GuineaPigDan reviews God's Not Dead -UPDATED 9/19-

God's Not Dead (2014) AKA "The Star Trek V of this generation"
A movie review by GuineaPigDan aka Furshinku

EDIT 4/29/2014- Just learned some pretty nasty stuff about Franklin Graham, a preacher that's featured in the film. He's voiced support for the anti-gay laws in Russia. How come the film makers couldn't choose a preacher who isn't crazy?
EDIT 8/13/2014- My suspicions that the film makers were too cowardly to reference Catholicism are confirmed! I have added a link to an interview where the screenwriters (who are Catholic themselves) saying that Catholic references in their script were removed from the movie.
EDIT 8/15/2014 FINALLY found a website that lists all the lawsuits that are mentioned in the credits. If you're curious to check them out without seeing the movie, I will link to them below.
EDIT 9/19/2014- Irony time! Kevin Sorbo, one of the stars of a movie that is intended to be anti-religious bigotry, turns out to be a horrible religious bigot himself, blaming Jews for Jesus' death and repeating the canard that Jews control Hollywood in interviews promoting the DVD of this film. I bet the film makers are now happy they killed off his character so Sorbo can't come back in any sequels they might make.

Hello once again, and Happy Easter! Here is another installment of my religious movie Easter reviews. Previously I saw the Noah movie, and now I got a chance to see another religious film, God's Not Dead. This is a movie I've been curious to check out for a while. When I first saw the trailer months ago, my reaction to it was similar to how I reacted to the trailer for Battleship. The trailer was full of so many clichés and silliness, seeming to draw inspiration from (most likely mythical) e-mail stories of smarmy atheist teachers being outsmarted by Christian students, that I thought this had to be a joke trailer. But the film was real, despite how silly it may have looked to me. So I went into the theater not really expecting much from the film. Maybe it would be good for a laugh or two. But after the film was done, I must admit that it genuinely surprised me.

Note in that statement that I didn't say it surprised me in a good way. What surprised me was just how much of a complete mess it was. The trailer mislead me to think the atheist professor vs Christian student arc was going to be the main focus of the movie, and although I did read there were a few other subplots with side characters about a Muslim family and a lady that gets cancer, I didn't know that there were going to be about 5 plots in all. If I never saw the trailer to tell me what the "main" plot was supposed to be, I'd say this movie was nothing but a giant web of subplots. So how does this movie go wrong? Read my review to find out!

The movie's title comes from a 2013 book "God's Not Dead: Evidence for God in and Age of Uncertainty," by Rice Brooks, who served as a consultant on the movie. I didn't know about this book until I started writing this review and researching the movie, so I don't know how much exactly of the movie's content came from Rice's book. The movie opens with a montage of a college campus, and our main character is named, try not to laugh, Josh Wheaton. (Shane Harper) Is it a coincidence this character has a similar sounding name to the guy who wrote and directed The Avengers? You decide! But anyway, this opening is also interspersed with other scenes such as a young lady named Amy Ryan (Trisha LaFache) getting out of bed, doing research on her computer for an article she's writing, and then getting into her car that has a secular humanism and I love evolution bumper stickers on it. I'll just call her "Miss Atheist" for simplicity. We cut back to the college and see a Muslim father dropping her daughter Ayisha (Hadeel Sittu) off, and he requires Ayisha to wear a head scarf around her face, which she promptly takes after her father drives away and she's out of sight.

We then see Josh at registration, and he's looking for a philosophy class to take because it's required for a law degree he's pursuing, and he chooses a class with a teacher named Jeff Radisson. The registration attendant notices that Josh is wearing a cross necklace and warns him that Radisson's class will be like the Roman coliseum. The movie has barely started and already it shows no subtlety at its persecution complex. And then a Chinese exchange student next to Josh in another line named Martin (Paul Kwo) decides to sign up for the same class, and the registration person asks Martin what PRC stands for on his papers. Martin explains it stands for "People's Republic of China" and the registration attendant marvels that China is called the "People's Republic." This scene is stupid to me because I wondered how could a school employee who probably helps hundreds of students at a time including foreign exchange ones from all around the world, would be unaware that China calls itself the "People's Republic." The college I went to had a lot of Asian exchange students though, so unless this school doesn't get a lot of Asian exchange students or the registration person is a total noob, I find this scene implausible and unintentionally hilarious.

Also I should probably note that almost all the characters in the movie use iphones, and you see them constantly throughout the first half of the movie. If I were doing a DVD review, I'd start a counter on how many times iphones appear, similar to how I counted every instance of product placement in my Garfield movie review.

