It's in a Movie -- It Must Be True

[Nam]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godlessindixie/2014/08/05/what-i-learned-about-atheists-from-gods-not-dead/

portrays three or four primary atheist characters:  The pompous bombastic university professor (surrounded by a supportive gang of snickering atheist colleagues), a self-absorbed businessman, his snarky, condescending journalist girlfriend, and a stern Chinese father of an exchange student.  Observing their behavior, I learn the following:

1. Atheist professors are predatory, and they are out to convert everyone into ideological clones of themselves.

Clearly the concept of people committed to “freethought” and “liberal arts” is utterly foreign to the writers of this flick.  Ironically, while no secular university I’ve ever heard of would hesitate to fire a professor who demands a signed renunciation of religion from his students, I have heard of Christian schools which demand written statements of belief from both their students and faculty.  In real life only one of these two cultures threatens people with everlasting torment for not believing the right things, and it’s not the group being caricatured in the movie.

2. Atheists are selfish, self-absorbed, greedy jerks.

Dean Cain’s ambitious acquisitions shark is cold-hearted and callous to everyone he knows including his girlfriend, his sister, and even his own aging mother.  He won’t lift a finger for anyone who won’t first offer him something in return, and when his girlfriend discloses that she is dying of cancer, he brushes her off as an inconvenience.  His behavior is as despicable as the professor’s and clearly he has no heart at all.

3. Atheists are cocky, self-sure, and totally enamored with their own superiority. 

Professor Radisson openly mocks the brave young Christian hero to his face in front of the class and in front of his colleagues.  But he doesn’t just do it to the poor freshman kid; he also mocks his own girlfriend (Do atheists marry at all in this alternate reality?) to her face at a dinner party while his atheist cohorts sip merlot and laugh condescendingly at her.  Truly cringeworthy.

4. Atheists will openly threaten you, bow up, get in your face, stare you down, and even chase you down a hallway and grab you to force you to listen to their angry diatribes because your faith makes them so angry!

5. Atheists are clearly incapable of love. 

If you’re hurting or sick they’ll abandon you.  They cannot be inconvenienced with other people’s problems because as we learned in #2, they are only interested in themselves and what they can get from you.

6. Atheists lack ethical boundaries, so they’ll date students against virtually every university’s rules and then later remind them that the reason they liked them in the first place was just because they were hot (see #5).

7. They disbelieve in God because something bad happened to them. 

See, since everyone is supposed to subscribe specifically to Abrahamic monotheism by factory default, the only reason anyone could wind up thinking there is no God is because of personal trauma and disillusionment leaving them damaged and spiteful.  And really, deep down they don’t disbelieve in God at all, but rather…

they disbelieve but what do they know?  Poor deluded empty soulless people!  They only think they don’t believe but in reality they’re just angry at a God they really know exists.  Never mind if they say they don’t believe.  You know better than they do.  Bless their cold, empty deluded hearts.

9. Atheists are miserable because they believe life is meaningless. 

There’s no point to life and nothing is of lasting value beyond their own lives, so you might as well just do what you wanna do and who cares about anyone else?  Even as I type this I can hear the voices of at least a dozen friends and family members who have sincerely asked me how I can have any meaning to my life or reason to get up in the morning because they can’t understand how I could have any. 

This movie totally validates that for them.

10. Atheists have no basis for morality. 

The brave young hero explained this for us toward the very end.  If there’s no God, then there can’t be any good reason to follow rules or be honest or do anything moral.  Come to think of it, it’s a wonder these atheists aren’t all murderers.

Just as an added bonus, I also learned from this movie that Muslims beat their children while Christians show everyone endless patience, kindness, understanding, and empathy (excepting only the young hero’s shallow girlfriend who inexplicably dumps him for being heroic I guess).
 
I also learned that if a car won’t start you can get it to run by praying for it, provided that you believe hard enough that your prayer will be answered.  Furthermore, I learned that most difficult life decisions can be solved with a Bible citation.

Perhaps above all what we learn from God’s Not Dead is that college is a threatening place.  It’s a scary place where the bad guys are the educators.  Just let that sink in for a minute. 

Just like in that notoriously fabricated chain email, academia is a threatening place where you go to have your beliefs attacked by evil professors who want to force you to give up your cherished beliefs.  Surely that is a healthy approach to higher learning which will help advance our common endeavors as a society, right?

One more detail I must add. [***Spoiler Alert***] I originally titled this article “God’s Not Dead, but the Atheist Sure Is!”  Because in the end they kill off the atheist.  Are you kidding me?  Could you be any more transparent in your wish fulfillment?  In the end, most of the atheists see that the Christians are really the ones who are right, and they convert. But it takes getting hit by a car for the antagonist to see the error of his ways. 

He prays the obligatory prayer that Evangelical theology teaches is required for salvation as he lay there in a pool of his own blood.  And as he’s choking out his last breath, the preacher who miraculously showed up at just the right moment to lead him in this prayer (but not a moment earlier so that he could have maybe prevented his getting hit) smiles and says:

It’s alright.  In a few minutes you’re gonna know more about God than I do.

