Further to Neuromyth: We only use 10% of our brain, at Evolution News & Views, Casey Luskin reviews a film Lucy that depends on that mythic claim:
Morgan Freeman plays a professor who has conceived hypotheses about what might happen to a person if she started to use more than 10-15 percent of her brain. Lucy confirms and surpasses his predictions. Here’s where the evolutionary connection comes in, starting with the parallel between Johansson’s Lucy and Lucy the famous australopithecine.
The film opens with a scene of the ancient Lucy, drinking water from a river. In another early scene, the boyfriend of Johansson’s Lucy tells her that he went to a museum and found that Lucy was the name of the first woman. Just as that Lucy was supposedly a step in our evolution, in that she purportedly used more of her brain than her ancestors did, so Scarlett Johansson’s Lucy is a further evolutionary step. Lucy the australopithecine makes additional artsy appearances throughout the movie.
This is the main message: that transhumanism is a reality, and humans will be able to continue their prior evolution and entirely surpass our current stage of intelligence. Human technology — in this case through drug use – might be the key to enable humans to reach their maximum intellectual potential.
Or not.
You’d never know it from Mr. Besson’s treatment of the subject, but it’s a complete myth that humans only use 10 percent of our brains. From Scientific American: … More.
Scarlett Johansson also making heads here, if the name rings a bell.
See also: Human origins: The war of trivial explanations
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Hey guys, it’s just a movie. Get over it. The scene at the beginning of 2001 a Space Odyssey was also full of symbolism with an evolutionary theme, but I don’t hear anyone in the Creationist community criticizing it. Could it possibly be because there was a serious supernatural theme to it?
I’m surprised that Luskin didn’t try to stretch the link between this movie and the much hated idea of evolution. After all, The Lucy fossil was discovered by Donald Johanson, only one letter off from Scarlett Johansson’s name (a random mutation perhaps?). And in the movie, her powers come from a mind altering drug. Lucy the fossil was named after the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, commonly believed to be a reference to LSD, another mind altering drug.
Maybe Luskin should wrap the tinfoil a little tighter.
In one scene: Lucy the [super]human is time traveling and meets “Lucy” the australopithecine. There is then a moment where Lucy (the human) reaches out her hand to the Lucy (the australopithecine) and they touch finger – a’la’ Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam
And in the final scene, Lucy has disappeared/evaporated into dust it seems. One of the characters asks where she went. Then he receives a text which reads “I’m everywhere”. Wow, really?
Casey’s review is accurate enough. I’d say it is pro transhumanism and pro evolutionism.
No one here hates evolution. What we hate are false ideas trumpeted as true facts.
Mung: “No one here hates evolution. What we hate are false ideas trumpeted as true facts.”
Like intelligent design and irreducible complexity? For once, you and I agree.
But, it’s still just a movie.
As to:
and AB’s flippant reply
Actually this flight of unrestrained, evidence-free, imagination is much more than ‘just a movie’. This type of unrestrained imagination is actually typical of materialistic thought,,,
To illustrate this point, this following video, at the 6:49 mark, has a very interesting quote:
Contrary to Barrow and Tipler’s beliefs, at the time they wrote their book (Tipler has subsequently converted to Christianity), of man having a very long time to evolve into some universe creating super-beings, the actual reality of the matter is far more humbling than their grandiose delusions:
If that was not enough to dampen any delusions of man evolving into some type of universe creating super-being (i.e. god with a small g), it is now found that, instead of humans evolving to greater and greater heights of intellectual prowess, humans have been, in fact, DE-volving instead of E-volving:
Thus, as is usual, when one looks at the actual scientific evidence, one finds that the evidence itself sharply contradicts what Darwinists claim, and imagine, to be true.
Verse and Music:
bornagain77 wrote
Geeze, get over it! It’s only Darwinism. It’s not as if it were true or anything. 😉
Neo-Darwinism is simply supposed to provide a plausible materialistic mythology that lets people feel comfortable as they overconsume beyond sustainable levels, justifies their self-indulgent lifestyle while the majority of the world starves, or anesthetizes their conscience for whatever reason.
Now granted that many people feel that they don’t have any reason to doubt what they were taught in school or what the Darwinian experts continually insist must be true, anyone with even a basic understanding of the overwhelming complexity of life and how probability works, can quickly see through the baloney for what it is—a 19th century pseudo–scientific philosophical relic that can explain absolutely anything but has never successfully been able to predict something.
-Q