Renowned theologian Dr. Thomas Jay Oord joins the dynamic trio of Andy Walsh, Kevin Schaeffer, and TJ Blackwell on a philosophical rollercoaster ride through the murky waters of destiny and free will, all sparked by the mind-bending narrative of *The Minority Report*. The conversation kicks off with a bold assertion that we don't get to pick our beliefs; they pick us instead, setting the stage for a deep dive into what justice, redemption, and the future mean in this context. The hosts and Dr. Oord explore the implications of a world where crimes can be predicted before they happen, asking whether such foresight strips away moral responsibility or if it actually enhances it. As they unpack the film's complex themes, they also manage to weave in humor and light-hearted banter, making for a relaxed yet intellectually stimulating discussion. Get ready for some thought-provoking insights on how this sci-fi flick mirrors real-world dilemmas about choice and consequence, sprinkled with a healthy dose of wit!

The dialogue begins with Amandi and the regular crew – TJ and Kevin – introducing their special guest, Thomas J. Ord, a leading voice in theology and philosophy. They jump right into the philosophical deep end, discussing how beliefs shape identities, akin to the narrative of 'Minority Report'. The film serves as a jumping-off point for a broader conversation about morality, justice, and the implications of predictive policing in a society that punishes individuals for crimes they haven't yet committed. The hosts grapple with the ethical dilemmas presented in the film, questioning the nature of free will in a world where the future seems predetermined by technology.

As the episode unfolds, it becomes clear that the hosts share a genuine camaraderie, interspersing serious philosophical discourse with light-hearted anecdotes about their personal experiences with the film. TJ's excitement about the latest zombie video game contrasts sharply with the weighty themes of the movie, providing a refreshing balance of humor and intellect. This blend of personal narrative and philosophical inquiry keeps listeners engaged while prompting them to reflect on the complexities of choice, morality, and the impact of technology on human behavior. The conversation flows naturally from one topic to another, showcasing the hosts' ability to intertwine their geeky interests with profound questions about society and justice.

As the episode draws to a close, the hosts hint at a bonus segment that promises to delve deeper into the film's predictions about the future, inviting listeners to reflect on how these themes are already playing out in today's world. Their banter remains witty and relaxed, ensuring that even the most profound topics are accessible and engaging for all audiences. This episode not only serves as a tribute to 'Minority Report' but also encourages listeners to consider their own beliefs about morality, justice, and the choices they make in a rapidly changing world.

Takeaways:

• The film 'Minority Report' raises profound questions about free will and determinism, making viewers ponder how much control we truly have over our actions.
• Dr. Thomas Jay Oord emphasizes that our beliefs often choose us, particularly regarding concepts of justice and morality, rather than the other way around.
• The discussion dives into the implications of predicting future crimes, questioning the morality of punishing individuals for actions they haven't yet committed.
• The precogs in 'Minority Report' present an intriguing paradox: while they can foresee future events, their visions are not infallible, reflecting the complexities of knowledge and free will.
• The hosts explore how the technology depicted in 'Minority Report' resonates with our current reality, especially as advancements in AI and surveillance become more prevalent.
• The conversation highlights the parallels between the film's narrative and theological discussions, particularly around the nature of divine foreknowledge and moral responsibility.

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We discuss all this and more in this one! Join in the conversation with us on Discord now!

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Today we're going to find out what beliefs chose us about justice, redemption, the future, and more. And I say we. I am myself, Amandi Walsh and I'm here with TJ And Kevin, regular hosts of the Systematic Ecology podcast.

And we have a special guest with us today, Thomas J. Ord. I'm gonna give you a little bit of a bio about him. He is a theologian, philosopher and scholar of multidisciplinary studies.

He's a best selling and award winning author, having written or edited more than 30 books. And as a personal plug, the uncontrolled love of God was personally significant for me.

He directs the center for Open and Relational Theology and he is known for his research and writing on love, open and relational theology, science and religion, evil and power, and the implications of freedom and relationships for transformation. Which is why we've asked them to discuss this film about destiny and choices.

Welcome.

Tom, do you want to say a little bit more about yourself and also anything you might be geeking out on these days?

Aha.

Well, thanks for the opportunity. I'm looking forward to this discussion and this particular movie. I think it's going to spark some great dialogue. What am I doing these days?

You know, I'm still directing doctoral students in open and relational theology. I'm writing a systematic theology. Actually, it's a systematic theology of love.

And I'm posting the chapters on Substack, so if folks are interested in that, they might check that out.

Pretty cool.

Excellent. And tj, what are you geeking out on these days?

The new Dying Light game. Dying like the Beast. It's so good. A true successor to the first game. It's phenomenal. And having a great time.

Awesome.

What sort of game are we talking about?

Oh, zombies.

How did I not know that?

Oh yeah, it's phenomenal. It's so fun. It's such a good time. Go drop kick a few. Make a new weapon because it broke. Drop kick some more zombies. It's a little parkour in there.

Awesome. And Kevin, how about you?

So I saw the new Paul Thomas Anderson film the other day. One battle after another. It is amazing.

I would say as soon as you're done listening to this podcast, go see it on the biggest screen as soon as you can. Leonardo DiCapiero de Taylor, Sean Penn, Benicho del Toro. It's a big action war epic, but also a very timely satire. I loved it.

I thought it was one of Anderson's best. And yeah, I'll probably. I'll talk about it more in the future if I get some other hosts of the show to watch it.

There's a lot to dissect in that film, but all I can say right now is go see it.

Yeah, I've seen like an absurd number of people saying, hey, I saw this in 70 millimeter IMAX. Wildest film experience of my life.

