Saturday, September 16, 2023

Leonardo the heretic

There's a movie out: The Inventor. Most Rotten-Tomatoes reviews are favourable for what that is worth. It concerns Leonardo Davinci's last years, with the pope Leo X and the king of France Francis. Davinci and Leo fell out; Davinci was a dissection guy, which is... kinda gory, but more to the point he had some notions on the soul of the foetus.

Davinci did well at explaining that a baby shares genetics with mother and father. A Christian can compare the Gospel teaching that a man and woman in marriage have restored the rib to Adam. Which is why it is so jarring that Davinci went on to say that the baby shares its soul only with the mother, until birth. Obviously they don't share a brain. Therefore they don't share a mind.

... unless Davinci's sense of "soul" isn't about body and mind, but about an ideal. Davinci is making a move upon the law - about what women may do with "their" bodies. If the baby is part of the mother then there is no sin in aborting it, until... whenever. The Church also has ideas on what a "soul" is; Davinci crossed at least one of these. Except in this case, Davinci crossed outside reason as well as doctrine.

I do see why Daisy Ridley wanted in on this one. "Blue Fox" might not have had to pay Comcast and/or Warner for the reviews this time, either. It is current-year fodder for suburban white moms and their nonbinary children.

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