Really? Including that part mentioning the minor Deities from the Halls of Asgard in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe? And the second coming of the Great Prophet Zarquon?
Well it's not entirely unfeasable that you could make a film that centers around an Athiestic way of thinking (if we can have plots that boil down to 'because God said so' then I'm sure we could have someone come up with a way to make 'there is no God' interesting).
I think the only major problem would potentially getting it green lighted and approved in somewhere very pro-Christian in it's beliefs like the US.
Mmm, I don't think that you could really make the case that His Dark Materials is atheistic. They explicitly show angels and God himself. It's far more accurate to say that the series is misotheistic or maltheistic rather than atheistic.
I've see some independent films to that effect but they tend to come off as smug in the same way that pro-faith films come off preachy. I'm Catholic but I enjoy some variety in my movies.
It's hard to approach atheism without requiring some belief structure in the idea. An atheist movie might have to have some extended dialogue/monologue to explain its position and then have no one bring up a counter argument. And why can't you counter? I cannot think of fool-proof argument to deny the existence of some sort of higher power.
Does that mean that I'm saying the Judeo-Christian-Islam idea of God exists? No.
Stephen Hawking not too long ago said that this universe doesn't need a God. And I tend to agree. As much as the forests do not need the hand of a gardener to grow, we do not need the hand of God.
Also, believing in evolution does not make you atheist.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy had plenty of references to God existing. He even left a message on a mountain saying, "We apologize for the inconvenience".
No, because non-Christians are a minority in this country, no matter how much the fundies want to cry otherwise. Did you see the outcry over the Atheist billboards and bus signs? Have you heard how certain politicians demonize "secular" people?
It would cause a shitstorm, if it got much attention at all.
And further, I imagine it would be rather hard to make interesting.
Bill Mahr... I was almost done with my book i had my whiskey, my tea, and my sammich i was about to finish my weekend book and you had to go and post a link involving Bill god damn Mahr. I don't like you.
well i would like to say i apologize, as i actually haven't seen the movie, it's just a couple of my "pro-atheist" friends always reference that movie anytime anything religious is mentioned. So i have no idea what is wrong with bill mahr...
but also, just curious about your post...
you had whiskey, and tea, and a sammich? That is the oddest combination i have ever heard of
and weekend book? it's tuesday night where i'm at....
It's pretty much straight up atheist, dude. Case in point:
Paul comes out of the bathroom and responds to Kristen Wiig's character spouting "created in God's image" stuff with, and I quote "how do you explain me?"
I really enjoyed the movie overall, mostly because I'm one of those people who can't get enough of any of the following people: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen, Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio. However, I found the whole atheist bent to be ham-fisted and out of place, and added nothing to the movie.
The thing that got to me was, here is this movie character railing against a fictional creationist strawman, and yet the character himself is a fictional CG alien who uses his own fictional existence within the narrative of the movie as one of his main arguments against the existence of God. Please note that I have been 100%, past-the-point-of-no-return atheist for at least the past decade, and will not suffer any creationist spouting garbage like irreducible complexity, the blind watchmaker, the shape of a banana or any other baseless, anecdotal horseshit arguments they can come up with. This also means that I hold any atheist arguments to the same standard, regardless of whether it's real life or fiction.
In short: I like you Simon Pegg and am a fellow atheist, but keep your brow-beating about atheism out of my good-time sci-fi/buddy/stoner/action/road movie, especially if you're not going to add anything meaningful to the conversation.
I can't think of any films that literally say "Atheism! ATHEISM!", but I'd say most of the films I watch have no involvement whit religious beliefs, and given that Atheism is the belief in no deities then a film not having involvement with them would be an Atheist film.
Who cares whether or not a movie says God is or is not real? When you watch a movie, you enter a world hand-crafted by a group of people, and these people get to dictate the laws of the universe. One of these laws may be that "God does/does not exist." I'm an atheist, I sure as shit couldn't care less whether or not that law is true. Because it's just fiction, and it's someone else's universe.
I was gonna go somewhere else with this, but it kinda got away from me =/...oh well.
CAPTCHA: groaning tummen
Poor Captcha is sick =( Or perhaps just hungry.
The thing that got to me was, here is this movie character railing against a fictional creationist strawman, and yet the character himself is a fictional CG alien who uses his own fictional existence within the narrative of the movie as one of his main arguments against the existence of God.
Athiesm isn't a belief so a film dedicated to showing athiesm as "right" would come across as empty. But for the sake of fun I'll bite with The Shawshank Redemption.
I'll look at two key things, Andy's Bible and Red's parole hearings. Andy's Bible is the obvious one. The warden, a heavily religious yet crooked man, praises Andy for reading it, saying redemption lies within it. Which is true but not in the way he means it as Andy is using it to hide his rock hammer. The message of this, as I read it, is that redemption can't be found in the pages of a book, it has to be a proactive effort by the one seeking it. Andy tried seeking redemption through higher means but the only thing that worked was relying on himself. To me that is a very "athiest" stance if there is such a thing.
To back this up we have Red, who's constant failed parole hearings serve as almost a calendar for the film. Each time he tries to appeal to the parole board with what he feels their sense of redemption is. The final time Red gives up trying to appeal to them and shows he accepts what he did and it doesn't matter if they think he's redeemed or not. And it works. This again shows that seeking redemption through higher means is pointless and it can be only found in ourselves.
So make of that what you will. Movies like this are easy to look too much into
well you could claim that all movies that don't show a presence of any religious statemant at all are atheist. But truth be told, isn't atheism a bit boring, that we just rot and the we all end up dieing in the end because the world can't last forever. I would rather believe there is something out there then believe nothing at all, because otherwise that would be depressing and boring.
That reminds me of my movie idea of a drunken asshole going to the Atheist afterlife...his own body, and it turns out to pretty much be Hell anyway considering all the crap dead bodies go through.
I don't know about all atheists, but I don't believe in a "soul" or any sort of continuation of consciousness past brain death. Hence, I don't care what happens to my body since I won't be able to experience it anyway. On a side note, I'd like to be cremated when I die, not because of any beliefs or traditions, but simply because I believe traditional burial to be a pointless waste of space.
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