Most frequent comments so far is "They made four of these?!" Yes, God's Not Dead: We the People was released last year. It had a three-day run in the theaters during some of the worst months of the pandemic so far, then a few weeks at the Pureflix streaming site before being taken down for home release. It made its money back, but it also made zero splash or impact. It has exactly one review on Rotten Tomatoes. So few professionals watched it that it doesn't have a score and maybe never will. I doesn't even have a lot of video essays and takedowns about it. A few vlogs and summaries without many views. I guess it was up to me to make this. So, uh, you're welcome.
Probably not to hard to make money back on a film like this. No special effects, no exotic locations, no set-building. Some B-list celebrities that probably demanded a chunk of money, but nowhere near the price you'd pay for an A-lister. I imagine it lost money on paper though, just because every movie loses money on paper. The industry is famous for their barely-legal tax avoision practices.
Frankly I can’t believe you and Joel are the only TH-camrs keeping up on the God’s Not Dead Cinematic Universe (or GNDCU). It’s a failure of the community if we’re being honest.
The allegation that Haiti made a pact with the devil to overthrow the French is especially heinous, since Toussant Louverture was in fact a devout Catholic whose religion factored heavily in his drive to end slavery and free Haiti.
Louverture never lived to see a free Haiti. The Haitians that did take power used him as a propaganda figure in hopes that the people overlook their corruption.
"Christianity started out in Palestine as a fellowship; it moved to Greece and became a philosophy; it moved to Italy and became an institution; it moved to Europe and became a culture; it came to America and became an enterprise." ~Sam Pascoe
Should probably add some snappy line, which I'm totally unqualified to come up with, noting how American Evangelicals have spent the last decade or so exporting their far right ideology back to, in particular Europe and Africa.
They fetishise being the victim, when in reality they have been in power and are losing it as society becomes more equal. Mitchell and Webb 'Are we the baddies?' is perfectly relevant here.
Agreed. Sadly, nearly every group on top, always seem to think they’re the ones at the bottom and the group or groups they have oppressed are holding them down. They find any suggestion of alternatives as a threat.
The reason they say that cause they want to have that mind control over you by using that Bible saying you is a kid to make you listen to them like a kid even though you are a full grown adult.. They figure that at those ages they can get you to donate everything you have, indoctrinate your family into doing the same things for years and decades and will use only certain scriptures to make you or I feel like sh_t when in fact they skipped over scriptures that will describe them and their behaviors..
so let me get this straight, dear christian right: black children become grown-ups around 12, girls can be considered women from the point they get their first period, and white guys are still children at 33... so why do we let those run our country again?
"There's not a single nation that embraces homosexuality and survives" Yep, absolutely true. We all remember that terrible earthquake that destroyed the entire nation of The Netherlands in 2001, right after they made gay marriage legal. We should've listened to the warnings...
Technically, no nations survive - all of them die eventually as they are just social constructs: once enough people cease to believe in them, they stop being.
@@wilberwhateley7569 yeah, but... the gay earthquakes though! my neighbour got into a gay relationship with another man, and a sinkhole opened up in the middle of the street and caused a nearby elderly woman to bruise her knee!
And also the United States Supreme Court paved the way for legalized gay marriage and at some point thereafter Diaper Donnie became president and our nation is currently being destroyed by the maga morons that worship him as we speak.
Hell, Greece was thoroughly gay and not only is it the foundation of Western Democracy as we know it, but it's also STILL AROUND from ancient days. Still going strong. Jesus, the ignorance...
Slightly off-topic, bu I once attended to Mormon meeting that discussed about slavery in old times. They had....interesting defenses for slavery. One was that old times slavery was good because masters treated their slaves as "members of the family". Implying it's okay to deprive someone of their autonomy, so long as you're "nice" about it. They also compared being enslaved to addictions of modern world. I get where they were going with it that addictions can change personality and make people do what they'd never do otherwise, but not all addictions are equal. Being addicted to caffeine is entirely different than being addicted to heroin. Furthermore, I've yet to find out that my addiction to coffee has resulted a coffee mug kicking me out of the bed and whipping me because I didn't do my work. Mormons themselves have pretty icky relationship with slavery, with both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young maintaining that slavery is consequence of curse of ham, thus being divinely ordained and shouldn't be tried to abolish(they also participated in it by enslaving native americans they captured during skirmishes in Utah). They can't exactly hide behind "it was just spirit of the times" either: Joseph Smith's son (who ended up starting his own church after succesion crisis) was against it and kept his position trough his life, meaning even in "those times" some still recognized slavery as injustice.
Religious Conservatives: It's okay that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, he was only 33. I had to get up and take a lap after hearing that one. Also, side note I'm 34 and I get mad at 19-year-olds when they goof off at work. But that's beside the point.
@@Ruosteinenknight yeah, that product of the times thing is nonsense. In the United States, many, including founders, acknowledged the moral evil of slavery (so did famous slave holder Thomas Jefferson). Many of those that acknowledged it as a moral evil fought to have it abolished, which led to much strife that ultimately culminated in the American Civil War. The insanity of these people is truly staggering.
@@Ruosteinenknight To be fair, the slaves were Family in the ancient Roman sense of the word. We get out term "Family" from a Latin term "Familia," but that did not mean family as we think of it today. I did not include blood relations at all, except maybe for slave children produced from the master or his sons raping a maid. Famulus (of Famula is feminine) was the term for a trusted domestic slave (the kind who lives in the same house as the master and handled menial tasks like cooking, cleaning, and childcare) as opposed to the slaves who did hard labor in the fields, mines, etc, often while wearing chains to prevent them from running away or fighting back, and slept in separate shelters. Familia is a collective noun that referred to all of the house slaves long before it came to be extended to include any free persons also living in the household. (Incidentally, the normal Latin word for the children of the household literally means "Free Person," distinguishing a legal son from a Famulus who might very well be a bastard that the Pater Familias sired on a helpless slave girl and refused to recognize as his own.)
I went to a public high school and we had an entire elective class devoted to studying the Bible as a literary text, but sure, Christians are persecuted in America
As someone who grew up christian enough to be shown the first movie unironically, the thing that grosses me out the most is the treatment of islam in the movie. The fact that they brought back the muslim father to convert him to christianity is wild.
That’s because Christian nationalists are islamophobes, transphobes, anti women’s rights, antisemite, racists. Their entire “religion” is exclusion of human beings that aren’t white and right wing.
@@woobiefuntime Depends. It can be manipulative sometimes, portraying outsiders of the religion as abusive, hateful or otherwise bad people until they convert, then they suddenly become good people. On its own it's not too terrible, but it reinforces the idea in the minds of isolated religious people that "non-believer = bad person" and "believer = good person." That said, not all conversion stories are like that.
I have heard from many Jewish students who have been penalized for taking time off for Jewish holidays that do not permit writing, riding in a car or on public transportation, etc., despite trying to arrange it ahead of time. When my friend was a TA his department even tried to arrange the makeup test on Shabbat and did not allow an alternative time. Somehow I have yet to hear from any Evangelical Christians about this affront to freedom of religion.
Because the Religious Right does not care about the Jews at all they only care about Israel. The only reason they care about Israel is because of it's supposed part in the book of Revelations and the end of the world. If there was no mention of the Jewish homeland in the book of Revelations then Israel would just be another Middle Eastern country that would be better offed glassed i.e. nuked like the rest of the Middle East to the Religious Right.