I guess I forgot to do my geek out thing too. I apologize for that. My geek out's probably going to date me. But I went to see Spinal Tap 2 last week or so.

Spinal Tap 1 came out my senior year of high school. I am. So we're talking 40 years ago. And it was the lines from that movie were lines said over and over in the punk bands that I was in in college.

And so I went and saw the sequel and it was good. It wasn't, you know, awesome, but it was. It was good.

Yeah, I need to check that out.

Yeah, I will admit that I also went and checked that out and I'm still kind of reeling about the fact that there was both, you know, fart jokes and a joke about Karl Heinz Stockhausen. It is rare to find a film that combines those two niches of humor. Yeah. So let's take care of a little bit of business.

So we are the Systematic Geekology podcast, not to be confused with Tom's Systematic Theology. And we would be happy for you to subscribe, rate and review us anywhere that you can do that.

We also want to give a special thanks to mutual friend of the show and of our guest, Trip Fuller for his financial support and remind you that you too can get a shout out by supporting our show for $5 a month on our new Fourth Wall site. The link should be in the description for wherever you got this show. And you can get extra content there.

Like the bonus question to this episode, we'll be talking about the movie's predictions of the future. You can buy merch and you can leave a one time financial gift there as well as signing up for regular donations, regular contributions.

All right, so that takes care of paying the bills. Let's get into the movie. So I believe that, Kevin, you were gonna give us a little bit of a plot summary for the film. Why don't we start there?

Yeah, absolutely.

If You've not seen this movie, please go see it and then come back and listen to the podcast because we're gonna get deep into spoilers and themes and everything. I mean, it is, you know, a 20 year old movie. So, you know, it's. If you're, you know, worried about spoilers, you know, you may have been missing out.

And in the opening scene, they go and stop a man who would have otherwise killed his wife and her lover. And so this sets the stage. The Pre crime has been in existence for, I think a couple years at this point.

And John Anderton is one of the main officers and his backstory is that his son went missing years earlier when he was at a swimming pool with them and he had taken his eyes off for one second and his son went missing. So this threw him into, I mean, crisis mode.

And it, the concept of Pre crime really appealed to him because if he could, he'd prevent something like this from ever happening to anyone else. He would. So that kind of sets the stage.

Meanwhile, there is a federal agent played by Colin Farrell, who is investigating the Pre crime division to see if it's legitimate or not, because at this point it's only operating in Washington. But the director of it wants it to go national.

And things really kick off in the movie when John Anderton finds that he is on a is one of the people that a Precog predicts will he will be a murderer. And so he is set up as a criminal.

He is under impression that there's no way this could be true because when he sees the Precog vision, he doesn't even know the man that he is supposedly destined to kill. So he goes on a detective case to try to clear his name and figure out what's really going on.

Sequence of a sequence of events lays out from that point on.

And eventually we get to the climax that when he does come into contact with this man that was in the vision, it looks as though this is the man who kidnapped his son years earlier and that's what propels him to potentially kill him. But ultimately, when the moment comes and he's in a hotel room and he's about to gun the guy down, he chooses not to and arrests the man.

However, this man ends up still dying because it the whole thing turned out to be he was hired by someone to pretend to be this, you know, kidnapper and the man responsible for the disappearance of John Anderson son. And so, and he says claims that if he doesn't carry through with this then the people who hired him are going to kill his family.

So he then falls out the window of the hotel, kills himself.

This then propels John into the climax of the movie which he finds out that the leader of pre crime played by Max von Sadow is actually set up everything as this big conspiracy. He was is the one who orchestrated the murder of Agatha's mother. Agatha being the main pre cog here.

And so in the final act, John works to expose Max von Sadow's character and expose pre crime. And eventually pre crime is dismantled and you know, John and his ex wife go and live in peace.

And also the Precogs are freed and they live a peaceful life at the very end. So that is a little bit about this movie, but we're going to get much deeper into it in this discussion.

Sure, yeah.

Thanks.

So and just for a little bit of context, I was thinking about this movie came out for me a couple of years after I graduated from college, still pre kids. So I was very much in the audience for a kind of high concept, trippy hard sci fi story.

We were 10 years after things like Jurassic park and Terminator 2.

And so there was that kind of sense that we finally had the technology to realize any kind of visual storytelling that wanted to about the future or alternate technologies, things like that, that you could put anything on the screen. Now you're only limited by your imagination. And so I think we kind of saw from that a boom of these kind of hard sci fi kind of stories.

And so, you know, I was hooked. I was excited about it. I was there to see it in the theaters when it came out and along with a few other people. And you know, I think it is.

It has lived on as a hit from that time.

But how about everybody else, you know, either your memories of seeing the film for the first time or your current impressions, maybe you got to revisit it recently.

Yeah, so for me, when this came out, I was really excited to be turning three years old.

So it came to me much later in life, like when I was in college and like, really getting into, like, by the time I was, you know, 15, 16, like, good sci fi movies didn't really come out anymore. It was all horror or sci fi fantasy. So I was having to go back and, like, find old science fiction gems like Total Recall. This.

I used to get Minority Report and Total Recall mixed up in my head because I'd never seen either one of them. I had to fix that.

Like when I watched it, like when specifically when Anderton Tom Cruise is interfacing with the temple or, you know, messing around with the screens and the gloves, he's wearing those. Like, I saw those and immediately I was like, oh, that's. Those are the gloves that Imogene Heap uses to write music, which is also awesome.

They're called Mimu gloves. Super cool. Super, super cool. She has a tiny desk concert where she explains it. Check that out if you've never seen it. Amazing technology.

