The message of God’s Not Dead 2 is…


godsnotdead2

…Christians are stupid. Sadly, the audience at the Morris Theater today gulped it right down and confirmed it.

This movie and its predecessor has only a few simple premises: a) all atheists are bad people; b) all Christians are good people; and c) if they close their eyes real tight and pray real hard and pretend, those arguments their pastor made to them will hold up in a court of law. So right off the bat, we meet a heroine of the movie who is grieving over the offscreen death of her brother, while her parents don’t seem to give a damn at all that they’ve lost a child. Her parents are “freethinkers” obviously, while she’s going to convert to Christianity. The father of the Chinese fellow who found Jesus in the last movie shows up to slap him around and disown him for his faith. A team of ACLU lawyers show up to persecute another heroine who dared to quote the Bible in a high school classroom; the lead lawyer is a sneering reptilian buffoon. An ACLU lawyer who is completely dumbfounded by the arguments of Lee Fucking Strobel.

The story is all about a court case. Above heroine who mentioned Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr in a class about non-violent protests gets dragged before an inquisition of fellow teachers, school board members, and lawyers who, obviously, are all atheists who detest Bible-believing Christians (where is this school? I’d like to move there) and when she refuses to apologize for proselytizing — because she didn’t — they all smack their lips in anticipation, because they’ve called in the Evil ACLU, who will destroy her in a court case.

Let me just say, speaking as a certified Evil Atheist myself, who also tends to be more strident than most, I did not believe this persecution scenario at all. The movie was very careful to set the scene so that there was no doubt at all that she wasn’t promoting religion at all, but was responding to a student question asking for a comparison between a set of historical (well, semi-) figures, and the teacher’s response was more cautious than even I would have been in quoting the Bible. It was set up from the beginning as a trumped up case.

What follows is incoherent. The legal case her lawyer tries to make at first is that she was simply speaking her conscience, rather than that she was responding directly to a student question. Then he switches gears and decides that the best strategy is to claim that she was making a secular argument, merely quoting historical figures. Then later he decides to rant and rave and claim that if they silence a Christian for speaking her mind, next thing you know they’ll be coming to arrest everyone for mentioning the Bible. It makes no sense, but of course the jury sees it as valid and votes to declare her innocent.

That wasn’t a spoiler. You know no Christian will suffer any consequences in this kind of movie.

Another irritating thing is that, although apparently this whole sham of a court case was all about proving that Jesus was real, the slimy ACLU lawyer allowed the defense to trot up a whole string of Christian apologists making ludicrous arguments, and not once did they disagree or bring up counterarguments. According to this movie, there are hundreds of contemporary first person accounts of the crucifixion, and no one disagrees with that.

One good thing, though: at least this one didn’t kill any atheists to get a deathbed conversion. It did have the woman from the first movie who had been diagnosed with cancer and converted to Christianity, though; instead of killing an atheist, they had prayer cure a Christian of cancer, praise Jesus. It also had a string of cameos from Christian culture warriors, like Pat Boone, Mike Huckabee, that same abominable Christian musical group, the Newsboys, from the first movie.

One more damning thing: it’s boring. It just goes on and on. It’s so bad that my wife had to nudge me awake in the middle.

Skip it. Total waste of time.

I’m content to let it stand as a testimonial to the paranoia and inanity of modern American Christians. I would think that the people who ought to be most indignant about it are Christians themselves.

Comments

  1. wzrd1 says

    So, we now know that PZ’s wife was positively riveted – by PZ’s snores.
    And likely horrified, “We payed *how* much to see this bullshit?!”.
    Or perhaps, “Oh no you don’t! You dragged me in to see this shit, you’re going to suffer through it with me”.

  2. microraptor says

    Wow, I didn’t even see this movie and it happened exactly the way I thought it was going to happen.

    So, what formerly-famous B-list actor/actress can they book for the turd third movie?

  3. Gregory Greenwood says

    I can feel the fatwah-envy radiating off the idiots who created this abomination in celluloid form from here. You just know that they would dearly love to create a movie where the righteous xian heroes slaughter every last ebil orc atheist in order to create what they doubtless imagine would be a perfect theo-topia, but they know that even Hollywood might baulk at going quite that far, and so they satisfy themselves with this persecution complex fueled drek instead.

