Religion & Prometheus 2

Dear all, just wanted to share my take on the Prometheus movie, my own twist on the Sumerian mythology inspiration and theory for a sequel. We know that the engineers are a very old and very advanced race. They have mastered space travel, engineering and molecular genetics. We know, mostly from the opening scene of Prometheus, they are willing to give their lives to achieve their goals. We know that they are genetically human and can infer that the opening scene shows they seeding Earth with their DNA to create the human race. They do this in an indirect manner however; if they wanted to simply populate the Earth, they would arguably have the technology to simply clone themselves or even simpler; establish a colony on Pangea. Their method would seem to be deliberately designed to allow a (semi)natural evolution. They scatter the building blocks and fragments of their own DNA onto Earth and allow things to happen naturally, assured that in millenia the human race will come to fruition. Along with this; the rest of life on earth (after all, we share half of our DNA with Bananas). Why would they do it this way? Why the sacrifice of Engineer life? Why the ceremony of that opening scene? The answer is surely; 'Religion'. One of the central themes of the movie after all. Having mastered the physical universe over eons and realized there is no god, the engineers look for something to believe in, a meaning of life, the perennial 'Why are we here?' (much like Shaw). The only answer they can find to that question is that the meaning of life is 'to be top of the food chain'. The point of existence is evolution and to evolve. The Engineers have not altered in millenia and believe they are not evolving, they believe they are an evolutionary 'dead-end' in that they are not the perfect organism. They hypothesize a perfect organism, one that would be the top of any food chain. One that is intelligent, can withstand any manner of temperatures or enironments and adapts quickly and evolves. Along the way, this theoretical organism becomes revered as a god. Possessing the technology, they set about creating this perfect organism, creating their own god, this terrible lizard creature. The facilities used to house the samples (black goo) of this 'holy' DNA/organism are shrines/churches and are decorated as such with eloborate murals. As part of the quest to worship this perfect organism, the engineers terraform and populate planets (such as Earth). They return periodically, awaiting the time when the planet is sufficiently populated and their perfect organism, their god, will be brought from the stars (LV-223) and the entire planet will be sacrificed to them. Some humans are told of this wonderful rapture that awaits their kind (the cave paintings). The religion of the engineers is essentially evolution. They evolve lush, populated worlds over millenia and then destroy them with a perfect, apex predator (their god). They believe that this process (of life and death) is the only point to life, the true meaning of existence. This is why the engineers were so determined to destroy the Earth and they had certainly not planned for the human race to go unchecked for so long and develop the ability to travel through space or the ability to make new people themselves (David). What will the engineer homeworld be like? It will certainly not be a paradise. I predict a world that has been torn apart by this belief system (we have had a taste of what can happen in Prometheus). It will be a world when religious zealots have unleashed the Black Goo on its own population (perhaps to quell an uprising) and all manner of mutated organsims have evolved and killed most of the population with the exception of just a few who live in fear of their gods roaming free. I think we may see some religious devotees who would have Shaw sacrificed, I think there will also be some Engineers who realise that the religion was a big mistake and just want to get off the homeworld in Shaw's stolen ship. Which team will David end up playing for? I think he might 'buy into' the Engineer religion.