Not to derail but I had an important test once on Eid and the teacher would not let me take it at a different time even after I explained my situation to them. Minority religions just cannot celebrate their holidays/holy days in this society.
Non-Christian friends have had to make the case every year to the school principal to have their children's absence from school for high holy days "excused" in the attendance records. The school calendar in most of the US is built around Christian holidays. My state representative led passage of a law this year to make absences for religious observances excused/protected, so now at least in a small corner of the country, there is a state law to appeal to, not just the constitution that feels too abstract to the average person in the majority population and that Christian Supremacists willfully misunderstand. My hope is that it will also make it easier for families of minority religions to advocate for excused absences. "My child will be absent on X, Y, and Z dates this year for major religious observances," rather than having to make a persuasive case that your religious traditions are legitimate and whether the observance is big enough to miss school over. Like, bruh, you already scheduled school so it doesn't interfere with your routine weekly observances. Why does my friend have to argue that their tradition's New Year observance is sufficiently legit?
I’m still traumatized from having to write “I will stand during the Pledge of Allegiance” 500 times as a elementary student in the 80’s. I grew to despise these systems of indoctrination.
@@everythingiseconomics9742 It's actually illegal for public schools in the U.S. to make students stand for and/or say the pledge, since that violates their First Amendment rights, but a lot of schools do it anyway, and just never get taken to court over it. Americans are absolutely bombarded by propaganda from a very early age, far before we're old enough to critically examine it, it's fucked.
@@everythingiseconomics9742 Ngl, the whole pledge thing sounds more like a military oath. Difference being that usually people in the military are adults.
@@Ruosteinenknight The one they make even preschool children say in Guatemala includes a line about dying for the flag. Imo it's bad enough to have adults say that kind of thing, but a small child who can't even write their own name or put on their own clothes yet?
@@everythingiseconomics9742 I agree. "“The important thing is to keep them pledging,' he explained to his cohorts. 'It doesn't matter. whether they mean it or not. That's why they make little kids pledge allegiance even before they know what "pledge" and "allegiance" mean." - Catch-22
@@everythingiseconomics9742 It is also deeply Anti-Christian. Christ made it very clear that his followers were never to swear any oaths at all. He also made it clear that they should pray only in private, never to show off their piety in public like hypocrites. do.
Believe it or not had a great example about this. Christian cheerleaders want to pray on the field before every game in front of a crowd where people may or may not even be Christian? Court says they can. Muslim girls ask to use one small room so they can pray in private? No, cant do that cause no religion in school allowed. It doesn’t make any sense.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." - Wilhoit's Law
On a side note about Haiti. As Michael Brooks used to say “ the world has never stopped punishing Haiti from freeing itself” doesn’t help nature seems to never leave that little island alone long enough to rebuild.
@@Quinntus79 what happened to haiti is one of france's greatest crimes. much like the congo is for belgium, the india famines and colonization and apartheid of what became South Africa, the US & Canada for the british, the residential schools and reservations, as well as slavery and Jim Crow for the US & Canada, etc.
I just started reading “Gangsters of Capitalism - Smedley Butler, The Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire” by Jonathan M. Katz - Smedley Butler instigated the system of forced labor - you might be interested in this book, too.
I still remember being a recent college grad, a VERY Christian College grad at that, and my family gathering to watch the original God's Not Dead. Everyone nodding sagely, "this what is really happening!" This is what happens when they don't allow God in schools. It was so... Weird... Intellectually dishonest... Self satisfying. Like a product of group think. It was weird. Did you guys not remember that i led the school prayer group through middle school? I went to a Christian College, which is a thing you can do if you want an explicitly Christian education. Why are we pretending that we're being persecuted like this?
The complete lack of perspective is baffling - an acquaintance of mine recently ranted about colleges "indoctrinating" students (with nothing more than conspiracy theories as 'evidence'), seemingly amnesiac to the fact that their own university required church service attendance.
Because Christianity was born in persecution. It adapted theologically. There are biblical passages comforting the persecuted followers. Many branches venerate martyrs. To be persecuted as a believer is one of the highest honors for a Christian. And if the persecution is not forthcoming, then it must be imagined or provoked.
If you've held a position of privilege for so long and believe it to be justified or 'the way it's supposed to be', anything that seems to challenge your privilege feels like an attack on your entire world. And some will do the craziest things to stop that from happening.
@@vylbird8014 That's also reason why early christianity emphasised role of jews in death of jesus. When you live in roman lands, it's best not to tell everyone that they were the ones who murdered your messiah. Unless you were interested becoming a part of roman show business, which involved lions at the colosseum.
Religious Conservatives: "Our religious freedoms are being taken away!" Also Religious Conservatives: passes abortion restrictions and anti-LGBT legislation across several US states
I recently was involved in a comment argument against this guy who claimed Christianity was the source of all morality and that human rights were a “superstition” among people of the Far East. He says Catholicism invented human rights in the 13th century and the idea of it being invented during the enlightenment was “liberal propaganda”. He then proceeded to claim that secularism itself was a “Christian theological concept” (????) and that “Christianity by virtue of its very seedbed, is impossible to be a foundation of a theocracy” 😑 He also thinks civilization is inseparable from Christianity and other cultures, especially the Aztecs and aborigines, should be thankful for Christiandom “civilizing” them. Lastly, he says that liberalism makes constitutional rights pre eminent over the “truth” that people like gays shouldn’t exist. Thankfully, and needless to say, everyone agreed he was an arrogant, bigoted fool who had his head far up his own ass. But the fact that people like this still exist shocks me.
@@chriscortez2036 Sounds like the nonsense Jordan Peterson spouts, then will do mental gymnastics saying he isn’t actually saying it, when questioned more specifically.
Same! There's a music group called "Gooding" who released an album titled "Factory Blue" back in the 1990s -- on the back of the album cover was the ominous line "No God can save you now". That line stuck w/ me & I've used it numerous times since then-- Some random Christian: Oh, God help us! Me: No God can help you now.
So, let me get this straight: In an attempt to set up the Muslim father character for conversion to Christianity, the film's writers have his daughter, who previously converted, get into a horrible car accident. And they didn't stop once to consider that rewarding her conversion by hurting her just to convert her father might make they and/or their deity look like assholes?
And ignoring the fact of how the Muslim girl's father found out about her accident, the writers didn't see fit to kill her off as a way to have her dad visit her, but had decided to kill off Raddison in order to bring him to Christ...
@@jacindaellison3363 that’s kind of frustrating Also they could of had them reconcile and become better people and teach an actual Christian message of tolerance to other people and beliefs
Being assholes and proud seems to be what gets fundamentalist Christians off. They do not for a single second consider the optics of being asshole by a third neutral party because to them there are no neutral third parties. Only them and people they are allowed, or rather required, to be assholes to.
I, a European, come to your home in the Americas. You invite me into your home to sit and eat--but before finishing the meal, I stand up with a prayer thanking the lord for this bounty, and your home, your land, and your heritage as my own by divine providence, as ordained by god. Lastly, I kick you out of your home calling you a godless heathen not worthy of such things. It is beyond heinous, it is genocide.