There's a brief scene with a woman taking care of her mother, who is tragically suffering memory loss due to her age. Meanwhile we also see the woman's brother, who is the CEO of a big business played by Clark Kent... oops I mean Dean Cain. How funny is it that this is the second religious movie I'm watching that has a Superman actor in it? Anyway, I will just call Dean Cain's character "Corporate Asshole" because company executives are almost always evil or corrupt in movies. And Corporate Asshole just so happens to be the boyfriend of Miss Atheist, who is talking with him on her cell phone while in the car. Hey! Use your earpiece, dummy! So then Miss Atheist pulls up to a church and meets up with Willie and Korie Robertson from Duck Dynasty. What the hell?! I had read before seeing the movie that some Duck Dynasty people had cameos in this movie, but I was unaware that they'd actually be playing themselves. Miss Atheist asks Willie and Korie several questions, like how they can go around on TV killing innocent animals, establishing not only is Miss Atheist a secularist and evolutionist, she's an animal rights nut also. What the fuck? When I did my comic in which my duck character Joe Mallard protests Duck Dynasty killing ducks, I did that as a joke. This movie on the other hand is showing a similar situation but playing it seriously! Miss Atheist also takes offense that the cast of Duck Dynasty preaches the gospel on TV and Willie answers that if people don't like it, don't watch the show (I wonder if Willie would have that same attitude towards people like Marilyn Manson? Don't like his music, don't listen? Or will he call for Manson to be censored?), and then starts preaching what I call "laundry list preaching" since it's stuff that people who have even a little familiarity with Christianity will have heard already, about how Jesus is lord and savior, yadda yadda yadda. And then the interview is over and Miss Atheist leaves, ending the pointless Duck Dynasty cameo.

I have to wonder, of all the Christian actors and celebrities the movie could have had cameo here, why the film makers picked two people from Duck Dynasty? They're still making lots of cash from their show and merchandise despite Phil Robertson's controversial anti-gay/anti-muslim/anti-shinto/pro-racist interview back in December (yes, Phil is discriminatory against that many people; he didn't just condemn gay people), so they don't need extra money or exposure. Why couldn't they give a part to someone like Jim Caviezel, who has had a difficult time finding new acting roles after he portrayed Jesus in The Passion of the Christ? Or what about letting some Christian apologists that Josh mentions during his debates have cameos? (actually, given how shitty this movie becomes later on, maybe it is better none of them appear in this film)

So we cut back to the school and see Josh going into his philosophy class. Wait, at this college you register for you classes and start attending them on the same day? At my college, you picked your courses weeks in advance. Did the film makers actually go to college or is their knowledge of college just based on clichés they see in movies? Anyway, the teacher Jeff Radisson (Kevin Sorbo) introduces himself to the class, but for kicks I'll just call him "Professor Churchill" throughout this review, in honor of the whacked out left-wing university professor Ward Churchill. Professor Churchill has a white board with tons of names of non-religious philosophers such as David Hume, Bertrand Russell, John Paul Sartre, Nietzsche, and... Richard Dawkins? BWHAHAHAHA! I can understand people like Hume and Nietzsche coming up in a philosophy class, but Dawkins? Can any philosophy students who might happen to read this tell me if Dawkins comes up at all in philosophy classes? Because Dawkins being a renowned philosopher is news to me. His main forte is zoology, and while he does talk about philosophy a bit in his book the God Delusion, it's still technically not his expertise. It would make more sense if they had someone like Daniel Dennett in his place, who actually is a philosopher and one of the so-called "New Atheists." Of course the real reason why Dawkins is mentioned is because he's a very outspoken atheist and one of the biggest public enemies of Christian apologists at the moment. If the writers of this movie actually bothered to look into the atheist movement, they'd see that as of late Dawkins has been falling out of grace amongst many atheists because of his controversial views on things like feminism (look up the "Dear Muslima" incident for example). He's far from being the "atheist pope." Still, I wonder how Dawkins himself would react to the way this movie aggrandizes him as an arch-foe of Christians and the pinnacle of atheists?