And it's just funny to see how much of the stuff that they're doing in that movie has actually just come into fruition. Like, you know, touchscreen surfaces, multi touch screen surfaces, gesture controls. Super dope.

Super cool for me to watch as a young adult, closer to the future than they were.

Well, and like tj, I was also a kid when this movie came out. I think I was about 8 then, so also did not get to see in theaters. This is one I would love to see in theaters at some point.

I think I first discovered it, though, when I was probably late middle school or early high school. I think I got. I remember distinctly watching it on a road trip and on the TV there. And I.

If I'm not mistaken, I think I got it as a rental from Netflix back when Netflix was doing, before Netflix was a streaming service, when it was doing the send you a DVD in the mail system. That was how it used to work. And I, I believe I got it then because I still remember even as a kid when the movie came out, seeing the trailers.

But it was also maybe not quite appropriate for me at the time or I don't know if I would have understood it as much. And so. But I really fell in love with it when I did see it, you know, probably in sometime in my adolescent years.

And yeah, I was just mesmerized by, like DJ said, this was a big moment for digital effects and. But also it's just such a smart screenplay.

And this was an example of a movie that really combined good writing with spectacle and with, you know, big action sci fi sequences. So I loved it from the moment I first saw it. And it's one that is very rewarding on every watch. So really excited.

But, Tom, what was your earliest memories of this movie?

I'm pretty sure I rented this from Blockbuster when it came out, but then I watched it again just last night. So it's very fresh in my mind. When I first saw it, I was very disappointed in it. I didn't like it. Well, I shouldn't say it that strongly.

I like the fact that it was dealing with metaphysical issues like the nature of time, questions of free will, questions of moral responsibility, epistemology, those kinds of things. But it presupposed a view of time and God I think that I strongly reject, which is probably one of the reasons I'm on this conversation today.

And so at that time, I didn't like it. When I watched it again last night, there were still things I didn't like, but I had a much deeper appreciation for.

So I think it does a great job of posing crucial questions that theologians like me are asking and trying to answer.

Well, that seems about as good of a setup as we're going to get for why don't you take a little detour and tell us a little bit more about your theological views and framework. That puts you maybe at odds with the structure of the film or the metaphysics of the film.

Sounds good. I think I'll contrast myself with Thomas Aquinas.

Thomas Aquinas, Roman Catholic theologian, probably the most influential systematic theologian in Christian history.

He and many others in the not only Christian tradition, but Islam and Judaism as well, have thought that in some way God is outside of time or timeless.

And because of that, God not only knows what happened in the past, what's happening in the present, but God can know with 100% accuracy everything that's going to happen in the future. In fact, Thomas Aquinas and I think this is especially appropriate for this movie. Thomas Aquinas often talks about God seeing the future.

So it's a visual metaphor of God's knowledge of what's going to happen. Of course, in this movie you have three individuals called precogs who somehow can see video type footage of what's going to happen in the future.

And that seems very similar to what maybe Thomas Aquinas might have had in mind. I, however, reject that view of God and time. I don't think God knows the future with certainty.

I don't think the future is capable of being known because it's not. Doesn't yet exist.

So I think God knows everything that happened in the past, everything that's happening in the present, and all possibilities for the future. But again, God can't know the future in my view, because there is no future yet to be known. The reason I believe this, there's actually several.

But one of them has to do with the questions of free will and moral responsibility, which I'm sure we'll get to. Should I stop there as sort of a way to launch into things?

I think that's a good. That sets table hour. That gives us a good kind of context for where you're coming from. Yeah.

Does anybody else have any thoughts that they want to add there to your own perspective on these issues or your own background on the topics of time and free will and so forth?

No. I feel like this kind of movie is kind of amazing just because it gives you the opportunity to think about these things deeply.

And if you don't want to do that, you can just sit there and be like, oh man, that's Tom Cruise. Look at him run. That's the Tom Cruise run.

Look at him go.

But really just impressive. Super impressive film, especially be based off of a novella adapting not that much content into a movie this long and well made.

Just feel like needs to be mentioned before we get pretty deep here in a couple minutes, so.

Oh, I agree with TJ in that that's what I love about this movie so much, is that it does such a good job of the action spectacle, the characterization, the story. This blend of sci fi, noir and, you know, has this mainstream appeal. But it asks these deep questions whether you agree with the ideas or not.

I like that it is not a know. It just, you know, it could have easily. I think, I think a lesser screenplay could have just thrown out this concept and be like, okay, cool.

And then just done a bunch of crazy action sequences and had Tom running around all the time. But it takes all of those elements and really trains it.

It always, it's always grounded in the characters and the story and the exploration of themes and ideas and Yeah, I don't, I like. I don't know.

Do we want to go ahead and get into kind of, because I know Tom, you just brought up some really big points about the movie's notion of free will. And yeah, I mean I, I can say a little bit about, I guess, my background there because I, I mean there is so much to think about with this film.

Well, I, I think before we go there, I'd like to say one other thing about this film. And it's sort of what makes it, I think, a little bit different from a lot of sci fi movies.

Maybe you guys can correct me because you probably know the genre better than I do, but a lot of sci fi movies that explore questions of time, explore the possibility of going into the past and somehow altering the past to change the present. You know, maybe one of the best known is Back to the Future, right?

Goes back in time and now they have to do things so that the present is going to be a particular way. And that is always, you know, always raises really difficult questions. Like really, can you go in the past?

And if the past is affected, then how is that going to be in the present? And if you made a decision in the present to go back in the past, isn't that decision in the present already determined by the past?