Holy God man. You basically summarized everything I've observed as a Christian in the old churches I used to attend. COVID was my major turning point. Never been happier and never looked back.
I always felt something wasn't right when I was a kid but started to pull away when I got in my 20s.. Too much going on in this world for a being to have all this power to sit back and does nothing to correct it..
Bro- if you want a REAL, TANGIBLE force to believe in: it's called LIFE. The force of life created us all. We are all a part of it. It requires not worship but EXPERIENCE. Go out and DO SHIT! Have TONS OF FUN! Life requires that you enjoy yourself or it's just a waste.
But it's true, christians are so oppressed, just ask Kenneth Copeland, how hard is for a good christian to have a private jet, it's such a pain and an humiliation.
He’s not Christian. He’s a false prophet using a very self-centered, watered down version of the faith to profit off of money-hungry and desperate people. Christians who know what the Bible says have spoken against him.
@@Window4503 and yet he has a massive flock, massive influence, and scores of defenders. Ya cant no true scotsman your war out of Copeland being a christian.
@@starchilde8698 Haitians did not worship Satan, they sought affiliation with their previous beliefs from Africa, many of them like Vikings, other Africans and other peoples who were new converts mix their older traditions and beliefs with Christianity
I find that hilarious considering Toussaint and many other leaders of the Haitian Revolution were believers of Jesus Christ. Not only that but originally they did try to work with the French Revolutionaries. Then Napoleon came along and it got messy real quick.
@@starchilde8698 well off the top of my head, Satan is to apparently thank for a successful slave revolution and the popularity of the blues and therefore all western pop music. God blew up a whole city because they liked anal, flooded the whole damn world because ? and allows cancer to exist despite being omnipotent. Satan absolutely is the good guy here.
IMO it's as difficult for non-nationalist Christians to reach some of these people as it is for atheists. Someone who doesn't hit the nationalist or culture-war touchstones is immediately and deeply suspect. I got involved in a campus Christian organization as a grad student, and it became pretty clear pretty quickly that I didn't fit in. Certainly, some people were open, or even receptive to alternate perspectives on politics, economics, and culture... but they were typically international students. Not entirely surprising. I think American Christianity is quintessentially bourgeois religion. It serves the interests of capital. To challenge that is to challenge the core of the faith.
progressive christians like myself are not even seen as christian to these people. if you are not hardcore nationalist they’ll say you’ve been corrupted by the world and by satan
I had a coworker who was a Christian nationalist, and the breakroom conversations with her were absolutely wild. It was interesting though, because whenever I asked her to apply her rhetoric to specific people (usually me or my kids) she would always back down immediately for like an hour, but then go right back to it.
@@deadfr0g guessing street epistemology. It's basically a conversational technique that helps people arrive to a position where they might be able to question their strongly held beliefs by asking them non-confrontational questions.
The first time someone said to me that Christians were the most oppressed people on earth, I laughed out loud because I thought they were making an obvious joke. They were not, that became a very awkward conversation.
@@matthewgagnon9426 I mean, they picked Islam out of a hat. They hate Judaism too, except when they think Israel will back them up in a war. They hate all non-Abrahamic religions as "paganism." They hate actual paganism. They think of atheism as a religion, which, naturally, they hate. It's never been about the actual beliefs of any religion--or non-religion--that they dislike; most extremist Christians can't name any non-Christian beliefs besides "Jesus is not God." It's about not being one of _them,_ which itself is a tricky subject when they decide they don't like something else about you--very few executed 'witches' practiced witchcraft, they were mostly as Christian as the rest of the village that wanted them dead.
From growing up in the culture, one thing I've found insanely annoying that I think is related is also the tendancy for Christians to like, expect content of anything to be within their comfort zones, and by comparison, anything outside of their comfort zone becomes everyone elses problem to mediate. Lol this can be as simple as I've noticed family/friends being uncomfortable with people swearing, and will sit quietly and uptight when people do swear. Or maybe a coworker or two is talking about their weekend and what they did, and it's not stuff the christian would do so they just quietly sit there in an anxious tension until the topic moves on and changes. And a flipside too, of how Christians kind of poke-around-the-bushes in terms to gauge your own belief or just outright assume you do think the same way about all the same things and shit. Doesn't help how spoon-fed they are of how they're being oppressed in this way or that way, etc. I feel like christians forget they were literally always going to die. They're narcissists who cannot help but always center the conversation on 'their walk with God,' their beliefs, or whatever the latest flavor of 'persecution' is. Meanwhile the world is being smashed to death by greed and Christianity is just one of the mediums co-opted by industry to justify it, haha. It's embarrassing to see.
There's a church in my hometown that has a serious hardon for these movies - even has the phrase "God's Not Dead" on their led sign and screens them around major holidays. Imagine a secular version of these movies with the roles reversed - evangelicals would try to get them banned from viewing and distribution.
Back in 1997 I walked out of a philosophy class and reported the instructor to the college because I was told that “there is no fundamental way an atheist will attain a passing grade in their class” on the first day of class. I never heard of any follow up by the school (I doubt there was any) but I was able to cancel the course with a full refund
As a pagan, one time I was visibly (but quietly and for comedic effect) praying right before a biology exam. My professor, a Hindu, smiled as she gave me my test, and said something to the effect of "I remember having days like that." We both got a chuckle and no one went to jail. Then I, still in a good mood, looked to the guy next to me and jokingly asked which gods he was praying to. And that little shit said "To Jesus, the only real God." They want you to have the freedom to pray, but they get real snippy about whom you pray to.
These guys will say their god is "the one REAL god", which if you really think about it, is saying "yeah well your religion doesn't exist so I don't have to respect it!" and acting like it's a slam dunk. But when I use the same logic against them for things like a political debate, a parking ticket or a bank robbery, I get called "crazy." Why should I follow your laws? Your laws aren't real!
Imagine if I was observed praying to Cthulhu in my student days - I’m sure that would have raised more than a few eyebrows as such prayers typically involve a virgin sacrifice…
I can certainly sympathize with that. Mind if I ask what kind of Pagan? Some people just use the term to mean Norse, but others include Wicca and Druidry.
A workmate once argued that without the bible there would be no law. Hence trying to say even the moral values athiests follow are gotten from the bible. I told him joseph was in prison in egypt over rape allegations. Meaning rape by then was already a crime in ancient egypt. Waaaay before moses came along. He continued arguing.
That idiot needs to be told about the Code of Hammurabi. Not only are laws way *way* older than he thinks, they’re also often incredibly shitty and shouldn’t be held up as a virtue.
It's tragically ridiculous when U study anthropology & discover that even primitive tribal societies have laws despite not having them written down or not having a written language -- because *tribal law pre-dates written law*. Meaning that our ancient ancestors had no problem grasping the concept or the value of a common code of conduct by which everyone in the group is governed & judged. Hell, the Scripture itself is merely the end product of centuries of passing down the "Word of God" *by word of mouth* -- because the ancient (pre-) Judaic people were illiterate anyway. Their religious beliefs were entirely an oral tradition until writing was introduced to them long after the fact. By that time, the ancient Chinese had already invented their own system of written language -- wonder how God fits in there....
It's one of the bread and butter apologetics. 1. Morality can only come from god 2. humans have morality 3. Therefore god exists. Except they are missing the fact that statement #1 is just an assertion.