So anyway, Professor Churchill opens his class by defining the word "atheist" and then starts pontificating that religion is outdated and God is dead. He then gets lazy about teaching and declares there shall be no debate in class about God's non-existence (wait, shouldn't a philosophy class be ABOUT discussing ideas?) and assigns everyone to take a piece of paper and sign it "God is dead" with their name. After this blatant violation of the first amendment in a public school, the entire class minus Josh shockingly conform. What the hell? Nobody is protesting? I'm reminded of the controversy a while back when a teacher named Deandre Poole at the Florida Atlantic University was teaching a class about symbols and then asked the class to write Jesus' name on pieces of paper and stomp on them. Poole didn't make this act mandatory for the class, and it was meant to demonstrate about how people give symbols value. One student unhappy with this "assignment" alerted the media, leading to a huge shitstorm and Poole getting tons of death threats and insults by e-mail (the student who broke the story regret the huge controversy and told people to stop sending his teacher death threats). Teachers and university professors who do controversial things in schools tend to draw attention. This movie asks us to believe that a professor in a country that is majority Christian could openly advocate atheism in a public school and not be reprimanded by the administration for violating the first amendment or receiving tons of complaints and controversy. If this movie took place in the Soviet Union it would be a lot more believable, but being set in the United States presumably in the Bible Belt state of Louisiana (I assume this movie is set in Louisiana since Miss Atheist is in driving distance of the church the cast of Duck Dynasty attends), it just stretches credulity.

Anyway, Josh is the lone student who protests at this absurd assignment, and then Professor Churchill starts to pick a verbal fight and challenges Josh to a in-class debate with the class as the jury, even though he said that there would be no debates about it earlier. So not only does Professor Churchill shit on the first amendment, he openly bullies students in school too. Isn't he such an endearing character? Also can any philosophy students reading this please tell me what kind of philosophy class this is supposed to be? I went to an art college, and although I didn't take any philosophy classes, there were classes I took that touched on philosophy the most were my comparative religion, semiotics, aesthetics, and numerous art history classes. We covered many different movements in thought and art, spanning things like the ancient Greeks, Christianity in the Middle Ages, Romanticism, and post-modernism; and in comparative religion we looked at big religions like Christianity and Islam, and some of the more obscure ones too like Jainism. Although atheists like Nietzsche did come up in aesthetics, none of these classes ever focused  only on atheists. I guess this movie must take place in some alternative reality where atheism 101 courses are offered in colleges and Josh just accidentally signed up for one. So anyway, Josh reluctantly agrees to the debate.

We then see Josh getting lunch and his girlfriend Kara (Cassidy Gifford) is with him, and she advises Josh to just to drop the philosophy class and not embarrass himself trying to debate God. I have seen some reviewers accuse the movie of sexism and that the film makers were trying to portray Kara as a temptress, dressing more provocatively than the other female actors and being too "worldly" by not being interested in defending God, but I didn't see it that way. To me the relationship was more like Kara was the stock companion character that's overly cautious and doesn't like taking risks, and Josh was the person that likes to take chances. This is a dynamic you see all the time in entertainment (think Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo for instance), so maybe those reviewers are reading more into the movie than I am, or maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention. Josh is adamant in his views and we see him later borrowing tons and tons of Christian apologist books to help prepare himself. They appear on screen briefly and since I saw this in the theater, I can't pause the movie and see the titles of the books Josh is borrowing. So the movie's way of promoting apologists and their works is to make their books freeze frame bonuses. Thanks a lot, movie! I'm sure all those Christian authors really appreciate how you prioritize by giving the Duck Dynasty cast more screen time than any of your books. I think even the atheist names on Professor Churchill's whiteboard got more screen time than any of these books.

After school, Kara meets up with Aiysha and they chat for a while, but then Aiysha notices her dad's car and tells Kara she has to leave, and quickly puts her head scarf back on. Wait a minute, Aiysha's father was right across from them and he didn't see Aiysha with her head scarf off? Maybe he has poor eyesight... but if he has poor eyesight, then how is he driving a car? Whatever, I already got too hung up with plot holes in my Noah review, so I shouldn't get too worked up on them in this movie too. We see Aiysha go home, and while her dad is away, she privately listens to her ipod and we see on its screen a picture of Jesus and that she's listening to Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham. Aiysha's younger brother happens to come into her room and sees who she is listening to on the ipod, and then Aiysha freaks out and tells her brother not to tell their father she's been listening to Franklin Graham. A few things wrong with this scene. 1) what happened in the movie that made Aiysha want to become a Christian? She's only been in maybe two scenes before this and while it's been established that she's uncomfortable with wearing a head scarf, there's a huge difference between thinking "I dislike some of the practices of my religion" and "I want to change to a different religion." Religious conversions tend to be very life changing experiences and a lot of potential character development Aiysha could have had isn't expanded on. The movie just asks us to accept she's a Christian for no reason now. 2) what are the chances that Aiysha's younger brother, who must be 9 or 10, would know who Franklin Graham is? And 3) there's better ways for Aiysha to keep this a secret. iTunes allows you to edit album covers and song/podcast titles. Just take all the Christian sermons you have, replace the album covers that have Jesus on them with covers that are inconspicuous, and re-title the sermons and edit the album artists so they say nothing about being made by Christians.