I’d like to say that comforted the poor dying former atheist (or was he even that, really?) but it was hard to make that out between the gurgling sounds and pained expressions.  But judging by the swell of music this was supposed to be a kind of happy ending.  I know they’ll say it’s because now his soul is safe in death, but I can’t help but think of the joke the dog tells in the movie UP:

A squirrel walks up to a tree and says, “I forgot to store acorns for the winter and now I am dead.”

Ha! It is funny because the squirrel gets dead!

This ending is happy because the atheist gets dead.  He “gets saved,” of course, although not in any sense that’s measurable.  And the atheist girl who gets cancer “gets saved” as well, although not from the cancer.  Even the Muslim girl “gets saved” although her dad still won’t look at her because of his religion.  But now all of these people think correctly about a narrow field of topics, so they’re approved. 

Happy ending.

Reminds me of the film Gone (2002): greedy, angry, atheist lawyers who then convert to Christianity (well, one of them) yet all die anyway. And at imdb.com it's got a 6.9/10 -- other than the Christians equal live, atheists equal hate message during this apocalyptic movie they movie itself is made poorly, and isn't really that good but people seem to love it.

They've been making films like this for years but where they take "true" stories and make films out of them now they have big name directors (at times), and just obvious fictitious stories and making films out of them and saying they're true.

I have family who rave about this film. I wonder if they knew at least three of their family members are atheists -- would they rave then? Would they, knowing us as they do, still believe these hateful films?

I think they would.

-Nam

[Munch]

Atheists are the new gays and black americans, yet one more thing they will try to demonize, and fail to do so.

[Desdinova]

All Pro-Christian movies suck.  That one with what's-his-fuck comes to mind.  Can't remember his fucking name.  Some kind of rapture based bullshit.  Watched about 5 minutes of it before I changed the channel over to QVC.

[Desdinova]

It was called Left Behind, with Kirk Cameron.  Now it looks like there's going to be a remake starring of all people Nicholas Cage.  Fuck.

[Hijiri Byakuren]

Someone should re-do that movie "Persecuted" they're coming out with, but have it starring a Richard Dawkins-inspired character who is attacked by the religious right. Show people who the real persecutors are.

[Shiranu]

Perhaps above all what we learn from God’s Not Dead is that college is a threatening place.  It’s a scary place where the bad guys are the educators.  Just let that sink in for a minute. 

...as a college student and ex-fundamentalist, I have to disagree. Even when I was a fundie I would not have any problem with most of the professors I have met. My philosophy professor was also a Baptist preacher for Christ's sake (but he was very... how to say... unbiased? in his presentation)! The only likely atheist professor I think I have had was my Biological Anthropology professor who would openly mock people who say the world is 6-10k year old and was very critical of anti-evolutionists but... yeah, of course she was, her whole job revolved around evolution being correct!

Ontop of that there are tons and tons of Christian organizations for college students. I would say neither college or even education is inherently an enemy to Christianity, only to scientific illiteracy.

Socially; yeah, lots of girls wearing whatever the fuck they want and dressing like "sluts" (by their standards)... we even have a resident preacher who comes by to yell at how they are all going to hell for being so "slutty and promiscuous" (and who is promptly laughed off). As for drug use, sex, etc. ... it's no worse (if not in truth even less of an issue) than it is in high school... so you should really be far more afraid of public school than college.

[Nam]

Remember when showing your ankle was slutty? You're that old, right?



-Nam

[Solitary]

We're being persecuted by the persecuted majority, they have to be right.  Solitary

[ApostateLois]

I haven't seen the movie, and don't plan to, but I imagine it is exactly like a live-action Chick tract. All of the characters are one-dimensional, with the unbelievers being completely evil and the Christians being good, pure, and perfect; and if you don't believe EXACTLY as Jack Chick says you should, then you face an eternity of horrors in hell.

[FinalSomnia]

Oh, how I love these kinds of things. It reminds me of a book a read back in high school (a friend with whom I no longer associate lent it to me) called "The Lambda Conspiracy." It was written by a pro-Christian, anti-gay writer who definitely painted gays as the immoral bad guys and the Christians fighting on the "right" side of things were the heroes. The main character had just enough background to not be completely one dimensional - but he was close. If I remember correctly, it was reviewed pretty highly by some christian magazines but the rest of the world saw it for the biased tripe that it was.

It's difficult to explain to the writers of these books and screenplays that someone who doesn't see the world as they do will not - by necessity - be a bad person. It just grates on me that the people who enjoy that sort of story only enjoy it because it validates their already skewed worldview.

[SGOS]

it was reviewed pretty highly by some christian magazines but the rest of the world saw it for the biased tripe that it was.

LOL  There should be a word that describes that kind of Christian attitude.  Something that attempts to describe a psychological dysfunction.

[doorknob]

My mother forced me to watch this movie then didn't understand why not only was I still an atheist but I was an offended atheist at that. I didn't want to watch it in the first place. And not just because it was a christian movie mostly because it looked like and is low budget crap.

[Munch]

My mother forced me to watch this movie then didn't understand why not only was I still an atheist but I was an offended atheist at that. I didn't want to watch it in the first place. And not just because it was a christian movie mostly because it looked like and is low budget crap.

propaganda films always are a pile of shit, because unlike decent film writers who write stories for creative licence, propaganda movies are coming from a primitive ideology or tribal worship.