Apparently he knows nothing about the peoples of the Far East - who never heard of the Judeo-Christian deity until recent centuries and yet created whole cultures and systems of ethics using a philosophical basis that is completely unrelated to their religious traditions…
Whether its worship of the flag, national colors, politicians, the police, solidiers, or even the romanticized philosophy and history of the nation. Nationalism in all these forms is the religion of the Nation State
Agreed. I grew up Evangelical, with my parents working at an international school in Asia. We got to go "home" to the US in the summers, which means we got to see American Evangelical churches celebrating the 4th of July. It really skeeved me out to see such hardcore nationalism in a church setting. It's like they were _worshipping America._ That's basically syncretism, which Evangelicals typically condemn. _(I'm no longer Evangelical and take a less judgmental stance on syncretism, since it's kind of just one form of cultural blending. But IMO the syncretism of any religion with nationalism tends to bring out the worst aspects of both.)_ _(EDIT: Caveat that not_ all _Evangelicals or Evangelical churches do this kind of syncretism. Some do deemphasize nationalism. But I worry that they are less common, especially now. Nuance and complexity are rarely as emotionally compelling as righteous anger over a binary "good vs. evil" narrative.)_
That’s the one thing that frustrates me about American Christianity at times. When you say things like “God bless the USA” , “God given rights”, ”God bless our troops”, and even include Christian prayer breakfasts that our politicians get involved in just for looks creates this image to regular America citizens that this country is great because God deemed it so. Also, idk if it’s just me, but Christian nationalism especially these past 5+ years have really pushed me to my edge. I feel like it’s been the worst it’s ever been. Celebrating the 4th in church makes my eyes roll, but throwing in someone like Trump (regardless of your political views) who’s shown to be a terrible person just infuriates me.
Based on his feuds with Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, that’s not completely untrue. Hiring a journalist to call your political opponent a hermaphrodite is pretty childish.
Oh dear, I'm a Christian too, and I PRAY that these films will cease to exist. Although the 3rd GND movie was good (B), I can definitely say that rest are bad, like (F) bad. The 4th movie was in my top 5 worst movies of 2021. I've seen Christian truths weaved beautifully in Dune, Wonder Woman (2017), heck, when I recently saw The Dark Knight, the Joker wanting to prove to Batman that ppl in Gotham are secretly corrupted and will fall a part the moment crap hits the fan. It reminded me of the Devil saying to God that Job is only good b/c everything's going right. Take everything away=he'll curse you. Batman is trying to prove to the Joker that there is still good in these ppl, and he'll do whatever it takes to keep Gotham on the straight and narrow.
@@jacindaellison3363 could you elaborate please on what you said you found in wonder woman? It's just that a movie with Greek mythology as a core focus of it's lore doesn't seem to me like something with any Christian influence in it and I would like to know what you had meant by that
@@Relichunters01 sure! So, Wonder Woman believes that Ares is behind the war in WW1, behind all of evil. But since it turns out that all he really does is just tempt ppl for what they want, like when he gave Dr. Poison the idea on how to strengthen her concoction. The devil is the same way. He doesn't force us to do anything bad but tempts us with things we know we really want to do that's sinful. WW, the character, I see as "Jesus type" character, wanting to save humanity but by love and not bu condemning them. That's what I got out of it. I'm pretty sure that's not what the creators had in mind, I just thought it was interesting to see a secular movie pull off Biblical themes WAY better than some Christian movies.
@@jacindaellison3363 i’m actually curious about your take on Dune, since it’s famously poised as a criticism of “charismatic leaders”, with Paul and his father being as flawed as the Harkonnens and Emperor, albeit in different directions. Thank you in advance!
@@casualskeleman6377 It was small, but what I caught on with Dune was how Paul was a messiah-like figure. He did something that one of the ppl who were residents on the Dune planet recognized, quoting some scripture, like what one of the Gospels in the New Testament to some of the things Jesus did that was foretold. Not that I'm saying Dune is a Christian movie-I beleive it's more inspirer by Islam, correct me if I'm wrong.
Whenever they pull out this “Please forgive the harmful & inhumane indiscretions of this young man of the pure & innocent age of 25!” argument to defend slavery or the similarity lazy one of “We can’t judge those living in such a different time”, they should always be rebuffed with the reality that the adult, elderly & actual literal children & teenaged slaves at the exact same period knew good and well that their abuse & exploitation was wrong. You can literally read diaries & accounts from black slaves of varied ages & genders where they discuss their horrid treatment & desire for freedom & equality. How strange that the individuals who financially benefited from the generations of backbreaking slave labor, who weren’t classified as owned/property instead of human beings & weren’t forced to risk so much for generations to fight for that right to be human, who weren’t regularly whipped, brutalized and/or raped by their “owners”, & who weren’t victims of or forced to see loved ones lynched for insignificant & even outright made up indiscretions get to be the naïve waifs who had no idea that the inhumane institution they participated in & benefited immensely from was inhumane.
i know its pretty wholly unrelated to the GND films, but i was really happy when Red Dead Redemption 2 came out and finally made the argument that no wholly immoral action is ok, regardless of the time period. Arthur Morgan canonically hates slave owners, racists, KKK members, and you should too. Even with a morality system that judges you for various actions, that system actually rewards you with "good" morality points if you remove these people from society.
@@wildcatste I mean we don't need states. England, the country, had banned slavery way before America ever got around to it. And England even went out of their way to enforce their ban on other nations that had not.
Using the comparatively young age of many of the founding fathers as an excuse for their faults always annoys the shit out of me. "Oh he was only 25! He was just a kid you can't be mad at a kid!" My man I'm 25, and if you found out tomorrow I was keeping people in my basement and forcing them to maintain my home for no pay you would be calling the cops. 25 is a young adult sure but certainly old enough to know the difference between right and wrong.
There's another movie that's pretty interesting, A Matter Of Faith, which was advertised as the Christian alternative to God's Not Dead 1. Let that sink in. That movie is surreal because it doesn't give an exaggerated view of universities and treatment of Christians, but its still treated as oppression. The professor teaches evolution because its what is accepted as science both by himself and general consensus in his field, but it plays out like he is personally trying to destroy the faith of his students.
Black Christian films are way different than white centric one's its typical about us black people trying to use faith to persevere through deep hardships having hope of a god who'll carry us through hardship hence why slaves even after being freed would us churches as gathering spots political and community organization its why they played a major role on civil rights movements
There’s a lot of truth to this, but at the same there’re plenty of black televangelists who seek control over large sums of money and to abuse their power
The Bible specifically advocates chattel slavery in the form of taking slaves from other nations. Liberation politics and Christian theology are very specifically at odds.
I was raised southern baptist and escaped it as soon as I could. My memories are full of angry, petty, intolerant, racist people who loved to talk about who saw who doing what where and when while doing the same things themselves when they thought no one was watching. One of the deacons was also a teacher in my school and he swore at students during the week and talked about drinking beer while preaching to the congregation on Sunday. The preacher was relocated for an incident involving some underage converts. No one even checked his background when they hired him and put him in charge of the youth ministry. Hypocrites.
Spot on. It's very awkward that almost every "Good Christian" I knew growing up was secretly watching pornography while still publicly decrying "Sexual immorality" and judging people for the exact same shit. But because of the doctrine of "Cheap grace" they could just confess that they had sinned and go back to doing it a few days or even hours later.