And all these kinds of really difficult questions. But what makes this movie, I think different from at least a lot of sci fi movies I've watched is it's not talking about returning to the past.

It's somehow thinking about knowledge of the future and how knowledge of the future can be determinative for in this case, the moral responsibility of the people involved. People about ready to commit murder, apparently. So I think that's a little bit of a twist. Am I wrong about that?

Are there lots of other movies that talk about the future, knowing the future or. Yeah, am I wrong about that?

I think you're very correct for the most. I mean, there are a lot of type of movies that are obsessed with time travel.

Do you know, and they have these debates about, you know, oh, if you go back in time and you fi. Alter something, does that create an alternate future? But. Right, but yeah, there are, there's not. And especially at this time.

I think like this was a unique one in that respect. It explored visions of the future and, and it also emphasizes in the movie that they are still imperfect.

And that's why Colin Farrell's character is critical of the pre crime division because he says there's no degree of certainty here. It's all, it's still.

Even if there is a 99% chance that this person is going to commit murder, there's still that, you know, chance of what if they decide not to go through with it? And how do you deal with the ethical ramifications of that. And so. But no, I think.

I mean, I don't know, Andy, if you have any, but yeah, when I think of cyber movies that deal with time, so much to do with time travel, and even if they travel into the future, it's still, you know, like. I don't know, it's really. With time travel. This isn't really a time travel movie.

It's relating to what if we had the technology to look into the future? And how would that impact, you know, law enforcement? So I think it's very unique in that respect.

Yeah.

The only other film that comes immediately to mind is Arrival.

That's a good one. Yeah. Yeah. Great movie.

If anyone's not familiar on the podcast or at home, it involves contact with aliens who have perhaps an experience of time that is more similar to the one that Tom was ascribing to Thomas Aquinas.

They experience all of their lifetime as a single moment or simultaneously, or in some sense, they have access to the entirety of their lifetimes at all times. In a way that perhaps we. And the movie kind of highlights this.

Right.

That we might not really have the right words to understand that experience because it is such a different kind of experience. But as a result of that, the movie does get into the concept of sort of retro causality.

Can events that have happened in the future have some impact on the past? Which I think is the flavor of what you're getting at with the fact that these.

These murders that have not yet been committed yet somehow cause people to wind up in prison. Right. And so how does that work? And is that just. And so forth.

It is interesting because the film at the same time opposes Tom's viewpoint because it is, at its core. You know, we find out later that it's all happening because someone manipulated the past, but when it was still the present.

So not really, but it does still relate to the past. And then I feel like most sci fi properties that do travel into the future and actually deal with that are.

It's just been relegated to video games because it's just something that you don't want to spend, you know, part of your two and a half hour runtime of a movie on. On a video game where you're supposed to, you know, spend 20, 40, 60, 100 hours with it.

Studios are a lot more likely to take that risk and sideline you there in the future of a past that you created. Like in Final Fantasy 13 does that a lot. I know, but that's kind of a niche Pull for most of our audience, I think.

But Minority Report is interesting because it's just assuming that the future is correct, and that's part of Tom Cruise. John Anderton's role in the film is proving that wrong, along with Agatha's help, is just because they saw it does not mean it's going to happen.

Yeah, and I think that. Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah, no, go ahead.

I was going to say Kevin mentions that, too, and I think that's one of the places the movie is dis.

Analogous to the theology of Thomas Aquinas and others, insofar as Aquinas and others who think that God knows the future also think God can't make any mistakes about that. It is infallible.

Whereas in this movie, you start the movie thinking it's infallible, but then it turns out there's the Minority Report, there is another way of seeing things, and these Precogs don't all agree. And in fact, by the time the movie's ending, you even have people making choices that go against what the Precog saw in the future.

So they're obviously not infallible. So that's one of the differences, I think, in this movie from the theological notion of divine foreknowledge.

And do we think that that is an epistemological issue, Right, that just these Precogs have an imperfect knowledge of a set future? Or is it an ontological issue that the future is not as set as is implied by those visions?

Yeah, I don't think the movie resolves that question.

In theology, I can't think of anybody who believes that God's knowledge of the future doesn't also entail the ontological fact that the future is the way God knows it to be. So, you know, God's knowing and the future being the way it is, that's infallible. Of course, for us, that's maybe another question like.

But ultimately, I think a lot rides on this issue of whether or not the future is settled ontologically. If it's a fact, if it's a final state of affairs, if it's fixed and someone like me. Well, I won't say someone like me me.

I. I don't think that anyone, God included, can be absolutely certain about the future unless that future is settled, fixed, determined.

But if that future is settled, fixed and determined, then that seems contrary to free will, if free will is making choices amongst possibilities, and one could do otherwise. So that's where the tension arises in the movie and in theology. If God knows the Future. And God can't be wrong about that. The future must be settled.

But a settled future seems to be incompatible with us freely choosing among live options.

Right. Which is my problem with your point of view, because I just don't.

You know, you and I just don't agree on what time is, because that's all that we disagree on is I don't believe time is constant.

Just a small matter like that.

Something we can ignore.

That's right.

Yeah.

I would say, if I was. Well, I guess we are debating.

I would say, TJ that you live your life like I do, that time is real, that the future is a realm of possibilities, the past is settled. The way you live your life suggests you think time is real.

But I could understand that for philosophical reasons or theological reasons, you might want to make the argument that you're living as if time is real just might not be true about the ultimate state of things. Again, I don't agree with that, but I could. I know people who make that argument.

Yeah. Yeah. Just because I am just a man.

As am I.

Yeah.

