If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you’ve probably already guessed I couldn’t give 3 visits to the rectory whether or not the jeebot movies stick to the Bible. It’s all fiction. Why not make the story your own?
But I guess all the Christmas crackers get up in arms about it and freak out that all their stories are being stretched and re-worked and diluted. Never mind that these stories have changed over time with new interpretations and new translations and new societal norms. Never mind that by getting all butthurt over a movie proves your faith to be weak and fragile. This is just weird because these are movies that you could easily use in your arsenal of crap and nonsense you keep to validate your faith.
Instead, you shit on it. I’m no psychologist, but that there is some looney-ass shit.
I was reading an article by some christicle, Mr. Yancey, who was tearing a holy strip off the new movie “God Is Not Dead”. This isn’t even a Bible story and he still takes issue with its authenticity.
GM Disclaimer: Godless Mom likes a good movie. It just so happens they don’t get made anymore. On top of that, Godless Mom is a Mom. To a boy. Little boys are forces to be reckoned with. As such, Godless Mom neither has the time nor shit-givery to keep track of opening dates, DVD releases, reviews, casts, awards, accolades, or reception. Godless Mom will watch it in two years when it’s on Netflix. Maybe. If the kid isn’t watching Spiderman. Judging me on my knowledge of the movies I bring up in the post will be futile, but if it makes your wicket sticky, g’head.
Now that we’ve cleared that up…
I really don’t know anything about this movie, God is Not Dead, other than the basic premise. This is funny, because the churchmallow who wrote the article I’m about to shred like Slash on the Appetite For Destruction tour, said the exact same fucking thing. I’ll quote from his blog, his explanation of said premise:
the main premise of the movie is that a student is asked by his philosophy professor to write “God is Dead” on a sheet of paper. He refuses. This angers the professor who tells him that if he cannot convince his classmates that God exists then he will fail the course. In the fashion of Hollywood the student triumphs in the end.
Ok, fair enough. It’s not my bucket of whiskey, but I can see why it would appeal to the cross lickers. I would be interested to see what this proof is the student provides, as would any good atheist, no? But that’s about where my interest dematerializes, so I can wait until Reddit spoils it for me.
It’s this premise, though, that seems to have our fancy Yancey fit to be tied.
But, why, Godless Mom? It seems like a premise that would please the biblically inclined.
You would think, wouldn’t you? But you’d be wrong.
The problem, he insists, is that the premise is unrealistic. Unrealistic.
Let me get this straight. You believe that an enchanted, bi-polar senior citizen somewhere in the vast expanse of shit that is, created our world. Further, you believe this magic grandpa impregnated a woman without so much as taking off her panties or popping a viagra. What’s more, you believe she birthed a caucasian in the Middle East, who died on a cross and rose from the dead 3 days later.
But you don’t believe a professor would be a dick to a student? Or is it the proving god part you’re having trouble with? I mean, I can’t begin to imagine why.
Yancey expands on this by saying that if a professor threatened a student in such a manner, he would be sued and the student would surely win. Yancey says,
The way some talk about God is Not Dead is problematic because they talk about it as if the premise really can occur in our contemporary society when I know this is not the case.
Oh, Yancey, are you back on the rock? You do not know this is the case. People do things that have heavy consequences all the time. What you’re saying can be likened to watching Natural Born Killers (excellent flick) and saying the premise is unrealistic because anyone who killed people like that would be arrested and put to death. Of course! There are consequences for doing stupid shit, but that shit doesn’t stop every motherfucker. Hence prison. A lot of prison. Too much fucking prison.
People gladly do shit that gets them in all sorts of trouble all the time. What’s unrealistic is your asinine expectation that everyone assesses the consequences of every last thing they do before they fucking do it. That’s as insane as immaculate conception or resurrection. Wait a sec…
If only our fine faithful friend applied this sort of scrutiny to the Bible itself.
At this point, the jeebot says something so ridiculous that when I read it, my guffaw startled my dog so suddenly that he tore ass. I’m not even joking. This is what disrupted my puppy’s hindquarters:
So even if a professor wanted to force atheism on students, the legal system would not allow that professor to get away with it.