My highschool tries to dodge the 'no staff led prayer' rule at pep rallies and stuff by just having a student volunteer in the place of a staff member. It's obviously still unethical because this is something planned ahead of time by the staff to be done with a captive audience, but I'm the only one who seems to see past the surface-level technicality. I never want to hear that Christianity is 'banned from schools'. The rules are bare bones, and yet several schools still violate the principle of them with little consequence, and it's almost always Christians doing it.
Unethical perhaps. Questionably legal, certainly. The test is if they would let any student lead the prayer equally. If someone were to ask to take the place and pray to Allah, or even Satan, what are the chances of the school allowing it? I'm guessing pretty slim.
I'd argue that such public prayers are an example of Christians being persecuted, as Jesus was very clear in his opposition to public prayer. No genuine Christian would take part in that. Real Christians would only pray in private, as Christ commanded. True Christians would also have to refuse to swear any oaths, including the pledge of allegiance
@@vylbird8014 This would be perfect for The Satanic Temple. It turns me stomach because I don't want a young student to make themselves the ire of their school, but any who did volunteer to lead a prayer for TST would be outstanding.
Fantastic as always, Leon. Christian Nationalists AND the Japanese Happy Science cult both (deliberately, IMO) misinterpreted Nietzsche's "God is dead" in almost the same ways. And both made garbage propaganda movies grifting on that misconstrued conceit, as a climactic call-to-arms to get further garbage nationalism into their respective public institutions of government! However, Happy Science only has the dubious honor that I'd watch THEIR awful propaganda movie, if I were drunk with my friends. White's work isn't even so-bad-it's-funny for me. I'm grateful for whatever luck there is that Christian Nationalists can't pull or fund animators quite the way they used to.
My 6th grade elementary school teacher had us read a passage from the book of Daniel while learning about the neo-Babylonians and it was all okay because it was in a historical context, trying to give us a better understanding of a period, etc. If he was making us pray after reading the passage, that wouldn't be allowed. I would pray the rosary before I had big tests, and there was a Christian student group that met before school once a month to sing hymns and pray, and it was all okay. If all students had to pray before a test or join the Christian student group, that would be illegal. This isn't hard to understand yet the Christian right still fails to comprehend this!
It's motivated reasoning. They fail to understand because it's advantageous for them to do so. They wouldn't be able to claim they're the oppressed underdogs, instead of the domineering authoritarian bullies they are.
We read sinners in the hands of an angry God (sermon by Jonathan Edwards) in 10th or 11th grade English class, but as a work of literature. Our teacher seemed to be a skeptic, and almost definitely wasn’t a practicing Christian.
The funniest thing about the first movie is that in a real life philosophy “Gods is Dead” just means we as a species are moving past the need for religion as we advance. But the makers of the film can’t understand that so they take it literally. “ gods dead and we killed him” just means that we are moving past the need for religion as we become more socially and technologically advanced not that god exists and we killed him.
@@heavens_best1905 ...Yes, Nietzsche was a nihilist @Professeur Gidéère No, it doesn't mean "sadly, God is dead," it means "we've moved past this nonsense"
@@cam4636 no, Nietzsche wasn’t a nihilist necessarily. Nihilism, to him, was the inevitable result of a world that had rejected God/religion as a source of meaning and purpose; he was warning people about it’s approach. Nihilism is, after all, the belief that there is no meaning (perhaps more nuanced?). So, Nietzsche’s goal and philosophy was rooted in the idea that in such a godless society, one must decide his own values, synthesize his own understanding, and carve out his own place in the emerging society (the times that we live in seem to be bearing this out in reality, with hyper-individualism on the rise in the west). This can be done by first acknowledging to oneself that all life possesses at its root a “will to power,” that is, to exist and to have the ability to effect one’s environment. That said, Nietzsche was much more nuanced than most people give him credit for (including myself until I decided to check him out), and often misunderstood. His work often has him battling with himself and attacking various ideas by targeting the fallacies and (useful) lies that generally underpin most social structures. At least, that’s the impression that was left on me, so take it with a grain of salt lol.
I don't know why it took me this long to be led to this conclusion, but I was really really struck by the truth of what you pointed out about the moral exclusivity of conservative Christian Fundamentalism. The idea that they believe they have the absolute singular authority to dictate human behavior, thought, and development to the exclusion of literally any other person, entity, or institution that exists, did exist, or may ever exist is staggering arrogance. It completely explains their dogged persistence in insisting we all buy into that article of faith (a very accurate encapsulation of this fallacy) through the propaganda and exploiting the tolerance that freedom of religion actually entails. Good job just nailing it.
The Founders wanted to avoid all things that could lead back to a monarchy ( the divine right of kings to rule) so deliberately avoided overtly religious speech in the Declaration, the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. There is a difference between being a Christian Nation & a nation made up of Christians. Besides, which sect of Christianity is the correct one? Europe had been torn apart by just such wars, I doubt the Founding Fathers wanted to start a new country with old prejudices & internal religious strife. That is what bothers me about modern Christian Nation proponents. They aren't being truthful at all since they have a very narrow set of beliefs & literal reading of the bible that not all Christians hold. Christian Nation is just another dog whistle.
James Madison explicitly said that the separation of Church and state was for the US to avoid the bloodshed of Europe. He also said that that separation would benefit the purity of both the government and the institution of religion. Other founding fathers opinions of Christianity were less kind... While intended to give Christians the freedom to worship as they wished, the United States itself has never been and should never be a Christian nation.
@vodkaboy @vodkaboy In fact many of them had quite unsavory things to say of Christianity: Thomas Jefferson: "Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man" - Letter to Joseph Presley March 1801 Thomas Paine: "It would be nore consistent that we call [the Bible] the word of a demon than the word of God. It has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind." - The Age of Reason "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion;" - The Treaty of Tripoli, 1796, ratified by the Senate and signed by John Adams. It is worth noting though that the "enlightened" founding fathers did not represent the beliefs of the whole US population by a long shot in this regard. Many of them were Deist, believing in a creator but not a God demanding worship or dooming us to eternal damnation, and it was a popular belief held by many during the enlightenment. It is to that which TJ refers in the Declaration of Independence, not the Christian God, though the development of the deist concept of God is intrinsically linked to Christianity by the nature of it's orgin in European, that is Christian society, and some Deist didn't separate their creator from Jehovah / Yawheh, reflecting the beliefs Christian orgins even if it explicitly rejects core tenants of Christianity (by the way to a certain extent this is true of almost everything. For most of human history the majority of people have believed in deities and supernatural things, and that has influenced our languages and customs. Even in modern secular society our thinking is to some degree unconsciously molded by religion) As the United States was originally founded, the only allusions to God I know of are "his creator" in the declaration of independence, "Annuit Coeptis" on our money ("He favors our undertakings", he being the creator) and the tradition started by Washington of taking the oath of office by swearing on a Bible. Nevertheless as time went on this rather clear division would blur, most painfully so in the early - mid 20th century which saw explicit religious allusions be adopted by politicians to counter pro-labor and socialist sentiments at the time. It is from that that we have the motto "In God We Trust" and the pledge with "One nation under God". Religious fervor in the US in the 20th century was further exasperated by the high profile threat of nuclear armageddon. The damage done to the secular intention of our institutions during the 20th century is quietly guiding the ever more insane Christian right of the 21st century.
