So This is a rant. . . I saw a trailer (on youtube) for a movie titled Gods Not dead coming out on Friday. To give you as much as you need to know for this (from IMDB) College student Josh Wheatons faith is challenged by his philosophy professor, who believes God does not exist. and for the record the prof asks every student to write God is Dead if they refuse they either fail the class or must defend their belief in a debate vs. the prof. I love sci-fi and realism is not required for me to enjoy media (I wrote a play about dragons . . . I mean Dragons, trolls, a woman made of Parsley etc) but I refuse to willingly suspend my disbelief for total trash. I think this is an ideological attack on higher education. lets begin with the lack of realism. from the students perspective. 1) There have been a number of times that teacher and prof. have told me things I didnt believe to be true but when the test came I answered how they wanted me to answer. Including a prof who had a bonus question what is the greatest restaurant? the correct answer was McDonalds I got the points. I hate McDonalds 2) If as a student I thought this prof. should not say that I feel that he (since the prof in the movie is male) is asking me to do something against my faith- I would go to the chair of the department or the Dean or both. and something of this magnitude would end. 3) I understand that faith means not needing proof so I know that my ability to prove God has an inverse relationship to my faith. from the philosophy professor perspective. 3) as a prof. I would know I would get in trouble if I asked every student to write God is dead. So I wouldnt. If Im an adjunct after a stunt like this, I would switch to past tense (I was an adjunct). If I was tenured I hope I never want to advance my career - chair are you kidding me -. I would know this is a bad call so I would never plan to do it. 4) If I assume that everyone will agree with me I wont have put in time for a class long debate. So even bringing it up allows one student to mess up my lesson plan. 5) Why would I reward students for passively agreeing with me (rather I could make everyone form into one massive debate) 6) So My task is to prove that God does not exist - as a philosophy professor I would know you cant prove a negative. so the question becomes why make a movie like this - have we run out plots. No (or yes Joseph Campbell . . . but you dont seem to be bothered by endless recreations of the mono myth ) We have a Christian(although he could have been Jewish, or Muslim it would not have had the homogenous American feel) man (interesting I guess a female is too weak to challenge the professor) who stands up against the evil professor. So Christianity vs education. So our hero is Galileo? No our hero is the suffering Josh Wheaton (sorry Firefly fanes close but Joss Whedon is close but . . . ). This movie is sending out a message that being Christian means education is attacking you. This is insane. there is no war between Religion and education (or normally science). Take the Catholic church 200 years after Galileo explained the idea to the Vatican, the Vatican still would not allow any publications with a Heliocentric world view. Now The Catholic Church embraces all of modern science - yes evolution. Your belief In God or Gods or no god at all has no barring on your thought about science unless you want it to. This movie is one to skip. only if you are a part of a very specific world view (the 25% of American who still think the sun goes around the earth perhaps) would dogma like this make you smile (Ken Ham . . . ) alright thank you for reading this entire thing
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 04:42:14 +0000
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