I definitely don't want to claim to have this all figured out, but I do want to claim, just to be honorary TJ that my view makes a lot more sense of life and of God and of Scripture. How's that for putting down the gauntlet?

Nothing I haven't heard before. That's just normal Tom stuff.

That's right. I love it.

I think now you've said that on both of my shows.

You have, however, on your side, the majority of the thinkers in the Christian tradition.

Right.

Not only Tom.

I don't like a lot of them, to be fair.

You don't? Okay.

I don't like Thomas Aquinas.

Yeah, I don't either. At least his doctrine of God. I think he's wise on a lot of things, but not when it comes to God.

But I do think even people who agree with you will admit that a more typical reading of scripture supports my view better than yours.

Probably so.

I think one of the big questions that I kept asking myself when I was watching the Minority Report last night, again, is a question that I guess I kind of posed for the three of you. And that's the question of moral responsibility. And the film asks it.

You know, if these Precogs are seeing something that's going to happen in the future, it hasn't yet happened.

And the police arrive before the murder occurs, is the person who was going to do the murder, at least with the Precog, said they were going to do is that person genuinely morally responsible? We normally think a person isn't morally responsible for some action unless that person actually does the action.

But in this case in the Minority Report, there's so much trust that the Precogs know what's going to happen in advance that they make the assumption that the person not only would have done it, but that would have. Doing the action is the truth of the matter. Ontologically, that's a pretty big jump.

It's a jump I think a lot of theologians want to make when they say that God foreknows from all eternity that the four of us are going to have this conversation right now, and yet we somehow freely do it, and we're somehow freely responsible. And if we sin in this, we somehow are responsible for that sin. But it seems weird to think that until.

That we're guilty of something even before we've even done it.

Yeah. Well. So Philip Dick and Steven Spielberg, I do believe, are Calvinist, which might have caused this problem.

Is that right?

Okay, maybe that's what it seems like from the movie.

From the movie. Yeah, I guess so.

But I do think it's interesting because they convinced at least all of Washington, D.C. and then the world, or at least the country. They all operate on the supposition that the future is set in stone until John Anderton proves otherwise.

And I can understand the attraction of it, because this was the thing I was asking myself last night. I was asking myself about my own theology.

People were quite willing not only to set aside their quibbles about free will when it comes to the murder, but also set aside any quibbles they might have about having these three Precog humans laying in vats all day thinking about the future. I mean, that's. There's a kind of moral question there. They were.

They were willing to set aside those kind of qualms and squeamishness for the sake of preventing future murders. And I think that's a really big question.

To what degree are we willing to sacrifice people's freedom and rights about what they choose to do with themselves for the sake of solving some murder or.

Well, I think it's. I think it's a better question if we ask it more personally.

Like, the four of us, would we go spend the rest of our lives in a vat to prevent every future murder forever? I think I might.

Yeah.

But that assumes that the Precogs were there voluntarily, which they weren't.

Yeah. Kind of hard. Yeah. I'm not. It is kind of movie doesn't settle that clearly. But I think I'm with you. They don't seem like they were there voluntarily.

Yeah.

Agatha got manipulated into it, at least. And they don't really cover the other two. They know, like, we know their lab experiments maybe.

Can I change your question slightly, tj? I'll still keep it personal. Would you ask your partner to spend the rest of their lives in a vat to prevent the murders of other people?

Would you ask someone else to sacrifice their freedom and integrity to prevent murders?

Right.

So that's the reason that I framed mine in that way, because I think that is what most people in the world of Minority Report are assuming, that they volunteered for that. Yeah. And that makes it easier to set aside the moral quandary. It's like, oh, well, I'm sure they volunteered that.

Yeah.

Well, and a lot of other sci fi, I think, particularly today in the last maybe 10 years or so, has asked similar questions.

So me and TJ and Christian, other hosts of the show, did an episode on the Last of Us earlier this year, and we end in the first game, in the first season. It very much poses this question of, you know, the main character is not willing to give up his adopted daughter to potentially save the world.

And even though. Even though she would have granted him the freedom to do so.

And it does raise such these questions as, like, what are we more desperate to hold on to our individuality, our own needs, or are we willing to give up things for, you know, quote, unquote, the greater good? There's a lot, I think, of that DNA in this movie as well.

And I don't know if I have a good, like, a lot of these questions I don't know if I have a good answer to. It's honestly something I don't have to really pause and reflect on because. But.

But I think too, we are, you know, we're getting into more uncertainty in the world as technologies are shifting.

So if we had this kind of technology in the future there, like you said, Tom, I think there is definitely an appeal there because it's like, you see how much horrendous violence happens in the world today, and if you had a potential anecdote to that, would you sacrifice potentially some freedom and Substance of notion in order to make the world safer. Because the movie really does tackle that at the beginning when they show that montage of people who, you know, because that. The other thing we.

I didn't mention the plot summary is in this. Since pre crime started in this world, the city has not had a murder in six years.

And so that, you know, shows that, like, you know, despite the, you know, really shady origins of this division and this experiment, and there were horrible things done to the pre cogs, you know, there's like. It still raises that question of, like, was it worth it? Because there is certainly an appeal there of a world without murder.

And so, you know, there's. I don't think there's an easy answer here to definitively say what we would do in those scenarios.

And so to answer your question, I think if I couldn't ask my partner to do that, but if they came to me and said they wanted to do that, then I would probably let them.

Yeah. And I like that you earlier said you would do that if you knew that you're laying in the vat and seeing these visions, even the painful.