As a french person, I'm glad someone finally talks about my favorite history lesson, about Napoleon The 3rd Orwhatever. It really helps put things in perspective.
They used to make us pray in my high school every day during announcements and right after the pledge of allegiance. Was a very conservative small town. They just called it a "moment of silence" but it was heavily heavily implied to be a prayer.
Wait, the moment of silence is prayer time? I spent my whole school life thinking it's for those who lost thier lives in the american revolution or something since it's right after the pledge of allegiance.
They started the moment of silence after 9/11 at some point. Not a thing in my private Christian elementary school, but happened every day at my public school. I never thought it was supposed to be for prayer, it was always explained to me as a memorial for, well, 9/11. Which kinda makes me wonder why they'd be still doing it now...
i had a class on "religions" my entire elementary school. It never occurred me that praying, writing a biblie verse everyday on our notebook and coloring jesus was definitively not ok, until I went off to a different school and realised all the time wasted they could have used to teach things high school would actually require us to know, like idk math? I'm still so pissed about it
"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." ~Founding Father *Thomas Jefferson*, in a letter to Horatio Spofford, 1814
I think we should made a parody of these movies. I say we take the basic characters, keep as it mostly, but put them in situations that counter the movies’ narrative. Have a Christian girl be ‘concerned’ about her Muslim friend, and think shes forced to wear a hijab, but actually the Christian girl is a busy body is just infantilizes her friend, but is dumb struck to learn the girl’s parent aren’t abusive Middle Eastern caricatures, but fairly liberal Muslims so they don’t force their daughter to wear her Hijab. Have a Duck Dynasty guy stand in totally sh*t the bed during a interview, and spend the movie trying to do damage control. And of course, the main character is a religious boy who buts head with his atheist professor, but their debates are actually a exercise in philosophical debates the prof does every year with his new class. But the kid crosses a line and by digging up the death of the prof’s Mom, and accuses him of ‘hating god’ because of it. It all collimates is the concert scene the (not Duck Dynasty guy tries to distract from his embarrassing PR by talking about issue at the University. But the Professor shows up and makes piece with his student, admitting to having crisis of faith when his Mom died, and is now contemplating a return to his religion, but here’s the twist, since he doesn’t die, and makes piece with his student, there is no reason to attack the university with a text message campaign. It’s just a rough idea I muse about when the topic of these movies come up. I call it “God is (missing and presumed) dead.” A title that involves just as much understanding of the original Frederick Nietzsche quote as the original movie title.
I’m Christian, but I was thinking alike on the first part, but I was thinking more of a satire of these movies! Like make it political and about persecution complex and everything the right wing loves so much! 😆
@@c.lineofficial Big Joel made a video about this series and in one scene of the second movie iirc a white guy talks to the poc priest about how he feels persecuted and the priest just goes: "Brother, who do you think you are talking to?" This should be the entire film direction.
In school I remember being told many times about Rome's founding myth, of Romulus and Remus. I wondered why we needed to be told this tale that was so obviously false, when we already have a more accurate understanding of the founding of Rome. Now I understand
Pat robernson at 24:47 kinda just forgeting about the Ancient greeks, Romans, Ancient Chinease, Ancient egyptians, Anciect mesopotamian, Pre contact pacific islander, Pre contact/pre colonial Philippines. all of whom had either acceptance or at the very least tollerance of both gay and trans individuals and were easily as succseful if not moreso than the united states
he didn't forget, forgetting implies that it's unintentional. it's clearly intentional to exclude these groups as part of "barbarity" and non society. which plays again into conservatives rejecting "democracy" as another perversion of the greeks.
Great video, thanks, man. Have you ever heard of the televangelist Jack Van Impe? He had a production company called Cloud Ten Pictures that made all these weird, x-filesy action-thrillers about the "end times". I think most people remember the Kirk Cameron 'Left Behind', but there's an untapped treasure trove with films like: 'Tribulation' starring Howie Mandel, Gary Busey and Margot Kidder. 'Revelation' starring Jeff Fahey. 'Judgement' starring Corbin Bernsen and Mr. T where God gets put on trial. Really there's just an amazing sub genre of Evangelical apocalypse porn that I haven't really seen any youtube essayists or reviewers dissect yet.
Diamanda Hagan Has reviewed all three "Left Behind" films and all four "Apocalypse" films (those films with Busey, Fahey, Bersen, etc, are in that series).
Seth Andrews did a pretty good breakdown of several apocalypse porn movies form the '70s starting with A Distant Thunder. Man, those movies are bad! But the reviews scratch a particular itch that it sounds like you're looking for.
My favorite line about tradition is that it's just peer pressure from dead people. Also, I was excited to see a little cameo from Salvation Mountain in this video. I've been there, didn't get to meet the guy who painted it but it was a charming place.
A common misconception that is repeated in these movies is that Atheists think "God is dead", or want him dead. A fictional character can't live or die. 🤷🏾♂️
Tbf, the phrase "God is dead" is an actual term used in philosophy. The thing is, it's not a term to be taken literally. It's referring more to the death of the concept of gods, the fact that as we understand more about the world and how it works the less we need that concept to serve as our default "answer" for anything we don't understand.
Wow. Just wow. Just when I think this "series" of movies CANNOT possibly find new ways to disgust me, they trot out Isaiah Washington to defend slavery...I mean...It's like someone went out of their way to be as offensive as humanly possible.
Can we also point out that the movie basically says that you HAVE to forgive and get back into contact with family who ABUSED YOU AND THREW YOU OUT just because they converted to your religion and are sorry? Cuz like...yikes...
I'm a Pansexual Christian and I've come to accept that not only will I never see myself represented by Pure Flix, but it's likely the people at Pure Flix probably hate me and don't consider me a Christian in their evangelical little world. They vote to actively take rights from my community and have the nerve to cry about being persecuted.
I got various statements to the effect of "Isn't it wonderful God made it that way?" in a public high school biology class when I was a teenager. This was back in the 80's, so perhaps more tolerated than now, though still outside the law.
"Look, see how God made all blood circulation dependant on a single heart, so even a brief disruption would lead to sudden death? Ohh, and these teeth are only rated for a thirty-year service life. Isn't God's design wonderful? Could maybe use some redundancy though."
Whew imagine the sense of spiritual relief one must feel when Pat Robertson tells a little story about how Haiti freed themselves "from Napoleon the 3rd or whatever" by praying to the devil. Do not trouble yourselves with ponderings on why God would let such terrible things happen to the Haitian people, dear Christians. It is their own fault for bowing down to Satan, yasee, definitely a thing that happened and we are helpless to change.
If you really want your blood to boil, read up on the charismatic christian idea of "Generational curses" sometime. These people actually think that God punishes the great great grandchildren of people who displeased him over a century in the past. And that he's justified in doing so.
My new favorite line is Owning slaves is not a youthful and indiscretion and is not like spray painting a wall. Christian nationalists can get out of the embarrassment of the founding fathers being slave holders, by being historically honest: Washington and Jefferson in fact were deists. But then Christian nationalists would be in a quandary; that the founding fathers were not Christian and America is not founded on fundamentalist Christian ideals, so America is not exclusively Christian. But they must have it both ways. Therefore the film explains the following: Jefferson was a devout and humble Christian AND was not really an evil racist. It was only a youthful indiscretion.