We cut back to Josh (the movie switches between subplots quite a lot, so I apologize if I misremember the order of events) and he goes into a church because he's unsure of himself. The Church is called St James but I will call it "The Unspecified Denomination Church of St James" (UDCJ) since the denomination is left vague. Inside, Josh meets the church's pastor Rev Dave, and Rev Dave gives Josh advice on how to be more sure of himself and some Bible verses to read in order to inspire him. Rev Dave is kind of an odd minister, because we never see him wearing minister clothes or priest robes in the movie, probably in keeping with St James church being an unspecified denomination. The stain glass windows make the church look vaguely Catholic, although one Catholic review of the movie that I read by Sr. Rose Pacatte on the National Catholic Register points out that the tabernacle missing from the sanctuary is a giveaway this church definitely isn't a Catholic one. Overall the scene vaguely reminds me of when Superman went to church in Man of Steel and asked a priest for guidance... oops! The Superman jokes should stay in my Noah review. This Rev Dave character actually has his own subplot in this film, where he and another minister, Rev Jude, are planning a road trip to Disney World. However they can't get their car to start, and there's some goofy shenanigans of them dealing with a car repair man that tries to scam them. It's like the writers didn't know what else to do with Rev Dave after his speech to Josh, so they just plopped him into a subplot that's supposed to be comedic when all it really does is pad the film's running time. I only mention this part of the movie because Rev Dave and Jude's subplot has a silly resolution that has to be seen to be believed.

The next day is the first debate, and Josh begins his argument with how he thinks the Big Bang conforms with the creation story of the Bible and points out that it was discovered by a theist scientist Georges Lemaître. This leads to a really stupid scene where a student in the class asks what a theist is, and Josh explains a theist is a person who believes in God. Professor Churchill earlier just explained the definition of atheist is a person that denies or doubts the existence of God, so do the film makers really think that the audience is too stupid to figure out that taking off the "a" makes the word mean the opposite? Also, I found it interesting that Josh identified Georges Lemaître as just a theist without specifying that he was actually a Catholic priest. I suspect the film makers were probably afraid to point that out for fear of offending fundamentalist protestants or other anti-catholic Christians seeing the movie and sparking the uncomfortable "are Catholics really Christians?" debate. My speculation was further confirmed after I looked at the God's Not Dead website and saw fundamentalist protestant groups such as the American Family Association under their partners. The fact that radical groups like them are backing this movie says quite a lot about who the film makers were aiming for their target audience. The subtle attempt of the film to pretend Catholicism doesn't exist became even more baffling to me when I learned that the movie's screenwriters Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman were themselves Catholic. -EDIT 8/13/14 And now I have confirmation from the screenwriters themselves in an interview they gave to the National Catholic Register that references to Catholicism were expunged. "When writing the film, we deliberately adopted a tone of discourse that’s clearly an evangelical one. We added some Catholic “brushstrokes,” but they were ultimately cut. Originally, there was a smidgen of Thomas Aquinas and a couple of other Catholic references, like the one regarding the Belgian physicist [Father Georges Lemaitre] who developed the idea of the Big Bang, and we had a character mention that he was actually a Catholic priest, but they edited around it." Go ahead and tell us about how it's really the "secularists" who are the intolerant ones.- So anyway, Josh then says that Genesis got it right all along saying that the universe had a beginning rather than the universe being infinitely old. Of course Genesis also says that the Earth formed before all the other stars and plants formed before the Sun appeared, but one out of three isn’t bad I guess. Professor Churchill chimes in and says that God's existence can't be proven.  Josh concedes the point and says that on the other hand, God's existence can't be disproved with complete certainty either. True enough, but if I were to accuse someone of a horrible crime and my only "evidence" was that the accused person couldn't prove that they DIDN'T commit the crime, is that in of itself enough reason to say the person is guilty? Being unable to disprove something isn't always reason to believe in it. Professor Churchill then quotes a statement from Stephen Hawking's book The Grand Design saying because gravity exists on it own, the universe can therefore exist on its own. Josh doesn't know how to respond, and it seems that Churchill has won this round.