Wait, What? Slow your roll, homeslice. “Force atheism”? Is not the entire premise of post-secondary education to teach people how to provide evidence for their conclusions? Is that not the whole idea of every paper you ever wrote in college or university? Why is it that when you ask a god gobbler to provide evidence for his or her conclusions, it’s suddenly encroaching on their religious freedoms? If a professor were to ask a student to prove the law of gravity, does that mean he’s trying to force the student to believe that gravity does not exist? No. It means he wants evidence. That’s it.
What our precious Yancey Pants here is actually trying to do, and what I assume the movie is trying to do (again, I don’t know anything about it so this is a guess) is vilify the atheist.
The reality of this scenario is that the professor is a philosophy professor. It is well within his right, fuck, it’s even his job to ask his students to show how they came to their conclusions. It is the perfect setting for a religious debate and the only thing here that the teacher in the movie (based on my knowledge of it) did wrong, was threaten to fail the student. But it still doesn’t mean he was trying to force atheism on the poor little jeebot. “Give me evidence of what you believe” is not the same as saying “You must not believe."
So then it gets worse. Our critical christ-craver goes on to say this:
But there is even a more basic reason why the premise in the movie is not realistic. This premise misunderstands how individuals with anti-Christian hatred tend to think. Such individuals do not engage in overt expressions of religious bigotry. Such expressions would violate their stated values of religious neutrality. Part of their argument against Christians is that Christians are attempting to force others to adopt their religion. An overt attempt to punish those who do not accept atheism would be such a clear case of hypocrisy that they would not be able to maintain claims of religious neutrality. So even if the professor did not fear a legal lawsuit, it would be highly unlikely that the professor would directly tie a student’s grade to religious beliefs. This would rob the professor of a great deal of legitimacy he has for hating Christians and Christianity.
Oh, holy Jesus on a stick, the fuck is this man talking about? There’s so much wrong with this entire paragraph that I felt like Ben Roethlisberger at a feminists convention: lost, confused, a little scared and kinda horny.
1. Now, not only is asking a Christian to provide evidence for the existence of God an infringement of their religious rights, but it’s also Christian hatred. Questioning someone’s belief now equals hatred.
Well, that escalated quickly
2. Saying “such individuals do not engage…” is lumping every last atheist in the same group with the exact same behaviour as each other after which he assures us not a single one would stray from this behaviour. This is just something he knows. Just like he knows Jesus and miracles and 3 wise men and all that.
3. Atheists apparently seek legitimacy for hating Christians. Fuck Moses on your mom’s quilt, he has our goddamned number! No holy!
Yancey, here’s your problem: everything.
Atheists are people who do not believe there is a god. Atheists are people who, with evidence of a god, would believe. It has nothing the fuck at all to do with anything else. There is no hatred involved in atheism, although some atheists are hateful. Just like some Christians are hateful, some Jews are hateful and some Muslims are hateful. Hateful people exist in all groups, be they nations, religions, races, sexualities or genders. That does not make the group as a whole a hateful group. Has Jesus not taught you this yet?
Furthermore, you’re trying, unsuccessfully, to discredit a movie that helps your cause. There is not an atheist on god’s green earth #NoHoly) that feels threatened by this movie, and yet you do?
Then there’s Noah, the movie! There’s a massive shit storm swirling over the steeples of every church in the world, declaring Noah to be a waste of the praying man’s time because it was done by an atheist and it does not stick to the Bible.
You’re talking about a story in which a 600-year-old man collects 2 of every species and puts them all on a boat that would have had to have been expertly designed to keep predators from prey (not pray, but prey) and somehow keep every last one of them fed for 150 days (which would have meant storing even more live animals on the boat for lion food, tiger food, bear food, etc) while the entire earth flooded higher than the tallest peak. And you’re worried the movie doesn’t stick to the facts? Are you on glue?
Listen, gullible godballs, it’s a fact that atheism is on the rise. People just aren’t as stupid as they once were, and they’re finding that the glory and wonder in science far exceed that of a few old myths. The days of Christianity are numbered. You need to grab on to these movies like Jack on flotsam after the iceberg. They are your last hurrah, your parting words, your epilogue. Watch them, love them, share them and leave it to us atheists to pick them apart, because we surely will.
What’s your favourite religion-related movie or documentary?
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