The other soution they have is to downplay the slavery. "Oh, yes, he owned some slaves. But he was really nice to them, not like some of those other slave owners, so it's no big deal. What was he supposed to do, pay them and run his plantation out of business?"
Let's be real, they're biding their time until it's once again acceptable to outright revel in owning other people. Christian slave owners had a million excuses why slavery was Christian; now their great-grandkids have a million excuses why they didn't know what they were doing. It's just a big kid beating up a little kid and saying "it was an accident, I didn't mean to" when the teacher notices; soon as the accountability is gone they'll go right back to it.
American Evangelical Christians: Woke busybodies are trying to erase our great nation's history thru revisionism! Also American Evangelical Christians: [tries continually to cover up embarrassing, uncomfortable facts about America's past via dishonest revisionism] Me: Uhhh ... hypocrisy, much? Doesn't the Gospel of your precious Bible indicate that Jesus Christ Himself had a very dim view of hypocrites? Oh, the irony!
One thing that stands out to me is that Christianity is declining a bit in the Americas and Western Europe, but Christianity is rapidly growing in Africa and Asia. Funny how they only care about the White Christian population declining but ignore the areas where Christianity is expanding🤔
Is that the one where the cars are about to crash leading to another deathbed conversion and then an evil atheist tries to prevent it by launching the vehicles into space-- but ends up launched into space himself, where he converts before burning up in the atmosphere?
When Republicans 10 years ago began trying to convince me that Michelle Obama was a transvestite and her two children were conceived in Petri dishes, I left God and the Republican party in my rearview mirror.
@@undersatan5685 I hadn't heard the "Children conceived in petri dishes" line but people on the christian right trying to insinuate that Michelle Obama was "mannish" was a very common thing in my circles growing up as well
3:20 This reminds me when Kentucky schools were forced to display "In God We Trust" in their schools. I remember reading that and feeling icky about the whole thing
Hey Renegade Cut, I watched your video on Left Behind. Comments were understandably disabled, so I never got to thank you for finally letting me find peace in my faith. That, and my political shift to Democratic Socialism, have helped my mental health (depression) tremendously. Thank you for basically saving my life!
12:45 lol bro napoleon was 24 years old when he reached the rank of General, 27 when he beat the Austrians the first time... and 30 when he made himself emperor quite the kid XD
I highly recommend Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers by Brooke Allen. It offers a detailed breakdown of each founding father's religious (or lack thereof) beliefs. I had to read it for my intro to historical methods class in college and it's fantastic.
Dang, the makers of these movies are really anti-education. College is bad, high school is bad, elementary school is bad, just homeschooling and then nothing.
Because education and the ability to critically think is the bane of religion, as religion as an ideology and system of analysis is full of holes and contradictions and moved goalposts from being so old and based on ideas and concepts that seemed true when the text was written, but over time have proven to be more and more incorrect. centuries of trying to adapt with with the times and appeal to people have left religion a hollow mess. That, and stupid people are much less likely to convert away from your ideology or question the authority members of your system than intelligent people. Stupid people more often lack sex education and are willing to have large families (therefore expanding your membership and reach) despite the financial costs and changing precepts of modern life.
When I came out as transgender at 24, I was forbidden to return home. I then spent a desperate sorrowful year traveling for work and watching my family and extended family cut me off one by one until I can say with certainty that I no longer have a traditional "family," outside of those I choose myself. It's insufferable to these invertebrates imagine discrimination after discrimination upon themselves while I was locked out of the house for disagreeing with my parents, called demonically-possessed, and left to accept that after exhausting every other possible explanation, that I was woefully abused, mistreated, and ultimately abandoned by people who claim absolute love. i wish they could see the world that I live in now, for it's far better than anything they can imagine. But, I will no longer reach back for them.
I am so sorry your family cut you out. If you were my child, I'd be your ally and welcome you with open arms. I'd never turn my back on you and accept you. I just don't understand how a parent can turn their back on their child. You're supposed to love your children unconditionally. Again I'm so sorry you had to go through that.
I literally went to a Catholic school and it wasn't anywhere near as religious as evangelicals want schools to be. We had science classes, and discussed other religions as part of the religious curriculum, and our chaplin was always very kind and understanding to atheist kids in school including me at the time.
I love how all of these movies look exactly like the stock footage b-roll you use in your videos. Like, they're almost indistinguishable. Great video as always!
Mere details: The cartoon strip "Pogo" produced the phrase in the early 1970's "God is not dead, He is merely unemployed." One of the other famous phrases: "We have met the enemy and he is us."
I am not american, nor am I christian or in any way highly religious. But your analyses of these films has some magnetic effect on me. I cannot say why, but each time you present on of these movies I like to listen. Maybe its some bile fascination, like having a car wreck you cannot look away from. I do not know. But thanks a lot for your effort to sit through this terrific series of films. Greetings from central europe and best whishes.
14:10 Oh, the famous "I'm not racist, I have black friend I've paid to say I'm good" gambit. Jesus, I don't understand why we respect actors, and not sexworkers.
the only thing that peeves me about this video is when they call Patrick Henry and "orthodox Christian". i know in this scenario it means something different, but to say "orthodox Christianity" when there is literally a large sect of christianity known as "Orthodox Christianity" it is confusing at best
Great video as always! Your film analyses are what first drew me to your channel, and the political videos are what kept me coming back. So I love seeing you fuse those two elements together in videos like this.
God's Not Dead truly taught me that the best way to attack fake religious persecution is to enact religious persecution. "I say the whole world learn of our peaceful ways. By force!" - Bender
The fact that this is a quadrology is proof enough for me that there is no god. If God can see everything and is forced to watch 4 of these, God would have Robloxed himself by now.
"If Christian nationalism is to be defeated, it will have to be by other Christians." I would even go so far as to say -- it must be from inside the movement; it must be Christian Nationalists who, as individuals, come face to face with their doctrines -- and find those doctrines wanting. The Sermon on the Mount -- the same Sermon from which MLK and Gandhi drew heavy influence for their non-violence -- is a direct threat to nationalism, because nationalism is built upon fear and self-preservation. The Sermon on the Mount flies in the face of violent self-defense, violent expansionist, factionism, exceptionism, and imperialism of any kind -- It is the complete breakdown of everything Christian nationalism holds dear -- And that is terrifying to anyone who is caught in that dogma. I have known several former Nationalists who were forced to turn away from nationalism after revisiting the teachings of Jesus -- and realizing they were acting out of fear and indoctrination. The truth of what they were ingesting had to come out of their minds like poison drawn from a wound -- and only compassion and love could accomplish that. It sounds cheezy, but it's deadly serious -- the only way to defeat Christian nationalism is to replace the fear in the hearts of Christian Nationalists with Love. And that is both dangerous and counterintuitive. Physical miracles (e.g. healing, transformation, resurrection) are easy enough to believe in because of the absurdity of quantum physics. What I find nearly impossible to believe in is the transformation of a fanatic, fear-mongering fundamentalist into a humble and gentle and loving agent of peace. That is the true miracle -- Even more unbelievable, I have seen it happen.