We then see Josh walking down a school hall, and then Professor Churchill stalks him and turns him around, telling Josh "You think you're smarter than me?," continuing to make Josh feel like shit. And then the professor boldly declares that there is a god in their classroom, and it is him. Actually, since Soboro has previously played Hercules, maybe his claim to be a god is true! Joking aside though, he acts like a total dickhead and I wish someone would report him for abuse and end the audience's torture. All the scenes where Professor Churchill and Josh interact are masochistic for me. On one hand Churchill is a total dick and I just wish he'd leave Josh alone, but on the other hand, Kevin Sorbo's performance is so enjoyably over the top in how he delights in being spiteful, that it's practically a parody of the stock evil teacher in kid's books. It's like he desperately wants to emulate Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter or the Trunchbull from Matilda, but he lacks all the cunning those characters had and just comes off like a self absorbed buffoon. Afterward, Josh chills out outside on a bench reading some more apologist books, and then his girlfriend Kara comes out to greet him and they spend some time together. While they're talking with each other, it's established they've actually known each other for 6 years and first met at a middle school Christian retreat. But all this exposition doesn't really matter because Kara is still uneasy about Josh having his debates with Professor Churchill and is afraid he might jeopardize her chances of passing Churchill's class, or something like that. I don't know. And then after this scene, Kara pretty much disappears from he rest of the movie. I guess she broke up with him or something, but if the movie didn't care about their relationship that much, why should I care either?

So while all this is going on, we also see what's going on in the multiple sub plots. Miss Atheist publishes her interview with the Robertsons, and then she goes and has a check up with the doctor and learns some terrible news. She has cancer. I'd delve in this plot thread some more, but there's so many sub plots going on it's kind of hard to remember the exact order everything happens as the film jumps around from subplot to subplot. At the same time we also cut back to Rev Dave and Jude still trying to get their car to start and having no luck. How nice is it that the film jumps around so much that in one scene we see one character having her life devastated and in another it's goofy comedy?

So Josh and Professor Churchill have their second debate in front of their class, and Josh presents his next argument about evolution and the Cambrian Explosion and how that coincides with a certain verse in Genesis about animals springing forth from their own kinds, or something like that. And he has very elaborate animated slideshows to go together with his presentation, which makes me wonder how he put this all together in a short time and went through so many apologist books so quickly to write his script. He even rebuts Professor Churchill's Hawking quote by citing William Lane Craig's cosmological Kalam argument (although he doesn't say it's Craig's argument) and points out Hawking also says in his book that he believes philosophy is dead, so Professor Churchill should just give up on teaching philosophy. I haven't read The Grand Design, so I can't really judge whether or not the movie presents Hawking's quotes accurately. Professor Churchill then starts citing Richard Dawkins to argue against everything Josh says, and it occurs to me that a lot of the arguments Josh and Professor Churchill make are just citing authority figures back and forth. A debate that just boils down to arguments from authority on both sides isn't really interesting to watch. They could have just had Josh and Professor Churchill tell each other "my authority can beat up your authority!" and it wouldn't have been very different. Josh and Professor Churchill continue to squabble even after class is over, and Josh asks what it is that caused Churchill to become an atheist. Churchill just gets defensive and remarks even the greatest atheists were once Christian themselves, and then vaguely implies that the death of his mother as a kid was the cause. We also get a few scenes of Martin on his cell phone after class talking with his atheist father way back in China about how he's really impressed by Josh's arguments for God, but Martin's father is dismissive and tells Martin to just ignore them. I'm not really sure whether or not to call Martin's phone calls to his father yet another subplot. Martin doesn't really do much in the movie, yet the film makes it a point that Josh is convincing him to convert. I was surprised to learn later despite having a minor role in the movie, Paul Kwo revealed in an interview that his character's conversion was actually inspired by the conversion of a famous Chinese doctor Ming Wang, one of the first surgeons to practice laser cataract surgery. Dr. Wang recounts that he used to be an atheist, but while attending Harvard Medical School a university professor guided him to convert to Christianity. If you think about it, this is weirdly an inversion of the movie's story; instead of an Christian student changing an atheist teacher, it's a Christian teacher changing an atheist student!

We then cut to a young lady named Mina (Cory Oliver) on the phone at her home preparing lunch, and then Professor Churchill comes in. What a shock! We actually have a scene in the movie that doesn't involve him bullying students in school! It's established that Mina is a former student of Churchill, and he's very proud of her. And then, I hesitate to type this, Professor Churchill starts making moves on her, talking semi-romantically and giving her a hug and a kiss. Oh, ick ick ick ick! What the fuck were the writers thinking to imply Professor Churchill has the hots for one of his own students? So what I'm supposed to take away from this scene is that when the professor isn't being an asshole in school, he spends his time hitting on his ex-students? I'm now calling him "Professor Creepy" instead. There's a teacher's lounge party later that night, and Mina is bringing the wine. At the party, Professor Creepy has a chit chat with all the other teachers, and marvels that anyone would ever disagree with Richard Dawkins (please consult my statement above about how Dawkins is not the atheist pope), but the other professors don't really seem interested in what he's saying though. Professor Creepy is under the impression that everyone at the party shares his atheist beliefs, until Mina comes in and reveals she's actually a Christian herself. And shockingly (actually, not shockingly, since this movie has no subtlety) Professor Creepy starts treating her like shit too. Mina also accidentally left the wine in the Sun, making the professor even more pissy. So far Professor Creepy has completely disregarded the first amendment in a public school, bullies and intimidates students who disagree with him, throws his weight around by giving students frivolous assignments such as asking them to write papers that say "God is dead," makes uncomfortable moves on a former student, and now is disrespecting his girlfriend in front of school staff members. Will someone please fire this dickhead?

Meanwhile at the same time, Miss Atheist is having a dinner date with Corporate Asshole, and is unsure how to break the news that she has cancer. When Miss Atheist tells Corporate Asshole that she's sick and might die soon, Corporate Asshole dumps her. Sorry Miss Atheist, but your boyfriend was probably already dating Lois Lane anyway (oops gotta stop the Superman jokes). We also see what happens to Aiysha. Her younger brother snitches on her and her father is so upset that he starts beating her and then kicks her out of their home. Whoa. These scenes are all really heavy, but it just doesn't work well in the film for me. First off, these sudden changes of tone are really jarring, having all these dark scenes with Miss Atheist while at the same time having comedy scenes with Revs Dave and Jude and silly melodramatic scenes between Josh and Professor Creepy. I remember the 2004 film Crash had a similar structure, having multiple sub plots with different characters and an anti-discrimination message, but the tone was kept consistent and didn't shoehorn silly bits of comedy here and there. I guess the film makers of God's Not Dead were trying to do something similar, but they went in over their heads. Some of these subplots could have been their own movies, but they're undercut by the film makers trying to do so much at once.

The next day before the last debate, we see Josh at school and he goes into an elevator to get to class, and it just so happens that Professor Creepy comes in at the same time and rides with him. While inside, Professor Creepy continues acting smug and threatens to fail Josh. While I was watching this scene in the elevator, I thought to myself if the film makers really wanted to make fun of atheists then they should have Professor Creepy ask Josh to come back to his room for coffee, and then it leads to a huge scandal (if you don't understand what I'm talking about, read up about Rebecca Watson and the "elevator-gate" controversy). So then they get to class and begin the final debate. Josh starts to discuss the problem of evil, and gives the usual explanation that evil exists because of free will (never mind other religious points of view such as Calvinist Christianity, which denies free will, or Judaism, which views God as creating evil alongside good as a test for humanity). Professor Creepy dismisses what Josh says about free will, so Josh springs to the issue of absolute morality and quotes a famous line from Dvoretsky's The Brothers Karamazov, "If God doesn't exist, everything is permitted." This is actually a slight misquote. The line is really "'But what will become of men then?' I asked him, 'without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then, they can do what they like?'" But regardless, Professor Creepy continues to dismiss and mock everything Josh says. The debate then becomes a shouting match as Josh demands to know why Professor Creepy hates a God he doesn't think exists and why he's afraid of the truth (insert A Few Good Men "You can't handle the truth!" reference here) Professor Creepy finally cracks and says he's angry at God for letting his mother die when he was 12. Wait a minute, why did the film just make this reveal twice? So the class then makes their verdict on who they think won, and all the students declare God is not dead, and Professor Creepy leaves the class in embarrassment. The students all congratulate Josh, and Martin approaches him and thanks him for revealing Christianity to him, even though he's barely been in the movie. This film is looking so derivative of those "atheist teacher vs Christian students" urban legend e-mails at this moment that it would not shock me at all if it was revealed that Josh was a young Albert Einstein all along.

