The AVclub reviewed the film mentioned in the OP–and gave it a D.
Kevin Sorbo (in an Evil Spock Goatee) plays The Atheist Professor; his performance gets one of the few positive notes in the review. Sounds like the film’s almost bad enough to be amusing. Almost.
As a nonbeliever, I have no problem at all enjoying religious art. The world’s belief systems have inspired some great works. This movie is apparently not one of them.
The car was a 1970 VW Squareback with a little “beep” horn. Just sounding it might not have attracted them. SOS is always good as a distress signal. (This was in January 1978.)
Not even to laugh at you?
Again, I wonder how he’d deal with an Orthodox Jewish student who would only write “G_d is dead”. That’d be interesting.
Who knows? It got their attention, and they called the Auto Club for me.
If they just wrote it like that and handed it in, it might go unnoticed. It they told the professor they had to write it in that fashion, you’d probably see the same reaction: “If you cannot bring yourself to admit that God is dead, you’ll have to defend the antithesis…” and etc.
The movie’s sitting at a robust 33% on Rotten Tomatoes. Sounds about right.
For those that thought the professor was just doing this to stimulate discussion, here is a complete synopsis of the movie-Spoiler link!
It turns out to be much worse than the trailer made it out to be.
Did anyone suggest that about the movie? I thought people were positing motivations for the assignment, independent of the movie.
Are you under the impression that you can just change professors? Because you can’t. You have to drop the class.
I would have loved to switch physics professors when I found out I was going to be graded on an engineering project meeting certain specifications.
Also, outside pressure is exactly what is needed to prevent a professor from forcing his own beliefs on his students. Someone needs to have to answer to the proponents of the students’ religions. That’s what will guarantee that said students’ religious rights are honored. If it’s just student vs. teacher, that student will lose.
How can something that never has existed, die? And please don’t quote the Bible. That book contains so much death and carnage any supreme being that purports to love us would have ended that crap long ago. He loves us about as much as Dick Cheney does. Wait - does that mean Dick Cheney is God? I guess I have to start praying to my Dick now.
Some responses from an atheist:
As has been explained earlier, “God is Dead” refers to the idea of dead, in the same sense that Disco is Dead.
No worries.
This is, a wonderful Catholic priest informed me years ago, the problem of theodicy, and I completely agree with you. Be aware that there are many arguments that attempt to resolve this seeming contradiction. I find none of the ones I’ve encountered, ranging from free will to the need to challenge humans to “mysterious ways,” to be persuasive, but obviously other folks do; it might be worth your time to explore these other arguments so that you’re familiar with them.
Whatevs.
I feel that people are mixing usages of the word dead here. God is dead and Disco is dead imply very different things to me and I have a hard time believing someone would say God is dead and also that they are an atheist. Are people who feel disco is dead adiscoists?
Sorry, that was a bad analogy. A better analogy might be to saying “alchemy is dead.” In other words, Nietzsche wasn’t, as I understand it (and it’d be hard to find someone more ignorant of Nietzsche than me), saying that a giant bearded corpse was floating out somewhere past the Kuyper Belt. Rather, he was saying that the human conception of God is no longer any more relevant than Disco is. God was never alive.
2 things about that:
Yes, you generally can if you drop the class early enough.
And 2, my reason for pointing that out is that there are enough different professors so that atheist, god-hating professors do not have a monopoly on learning, so if a student gets one, oh well, luck of the draw. Its likely the next professor he gets won’t ask him to write something like that. So there are other choices, the kid eats one F, hardly the end of the world, and life moves one
I disagree that outside pressures need to exert itself into a teacher/student relationship. There are enough different teachers that being exposed to a wide range of beliefs is overall good for the student, so I don’t see a need to micromanage every single professor
Second, I disagree that we need an advocate for student religions in a classroom. The students are there to learn and be exposed to differing viewpoints. Having an advocate just means the student gets to dictate what is being taught, which to me is much much more harmful.
I am in awe :
God the mechanic, saviour of Six Flags trips.
Nietzsche…didn’t he die insane?
Are you aware of exactly how irrelevant that is, and if it’s an attempt to make a point, what a terribly dishonest and/or illogical way of making a point you’ve chosen?
As strange as it seems, I believe in God, and also agree with Nietzsche that “God is dead.” (Or, at any rate, he’s not at all well.)
That’s NOT a contradiction. In, say, the year 1200, an atheist philosopher would have agreed (sadly or angrily) that God was very much alive as a force in Europe, whether or not He actually existed. Europe’s entire system of government and morality derived its legitimacy from a belief in God and in Christian morality. Millions of ordinary people lived as if God’s rules were extremely important.
Fast forward 814 years. Now, it is Catholic moi who must concede (sadly or angrily) that God is fading fast as a force in the West. Fewer and fewer people, and fewer and fewer governments, see any need to consider traditional Christian principles when making important decisions.
To THAT extent, yes, God is dead… even if He’s really alive.
As I see it, it’s the people who are dead…or close to it.
Aside to Left Hand of Dorkness: Insane or not, Nietzsche impresses me as one of the most repulsive people who ever lived.
Let’s stipulate that Nietchzsche’s inspiration of Nazis was deliberate, that he wished he could run death camps, and that he also was a Belieber. Even if that’s true, that has nothing to do with the argument at hand, and it’s either the height of illogic or of deceit to act otherwise.