Proof of God in evolutionary traits
Offline Many classic horror icons, such as Geger’s xenomorphs,
The Ring & Paranormal Activity, zombies and other disturbing creatures,
share common characteristics.
Pale skin, dark, sunken eyes, elongated faces, sharp teeth, long black hair, and the like.
These images inspire horror and revulsion in many, and with good reason.
The characteristics shared by these faces are imprinted in the human mind.
Many things frighten humans instinctively.
The fear is natural, and does not need to be reinforced in order to terrify.
The fears are species-wide, stemming from dark times in the past when lightning
could mean the burning of your tree home, thunder could be the approaching gallops
of a stampede, predators could hide in darkness, and heights could make poor footing lethal.
The question you have to ask yourself is this:
What happened, deep in the hidden eras before history began,
that could effect the entire human race so evenly as to give the entire
species a deep, instinctual, and lasting fear of pale beings with black,
sunken eyes, razor sharp teeth, long black hair, and elongated faces? Demons, possessed people and undead obviously did exist during the biblical times.
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I was going to suggest this innate fear of pasty, straggly haired individuals came down to Alice Cooper album covers but your iron clad rationale has got me totally convinced. I'm not so sure about this business of the razor sharp teeth, however.
Creatures with razor sharp teeth have different digestion processes to those of us who need to start our food combustion upstairs in our mouths by grinding it up significantly prior to swallowing.
Things with razor sharp teeth are obligated to swallow their food in big chunks. It's hard to imagine the human digestive system being able to handle unchewed bits of meat the size of ham hocks.
Personally, I think these creatures bring together a number of characteristics humans are universally unhappy with. We are nervous about animals with big sharp teeth, we don't like to be around people who look sick, are near death or who are dead and we don't like people whose personal hygiene practises are so disinterested they can't even be bothered to wash their own hair.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Easy.
Pale skin, sunken eyes, are associated with corpses in the early stages of decay.
Sharp teeth are associated with predators.
And WTF has any of this to do with the fantasy of a God? Apart from the idea that assuming something unknown may possibly be the result of some conscious agent, which may be a potential threat, is a precautionary assumption.
IOW all these things naturally arise from primitive fears.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Something is missing... why would people run in fear from a rotting corpse or sick person?
I mean I've seen cadavres and such up close; not afraid at all, but movies with such still make me uneasy.
Basically you people are implying that zombies are real, which is simply an undead person controlled by an evil spirit
If you are afraid of something, you might avoid it, increasing your chances of survival, no?
So, what you are saying is that being afraid of the devil increases your chances of survival and therefore we evolved to fear the devil?
I highly doubt that you have a higher chance of survival if you are afraid of the devil: it will make you an easier prey for him, and he isn't bound to space, so running away from him doesn't really help either...
Because it's dangerous to be near a rotting corpse or sick person. You could become one yourself.
I find that interesting, because nothing I've ever seen in film strikes me as scary. Gross maybe, but not scary. And as I used to work in a hospital as security (and in case you didn't know, 90% of the time security holds the keys to the morgue and is responsible for opening it and ensuring that the bodies have all the proper tags and are being kept cold and secure), I have plenty of experience with corpses as well. I've even watched autopsies. They don't scare me either. I do feel uneasy unless I'm garbed in the proper and safe medical equipment, but that's a rational response to real potential danger.
Zombies don't exist, and neither do spirits. However, I have yet to see a zombie movie that was based on dead people controlled by evil spirits. 99+% of the time it's a virus or chemical of some sort, not a spirit, that causes the condition.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Evolution would favour those inclined to avoid an area where people were sick and dying, so what is your problem? It explains those feelings better than any God hypothesis.
When are you going to come up with an 'argument' that actually supports the God hypothesis rather than shooting yourself in the foot?
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Your story is based on the re-animated dead. Is God now evil?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
There are a number of nasty diseases one can contract from a deceased person who died from that disease. In the times when hundreds of people in a single town would die from these diseases within a few weeks, people noticed that if you were one of the body collectors or if you had cared for someone who died of the disease, you were very likely to contract the disease and die yourself.
Of course, people are afraid of death and corpses. It was sensible at that time to avoid corpses at all costs. Which is why so many cemeteries were place well outside of town. Some of those diseases thrive just fine without a living body to inhabit and you can get the disease years later from the contaminated ground around the mostly disintegrated corpse.