Also can someone please explain to me why hating something you don't think exists or being concerned about something you don't believe in must mean you secretly believe in it? Right now I hate the asshole professor in this movie with every fiber of my body because he's been a constant annoyance to me in this film and a total jerkass to the other characters around him, but that doesn't mean I think he's real person. Heck, at this moment I could easily go onto a website like Right Wing Watch and find tons of clips of radical Christians saying hateful things about Muslims, pagans, and other people of non-Christian religions. Does this mean that all those radical speakers are actually closet Muslims, pagans, etc themselves because they constantly complain about religions they don't believe in?

But wait! The movie isn't over yet! We still have sub plots to resolve! Josh and his friends decide to go to a Newsboys concert later that evening in celebration. Meanwhile we see Revs Dave and Jude still can't get their car to work... wait a minute, are we to believe they've just been stuck here for days? Why don't Dave and Jude just get a taxi to the airport and rent a car while at Disney World, or use public transit? Finally Jude just says they should ask God to make the car work and they should pack their things into the trunk and act like the car is already working. Dave is incredulous, but gives it a try. And surprise! The car finally starts. So I guess the lesson here is something allegorical, like sometimes life can be rough but if you have faith you can get through it? I don't know. This subplot of a broken car that is implied to have been miraculously repaired by God is so silly and out of place from the rest of the movie that I honestly felt like I was now watching a parody of a Christian movie. We also see what Corporate Asshole is up to, and he's kind of regretting the way he treated Miss Atheist and then goes to visit his mother. While he visits, Corporate Asshole's mother goes into this semi-trance and talks to him about how the devil deceives people or something like that. And then that plot just disappears. I wish I could disappear from the movie too. But then I wouldn't be writing this review, would I?

And now comes what is probably the worst part of the movie. Professor Creepy is at home alone, having been dumped by Mina (she's going to the Newsboys concert too), and he reads an old letter  his mother wrote before she died. He's then inspired to try and find Mina and apologize to her for the way he embarrassed her at the teacher's party. At the same time, Miss Atheist is also on her way to the Newsboys concert to get an interview with them and she hops into her car. Professor Creepy walks to the concert rather than drives, and  while crossing a street, Miss Atheist HITS THE PROFESSOR WITH HER CAR AND THROWS HIM INTO THE AIR! (see what I said about not using your ear piece?) Miss Atheist just keeps driving off without caring that she hit someone, and no one stops her for hitting and running. Professor Creepy barely survives but is unable to move, and Rev Dave and Jude just so happen to be nearby. Jude goes to call the ambulance, while Dave stays at Professor Creepy's side, and somehow identifies that the professor's ribs are crushed without close inspection. Now take a guess what Dave does. Does he try to help the professor and tie up his wounds to try and minimize the blood loss before paramedics arrive? Nope! He actually starts asking Professor Creepy whether or not he believes in Jesus and states how Jesus saves, and that that God must have allowed the professor to survive just long enough to give him a final chance to repent. The professor, fearing that he will die, finally gives in and converts before passing out. Let me repeat that. Rev Dave's first reaction to a car accident victim is immediately pressuring them to convert to Christianity while not doing anything life saving. Holy shit! It gets even worse after the paramedics arrive and take Professor Creepy away and Rev Dave and Jude just stand around at the car accident scene and don't show any horror or concern about what they saw just happen. At least Jude called the paramedics, otherwise I'd label the both of them sociopaths. On one hand, the sadist in me rejoices that Professor Creepy got his comeuppance. On the other hand though, the way Rev Dave handled this situation is just so unbelievable that in my opinion it actually makes the movie ANTI-CHRISTIAN. All that stuff Jesus said about helping others (eg the good Samaritan parable)? Forget about it! If you see someone horribly injured, rather than helping them, demand that they convert before they die.

So at the concert, Miss Atheist runs into the Newsboys before they play and starts asking them questions about Christianity and where they get their hope since she's lost all her hope after being diagnosed with cancer, more preaching, blah blah blah. All I can think about is how Miss Atheist was so oblivious not to notice she just ran someone over earlier. But her plot line is finished so I won't dwell on it anymore. We also see Aiysha is at the concert too, so I guess her plot line is resolved suddenly too without telling us where she's going to live now? Oh well, the movie is almost over, so there isn't enough time to resolve absolutely everything. We then get another pointless cameo from Willie Robertson on a telecom over the stage, and says he's heard about how a Christian student stood up for God in school and is thankful for him. Wait a minute, how did Robertson find out about the conflict between Josh and Professor Creepy? He then suggests that everyone "evangelizes" on their cell phones by texting the message "God's not dead" to everyone on their contact list (the cynic in me suspects this was really done just to have another product placement moment with everyone’s' iphones out). Hilariously we see that some of the texts forget the apostrophe and spell "Gods not dead," and thus the movie accidentally endorses polytheism. As everyone in the audience does that, the band then plays their signature song "God's not dead," and the movie ends with captions encouraging the audience to do the same with their own cell phones. Yay! Let's spam for Christ!

