(Queen Anne's Lace - Monroe County, Michigan, 12/2007)
In “I Am Legend” Will Smith plays Dr. Robert Neville, a scientist who was part of developing a cure for cancer that instead turned into a killer virus, wiping out most of mankind. Neville is immune to the virus, and stays in NYC working to find an antidote.
A woman and her mute son find Neville. This woman claims to hear from God and be led by God. Neville says to her, “There is no God.” Later on Neville, when talking about the virus, says “God didn’t cause this.” Which is correct. The question this film raises but never adequately deals with is: does the reality of massive evil argue against the existence of God?
The wiping out of mankind causes Neville to turn to atheism. I assume Neville was a theist, as we see his wife praying for his safety as he is separated from her and his daughter. Now, in the face of mass extermination and the residual suffering of humans turned into “Dark Seekers,” Neville apparently has concluded God could not exist. For if God did exist, he could have stopped this horrible thing from happening. Such evil shows that if there is a God he is either not all-loving or not all-powerful. Or, there is no God.
When Neville says “God didn’t cause this” he is, in my mind, at least entertaining the idea that, even though there is this mass suffering, it doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist. Humans caused this suffering, he being one of them. Neville thus presents a form of what is called The Free Will Defense against the argument from evil. God has given persons free will, because love is only possible if persons have free will, and love is the highest value for God. This is risky for God since persons can use their free will to either deliberately bring about evil or inadvertently bring about evil. Neville and his colleagues were trying to bring about a great good, and instead brought about a great evil.
This reminds me of atheist Albert Camus’s The Plague. The main character, Dr. Rieux, labors to help infected people in their homes and in hospitals. Father Paneloux tells people the plague is an act of God against the sins of the people. The story can be read as being about the essential irrationality and absurdity of the world. No cure is found, and Dr. Rieux’s wife dies as well. Where was God?
In “Legend” the cure finally comes, and Neville becomes a God-believer again. From my Christian paradigm, the “cure” has already come. There is an antidote for our darkness-diseased souls in Christ. (Neville himself becomes a bit of a Christ-figure, bringing the antidote to save the world from sin and darkness, and giving his life in the end to accomplish this. But his earlier self-doubt and God-doubt is more like the bumbling Willem Dafoe Freudian Jesus in "The Last Temptation of Christ.")
As for the atheist Camus, read Howard Mumma’s Albert Camus and the Minister, which records Camus’s interest in God and Christianity in his later years.