If you hang around dead people, I trust they died of something not communicable or you take proper precautions and wear at least a high quality surgical mask.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Something is definitely missing - a rational argument from you.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
pretty much all of lucio fulci's zombie films have this element: zombie, city of the living dead, the beyond, the house by the cemetery. he was a master of the genre, second only to romero in renown. zombie was actually an unauthorized prequel to dawn of the dead and traces the phenomenon back to a haitian voodoo curse.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
Interesting. The only film I've seen that I could come up with was the Friday the 13th film where Jason was a wandering spirit taking over other bodies (though whether they were comparable to zombies...). And an Outer Limits episode that I only vaguely recall. My roomate being a horror nutcase, I'm sure he'd be interested in these films. And I'll get to watch them from the corner of my eye as I game away.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Also the Evil Dead movies by Sam Raimi.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
aren't most of the people in those films alive when they're possessed? i know ash gets possessed a couple times and sort of looks like a zombie. even the wife in the cellar i think was alive when she first got possessed, then her husband buried her.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
I think most of the people in the second film were alive, but in the original the first few people get possessed after they die, and in the third film almost all of them are dead.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
My favourite is now the Resident Evil series. I haven't, unfortunately, played any of the games except the most recent one (5), but it's awesome, and the movie series is great too.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
That's the trouble with zombies. You can never be sure what's going on there. Are they alive or dead, cursed, infected, rejected by the afterlife or what? It could be chemicals as in the 1985 punk rock zombie film Return of the Living Dead. In Zombieland it was a mutated strain of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. Of course there's always the outside chance it's the work of aliens à la Night of the Creeps (1985) or Slither (2006).
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
The great thing about zombie movies is that, usually, they are character pieces. The Night of the Living Dead gave me nightmares when I was a kid, not because of he zombies, but because of that poor bastard who survived the whole thing only to get shot in the head by a bunch of rednecks.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
I certainly agree. I think that's why Zombieland was one of highest grossing movies ever in that genre. Aside from the horror premise there was actually quite a sad story about people feeling rejected by society that I'm sure resonates with many today particularly in some youth cultures.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
well, i think that in order to call it zombie fiction, the "zombies" have to have died prior to their transformations. i was really let down when i found that 28 days later--which my friends assured me was the greatest zombie film in years--didn't have zombies at all, just people driven mad by a disease. hell, they even starved to death at the end. i was also very much let down by stephen king's cell, which some reviewers had dared to call a zombie novel. i was even more irritated when king made the "zombies" (again, just messed up living people) levitate, communicate through telepathy, and form a community.
but that's what galls me about king in general: he can almost never have pure chaotic evil (which zombies should be). he always has to bring order and a motive to it. some of his short stories are good in this department, however, particularly graveyard shift, jerusalem's lot, and room 1408 (but not the film, because, much as i'm sure king would have done had he expanded the story into a novel, it brings order to the chaos).
world war z, however, kicked ass, and the zombies are never explained, which i prefer.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
As a writer, that brings to mind an interesting question. When delving into fantastic fiction, do people generally like a scientific explanation, a mystical explanation, or no explanation at all? I personally tend to prefer science, though I don't mind the other two if the story is good enough.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
I would prefer no explanation, rather than one which doesn't quite work for me, allowing for he context. A bit like how I get irritated in hard sci-fi when they make a clear scientific error in their background description of the technology they have in the story.
Especially with errors in application of fundamental Laws, such a the Laws of Thermodynamics or the Laws of Motion, etc.
For fantasy, it is harder to pin down what kind of explanation works. I would generally prefer one which doesn't try too much appeal to actual science, as long as it makes some sort of coherent 'sense' given the assumptions of the particular fantastic setting.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I would prefer a scientific explanation, but then it must be a plausible or at least a possible one. The worst case is when I feel that the author believes he has a good understanding and has given a sound explanation, when in reality, he is ignorant about some scientific theory or is supporting some pseudoscience. That just irritates me and makes me lose respect for the author. Instead of that, I would much prefer some obviously impossible mystical explanation, so that I know I'm in a fantasy land and can just focus on the plot and characters.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Rotting corpses and sick persons are both sources of disease. It's best to stay away.
The term "undead" is inept. There are no "evil spirits."
I do think it is technically possible for some organism or machine to control the body of a dead person, but something like that has not been observed to exist.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
i don't care about explanations at all when it comes to zombies. that's why for me romero's films are the best, even though night does offer a sort of quick, half-assed explanation. still, i love the explanation because it involves unexplainable cosmic radiation--something utterly alien, unforeseen, and unpreventable. the whole zombie virus fad is so lame. it makes the whole thing a creation of man.
zombies for me are the most poignant metaphor in all of modern horror, and no other picture, in my mind, sums up man's existential dread so nicely as those we once knew and loved and hated now returned as creeping, blind, idiot automatons that eat us for no reason. they are every mistake we ever made, every dream we ever had, everything we've ever built, crushed under something impossible to stop and impossible to understand. the only hope is that maybe, maybe, we can pull together and coexist with it. romero has a pessimistic view of this, max brooks an optimistic one.
my favorite horror scene of all time is when the reporter girl from the original dawn is face to face with a zombie in the mall, separated only by an inch of glass. she stops and looks in his eyes. you can see the wheels in her head turning as she searches deperately for something in there...and comes up totally empty. i don't know who that extra was, but he was fucking brilliant.
the whole thing went downhill when romero started giving the zombies intelligence and personality in day of the dead amd land of the dead. i think that's why he's tried to reboot the franchise lately, but the last couple films have kind of sucked.
oh, and another thing, zombies have to creep and lurch. i fucking hate the whole sprinting zombie fad.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson