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For example, in the film CAST AWAY, fate is offered as a God substitute when a FedEx employee is marooned on an island after a plane crash. As Brian Godawa writes in his book, HOLLYWOOD WORLDVIEWS, "God is conspicuously absent . . . [The man] is all alone in a naturalistic universe." In the end, he finds his way back home and meets a woman to replace the one he lost. Thus, Godawa writes, "humanity finds meaning in hope for another human being, and the benevolent impersonal fate will work it all out for us in the end."
This is just silly. Tom Hanks didn't sit back and wait for "fate" to work things out, he made a friggin boat. Would Godawa have preferred Hanks be like the man in the joke who keeps waiting for God to save him from a flood, and rejects the rescuers? Call me a sinner, but I think one of the things that differentiates humans from animals is that we "find meaning in hope for another human being."