Mar 26 2006
“Faith” Scares The Crap Out Of Me
The God Who Wasn’t There, a documentary:
Bowling for Columbine did it to the gun culture.
Super Size Me did it to fast food.
Now The God Who Wasn’t There does it to religion.
Holding modern Christianity up to a bright spotlight, this bold and often hilarious new film asks the questions few dare to ask.
Super Size Me did it to fast food.
Now The God Who Wasn’t There does it to religion.
Holding modern Christianity up to a bright spotlight, this bold and often hilarious new film asks the questions few dare to ask.
The film asks questions which explore the roots of Christian belief. The documentary in particular proposes that Jesus is likely a fictional character who was never based on a real human, that Christian doctrine often contradicts itself, and encourages immorality when it serves the religion, and that moderate Christianity makes even less sense than the extremist form.
I like this blurb from the film’s site the best:
Dazzling motion graphics and a sweeping soundtrack propel this uncompromising and taboo-shattering documentary…
“Dazzling”.
The filmcritic.com writes about it:
Overall, The God Who Wasn’t There is entertaining and it gets points for being gutsy and inventive but the truth is: none of this matters.
You can argue all these “facts” until you’re blue in the face but there is one truth about religion that Flemming seems to overlook: the facts don’t matter. When it comes to faith, it’s all about faith. Christians don’t believe in the power of Jesus because they read a fact-filled book about him, they believe in the power of Jesus because they feel it. That’s conviction, bub.
You can argue all these “facts” until you’re blue in the face but there is one truth about religion that Flemming seems to overlook: the facts don’t matter. When it comes to faith, it’s all about faith. Christians don’t believe in the power of Jesus because they read a fact-filled book about him, they believe in the power of Jesus because they feel it. That’s conviction, bub.
I haven’t seen it.
(via sedition.com)
The critic is right about the faith part. Every church, temple, whatever has a sign on the door, it reads “Check logic at the door please.”
I’ve been saying this for years. And it’s not just that it makes less sense. It’s more dangerous. Without invoking Godwin’s law let’s just say fanatics/extremists are an eternal small minority never given any weight or power but by moderates who make excuses for them.
I’ve “thought” things to be true all my life and been totally incorrect, even when I was pretty damned sure I was totally in the right. The only thing I truely believe in is that humans think they’re so damned smart, but they’re dumb. All of ya.