I just saw the post-apocalyptic film I Am Legend. Will Smith plays New York City’s sole survivor, who broadcasts a radio message every day asking any other survivors to rendezvous with him. When another survivor hears the broadcast and finds him, she tells him that it was God who led her to him. He tells her quite flatly that there is no god. I think it was a good speech which tried to make the woman see that humans were responsible for the apocalypse, and that she needs to credit herself, not some invisible sky pixie, for surviving and for finding him.
My immediate thought upon hearing him give this speech was, “He’ll never get away with that. The movie will be written in such a way that he’ll be proven wrong before the end of it.”
Sure enough, in the final scene of the movie, he sees something which apparently vindicates the woman’s religious convictions, and makes a statement to the woman which essentially concedes that she was correct after all. This blatant endorsement of religious superstition was annoying but predictable.
So this got me to wondering if there’s ever been a Hollywood movie in which explicit atheism was portrayed positively. The emphasis here is on both “explicit” and “positive”; movies where religious sentiment is simply absent, or where the main characters are nominally atheist but don’t actually make any statements about God or religion, don’t count. Neither do horror movies where atheism is used only to explain why God didn’t come to the rescue. I’m looking for some case where a positively portrayed character made an unambiguous statement denying the existence of God, and was not subsequently proven wrong or punished. Bonus points if equal time was not given to the opposing, religious view.
Double bonus points if, instead of an atheist converting to theism and it being portrayed as a positive, a theist converts to atheism and it’s portrayed the same way.
A good question and I can’t think of one. Plenty of movies that don’t have religion in them of course. BTW, in *I Am Legend * that wasn’t atheism, it was disenchantment with God - he strayed from faith because of all the bad going on but comes back in the end, the old message so many movies have because Hollywood can’t let a hero die without an afterlife waiting for him.
Frankly, the move you describe seems like it would be kind of boring. It would be good enough for me if Hollywood would tone down the use of woo and religion to fill gaps in their plots.
I don’t know; it’s a fairly well-established plot device for a character to attribute some accomplishment of theirs to an outside force, only to have it revealed in the end that this force was illusory, and the character actually did everything themselves. For example, a character has no success with women, so he buys a love potion and then uses it to make the girl of his dreams fall in love with him; he later discovers that the potion was just sugar water, and that the girl loves him for who he is. There’s no reason that this sort of story couldn’t work with God as the illusory agent.
Also, I have a vague memory of a movie, based on a true story, about a blind man who is an atheist. The only thing I really remember about it is a scene where he realizes his sister has fallen in the swimming pool and he is able to find her and administer CPR.
First, realize that we are no longer living in the Golden Age of Hollywood, when we were constantly shown saintly priests played by Pat O’Brien or Bing Crosby or Spencer Tracy. Today, if a character in a Hollywood movie quotes from the Bible, it’s a safe bet he’s going to turn out to be a hypocritical scumbag (like, say, the warden in “The Shawshank Redemption”).
That doesn’t mean that Hollywood pushes atheism- rather, Hollywood prefers vague, nebulous “spirituality” over anything worth calling religion. An atheist in a Hollywod movie isn’t likely to become a Christian- rather, he’s likely to be pushed toward acceptance of some warm, fuzzy, undemanding God.
But if you’re looking for an idealized atheist in a mainstream movie, there’s Joan Allen in “The Contender.” The movie itself is a preachy, implausible snoozefest, but it’s definitely a liberal atheist’s wet dream.
If You Could See What I Hear, the biopic of blind musician Tom Sullivan (Marc Singer, Shari Bellafonte). One of my favorite movies when I was a kid. I don’t remember any atheist sidestory, but it’s been years since I’ve seen it.
Yup. And she even gets into a discussion with a believer about whether it makes any sense to believe in God (plus she experiences discrimination against her as a result of her non-belief), so it’s made very clear to the audience.
Most atheists I can think of are of the “angry at God” type, rather than the “doesn’t believe there is a god so no point in being angry at Him” type. That fits in with AClockworkMelon’s post, I guess.
I just watched the movie Agora, which wasn’t very good, but Rachel Weisz does a decent job portraying the heroine Hypathia, who was a mathematician, philosopher, and astronomer in 4th-century Roman Egypt. She’s depicted as an atheist, and the movie is about the conflict between science and religion. It’s an extremely unflattering portrayal of early Christians.
Movie spoiler, even though she’s a real historical figure:
She’s eventually murdered by a very nasty Christian mob.
I can’t think of a movie that really shows critical thinking being celebrated. Hollywood atheists are almost aways “angry at God,” or arrogant, intellectual, Jack Chick style, strawman skeptics who will get proven wrong about the Devil or God’s Purpose in the end.
Jodie Foster was an atheist in Contact, but they watered it by pairing her with a theist, preacher boyfriend and writing some tepid, toothless debates between the two that resolved nothing.
It’s not a movie, but the TV show, House does have an atheist protagonist who consistently challenges and refutes woo.
There is a scene when his girlfriend mentions God and he gives a speech about not believing in a man sitting on a cloud remembering his birthday. It wasn’t really a plot point, but he makes it clear he is an atheist.
…“Nacho Libre” starring Jack Black (Mexican monk turned Luchador). His tag team partner is an atheist (I don’t believe in God. I believe in science."). It’s never an issue and I don’t recall it ever being shown up by Nacho’s faith.
First, that’s not really “Hollywood”. Second, who is portrayed as an atheist in that movie? Most of the characters would have been at least nominal adherents of either Judaism or of the Roman religion: I don’t remember any saying anything about not believing in any gods. Third, Jesus Christ appears in several scenes of that movie (the Nativity and the Sermon on the Mount), with nothing opposing the conventional Christian view that he was divine.