![]() Everyone deserves better than this, atheists and theists alike.īad argument, little comfort: God’s Not Dead 2 is no good, on its own merits. It is a mean-spirited and unpleasant film for non-Christians, and by presenting itself in such a judgmental way it also makes Christians look bad to outside parties, because they are being represented to the rest of the world with mean-spirited unpleasantness. This film tries to be reassuring to certain members of the audience but everyone else is being explicitly told that they are not welcome, and that they are less than human if they have a different set of beliefs. #Conversations with god movie movie#If any movie treated Christians as badly as God’s Not Dead 2 treated atheists, then Christians would be entirely justified in making another God’s Not Dead movie about it. And again, even that wouldn’t even be so bad if God’s Not Dead 2 was made exclusively for Christians, but it is explicitly about opposing points of view, so presenting one of those points of view as absurdly illogical and forcing it into the mouths of grotesque villains makes the whole enterprise suspect. To make its case, it pretends that all non-believers are despicable unless they convert, and that Christians have never ever done anything questionable. It’s hard to trust God’s Not Dead 2, because the film doesn’t even seem to trust its own message. But theologians all get to testify in court, with hardly any cross-examination to speak of. Atheists and agnostics are not afforded the dignity of having a halfway reasonable point to make. Christians present their seemingly bulletproof arguments and atheists are only allowed to respond with bemused condescension or dumbstruck wonder, instead of with intelligent follow-up questions. So instead simple logic is treated here as some kind of brilliant intellectual breakthrough, one that boggles the mind of non-believers everywhere.Īnd that’s another problem: non-believers spend a lot of time boggling in the God’s Not Dead movies. But the film doesn’t bring that up until it’s too late, because otherwise there wouldn’t be a trial, and the film wouldn’t have a plot. It’s such a simple and convincing argument that it’s the one schools already use to talk about Christianity without getting into trouble, because that’s how logic works. It takes over half the movie for the hero’s defense attorney to realize that although claiming that Jesus was the “son of God” may be a violation of school policy, acknowledging Christianity’s pervasive sociopolitical impact is necessary to teach a course in history. ![]() But one of the key areas in which God’s Not Dead 2 fails to make a convincing case for itself is in its steadfast refusal to admit just how routine this inciting incident really is. Actual events, many of them very reasonable, are often exploited by the multimedia hype machine, and are transformed into larger issues by those with lofty and self-serving agendas. is blown completely out of proportion and transformed into a potentially landmark court case with drastic ramifications for the separation of church and state.Īnd again, that’s not a bad idea for a movie. Grace Wesley (Melissa Joan Hart) is a kindly teacher with an ailing, elderly father (Pat Boone) whose reasonable discussion about Jesus Christ as a historical influence on Dr. In God’s Not Dead 2 this trend continues: non-believers are depicted here as soulless opportunists who don’t care when their own children die, or black-suited lawyers who will stop at nothing to destroy religion for no particular reason, or nameless bureaucrats who make vague and utterly baseless threats.* They oppose a Christian hero who is entirely without flaw. Christians are portrayed as universally decent people, but non-Christians are portrayed only as abusive monsters, so that any argument those non-Christians make can be dismissed because, reasonable or otherwise, it’s coming from individuals whom the audience is encouraged to pity and/or hate. ![]() God’s Not Dead depends entirely on a “straw man argument,” in which both sides of the conversation are presented from a single, biased perspective, so that any opposing viewpoints are inaccurately represented to make them sound worse than they really are. More importantly, any attempt at logical discourse is rendered moot, because God’s Not Dead tells non-believers that they are all horrible people unless they convert to Christianity, and that’s hardly catching flies with honey. Atheists are presented only as disenfranchised former Christians, Christians who haven’t found Jesus yet, or Communists. ![]() The idea – to dramatize the ongoing and passionate debates between atheists and theists – is a perfectly decent starting point for a movie, but the original film insists that, unlike God, atheists do not actually exist. In the first God’s Not Dead, a young college student tries to prove to his peers that God exists, despite the protests of his professor, who claims otherwise. ![]()
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