Friday, January 8, 2010

Is God MIA at WDW?

ASSIGNMENT #5: VIEW THE FIREWORKS PRESENTATION (“WISHES”) AT THE MAGIC KINGDOM. COUNT THE NUMBER OF NONENTITIES THE DISNEY CORPORATION ENCOURAGES YOU TO “BELIEVE” IN—THE WISHING STAR, BLUE FAIRY, ETC. NOW, RECALL THE BRIEF ONE-MINUTE CAPSULE OF THE ORIGINS OF THE UNIVERSE, AT THE “UNIVERSE OF ENERGY.” DID YOU SEE ANY REFERENCE TO GOD, THERE? WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS TRUE? WHAT WOULD CHANGE, IF GOD WERE INSERTED INTO THE SEQUENCE?

If, as I have suggested in my previous Disneology commentaries,
• Those who believe the heavens and Earth took a long time to develop need not throw out Judeo-Christian theology, and
• The Big Bang theory of the origins of the universe is not at odds with a Judeo-Christian theology,
why does the “Universe of Energy” exhibit eliminate God from the picture of the origins of the universe?

The Magic Kingdom DOES have a Fantasy Land, something missing from Epcot. Clearly, the Disney imagineers viewed the Magic Kingdom from a perspective different from their perspective on Epcot. Peter Pan flies off with you to Never Never Land. You ride a Honey Pot on a blustery day with Winnie the Pooh. You help Seven Dwarfs rescue Snow White from the Quicked Ween, I mean Wicked Queen. So, it’s easy enough (with a wink and a nod) to suggest that you should believe in pixie dust, wishes, stars, and fairies. Yet, there is something eerie about Disney’s “Wishes” fireworks presentation. It seems to coalesce too closely with Disney’s Make-a-Wish Foundation. It suggests to children who may have serious or even fatal diseases that there “truly” is a force in the universe capable of performing miracles, if they truly believe. What is this force? Apparently, it is anything but God. Why is Disney so fearful of suggesting even the equivalent of what our country unabashedly proclaims on its currency: “In God we trust”? Disney does not need to protect itself against “separation of Church and State” charges; it’s a private company.

Just outside Epcot’s “American Adventure” in the “World Showcase,” during the Christmas season, quite explicit theological accolades are accorded to Jesus, every year, in the “Candlelight Processional.” The “American Adventure” shows Abraham Lincoln relying on God during the Civil War and does not shy away from the Declaration of Independence with its reference to our Creator. Yet, this Creator is strangely absent from Epcot’s account of the origins of the universe in “Universe of Energy.”

Blame it on something called “Occam’s Razor,” named for its inventor, William of Occam. Occam was an excommunicated English Franciscan thinker from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But, as Burke says, his razor is the “keystone of scientific terminologies.” Occam’s razor requires that explanations be abbreviated to eliminate any elements science might consider unnecessary to explain how things occur. Kenneth Burke refers to Occam’s razor in Attitudes Toward History, pages 59 and 166. He explains the Occamite principle in his Grammar of Motives, pages 80-81:

“If natural structure was the visible, tangible . . . embodiment of God’s will, one would simply be duplicating his terms if his accounts of motivation had both natural and supernatural terms. The natural terms should be enough, in accordance with the Occamite principle (the keystone of scientific terminologies) that ‘entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.’”

(See also Grammar of Motives 71, 95, 98, 107, 120, 138, 178, 248, and 324.)


I comment on Burke’s views concerning Occam on page 53 of my book Revelation: The Human Drama:

“[N]ature is equated with God, as the scene of man's acts, then later God and nature are turned into agonistic terms. What had begun as . . . the view that God created natural laws; hence nature could stand . . . for God . . . developed, due to the Occamite ‘principle’ . . . into the narrowing of a circumference of the scene to simply nature. The ‘natural’ then became contrasted with a no-longer-necessary ‘supernatural’ explanation."

Since the “Universe of Energy” exhibit is based on “scientific terminologies,” supernatural terminology is eliminated, in accordance with Occam’s razor. God is missing from the story. But, we cannot say that God is MIA (missing in “action”), because, without all of the elements of Burke’s Pentad—scene, act, agent, agency, purpose—THERE IS NO “ACTION.” There is no Act, if there is no Agent to perform the Act. Occam’s razor eliminated the Agent—God. There is no Purpose for the Universe, because it takes an Agent to have a Purpose.

But, why should we accept the premise of a William of Occam when the ancient Greek genius Aristotle (with his four causes) and the modern American genius Kenneth Burke (with his Dramatistic Pentad) point out the flaws in such an approach? In my earlier discussion of the syllogism, I point out that the syllogism works only if we accept the premises. Occam’s razor is a premise accepted by scientists, but shown to be flawed by Burke and Aristotle. So, what would change, if God were inserted into the “Universe of Energy” exhibit? The universe would again be endowed with meaning. Humans would be more than just the latest step in a continual, unending evolutionary process. Their symbol-using social nature would be an indication of the great purpose of God. Walt Disney’s motive of building a scene in which families could socialize would be comparable to the choice of God to build a scene in which His creatures, made in His image, could socialize with him. This seems to me to be more conducive to living “happily ever after,” a quite Disneyesque motive.

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