By now everyone knows that the author of the Twilight books is a Mormon and that the books contain a distinctly fundamentalist view of gender roles. I confess that I have not read the books so I am taking that view in large part from commentaries I have read about the books and from my other confession… I have actually watched the movies and the last movie reminded me about some ideas I had about God and predestination.
Let me state for the record that I have heard that the movies are different from the books and that the scene that I will be discussing is reportedly not in the book. Now, before I go any further, I am expecting that the readers of this post have either seen the movies or aren’t planning on seeing the movies. In other words, SPOILER ALERT!
The final film was boring as fuck, but the one part of the movie that was at least a little bit entertaining was the massive fight scene at the end. While it was disappointing that it was revealed to have been an illusion, it was that illusion which grabbed my attention… that and seeing Carlisle’s head get chopped off… which was fairly satisfying even if it was an illusion.
The fight scene begins when Alice Cullen tries to share her vision of the future with Aro of the Volturi. The audience was led to believe that Alice was unsuccessful and as a result the battle begins. In the battle, the Volturi win, but Aro is killed. Then it is revealed that the battle never happened. The entire battle was the vision that Alice was sharing with Aro and the knowledge that Aro would be killed in the battle persuades him to prevent the battle before it begins thus ending the meaningless conflict and allowing our “heroes” to live happily ever after… forever.
The point here is that when Aro knows the outcome of the battle, he avoids the battle. That’s simple enough. Now, imagine God. He knows the outcome of every battle. He knows everything. He knows what would convince an atheist to not only believe in his existence, but also to embrace Christianity as a religion. Yet here I am, still a non-Christian atheist.
The very fact that I don’t believe God exists is actually evidence against God’s existence. If God wants me to believe in his existence, then I would believe in his existence. There is nothing I can do that would allow me to believe in God’s existence. If God exists, then whether or not I believe in him would be entirely up to him. Only he knows and is capable of presenting the evidence that would convince me. It is like Alice has shown God all the outcomes and if God doesn’t like the outcome, he would change course before the course was set.
If God does exist, then there really is no way around predestination and I would be doomed to be tortured for all eternity before I was even born. While many Christians reject the concept of predestination that seems like a tough argument in light of the scene from Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2. God would know the outcome of the situation and yet he did not change course like Aro did. It’s hard to believe that some old sparkly vampire has more wisdom than God, right?
The problem is that if God exists, then he created a system in which he knows ahead of time that most people will be tortured for all eternity. He could alter the system to avoid this undesirable outcome, but doesn’t. This means that God is stupid, immoral, or non-existent. I’ll let the believer decide which one.
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