  4. Jonathan Dresner says

    Wait, the ACLU can prosecute people? They’ve been missing a trick in their fundraising.

  5. says

    Yes. And if their prosecution fails, they have to stop and consider whether to appeal.

    I’m not a lawyer by any stretch of the imagination, but the legal shenanigans in this movie made no sense at all.

  6. Becca Stareyes says

    One would think if prayer could cure people of cancer, they would be leading with that. Probably because it usually means ‘prayer = prayer + chemo + surgery’ or ‘sometimes the answer is no’ or ‘ignore the fact this is typically a slow-progressing cancer’ and the normal refuges to explain why the successes are miracles and the failures can be excused.

    (Also they must have missed the ACLU case where they were defending an Alabama Christian’s right to wear a religious head covering in her driver license photo*. Because the ACLU is a secret atheist cabal out to persecute Christians, not just something that makes sure ‘freedom of religion’ is applied fairly for everyone… and oppressive atheist regimes mostly only exist in this sort of fiction.)

    * Apparently because most Christians don’t have religious rules about covering one’s hair, and many Muslims do, that meant it was impossible that a Christian might have a religious rule about covering one’s hair. A secular state protects even members of the majority religion, if the majority religion thinks you are doing religion wrong.

  7. lesherb says

    I don’t understand why you went to see this movie, PZ, let alone drag your wife along. You owe her a great night on the town for this! ?

  8. rietpluim says

    One more sad thing: many Christians actually believe stories like these to be accurate descriptions of reality.

  9. robro says

    If you haven’t already, I suggest today’s “Get Fuzzy” strip. Satchel’s expression in the third panel pretty much sums up my feeling about all things woo.

  10. Hoosier X says

    Heads-up for movie lovers!

    TCM is showing a 1929 movie called The Godless Girl tonight. I don’t know too much about it, but I thought the title sounded intriguing and I read the summary. It’s about an atheist girl who tries to start an atheist club at her school. And the community is not too pleased with the idea.

    It’s directed by Cecil B. DeMille, so I’m not very confident that it will be particularly supportive or accurate. Or even believable.

  11. Menyambal says

    PZ, you forgot to describe the chanting crowds outside the theater, mocking and threatening the attendees. I hope the persecutors are able to trace each viewer to their place of employment for blackmail purposes. Good luck explaining your attendance.

    (Seriously, the movie was filmed in an Arkansas high school. The Christians were just allowed in to use the premises, like they weren’t going to make a movie insulting everyone in Arkansas. How’s that for the opposite of persecution?)

  12. says

    There were no chanting atheist crowds.

    Although there were several scenes inside the movie of patient, quiet, suffering Christians praying outside the courthouse while hordes of raging spittle-flecked god haters howled at them. I felt like suggesting that maybe they ought to visit a Planned Parenthood clinic to see the roles more accurately portrayed.

  13. chigau (違う) says

    PZ

    There were no chanting atheist crowds.

    *tsk*
    Your students have no clue how to suck-up to a Prof.

  14. says

    So right off the bat, we meet a heroine of the movie who is grieving over the offscreen death of her brother, while her parents don’t seem to give a damn at all that they’ve lost a child. Her parents are “freethinkers” obviously,…

    That is truly horrible. Sickening.

  15. futurechemist says

    I wonder how fans of this film series would respond if someone made movies called “Allah’s Not Dead” or “Shiva’s Not Dead” where the plot and dialogue are kept the same except for changing names where appropriate.

  16. says

    The movie is largely an exercise in dehumanizing non-Christians, who lack all normal human feeling. It was actually rather stressful to be in a large auditorium with somewhere between 100 and 150 people who are all reveling in a movie that confirms their bigotry against people like me.

    I actually found the audience more sickening than the movie, and the movie was damned bad.

