Reflection: Contact (1997) Movie

Contact is based on a novel written by Cart Sagan, who was a renounced cosmologist of the 1970’s and 80’s. The movie is based on the human desire for extraterrestrial travel and meet aliens or God. The lead character, Elle, in the movie does make an extraterrestrial travel but no one is sure if that was an actual travel or a spiritual. The movie provides a useful insight into the discussion between religion and science. In religion, you do not need any proof for a lot of things but science demands proof for everything. It is hard to meat at a middle point for both religion and science and the discussion goes on forever.

Elle is an atheist who only believe in scientific facts but towards the end of the movie, she has some sort of spiritual experience when she supposedly travels through time and space. What I take out of her travel through time and space and meeting “someone” from another extraterrestrial civilization is a proof that both religious people and scientists may be at two extremes. Instead of fighting and arguing, they can come together and explore scientific means that could lead us to find proofs for our beliefs. Some religious believes may be baseless but science also seems to be fixated against many religious believes that could well be true. For example the existence of God. When Elle has a travel through time and space and meets her father, this could well be God who wants humans to reach their full capacity and find innovative ways to meet their creator.

The movie also provided an overview of how easy it is for the humans to get divided over political, scientific and religious issues which could otherwise be used as a way to get together and find mutual solutions. Media has rightly been identified as a source of most of the unrest in the world in my opinion. Contact was fun to watch.