belief in demons of certain sorts is a cross-cultural phenomenon. While their attributes may differ from place to place, people to people, a majority of these beliefs can be attributed to the personification of natural phenomenon, an explanatory and predictive theory. Cultures devoid of some type of renaissance typically have their theories intertwined which such entities. Ancient myths are filled with blood sucking, flesh eating monstrosities that generally play some important functional role, if only to scare little kiddies into belief. Creatures and entities are often clearly invoked to explain phenomenon.

What of metaphor? These supernatural creatures that inspire fear should surely be left out of the atheistic, naturalistic vocabulary. Folk tales are generally considered useless, fiction as irrelevant to fact. But culture can often give us an insight into important human problems. The modern Vampire is one of those insights.

Our modern vampire is largely influenced by Bram Stoker’s Dracula: the fangs, the blood, and most importantly, the immortality. Feeding from the blood of humans (particularly, children, women and the innocent) in a delirious quest for ever-lasting life – once this impulse to escape death is embraced, one is truly a vampire.

I was introduced to the novel Dracula when I was in 5th grade. I still vividly remember how exciting the book was to read back then. The literary style was different to anything I had read before, and the struggle between the protagonists and the antagonist Count Dracula seemed epic in proportion to the shit that primary school kids are given.

Most vampires don’t suck blood. Modern vampires prey on people’s gullibility, sucking their money, their emotional welfare and their ability to cope with the modern world. A vampire, upon sucking the blood from their victims, will often give a little of their own blood to the victim, a little taste of immortality, and convert them, feeding on their desires for power and everlasting life. An emotion-vampire will break down their victim so as they feel they cannot live without their master, giving them tiny rewards and reinforcing the desires that keep them as slaves.

What better metaphor for religious communities? Priests and Rabbis, shaman and sages: charismatic leaders, promising their followers eternal life, sucking their emotional stability and bank accounts dry, keeping them in their place until death comes home to open arms. Opiate of the people, as Marx once said.

I want to run through this metaphor a bit more thoroughly than I usually do, because the vampire theme in popular culture is kinda enormous. The ways in which religious themes dominate vampire stories is pretty damn complex… hopefully giving it a few posts will make the relationship a bit more coherent in my mind.

By the way, how funky and cool is my new blog theme? w00t!

 Unfortunately, and rather obscurely, this movie has no men on fire (I don’t recall any, but I was rather drunk when we watched this). But like any movie in the action genre you have hyper-masculine, masochistic, wounded protagonists spinning off cheesy one-liners as they kill everyone and everything in their way – in an often convoluted manner.

Even more unfortunately, the plot for this movie was stolen directly from Rambo II. John Creasy, ex-CIA (Rambo, ex-army), depressed at the failings of his previous occupation, takes a new job in hope of redemption, fails new job, goes on redemptive killing spree. But whereas Rambo was inspired by post-Vietnam America, Man on Fire is inspired by Bush-administration family values.

With this in mind, one shouldn’t be surprised at all the random cross-and-crucifixion shots dished out. The problem is that appealing to family values and Jesus is more difficult when you’re trying to make a gory, sadistic action film.

Firstly, the ‘bad guys’ are in an organised religion. Institutionalised enemies are good bad-guys, because even if their motivation is the same as the good-guys, their deeds can be rationalised within a hierarchy. The bad guys are pointed out always saying “we’re professionals – we’re just doing our jobs”, implying some Nazi–bureaucracy where no single person thinks that they are to be held responsible. In this film, it is the individual that is responsible – for his own salvation, for the family (that he represents) and for justice itself. Welcome, protestant audience.

There are obvious verbal pushes to indicate how personal justice (ie. Vengeance) is more efficient than organised justice. The police point out that Creary is doing more to remove corruption in the force than they could hope to achieve in years of organised work.

The problem, as it normally is in these types of movies, is where does the justification for this overkill arise? This is especially problematic when there is also a Christian theme. The injustice of the seedy Mexican underworld is made out to be the construction of a chain of corruption: man-made evil. The free-will defence is being applied here. There is no injustice in the natural scheme of things, but the actions of free men imposed it regardless. So technically, it’s up to men to fix it, right?

Here is the scary crux of the free-will argument. The divine punisher, the imposer of God’s will, is no longer God. Men must take up God’s will, whatever religious creed they have been indoctrinated into. The bible says to forgive, and only God can pass judgement. So says an old man to Creary. But, Creary says, they have an appointment up there – and he’s just pushing them to the front of the line.

And this line of reasoning is what made this movie so fucking scary to me. The way that these action films are meant to work is that we, the audience, are supposed to empathise with the protagonist and his struggle, and cheer his overkill, revel in his Dionysian bloodlust. But this is the deus-ex-machina of religious fanaticism. This is the hundreds of martyrs and saints killing the heathens in hope of apocalypse.

This is a reminder of the dangers of religious justification and its implication to everyone in a free society.