  17. Akira MacKenzie says

    Just as in the first…film was written by someone who never attended a college-level philosophy course, whoever wrote the sequel seems to have has clue how the American court system works. The target audience doesn’t know themselves, and are not likely to investigate further, but that’s not important. The class and trial only serve as plot contrivances to create a an opportunity to confirm the viewer’s prejudices and beliefs. It’s essentially a Medieval Passion play, only the cartoonish Jews are replaced with stereotypical atheists (e.g. Empty, hopeless, vindictive, selfish, litigious, and instantly “offended” by any public mention of Christianity). The conflict doesn’t have to make sense, the Christian just has to be triumphant.

  18. Akira MacKenzie says

    That, and I suspect that the company that made this film also produces the Newsboys’… “albums.”

    Synergy, Bible-humper style!

  19. tbtabby says

    Should’ve gone to see Ratchet & Clank instead. Ignore the critics, this is a fun movie. And as an added bonus, both female characters in the movie are portrayed as competent and respectable, and neither of them falls in love with the main characters.

  20. emergence says

    This is something I hate no matter who does it. These types of movies, books, comics, and so on run on a predictable, nauseating formula. A Mary Sue protagonist is attacked for no reason by a cartoonishly evil strawman, and then defeats said straw man intellectually, physically, or both. The Mary Sue protagonist usually uses tired, long-refuted arguments to win the debate, and the strawman character is unable to respond to arguments that their real-life counterparts have refuted dozens of times over. It’s particularly sickening when the strawman character suffers some sort of punishment at the end of the story for daring to disagree with the author’s views. These cases, especially the ones where the straw man is outright killed or maimed, come across like the writer is burning their ideological opponents in effigy.

    I wouldn’t appreciate a story that just flipped the roles around so a group I agreed with defeated a group I didn’t. These types of stories are petty, self-indulgent wish-fulfillment no matter which group writes them. I think that it’s possible to write a good story that has an explicit political or ideological message. Just having an over-idealized mouthpiece for your own views knock down a riduclous caricature of someone that disagrees with you isn’t the way to do it.

  21. emergence says

    @tbtabby I grew up playing the Ratchet and Clank games. I hope that the movie breaks the rule of video game movies always being bad.

  22. chigau (違う) says

    I guess I missed my chance

    The movie is no longer playing in Edmonton :-/

    too bad
    so sad

  23. Trickster Goddess says

    The movie is no longer playing in Edmonton :-/

    I just checked a movie listings website. It is showing in only 10 theatres in the entire country. If you really want to see it, you’ll have to go to Saskatoon.

  24. pita says

    It’s always funny to me to see the Newsboys still being “popular” (for certain values of popular), they were the kings of K-LOVE even when I was little. It’s like if Beyonce was as popular 15 years ago as she is now and she hadn’t made one musical change in all of that time. I listen to Christian radio even now (the DJ voices are really soothing man, idk) and the Newsboys sound exactly the same as they did when I was a kid.

    Also, if you want a sense for how fucked up they are, listen to Breakfast in Hell. It’s hilarious until you realize that they’re completely serious.

  25. wzrd1 says

    @pita, ROFLMAO! Currently, we’re listening to a new “channel” created for my wife.
    Her uncle was JD Jarvis, a man I got to meet before his mind departed him fully, thankfully. Were I to be promoted to godling, I’d eliminate both childhood death and dementia. As that’s as likely as becoming perfect, yeah, a non-starter. :/
    JD was a cool guy, religious as all hell, abandoned by his god to leave him in a condition I’m glad to not witness.
    Being mutually saluted was reward enough in this life for me.

    We may fundamentally disagree on one root point, the rest, we agreed upon. Hence, he was a very, very good man. He’d never starve a US citizen, leave that citizen homeless or without the health care necessary for continued life.

  26. Anri says

    Joe Felsenstein @ 30:

    IT COULD HAPPEN HERE!

    (alternately)

    Atheists in your church-dominated society? It’s more likely than you think!

  27. hkdharmon says

    “Christian culture warriors, like Pat Boone”

    Is that why Pat Boone suddenly thinks he matters again (if ever) and I touting blasphemy laws?

