My mind quickly scans through the plots of huge numbers of films and books. We open with the ordinary person and something extraordinary happens to them, we see that they tell “the truth” to a world that is rightly sceptical. It is a very common scenario. Terminator is a classic example. Sarah Connor spouts off nonsense about a killer robot from the future coming to get her, everybody around her has the correct sceptical response but we the audience know that she is right. But Terminator is MADE UP. When people say they are visited by aliens, possessed by the devil, turn into mermaids or hear the voice of God they are wrong. The bible, Book of Mormon and Hollywood not withstanding.

Am I paranoid or is there a conspiracy of anti-reason in the media, especially in Hollywood? The lunatic who says what cannot be true is always right. The lunatic is the prophet. The scientist is always the villain. All scientific technical advances lead to disaster, without fail. Nobody made a film about the Queen Mary, because she was a technical and commercial success, but the Titanic is the most popular ship ever to sail as far as Hollywood and cheap fiction is concerned, because of HUBRIS, the sin of acting as proud as only a god should. That one ship has had more novels and films written about it than any other. The moral in modern (anti science) fiction seems always to be “trust your gut instinct, reject science, reject progress.” Anybody might think it was all financed by the Church.

Logic never helps the heroes, Kirk uses his “heart” to find the right answer, Spock's logic usually gets in the way. It is time we stood up and protested; in real life science, reason, logic and good engineering will kick the arse of any wish-upon-a-star god. Trust-in-the-force be buggered, get a proper gun and shoot the bastards.

But how could a film or book be written in the other way, showing science as the hero and superstition as the villain? It is hard to do. Reality is boring, stories need conflict. Perhaps it is not a conspiracy, just one of those things, novels get written that way because it is easier. Image the scene, the top Hollywood producer reads the script. “Cloud cloaked island, yes, good, REAL DINOSAURS! I love it! DNA from amber, whatever. Richard Attenborough opens dinosaur theme park, makes lot's of money... hey what is this crap? I want to see blood, action, how about somebody getting chewed up by a T Rex? Somebody everyone loves to hate, tax inspector or lawyer. Take it back, rewrite it and let's have some ACTION! Movie goers don't want to learn about science...”

That realization does not help the situation we have in that millions of people are daily being fed anti-reason messages by the entertainment media. Messages that subtly reinforce the anti-reason at the heart of religion. Playing to the box office means postulating rubbish like the idea of heaven shown in Ghost, a clear message that good people go to heaven and evil ones go to hell. The ultimate in dodgy scenarios is in Star Wars, there is no creator god but there is a force that can change the world and the prospect of a form of immortality.

We will continue to get films like The Blair Witch Project which fill all our minds with stupid concepts of forces of good and evil. They entertain the masses but they are polluting our culture, to me they do far more harm than good.

Such nonsense fills our culture. It is everywhere. Religious imagery and concepts fill our world, polluting our thinking. Most people are too weak to resist this tide of anti-reason. They synthesize their own version of reality along with these corrosive memes. After all, there must be something in it...

To me the “there must be something in it” meme is the worst idea mankind ever had. Resist the tide of anti-reason.

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