Painful as it is, would, if not reduce, if not totally eliminate, at least highly reduce the number of murders in the future. You do that so that, you know, that makes me think of tj. Here's a segment of our episode for us. Who's morally superior, TJ or Jesus of Nazareth?

Let's say Jesus is divine and knows the future. And Jesus knows that going to the cross means that people are going to find salvation.

Maybe everyone, maybe just some, but somehow Jesus knows that a good portion of the planet is going to find salvation because he dies. And TJ knows if he's in the vat looking at the films of future murders, he's going to prevent some, but not all. I would say if Jesus.

The number of Jesus or the number of people that Jesus could potentially save is far, far greater than TJ given that TJ just started living just now. And presumably if Jesus is divine, Jesus has all time or whatever.

So you can make a good argument that TJ is actually morally superior to Jesus of Nazareth. Do you think of that?

I think.

I think Josh and Christian would take that stance and run with it to introduce me on this show.

Good. More loving than Jesus.

Yeah. But I would say probably Jesus of Nazareth because he did it. Mine's hypothetical.

All right.

For now, at least. But we'll see. Maybe that's the form that he'll come back in, is as a Precog, maybe so Maybe so. So it is Andy.

I just, you know that we've, we've gone some places. I did not, I did not see any of this coming, but it felt like we hit maybe a lull in that. In that direction.

So maybe I can nudge us in a little bit of a different direction and since we've gotten fairly theological and biblical here, maybe we'll stay in that vein. Right. So one of, one of the interesting things about the Precog visions is that while they are literal, right. They.

They are presented in the form of essentially video footage.

Right.

That somehow they can extract video footage from these, these folks minds. There's a lot of interpretation or exploration that needs to go into figure out what, what's actually being seen. Right.

And the, probably the most notable point is in the pre cog vision of the murder that Tom Cruise's character is going to commit, there appears to be a third man in. In the room in the vision and probably an intentional nod to the film by that name as well. And.

But it eventually comes out that that's actually a billboard of a man across the street or across the way from the building.

And just the trick of scale and forced perspective makes it look like he's the right size to be a person in the room, but it's actually a many feet tall billboard across the street.

So yeah, so we have these little visions, but they're not necessarily straightforward to understand, which kind of to me rhymes a little bit with certainly prophecy and other storytelling forms where, you know, the trick that the devil plays or the prophet plays or the oracle plays is that, you know, the thing will. The thing, the prophecy will come true, but you misunderstood it. And so there's some twist in the narrative that the hero or whomever doesn't quite.

Doesn't quite get that. And maybe there's an element of, you know, interpret. This is obviously an element of interpretation to scriptural prophecy and so forth.

So yeah, I just kind of wanted to put that on the table. I could have maybe formed that in the better as a question, but I'd love to hear folks takes on those issues.

I'll start. Yeah, I think you raise something that's dis.

Analogous to the theological question of God knowing the future and being able to provide a revelation of what that future is. Because as you rightly say, the revelation provided by the Precogs in the movie is ambiguous.

Requires a great deal of interpretation from Tom Cruise and others.

And while that may sound parallel to let's say, revelation, we find in scripture having multiple Interpretations or revelations that people allegedly have from mystical experiences, not necessarily aligning with the mystical experience of others.

The big difference I see is that most theologians have thought that God is omnipotent, and God, unlike the Precogs, could guarantee at least an omnipotent God could guarantee that we have an unambiguous revelation, a crystal clear revelation. And of course, that's what some people think they get with Scripture, or.

Or they think they get that from the church or they think they get that from their personal mystical experience. But I have lots of doubts that anyone gets any unambiguous revelation. So that's one of the differences.

God of traditional theism is omnipotent and could make the revelations crystal clear. The Precogs and the minority part apparently don't have that ability.

Yeah, part of it is just. It adds to really good storytelling here in the movie because, you know, I mean, they're.

They're the multiple angles here because I also know it was funny too. I'm.

This is kind of a side note, but I remember a screenwriting class in college where we actually looked at the pitch for this film and the professor actually criticized the climax. I was talking about earlier where it goes into how Max von Sadow's character was behind all this, the corruption.

And it felt like, kind of like the story ends with, you know, when Tom Cruise's character decides to not kill the man before he knows that he was a fake and he wasn't the guy who kidnapped his son.

But, you know, all of those elements really help enhance the film in terms of, know, providing, like, oh, the preconds vision is not fully, you know, accurate. And I do that.

I mean, Tom, everything you're talking about here, I'm thinking just the fact of all of my theological upbringing and, you know, where I am now, how it's changed drastically. I grew up in a very fundamentalist church, and then my views have changed a lot over the years.

And I did intervarsity in college and I'm now at a progressive at church now that I really love and I do this podcast. But I was. We were even doing. My church is doing. I just finished a series on Revelation.

And I, you know, growing up, I was always taught to view it as very literal, when in fact, like for a lot, I think this is my view at least that a lot of the kind of prophets in scripture that have these visions, it's not fully, I would say linear and accurate.

A lot of it is sort of metaphorical interpretations that they can still produce truth There, but it's not that, oh, all of these images are going to be things we actually see happen in a literal sense. And I think there's a connection here to this movie in that sense. Like how so? I think pre thogs and prophets. Scripture could have a parallel there.

Yeah, I like that. Yeah.

I do think, however, the prophets in the Bible do still benefit from it already having happened in most cases and not being written about until after the fact. That's not really relevant. But it feels a little unfair to compare them to the pre cogs because.

You know, I mean, I'm not saying exactly.