    Oh, here is him putting his pecker in a box and once again being a forward-thinking musical genius.

    http://i.imgur.com/XzoDt.jpg

  28. laurentweppe says

    The story is all about a court case. Above heroine who mentioned Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr in a class about non-violent protests gets dragged before an inquisition of fellow teachers, school board members, and lawyers who, obviously, are all atheists who detest Bible-believing Christians (where is this school? I’d like to move there)

    Are you sure? The only atheists I know off who are willing to go old-school inquisitorial on a teenager who quoted Ghandi are right-wing brotheist douchebags (not that left-wing brotheist douchebags don’t exist, but at least they know enough to not bash people for quoting heroes of the decolonization), and I seriously doubt they’d welcome you with open arms.

    ***

    I can feel the fatwah-envy radiating off the idiots who created this abomination in celluloid form from here. You just know that they would dearly love to create a movie where the righteous xian heroes slaughter every last ebil orc atheist in order to create what they doubtless imagine would be a perfect theo-topia

    You know, given that former officials of the (formally) secular Baathist regime provide much of Daesh’s brainpower nowadays, I’m kinda surprised that we’ve yet to see a Hollywood movie taking inspiration from this marriage of convenience between authoritarians to peddle the tale of a heroic American “advisor” and his iraqi Christian sidekick discovering that Daesh was an atheist conspiracy all along. In skilled hands, you could even make a descent piece of speculative fiction that would satisfy the fundies’ demand for martyrbation fantasies without completely turning off everyone else.

  29. Usernames! (╯°□°)╯︵ ʎuʎbosıɯ says

    hkdharmon: posting that picture was totally uncool.

    If you’re going to post such things, label them NSFW

  30. laurentweppe says

    If you’re going to post such things, label them NSFW

    I didn’t find the picture that shocking…
    Then again, I’m French.

  31. DrewN says

    The actress playing the oh so persecuted christian teacher, played Sabrina the teenage witch, about a decade ago. I’m honestly surprised that the most rabid of the intended audience of GND2, aren’t offended by the casting choice.

  32. says

    Usernames @ 34:

    If you’re going to post such things, label them NSFW

    I’d think putting his pecker in a box was a pretty big fuckin’ hint.

    Laurentweppe:

    I didn’t find the picture that shocking…
    Then again, I’m French.

    I didn’t find it shocking either, and I’m not French.

  33. toska says

    DrewN @36

    The actress playing the oh so persecuted christian teacher, played Sabrina the teenage witch, about a decade ago.

    I thought about this too. In my fundie 90s upbringing, Sabrina the Teenage Witch was not allowed in our house. Banning everything that had to do with witchcraft was the norm in my community.

  34. says

    The incoherence of the courtroom arguments sounds a lot like real life, in which the fundies try all manner of contradictory arguments when one gets . It usually goes something like this: 1) she totally wasn’t preaching to the students, 2) she had a right to preach to the students, 3) the Bible and/or creationism has nothing to do with religion, 4) secularism and/or evolution is a religion so she has a right to balance it with another religion.

    But I must say, “we can prove our religion true in a court of law” is one I haven’t seen before. The above bullshit never works on judges, so why they thought this one would is beyond me.

  35. says

    ….in which the fundies try all manner of contradictory arguments when one gets .

    Meant to say, when one gets fired for proselytizing and then sues (in those cases where the ACLU is the plaintiff, it’s the school district that’s the defendant). The fundies have an almost perfect record of losing these cases.

  36. Vivec says

    @36
    I mean, Sorbo is in the first one, and to this day he continues to portray a pagan demigod for tons of money.

    The funny thing about Sorbo is that according to the plot of Hercules, “Kevin Sorbo” is just Hercules’ modern-day secret identity. As such, according to the canon of the show, Kevin Sorbo is an ancient Greek demigod that converted to Christianity and then portrayed an atheist on screen.

  37. laurentweppe says

    But I must say, “we can prove our religion true in a court of law” is one I haven’t seen before.

    Oh but you did

    ***

    according to the canon of the show, Kevin Sorbo is an ancient Greek demigod that converted to Christianity and then portrayed an atheist on screen.

    Well, immortal demigods must have their fun: maybe posturing as a right-wing Christian portraying shallow caricatures on screen is an elaborate prank that’s considered Hi-La-Rious on Mont Olympus.