Wow. What a complete disaster of a movie. Part of me feels bad for tearing it apart, because I think it does raise some serious issues about religious discrimination. But it loses its focus and completely trivializes the issue in order to take pot shots at atheists, and arguably Muslims as well. The reason I compare this movie to Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is because they both suffer from similar issues. William Shatner wanted to make a dark story about God and humanity, but the studio mandated that he shoehorn comedy into the plot, causing total dissonance in the film's tone. In some parts the movie is a complete farce with Uhura doing a naked dance in the desert to distract the villain's army and Scotty bumping his head into an overhang after he says he knows the Enterprise like the back of his hand, but then those moments are contrasted against scenes such as the villain forcing Dr. McCoy to recount his regret at euthanizing his dying father, and the whole message Shatner was trying to get across was lost. But at least Star Trek V had a single plot line to focus on, unlike this movie. The movie's portrayal of atheists makes me afraid that it could end up making atheist-Christian relations even worse, being vindication for radical Christians that atheists are rude and arrogant, and at the same time being vindication to radical atheists that Christians are hateful and intolerant towards them. The intended anti discrimination message of the film is undermined by its negative view of Islam, how the film makers try to sweep references to Catholicism under the rug, and how they have no qualms associating with anti-gay bigots like Franklin Graham and the American Family Association, which has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. -EDIT 9/19/14 And now Kevin Sorbo has revealed himself to be a horrible bigot as well. In an interview on radio host Jerry Newcombe's show "Vocal Point," the two started to discuss Mel Gibson's movie The Passion and Sorbo commented that Jews were responsible for Jesus' crucifixion, despite the fact that many Christian churches such as the Catholic church have repudiated the "Christ Killer" accusation against Jews. And then in a later interview on a radio program hosted by Peter Heck, Sorbo said that more Christian movies aren't being made because Jews control Hollywood. How ironic that a movie that's supposed to be against religious discrimination has a religious bigot in one of the starring roles. Links to the interviews will be below.- The credits have a huge list of real life religious freedom lawsuits that were inspiration, but as far as I can tell, this list isn't reproduced on the God's Not Dead website or anywhere else on the web, so I can't judge whether or not all the cases they cite are legitimate. I've seen Kevin Sorbo in an interview with Bill O'Reilly about the movie say when the DVD comes out, viewers can pause the movie and look up the lawsuits ourselves. That's bullshit. They should be on the website for everyone to see. Their blog is posting people's own stories of religious discrimination in schools, so it shouldn't be hard to also post those lawsuits. We shouldn't have to wait for the DVD to find out more about them. If anyone reading this does find the list, I'd be interested to know where I can see it. -EDIT 8/15/14 the Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the sponsors of the movie, has a full list of the lawsuits that were shown in the credits. I will link to it below so no one has to spend money to get the DVD to see them.-

I'd also like to encourage everyone interested in learning what REAL religious discrimination looks like to check out the book "American Heretics" by Peter Gottschalk, which goes over the history of religious intolerance in American History. Asides from their list of lawsuits, history has many examples of religious intolerance which are very shocking that the film makers could have taken inspiration from. There was no need to model the movie's main plot on those ridiculous "atheist teacher vs Christian student" e-mail urban legends.

So where do I go next? I didn't see the History Channel movie "Son of God" playing at my theater, so a review of that won't be very likely. And knowing the History Channel, they probably did something really crazy to the Jesus story anyway like insert ancient aliens or something. There's also the movie adaptation of the book "Heaven is for real" about a young boy who believes he had a vision of Heaven during surgery, however I would like to read the book first before seeing the movie. A friend of mine also suggested two movies for me to check out that look interesting, "The Omega Code," and "The Omega Code 2: Megiddo." All you need to know is that those movies were produced by TBN, the network responsible for Pat Robertson's 700 Club show, and Hal Lindsey, who previously incorrectly predicted the return of Jesus between 1981 and 1988, was a Bible prophecy consultant. Yeah... this is gonna suck.