I just wonder if, like, in that sense of like, particularly revelation, like with stuff that, you know, like you're looking at end times and apocalyptic visions, you know, how much of that is these literal images they saw, or is it, you know, are our minds not fully able to grasp that? So not saying they're exactly alike, but I just wonder if there is a kind of connect, you know, connected in that sense.

Can I ask a point of clarification to TJ on this? When you said that the biblical prophets were talking about something that's already happened, did you mean that it's already happened in God's time?

Like maybe in the future, but it's already happened for God's perspective, or did you mean it happened in the past and people are writing as if it's in the future, but they're actually looking at things historically rather than from the author's perspective. So the author is saying, you know.

This is going to happen, but they.

Already knew it happened. Is that what you're saying?

Yeah.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Yeah.

Because I could see the other side of that. I could see someone who has your view that somehow God knows the future and the future is settled.

Someone could say, okay, the prophets of Scripture are given a revelation from God about events that are already, have already, quote, happened in God's time, but not yet in our time. But God gives them that knowledge. And I reject that view. But that would be plausible on your view?

Yeah. Which I think is how prophecy would work with that view.

Okay.

That's just kind of. Yeah, he already knows it happened, so that's how he was able to tell you about it.

I think it'd be interesting to discuss a stance wherein God is simply at the end of time and able to come back to voice his thoughts and, you know, give his qualms. And maybe more plausibly that way you could believe in free will. Maybe not.

One of the common critic objections to my view Says something like this, yes, God knows the future, but God's knowing the future doesn't force me to make one decision or another. Knowledge doesn't force. That's a very common response, and that's. They're responding to a view that's not mine, but they interpret me as saying that.

But what I am saying is that it is not that God's alleged knowledge of the future somehow forces us to do one thing or another, and we are not free. I am saying God could only be absolutely certain about the future if the future were settled, fixed, determined.

And if this future's settled, fixed and determined, that's incompatible with us choosing amongst live options. There's a subtle distinction there, but I think it's a pretty important.

It is. It makes a huge difference.

But I think this also. Actually, I want to call back to something I said at the very beginning. This. This notion of seeing the future, I think is crucial.

It's crucial for the Minority Report, and it's crucial for many theologians who think that God knows the future.

And I love the fact that, you know, the COVID of the movie that you had up there one time shows the, you know, Tom Cruise figure with the bandage over his eyes. And part of this, part of the thing is his eyes are taken out, so he's not recognized.

If I was writing the movie, I would have done some stuff with that in terms of foreknowledge and seeing things. Like, you know, if. If. Like, for instance, maybe having Agatha's eyes. Agatha, that's the one. That's the precognition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What if.

What if we took out her eyes and saw, Decided, you know, that made a difference. Does she actually need physical eyes to see things?

Anyway, interesting musings. Definitely something I thought about. It's like, man, what if he had. What if you got a precog's eyes?

Yeah.

What would happen?

Part of my criticism of the classical view that God sees the future is that it seems to suggest God has actual eyes. And I mean, unless you're a Mormon, you, Most theists don't think God has a body and therefore doesn't have actual eyes.

So that creates some real problems.

I happen to think God's knowledge doesn't come from divine seeing, but comes from God as a feeler, that God feels causally everything that happens in the present. And that I think, also.

What's the right word, given my emphasis upon love and real relationality, that fits nicely with a feeling kind of God, because a God who feels is, you know, intimately Related and. And has real interactions where you can more easily imagine a God who sees sort of standing at a distance from history and seeing things happening.

Yeah, I think maybe I said this on your show before, tj, but I think it bears repeating here. John Calvin thought of God as the God who sees all of history all at once.

And to illustrate that for his readers, he said, imagine that God hikes or climbs to the top of a church bell tower in the middle of a town and from this height looks down at the street below and sees a parade going through the streets.

Now, from this perspective, if he's high enough in the bell tower of the church, he could see the beginning of the parade and the end of the parade all in one glance. Calvin said, that's how God sees history. God sees it all in one glance. My view is that God is not in the bell tower. God's actually in the parade.

And as one in the parade, God feels what's happening moment by moment in the action of history as opposed to standing outside of it and looking at it.

Right.

And I think that is the issue that comes about with, between you, your view and most people is that most people subconsciously think of God as being outside of time.

Yep.

Because it's just not something a lot of people think about.

I think that's right.

Which I agree. I personally think God sits outside of time.

Yeah.

Or maybe now I think he sits at the end of time. I kind of like that view. I might try to support that in the future. I don't know. Now that I've said it out loud. Sounds kind of cool.

But that's for later thinking.

The downside of that view is that most people want to say God was there at the beginning. And if you have God only at the end, then how do you think of God creating at the beginning?

It's a lot easier to go backwards than forwards. Everyone knows that's why all the movies are about going to the past.

I love it. Yeah.

Hey, Andy. Can I say one of my favorite scenes is. Because I think kind of relates to this, but one of my. Well, two favorite scenes in this movie.

One is just more of an action sequence that introduces some of the sci fi elements. And that's when John for is on the run after he's trying to clear his name and he gets chased by his fellow officers.

And one of the devices they have is called a sick stick where they. They use to basically cause someone to immediately gag. I always like. I mean, especially when I saw this in middle high school.

I Thought that was kind of hilarious. But also it was a, you know, really brilliant concept here. But that was one of my favorite. I love that action sequence.

But one of my favorite more emotional sequences in the film that ties a lot into these ideas is toward the end when Agatha, after she's been rescued, she's sitting with John and his wife and she has this vision of, I think, what John's son could have been if he is right, like the life he could have had growing up. And if he had never. The incident when he went with missing never happened.

If he grown up, gone, had a normal life, gone to college, gotten married, all these things. And it's this really beautiful vision she has.

