"sometimes in order to create, you have to destroy."

I'm still leaning to the idea that there's two factions going on with the Engineers, and the guys on LV-233 don't belong to the faction that seeded Earth, so they didn't "Change their mind" ... they NEVER wanted us to be walking around free, intelligient, exploring the universe and creating our own life forms like David.

The movie had me thinking the same things. It probably was like an instance of an angry "god" that didn't like what he made and decided to just start over. It shows this act by the Engineers to be a bad thing, but we have to accept it when it is given in a biblical text. In the christian religion it's considered god's will so humans go "ok it's god's will, we must obey god he knows what is best." Now, the engineers want to do this, do we stop them or let them. Are the engineers god? I came away from the movie thinking of this and many similiar concepts.

Thats a very interesting theory though. I'm guessing if thats the case then maybe instead of sending a flood like God did, the Space Jockeys were trying to send us those containers to destroy us, almost like a weapon of mass destruction to wipe us out.

We are, essentially, evolutionary created clones, en masse, of one Engineer. That was their intention to create millions/billions of individuals with an almost exact genetic template. Why? to be used as hosts for the Xenomorph. They did not hate, detest or loathe us. We are simply a phase in an experiment, a procedure to create the Xenomorph en masse.

It seems the Engineer from stasis looks down upon humans as if they are a mistake or an unintended mutation.

Or that we were never intended to evolve to the point in which we would be waking him up.

@Snorkel But WHY would they want to make the Xeno? As a weapon for their own wars? And they made us to test the XenoWeapon on?

They need the Xeno's for something (weapon, reproduction, alloys, chemicals, or something else entirely) as shown by the craft on LV-426. But to create Xeno's en masse you need host's, rather than sacrifice themselves, they created millions/billions of clones through evolution of life on a fledgling planet by sacrficing one of their own. 1 Engineer = Billions of Xenomorphs

And the eggs come from a Mother? Or a factory? One egg= One Xeno. Seems like we're onto something here....

That was the purpose of LV-223, to redesign the create so that it could be transported safely and unleashed virally instead of biologically, because of the fate of the pilot on LV-426. But it failed, ultimately making the Xenomorph easier to spread and harder to contain, and this is why they didn't unleash it - because they couldn't. For some reason the Engineers need/want the Xenomorph, and to produce it en masse they created clones of themselves as host, billions upon billions throughout the galaxy, but because of the events on LV-223, we were unintentionally spared and allowed to develop to a point we were never intended to reach.

Snorkelbottom, I agree with you to an extent re the production of humans on Earth as a means to further experimentation. I don't think we were made just for fun - there is a lot of ritual around the process (priestly robes, getting nude, falling down a huge waterfall etc). The thing I don't get is....if the humans are being used as the host, and they want to produce the Xenomorph en mass, then why do they worship the creature? The whole crosses/faith/Jesus thing comes up a lot (probably cos it's a US film and there's ALWAYS something about god and faith...like a trained scientist with no logical backup for ther theories that just 'has faith'...but anyway). The Jesus-like sculpture of the Xenomorph queen makes me think the Enginers actually worship the Xenomorphs (whether it's just these dudes or the entire Engineer race is unclear - these could just be a crazies faction). In that case, this would mean they are actually fanatics and want to seed the whole universe with Xenomophs, which is absurd, I think, if you are a highly evolved species. I just don't see how they could view the Xenos as a product given the highly ritualised and religious connotation behind their generation (like also the way the urns are arranged in that room with the giant head, it is very tomb/ceremony/worship reminiscent). Another theory is that perhaps they are trying to recapture the original race that spread their DNA and seeded THEM (the engineers), who happen to look like Xenomorphs, and they are attempting to recreate their maker's image - when they fail, they send more goo to restart the process). THis one is a long shot but has a nice symmetry about faith, looking for your origins etc - the Engineers are simply looking for their own beginnings by tampering with us. Anyhow my 2 cents :)

In the sense of 'timelines', we see an Engineer purportedly seeding the Earth at the start of the film long ago,[i] in the before time[/i]. We also know, if the mural means anything, that the xeno's have been around for a while too. For what purpose, it's open to conjecture I conjure. However, the Engineer's reaction upon awakening is understandable outside of the odd connotation of 'why seed and then destroy?'. Something went wrong on that ship, plausibly the lone survivor awakens to see a variant of himself come to greet him like a child, which would be stunning enough but also a child that could set off a catastrophe if allowed to continue, i.e., the power of the 'goo' is difficult enough for the Engineers to control, can't leave that in the hands of newborn babes or the ones that might follow to the utter doom of all.

It is a lot easier to explain why the Engineers wanted to destroy us, if you put it into the context of there being two different factions of Engineers who are at war with each other, who destroy each other's creations on sight. I bet Shaw finds the Engineers who created us in the sequel. I remember a similar story theme of these two warring factions on an island, I think it was called LOST.