Tahir said:
Satan tried to kill Christ many times. He "infected" thousands of the Romans and Jews with his hatred and evil in order to do it when direct confrontation, the temptations of Christ, didn't work. When he finally got his wish, he could not have known that Christ would become even more powerful in death and that it would seal Satan’s doom. Satan could not see past his purpose, i.e. to destroy god's creation, to end all life. Because of this, he could not see that the death of Christ at the hands of those he had infected with his evil was in fact his own doom. Smith parallel’s Satan’s fall quite well.
Expanding on your and offering a different conclusion on this part if I may:
Jesus did not die, he was resurrected (Chirstian and Muslim belief). The ending of the Matrix is open in so far that we do not know if The One died. The final conversation with Oracle and The Architect hints that The One is not dead.
With regards to the darkness you mention earlier, the Darkness is not a lack of light. Darknes is 'zero' or before even 'zero' - Darkness is nothing WRT to Creation as before there was Creation there was nothing except God.
Oh? I thought Muslims believed that Jesus was a prophet like Mohammed and Abraham and Moses, but that he did
not rise. I thought that was a purely christian belief. The Jews acknowledge Jesus, but only as a good man and nothing more.
What I meant when I was talking about "in death", was Jesus' triumph over death, hell, and the grave. But the only way to gain the keys would be to go through the process himself, forcefully take them, and rise with them on the third day. So no, I don't believe Neo is permanently dead. I think he may eventually resurrect as a different entity, or reincarnate. Depends on which religious spin you put on it.
I'm a little tired at the moment so I'm not really able to go completely in depth on this one. Brain is a little fried.
Now as for darkness, in the bible it said that in the beginning, the earth was without form, and darkness covered the waters as god moved over it. You said that darkness is not a lack of light. It is nothingness, it is a lack of god. However, being that god
is light and god
is everything, would it not be a good assumption that nothingness, a lack of god, lack of god's light, is in fact darkness? I see it as the same conclusion, merely different routes to get there.
Tahir said:
Smith is also the ego of God in a similar way that he is the ego of the machines. God, being a perfect being in its own mind, could have no other choice but to have an ego. When you can look upon a creation and see no flaw, no fault, and say “It is goodâ€, there is a sense of pride and ego that one naturally expresses. It is the sense of joy and completion that it is inherent in every being, even one that knows nothing but perfection. Ego in and of itself is not a bad thing. Ego, when controlled, is what we call pride, and pride, when controlled, is a powerful force that can lead one to hone their skills, take care of their children, fix their homes, et al. How did ego in this case become corrupted? It happened when it came in contact with humanity. It happened when it came in contact with choice. God has no other choice but to be perfect, to be good. However, when God created humanity, and gave humanity the choice to be good or evil, the repercussions of that choice infected all of creation and even God itself. The manifestations of this are a “perfect†god’s rage, anger, jealousy, and destructive impulses. The Floods spoken about in nearly every religion are one such manifestation of this. The only way to abate this rage, this anger, these destructive impulses, was to offer up sacrifices in order to balance the world again and set things right. However, they were only temporary.
In Christian theology and others the Creation is not perfect. God saying, "It is good" as you quote does not mean God is saying "The Creation is perfect." It is flawed however in The Matrix the machines are trying to reach perfection and cannot attain it so this is different to your comparison to your idea of "Creation" in Christian and Muslim theology. God alone is perfect, not His creation as He did not create it with to be perfect. (Sorry for referring to Muslim theology but there are parallels and I am most at home with it).
Well that's a problem that I've always had. How can a perfect being create something imperfect? You see the paradox there no?
That is one of the central problems I've had with Christianity since I was a child.
Tahir said:
Point 3 The Oracle could be seen as, in your quote, simply a 'mother' who understands the needs of her child better than any other 'being' including the 'Father' both literally and figuratively. So she gives Neo a nudge in the right direction when he needs it (but not only as she is 'caring' to all that come to her). Like everyone says in the movie, 'she told me what I needed to know' which reminds me of something akin to a mother offering comfort when her child is 'hurt' or naturally inquisitive and there is no easier answer. An example would be, 'where do babies come from?' or even, 'why am I [here]?'
Perfectly valid interpretation. I was merely trying for a different tack because that view had been discussed in various forms. I'm not sure if my attempt to discuss a different tack was successful though.
Tahir said:
Point 5, you assume Neo is killed as I said earlier he may not be killed, perhaps his body is but there will be another The One. Why do they always end in draws? A principle of Yin and Yang perhaps? Light and Darkness? The balancing of an equation until finally the equation is solved? The stroytellers did not know what to do with him..? I believe Agent Smith was the weakest part of the Trilogy, he was an afterthought it seems - needed for rounding off and perfecting the 'equation' only at the end.
Neo is physically killed. But I do believe his digital essence, his soul if you will, because the digital world, as far as the humans are concerned, is representative of the great spiritual energy Hindus and Buddhists believe our souls originate from and eventually return to during various reincarnations. That's why I was saying that I believe the power of "The One" grows stronger in each loop. In Buddhism, your soul retains some part of your prior life, meaning each time you reincarnate, you are moving closer and closer to nirvana as an inevitability, rather than merely a possibility. It is merely up to the soul how long it takes them to get there.
