Comments on: Providence and Time on Lost

By: James McGrath

James McGrath — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 03:16:00 +0000

I'm not persuaded that Pearcey and Johnson are going about reconciling faith and science in the best way (I'd recommend Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, Francisco Ayala or someone else who is doing better justice to the science side of the equation), but I nonetheless appreciate your reflections on LOST and your conviction that reason and belief need not be separated from or opposed to one another. Nowadays I find myself posting at least once a week on the subject of LOST on my own blog, including on the tension between dualities that you mention in your post. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!

By: Amy

Amy — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:01:00 +0000

I'm actually not too worried about Charlotte. I think they're only invoking Lewis's name because of the mystery and the door into other worlds that it invokes. I don't think they're putting him down. I'm much more worried about what they're going to do with Locke. He seems to be losing it.

By: John

John — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:45:00 +0000

Amy,
Hey, I've been wanting to talk to you about this.
I've felt good about Lost's view of faith too. In the first season, John Locke was a great depiction of a good pastor. I thought Mr. Eko's story was also a great redemption tale (mostly).
However, I became very concerned with the direction they were heading when one of the new characters off the ship was named C.S. Lewis. She's the new girl who seems sort of like a jerk. Abrahms does this a lot. I still remember an episode where a particularly jerky bureaucrat was named Edmund Burke.
Anyway, I have a bad feeling about where all this is heading.

By: Amy

Amy — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:11:00 +0000

David, no, I hadn't seen that! Thanks! I just watched a few minutes of it and I'll watch the rest as soon as I can. I've been wanting to write a blog post about mystery and Lost and how this relates to God, so that's so interesting that he's talking about mystery and what it means to him in that talk--how mystery is more interesting than knowledge. I actually prefer mystery to knowledge on Lost, but knowledge to mystery when it comes to God. This is because God is always greater than our imaginations, but the endings of TV shows are always less. Well, there you go...that's what my post was going to be! Maybe I'll still write it sometime.

By: David Wayne

David Wayne — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:21:00 +0000

Amy – did you see the video of J. J. at TED?
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/205
Not sure that it addresses any of the conundrums you raised, but it shows how much he loves the idea of mystery.

By: Amy

Amy — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:36:00 +0000

I didn't know that! I'm looking forward to the movie. Even though my geekiness does not usually extend to Old Star Trek (only to The Next Generation), at this point I would go out of my way to see just about anything Abrams created because I just love his work.
I've prayed for him and his usual crew regularly. Even more than having a positive view of “faith” and the supernatural, he has consistently portrayed Christians and Christianity in positive ways (though not always accurate ones), particularly on Lost. That is really unusual! So I pray he figures out whatever it is he needs to figure out in terms of his divided view of reality.

By: David N

David N — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 15:56:00 +0000

Good post. Abrams has said that the original Star Trek, with its dynamic between Kirk and Spock, was the inspiration for a lot of his “faith vs. science” themes. It will be interesting to see how he further develops this theme with the characters that started it all!