Film post #3 The Time Machine

If I am honest, I would not recommend The Time Machine (2002). It is badly written and badly acted,  currently receiving a score of just 5.7 on IMDB. However, I did promise to write about every film I watch in 2012. So here goes.

The film sees Professor Alexander Hartdegen (Guy Pearce) travelling about 800,000 years into the future. There he meets humans living a seemingly idyllic lifestyle without technology, at peace with their environment. However, he soon discovers that no human now lives past early adulthood because they are hunted and dragged away by vicious grotesque hunters.

There is one scene in The Time Machine, when Alexander discovers the truth that one half of the human race has been feeding on the other for millennia. Horrified, the professor demands of his captor (Jeremy Irons), "Have you not thought about the human cost of what you're doing?"

As you watch the film, we the viewers instinctively agree with Alexander. However, we are left with the question: What is it that gives a human being value? What is it that makes this scenario sickeningly wrong? For a Christian the answer is easy. Each human being is made in the image of God and has objective and very real value. However, for the naturalist we are simply a product of genes struggling to survive in a hostile environment. If this is the case, then how can we justify our feeling that each individual has value? And yet we do feel sickened by the scenario played out in The Time Machine. Which world-view makes most sense of this?

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The question of human value is something that I've been thinking about quite a bit recently. In particular in the context of abortion. I sometimes feel like crying out to anyone who will listen: "have you not thought about the human cost of what we're allowing to happen?" But I am left with the question, how do we argue for the safeguarding of these children's lives in a world that does not believe in God?

I have been praying recently that God would help me to understand the political and sociological landscape when it comes to abortion, and that he would show me how he can use me. Step one has been to buy "The Case for Life" by Scott Klusendorf, which I will endeavour to review here soon.