In the case of Neo's soul, his digital essence, apparently it took him 6 tries to get it right. Someone else might have taken 3 tries, or 20 tries. Who knows. But right now his digital soul is part of the world as the humans in the matrix know it. His energy and essence is everywhere, as noted in part by the lack of the green tint of artificiality in the matrix after it is reloaded. I believe what Neo introduced into the equation, just as Jesus Christ did, was love, and that is what made the difference.
Basically what I was pointing out in point #2.
Tahir said:
Point 5 bares some thinking about, but I think that there is no new incarnation of The Matrix until another war ensues. I don't know what Smith would have become and I don't think the storytellers did either. Again I see him as a convenience, like the really bad way of tying a lose end by saying, "and then she woke up" ending.
Well, it seems even from the first one that Smith was always the main nemesis. I'm not sure it's fair to say he was tacked on as a convenience. I looked at the little things, i.e. Merovingian's comment regarding Neo's ability to stop all those bullets, along with buddhist tenets of soul reincarnation to come to the conclusion that "The One" was growing stronger each time. The equation would naturally try to balance itself, light vs dark, and the stronger the "light" became, the stronger the "dark" would have to become in order to compensate. Without the little things and the references to Buddhism in the mix, and the idea of prior "The One"s, I would think it was a contrivance, but there seems to be far too many coincidences for it to be so.
Tahir said:
The "I believe crap" is faith and hope personified by Morpheus and if you want to add Christianity into, he represented Prophet John (AS) who foretold in the lifetime of Jesus (AS) of his coming.
Oh I know. I was positing those questions as if people were asking me. Actually quite a few of those have been given to me as questions that I would have to then explain.
Tahir said:
Point 7, Sati is as you describe not only a justification that The Oracle is human in many respects but also personifies why human do irrational things at times (we do for the future of our progeny etc). The sunrise that she apparently makes or artistically renders at the end is a metaphor for our kids bringing light in the world like no adult human can, and as a potential for what a child can blossom into in the future. Sati has a future after all as do all children, untainted by the Darkness until they reach a certain level maturity.
Agreed. Imagination is a powerful thing.
Tahir said:
Point 8 about seeing Neo again, he could come back again in form not only digitally and spiritually but physically since he may not be dead (again the analogy to Christ).
There is the possibility that the machines would revive Neo's body. I'm not sure why they would do such a thing considering how much it seems they revile our meat-bag form. But I could certainly see that.
Tahir said:
Point 9 I see you mention John the Baptist too but think The Oracle is, well all I say is actually see what John the Baptist did, bring forth a message and tell of the Messiah Jesus (AS) and cleanse souls (unhook people from The Matrix).
You say Oracle is also a Christ figure so they keep changing roles all the time.. I will stick with her being a 'mother' and maybe Mary rather than Christ and John the Baptist etc.. heh.
Well I wasn't necessarily saying that they change roles all the time. Merely that depending on your point of view, she can be a christ figure. If you look at it from the Machine's point of view, I think she certainly qualifies. If you look at it from the Human's point of view, she can be a christ figure and she can be John the Baptist in that she sets people on the path toward The One, i.e. Christ. That was John's role in the NT, to pave the way for Christ and set people on the path to find him.
Tahir said:
OK this is where it gets even more trickier, I disagree with your first analysis and conclusion which you make at the beginning that Revolutions was predominantly Chritian with a mix of Hinduism, Buddhism. To me it wsa more about Karma and focused on Choice which is almost paradoxial in its understanding that I don't think any human can really truly in the heart say "I understand it" but rather some may say "I accept it." The lack of real choice in mundane things (like breaking a vase) but the power humans have in the BIG CHOICES for example Agent Smith asking Neo "Why do you fight?" and Neo replies, "Because I choose to," is like a mix of pre-destiny and freewill.
I personally believe that if one has belief in a higher power or deity, you cannot believe in free will. For instance in Christianity, god is said to be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. Now to the scientific mind, that would describe a 4th dimensional being because that being would be at every point in space/time, and therefore have infinite knowledge by knowing the information for every point of space/time simultaneously.
But I digress a little. hehe.
If a being knows the future and knows everything that will happen, in essence imo, the sheer fact of knowing automatically makes it predetermined. Unless you are a believer in the heisenberg principle, but really, what kind of omnipotent being wouldn't be able to overcome a principle set forth by a mere mortal?
Anyways what I'm basically trying to say is that anyone who believes in an all knowing deity cannot believe in free will. The two simply do not mix. And if there is no free will because that being is all knowing, then God (the christian kind) has allowed billions of humans to be born and die, knowing that they will spend an eternity in torment. I don't believe any conscientious and loving parent would do such a thing. I actually like the muslim interpretation of god, i.e., the afterlife is not an eternal torment, but a time spent in fire to purify one's soul, at which point you can enter god's presence. That seems to me to be a little more, err, humane than the christian variant.
Tahir said:
Even if you disagree with what I may have said, I hope you understand why I saw the movies differently to you.
Finally my final critique of the movie is that 'the Light' is not the light of perfection in the movies at all. And the movie stumbles and contradicts itself but overall on a less deeper level it gets a thumbs up from me.
"Good, could have been better," Tahir.
Most certainly.
