August 3, 1997

Carl Sagan's Contact

The first thing that was clear is that Sagan was not a fiction writer. Good fiction has multiple, simultaneously developing plots. Contact moves from point A to point B to point C with little or no intervening or simultaneous events. OK, I can forgive him for that, because the science was impeccable. That's obviously his strength.

Have you ever been in a situation where a person is speaking in public and they make a statement that you know represents a misunderstanding, then they go on to comment and embarrass themselves over this thing you know is not true? You feel embarrassed for them and just sit there hoping they stop.

That's how I felt throughout this book and now, throughout the movie.

The book/movie is clearly "Sagan vs. God" or perhaps more appropriately, "Sagan vs. Religion." Unfortunately, Sagan's grasp of Christianity isn't nearly as deep as his grasp of science.

In fact, it's not even as deep as his fiction-writing skill.

Jody Foster writes off Christianity with the tired, "Oh yeah? So where did Cain find a wife?" argument. She said she was kicked out of Sunday School for asking such questions as a child. While Foster's Sunday School teacher may not have been able to answer this simple question, anybody who's done any Bible study would dispatch it easily.

So is that the best Sagan has to offer?

A major theme of the book/movie was faith. Foster's character couldn't believe in God because she had no proof of his existence. In the end she has an experience with alien beings but brings back no proof of their existence. She concludes that others would be correct to doubt her version of reality in the absence of facts, but that she has had an experience and therefore she believes.

As applied to Christianity, Foster's faith wouldn't be very satisfying. Something happened to her that she attributed to aliens. She couldn't prove it happened, but she believed. If something had happened to her that she attributed to God and she called it a Christian salvation experience, I wouldn't give it much credence.

Christianity is founded in a history of revelation that is contained in the Bible. Personal experience has to coincide with the recorded revelation or it is no more than just something that happened to you. Just because you "feel" like God said something to you or is doing something doesn't mean that's what happens.

Biblical faith is believing without the experience. It's believing because the written revelation says so, and is backed up by the fact that the Bible (the written revelation of God) is consistent with and better explains reality than any other explanation.

Contact reveals that Sagan was out of touch with reality. If anyone chooses not to believe the Bible because Carl Sagan -- super-scientist -- didn't believe it they need to understand that Sagan's understanding of religion -- and specifically of Bible-based Christianity -- is so shallow as to barely form a puddle. I found myself embarrassed to think that such a prominent person would put his ignorance on parade in the form of the book, then that someone would embarrass his memory by capturing the book on film. (Sagan wasn't the only entity to sacrifice himself on the altar of this movie -- CNN's anchor-actors effectively discredited CNN.)

The Bible includes a story of a rich man who dies and goes to Hell. In Hell he cries out to God to send someone back to his family and warn them of the torture that is theirs unless they change their ways. God tells him that they have the same revelation and opportunities that he had; even if someone went back from the dead they wouldn't believe. Well, Jesus proved God right by returning from the dead and still people don't believe.

And I know of at least one resident of Hell who, upon seeing this movie, would love to come back and recant.