Posted by Anthony on May 12, 2009
A while back I posted a blog on the ‘Gospel according to Toy Story.’ It has generated an atheist response.
I am afraid to say the blogger needs to go back to the drawing board. He was greatly confused about what I actually said and so much of his reply just doesn’t fit what I was saying.
For example, he said that I presented Toy Story as a Christian allegory. I did no such thing. I said that it had theological themes. There is a big difference there. So, the blogger kept thinking I was trying to interpret the whole movie as some sort of intentional Christian metanarrative. This just isn’t the case. I detected one particular theme… and recognized that it was theological in nature.
This alone would shave about 8 paragraphs off his response. 
Another confusion is in his assessment of my assessment of Objectivism. Here I suppose there may have been a lack of clarity on my part- or he just read too fast. The part in question is where I said:
“If Toy Story were written to reflect modern secular humanistic relativistic atheistic worldviews, Buzz would have decided that he was a real Buzz Lightyear if he said he was… ie, prestigious in his own eyes, if the important thing is that we value our individual selves (ala Objectivism).”
The blogger seems to think that my entire post was framed against Objectivism. In fact, the only think the Objectivism reference was related to is the supreme value that Objectivists give to ‘our individual selves.’ See Rand’s Anthem as the epitome of just that.
The rest of my post discussing value assignment, reality, etc, is not meant to be constrasted with Objectivism. Objectivism is simply a subclass of atheism where I thought the ‘final value regress’ issue was highlighted with clarity.
So that’s another 8 paragraphs off his response. Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on November 14, 2008
Toy Story is one of those movies that is constantly playing at my house. It is a ’safe’ movie for kids and it has enough material for the grown-ups that I don’t mind it playing over and over again. It was on again last night. In fact, it is on right now.
If you don’t know Toy Story, it is simply a story about toys- toys who come alive when you aren’t looking. In otherwords, a stock ‘toy story.’ In both movies there is a curious perspective presented that I really appreciated. In the first movie, Buzz Lightyear has to come to terms with not being a ‘real’ Buzz Lightyear. The realization that he is a mere child’s plaything drives him to drinking. Woody the Sheriff helps him through this difficult time. In the second movie, Woody the Sheriff finds out he is a valued collectible after he is separated from Andy, the child who owns him. Ultimately, it is Buzz who brings Woody the Sheriff back to his senses, using the same arguments that had been deployed by him. After all, both have Andy’s name written on the bottom of their feet.
Both movies address in their own way the difference between assigning value to yourself and having it assigned to you by someone else, someone more superior, something more real. Here then is the first valid insight into theology- in both movies, the ‘toys’ come to the understanding that their self-assigning was less valid and less meaningful than the meaning they would have relative to Andy, the child that loves them. If Toy Story were written to reflect modern secular humanistic relativistic atheistic worldviews, Buzz would have decided that he was a real Buzz Lightyear if he said he was. And Woody the Sheriff would have decided that being a collectible, ie, prestigious in his own eyes, if the important thing is that we value our individual selves (ala Objectivism).
That the movies end with the toys coming to terms with the fact that they are toys and finding immense satisfaction in their created purpose is one of those wholesome lessons that proves that however much Hollywood and secular humanists try, theological messages resonate. (See also Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty)
So, are we toys?
We don’t like to think so. We would like to think that if we merely declared that we were completely independent and autonomous from any creator it would be so. We would like to think that assigning ourselves whatever value we like means that we really have that value. There is the theory and then there is the reality. Buzz tried to fly to prove he really was the ‘real’ Buzz Lightyear and lost an arm. You can only mock reality so long before you get hurt. And like Woody the Sheriff discovers, coming to terms with your created purpose means that your value is found relative to a Lover but this is more ‘real’ and satisfying than the vaporous self-adulation apart from anyone else’s considerations. Read the rest of the entry… »