And I think that moment really brings some closure to Don and his wife because they've been trying to wrestle with and escape this tragedy for so long and now they're able to relinquish that pain and suffering. And, you know, and that was just a really beautiful moment of the film.

And it is also raises another question because it shows us that a peacock can see futures that can't exist.

Exactly.

I think that would have been a perfect place to have their son be the next Adolf Hitler.

Yeah.

What makes a kid have this beautiful life? You know, why not have the kid crappy life and be a horrible person? Because then you could say, well, maybe that death was okay after all.

Know, like some people say when they. They say, you know, well, she died too early. Well, God knew that she was going to be horrible in the future and that's why God took her.

You know, that kind of an argument.

Tom making this like an Ari Aster movie. Screw the Spielberg stuff. Right. Rewriting it as. Sorry. As.

I do agree though, the action scenes, we didn't talk about them a lot, but they're. They're pretty, pretty entertaining. I feel like they focus a lot more on like the subtle humor in the action sequences.

Like Tom Cruise jumps on a dude with a Jack jetpack. That's just funny.

He's like.

He's riding a dude on a jetpack.

It's pretty hilarious.

I still think this movie very much holds up visually because, like, we were talking earlier, this was the age of the digital revolution and many critics I brought, like, I actually. I went back and read Ebert's review of this movie earlier and.

And he had mentioned in that that, you know, earlier I criticized movies like Attack of the Clones or the First Spider man for being too reliant on CG over story, which, like, to an extent, I could do that maybe a little More Attack of the Clones. But regardless, like this one, it utilizes effects well and. And they do still really hold up, you know, decades later. I think it's impressive.

Yeah, yeah. For.

For like a point of reference. The Scorpion King came out the same year.

Right, right.

So that was an.

Oh, absolutely. You had plenty of filmmakers who, you know, felt obligation to utilize this technology, but really didn't know how to make it.

And Spielberg has always been a filmmaker who, you know, adapts as the technologies in film changes, but he's always using them as tools to enhance the story, not to make them the sole focus.

And I don't want to bully the Scorpion King anymore, but Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Man's Chest came out two years after this. Three years.

Yeah.

After this.

Yeah, yeah.

Around there still holds up visually today and.

Right. Yep.

Way, way more CGI reliant.

Let's see. Pirates. 14 years was. Yeah, exactly. Because the curse, black girl was 03. Yeah, but. But absolutely.

It is fascinating to see which ones still hold up today and which ones look awful.

Yeah.

Hey, guys, I'm getting a text from my wife saying it's time for me to come to dinner.

All right.

Well, I was looking for a good place to bring this to a close, and that seems like the spot to do it.

We can blame my wife.

We will thank your wife for providing us with that opportunity to bless everyone with. With some more time to do as their free will leads them.

And God's not sure what they're going to do.

All right, so I will remind folks that we're going to have a bonus question if Tom needs to go, then Kevin and TJ and I will tackle that for a couple minutes after this main recording is done. We're going to be talking about.

And TJ has already kind of spoiled a little bit of his thoughts, but we'll talk about the technology that the movie predicts and what it seems to be getting right and wrong. Does anybody real quickly have a recommendation of something that they would like to share with our listeners? Book, movie, anything?

Tom, if there's something you want to plug, something you've written or something you have coming up that you'd like to encourage people to check out, this is a good spot to do it.

Well, maybe I'll just mention something I've already mentioned, which is the substack that I have going on this systematic theology of love. If there's anybody interested in that, I'd love to have them make some comments and suggestions on how I might improve it.

Excellent.

I think Ex Machina is a great companion piece to this film. It also raises up a lot of really interesting ideas. Alex Garland. Yeah, that. I mean, I still think he's Alex Garland. Probably his best film.

And that one just has a lot of really interesting ideas. It's great sci fi film as well. Not as much of an action film, but definitely check that one out.

If you haven't seen it, I'm gonna.

Have to recommend Absolution by Jeff Vandermeer. I just finished it the other day. It is the fourth book in the Southern Reach trilogy.

Used to be, but it is, if you've seen the movie Annihilation, it is the fourth book in that series, which is.

That's right. Okay, that's good because Alex Garland directed Annihilation as well.

Yeah, yeah, he did a great job and it was really interesting because he directed it after he read the first book and then they were like, we should make a movie out of this. And the other two books came out later that year and they still just didn't want to wait.

They started production pretty much immediately after he finished the first one. But definitely check it out.

I think it's a really good rap to the story and it answers a lot of questions and it introduces just enough questions to be a great read. And it's still short like the others. Check out Absolution by Jeff Vandermeer and.

I'll throw out there Fantastic Four 33 from the Ryan North Run on Fantastic Four has a fun and heartstring tugging time loop story that I think fits a little bit in with the themes of Minority Report. So you can check that out.

Apologies that we ran a little bit long such that Tom had to go, but we thank him for having been here and yeah, definitely check out his substack. That's probably worthwhile beyond my silly comic book recommendations.

There's a lot to read there.

Yes, I'll say again, please remember to like subscribe, rate, review all the good things you can do on all the places. We really appreciate that. It helps everybody out a lot.

Thank you to the appropriate named Jonathan Augustine for his financial support and you too can get your own shout out by supporting us for $5 a month on that new fourth wall site where you can also get the bonus content, buy merch, leave one time or continuing a financial gift as well.

And yeah, so tj, Kevin, thank you also for being here, being part of a fun and wide ranging conversation and we will now sign off and ask you to remember that. And if you're going to geek. Please do it systematically.

Thanks.