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    David Kyle Johnston watches “God’s Not Dead” so you don’t have to

    Really fine review of the movie (filmed on the LSU campus) at Psychology Today here, with a number of comparisons between the film and that one Rocky film where Stallone wins the Cold War, including this:

    If you recall, the Russian boxer Drago trains in a state of the art scientific facility, where they measure the impact of his punches, train him on machines and try to figure out how to make him a better fighter. Meanwhile Rocky runs out in the snow and lifts logs. God’s not Dead is very similar. The reiteration of Hawking’s statement that philosophy is dead was not accidental. It is something that the conservative evangelicals who made this movie desperately want to be true. In the real world, Hawking’s statement was met with condemnation from both scientists and philosophers,* and philosophy is so alive and well today that the Christian right-wing feels they need a movie to demonize it. But this is a part of a larger anti-intellectual movement in evangelical Christianity that distrusts what academics say on everything from American history to evolution.

    The end of Johnston's piece is a little bit unfortunate.

    Interestingly, I believe that many of my Christian theologian colleagues would object to this movie just as I do. The point of religious faith is exactly that—to believe without evidence. Some even suggest, as Kierkegaard did, that one should believe God exists because it is absurd. My theist friends and I will disagree about whether such belief is advisable, but I think we would all agree that trying to prove that God's not dead is a bad idea—especially if you do so by demonizing and straw manning your opponent in a movie filled with really bad arguments.

    I wish Johnston had read this recent post (and this earlier one) by Helen De Cruz. But independent of the crudeness of his own treatment of faith (as believing a proposition with insufficient evidence) the piece is well worth going over for when your students ask you about the execrable film.

    [*I also wish Johnston hadn't linked to yet another instance of Santiago Zabala and Creston Davis' ignorant analytic philosophy bashing. Maybe I'm being too harsh. . . please follow the link above and see what you think of their claims.]

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    3 responses to “David Kyle Johnston watches “God’s Not Dead” so you don’t have to”

    1. Charles R Avatar
      Charles R

      There are a number of places in the movie where ambiguity arises. For one, the supposedly Muslim father—it’s not clear where and how the geography of his views influences his practice and understanding of his own religion, since the dress restrictions and permissions he demands of the daughter aren’t consistent—speaks and acts in exactly the way a conservative Christian person in the audience is supposed to act if they discover a family member is choosing to renounce their faith and live a deliberate life of sin (maybe to get gay married, maybe to practice witchcraft, maybe to be atheist). The father, prior to removing the daughter, says to her that they are people of belief, called to be within the world but not a part of it, and that the world the other non-believers live within looks tempting and the people look happy, but inside they are miserable and without truth. If the father’s justification for why he is doing what he does, even against his own love for his daughter—his crying and the last moment where he sees her and still chooses to do the right thing brought some tears to the people watching—is that he must do what is right regardless of how it feels in terms of sentiment, what separates him from the Christian who must divorce or separate from a lover because of a conflict of faith?
      In the last scene with the professor, there are two things worth pointing out that stand out. The professor is dying; he has just prayed to receive Jesus and accepted the offer. He’s going to heaven, so goes the story. But then the pastor speaking with him says, “In five minutes, you’re going to know more about God than anyone here.” From standpoints not in agreement with this particular movie’s concept of heavens and hells, this will also be true. The second thing worth pointing out is that Radisson gets a text message from his separated wife who was inspired by the Newsboys concert and Willie’s video appearance there to text all her contacts three words: “God’s not dead.” So, imagine this scene and what Willie earlier did. Willie told everyone at the concert that he heard there was a college professor who was having people write God is dead but a young student stood up to argue that God’s not dead, which inspired the Newsboys to have the God’s Not Dead Tour. This same professor is struck while crossing at a crosswalk by a car that just speeds off and shortly after receives a text message saying “God’s not dead.” The pastor and the missionary see the text message and smile at it. However, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine: from the point of view of someone investigating a homicide that’s potentially murder, what we have here is someone or some group murdering this specific professor whom the public came to know as suppressing religion and texting to him “God’s not dead” as a politically motivated, terroristic response. Is it less violent and less threatening just because we know the timing—which is in God’s hands, as the whole pastor and missionary storyline demonstrates—behind it all?

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    2. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      Wow. I’m guessing that the ambiguity is unintentional. It would be really weird if anyone involved in its production realized any of that.
      It probably is just one more instance of Voltaire’s prayer though. If I remember right he said he only ever prayed that God would make his enemies look ridiculous, and God answered his prayer.
      As a philosophy professor and Christian, the whole thing does ultimately depress me a little bit, even if the massive amount and type of earnest incompetence on display renders it hysterically funny at the same time.

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    3. Charles R Avatar
      Charles R

      I think it is unintentional (and I have an overactive imagination at times), but I’m also of the mind, similar to what you’re saying about Voltaire’s prayer, that the Spirit moves in mysterious ways.
      One other thing came to mind. When the ambush journalist—the woman who gets cancer and later meets with the Newsboys—is interviewing the Robertsons (the Duck Dynasty people) as they are about to enter a church building, she tells Korie that she’s surprised to see her dressed up and in high heels and not barefoot at home and pregnant. The Robertsons laugh a bit, and Korie says something to the effect of “Oh, I remember those early days.” Willie then responds that they can try for it again, that he’d like to have another kid maybe, and Korie emphatically says “No.” There was some knowing chuckling in the audience at that.
      But my thought was immediately, “Is she saying that she has a choice about it?” The evangelicals I have long known over the years tend to be okay with contraception and family planning, but for a wife to adamantly refuse something like this is not right. On the one hand, it’s not her decision alone to make, so she can’t be so adamant about what’s in God’s hands; on the other, she’s not displaying proper submission to her husband by not respecting his interests, even if he is somewhat joking. But that she has already made up her mind and sticks to it on something like this is not quite the ‘biblical womanhood’ position found in more conservative circles.
      So, it was curious to me why some laughed at that scene.
      And, yeah, my experience on the “How can you hate something that doesn’t exist?” was the same as that article. It got the most cheers and applause, not the professor praying to receive Christ—which kinda lays out there that if the heavens celebrate the return to the fold of those who are lost, but what my audience celebrated was a one-liner having no real effect on the arguments, then there’s clearly a disconnect between those who want what heaven wants and those who still want what they want.

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