Reading Time: 2 minutes I know a lot of you don’t have time to read a 2,000 word essay about a movie you’ll never see anyway, so here is a much briefer summary of the latest evangelical Christian blockbuster: Plot Synopsis: A high school history teacher who identifies with the same religion as 86% of the rest of her […]
Film/TV
Exploring the world of film and television from a secular perspective.
Posted inFilm/TV, General, Religion
Live Tweeting My Way Through God’s Not Dead 2
Reading Time: 4 minutes I had the dubious privilege of previewing the second installment of the God’s Not Dead franchise last night in Pearl, Mississippi, and I decided to live tweet my way through the experience. I’m including those tweets here in case you’d like to witness the experience unfolding as I experienced it myself. My full review of […]
Posted inFilm/TV
Persecute me, please: God’s Not Dead 2 and the evangelical lust for victimhood
Reading Time: 8 minutes Evangelical Christians want to be persecuted. At some level, they need to be persecuted. It’s woven into their central narrative. It is a part of how they were taught to understand themselves. “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me.” —Jesus.“…that I may know him […]
Posted inFilm/TV, General, Philosophy, Religion, Secularism
Groundhog Day: Finding Purpose Even If There’s No Tomorrow
Reading Time: 6 minutes February 2nd is upon us, which means it’s time once again to talk about one of my favorite movies of all time: Groundhog Day. Few movies have stimulated as much philosophical and theological debate as this one has. There’s so much that could be said—and already has been said—about this movie. About a decade after the movie’s release, […]
Posted inCulture, Film/TV, General, Philosophy, Psychology, Secularism
Into the Woods: A Closer Look at Our Scapegoats and Reviled Saviors
Reading Time: 8 minutes A year ago this past week I took my four daughters to see the Hollywood adaptation of Into the Woods, and coincidentally I found myself watching it again on DVD exactly one year later. I’ve been meaning to write about it for some time because of a couple of key themes that stuck out to me, […]
Posted inGeneral
The sequel to God’s Not Dead happened in my classroom, but in reverse
Reading Time: 6 minutes Given that the first installment of God’s Not Dead only took $2M to make but grossed $60M, Pure Flix Entertainment decided to bless the world with a second installment, due out on April Fool’s Day, rather uncreatively entitled God’s Not Dead 2: He’s Surely Alive. It takes place in Arkansas and centers around a fictitious teacher […]
Posted inFilm/TV, General, Religion
Big Fish and the Resurrection of Jesus
Reading Time: 8 minutes Last weekend, people all over the world celebrated Easter, a holiday which reminds us that we are all so very bad that a man had to be tortured and killed in our place…because apparently that’s what we deserved. Never mind if you think torture is wrong, or that the death penalty should be reserved for cop […]
Posted inFilm/TV, General, Religion
Chocolat and the Impotence of Religion
Reading Time: 6 minutes If people behave well because they fear punishment, is it really accurate to say they are “good people?” I ask this because it comes up a lot for atheists like myself. When people learn I don’t believe in spirits, gods, or afterlives, the first question I tend to get is, “Well, what’s to stop you from […]
Posted inFilm/TV
God does exist
Reading Time: 5 minutes A couple of summers ago I spent entirely too much time in online discussion groups arguing with people about whether or not gods exist. I say “gods” because there were several being debated. Of course, where I live, everyone safely assumes that only one particular deity is even on the table for discussion. But the […]
Posted inFilm/TV, General, History, Politics, Religion
When All Good Sense Gets Left Behind
Reading Time: 9 minutes Time and money are far too scarce for me to spare either one to see the new remake of Left Behind, this time with Nicolas Cage instead of Kirk Cameron. But let’s be honest: Do I really have to see it to know what’s gonna happen? I mean, sure, there are individual story lines and […]