I know this not about the 4th movie but one of my favorite things about the evil "Atheist" professor is that right after telling everyone to pledge that god is dead, he tells them to read Descartes mediations as homework ... proof that the writer of these films doesn't even a passing knowledge of the subject he is vilifying
When I was in fifth grade I had a teacher who said 'In my class, we're going to start every day with God's word.' Wherein she would read a 5-minute passage out of a christian proverb book. In the beginning of the year she made the very gracious concession that 'I know some of you may have parents who don't want you to hear God's word. If that's the case then I can let you stand out in the hall while I read it.' Of course I was only 10 years old at the time and was raised in the bible belt, so I didn't understand at the time that what she was doing was wrong and didn't think much of it. Come to think of it, I remember her abruptly stopping that practice after the first 2-3 months of the school year, maybe someone told on her for it.
Most frequent comments so far is "They made four of these?!"
Yes, God's Not Dead: We the People was released last year. It had a three-day run in the theaters during some of the worst months of the pandemic so far, then a few weeks at the Pureflix streaming site before being taken down for home release. It made its money back, but it also made zero splash or impact. It has exactly one review on Rotten Tomatoes. So few professionals watched it that it doesn't have a score and maybe never will.
I doesn't even have a lot of video essays and takedowns about it. A few vlogs and summaries without many views. I guess it was up to me to make this. So, uh, you're welcome.
The hero we needed.
Well thanks! I watched it last year and couldn't wait for your video about it.
It's almost like they're designed to be mindlessly consumed, and not analysed
Probably not to hard to make money back on a film like this. No special effects, no exotic locations, no set-building. Some B-list celebrities that probably demanded a chunk of money, but nowhere near the price you'd pay for an A-lister.
I imagine it lost money on paper though, just because every movie loses money on paper. The industry is famous for their barely-legal tax avoision practices.
Frankly I can’t believe you and Joel are the only TH-camrs keeping up on the God’s Not Dead Cinematic Universe (or GNDCU). It’s a failure of the community if we’re being honest.
The allegation that Haiti made a pact with the devil to overthrow the French is especially heinous, since Toussant Louverture was in fact a devout Catholic whose religion factored heavily in his drive to end slavery and free Haiti.
Given Evangelical attitudes toward different flavors of Christianity, that's not an endorsement.
and I'm sure it has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with the fact that he was a black man whose parents were born in Africa. none at all.
He also couldn't admit that it was Napoleon Bonaparte, not Napoleon III. Napoleon III signed of on the Mexican Incursion of the 1860's.
he probably thinks all Haitians were/are voodoo (which is considered by many Christians to be devil worship)
Louverture never lived to see a free Haiti. The Haitians that did take power used him as a propaganda figure in hopes that the people overlook their corruption.
"Christianity started out in Palestine as a fellowship; it moved to Greece and became a philosophy; it moved to Italy and became an institution; it moved to Europe and became a culture; it came to America and became an enterprise."
~Sam Pascoe
Wow, that’s good
Great quote.
Well put.
Yeah. Makes sense.
Should probably add some snappy line, which I'm totally unqualified to come up with, noting how American Evangelicals have spent the last decade or so exporting their far right ideology back to, in particular Europe and Africa.
Evangelicals: "Be Christian or else."
Everyone else: "no."
Evangelicals: "OMG STOP PERSECUTING ME!"
😅 true
This is literally it
They learned the lesson of playing the victim card very well. They didn't think they needed it until they thought they were becoming a minority.
DARVO isn't a new phenomenon. The Puritan movement (which influenced much of the Evangelical movement) had the same tactic.
Very true
They fetishise being the victim, when in reality they have been in power and are losing it as society becomes more equal. Mitchell and Webb 'Are we the baddies?' is perfectly relevant here.
Skulls? Why Skulls? 😂
Perceived oppression is both a unifier and a motivator. That can result in a formidable adversary.
Agreed. Sadly, nearly every group on top, always seem to think they’re the ones at the bottom and the group or groups they have oppressed are holding them down. They find any suggestion of alternatives as a threat.
oh good shout. I HAVE to rewatch that instantly!
Makes sense as Christianity is, at it's heart, a sadomasochistic philosophy.
Calling 25- and 33-year olds "kids" says MUCH about the target demographic for these movies.
At 25, especially at that time, you would have been essentially considered an adult for a decade! What an absurd argument.
I guess that's the mindset of our half-fossilized politicians and some of the top religious figures in the country.
It started under Reagan so their timeline is solid.
The reason they say that cause they want to have that mind control over you by using that Bible saying you is a kid to make you listen to them like a kid even though you are a full grown adult.. They figure that at those ages they can get you to donate everything you have, indoctrinate your family into doing the same things for years and decades and will use only certain scriptures to make you or I feel like sh_t when in fact they skipped over scriptures that will describe them and their behaviors..
so let me get this straight, dear christian right: black children become grown-ups around 12, girls can be considered women from the point they get their first period, and white guys are still children at 33... so why do we let those run our country again?
"There's not a single nation that embraces homosexuality and survives"
Yep, absolutely true. We all remember that terrible earthquake that destroyed the entire nation of The Netherlands in 2001, right after they made gay marriage legal. We should've listened to the warnings...
Technically, no nations survive - all of them die eventually as they are just social constructs: once enough people cease to believe in them, they stop being.
@@wilberwhateley7569 yeah, but...
the gay earthquakes though! my neighbour got into a gay relationship with another man, and a sinkhole opened up in the middle of the street and caused a nearby elderly woman to bruise her knee!
Can confirm. I lived there and this is my dead spirit commenting.
And also the United States Supreme Court paved the way for legalized gay marriage and at some point thereafter Diaper Donnie became president and our nation is currently being destroyed by the maga morons that worship him as we speak.
Hell, Greece was thoroughly gay and not only is it the foundation of Western Democracy as we know it, but it's also STILL AROUND from ancient days. Still going strong. Jesus, the ignorance...
I can't get over "What happened here is a cause for celebration!" being said unironically after a man gets hit by a car and dies.
"He won't last long. There's blood filling his lungs!"
The people at the concert: 💃🕺🎉🎊
That part used to make me furious. I was shaking mad with the idea that even as I lay dieing I'd be pestered to hurry up and agree with them.
It’s honestly disturbing
fundamentalists worship death and hate so it makes sense
Reverend Jude and Dave, those who said that, were pure evil for saying that: no humanity at all. They are devils dressed as angels.
"26 year olds are just kids"
I'm 26. I have a kid. Apologetics for slavery are wild
Slightly off-topic, bu I once attended to Mormon meeting that discussed about slavery in old times. They had....interesting defenses for slavery. One was that old times slavery was good because masters treated their slaves as "members of the family". Implying it's okay to deprive someone of their autonomy, so long as you're "nice" about it.
They also compared being enslaved to addictions of modern world. I get where they were going with it that addictions can change personality and make people do what they'd never do otherwise, but not all addictions are equal. Being addicted to caffeine is entirely different than being addicted to heroin. Furthermore, I've yet to find out that my addiction to coffee has resulted a coffee mug kicking me out of the bed and whipping me because I didn't do my work.
Mormons themselves have pretty icky relationship with slavery, with both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young maintaining that slavery is consequence of curse of ham, thus being divinely ordained and shouldn't be tried to abolish(they also participated in it by enslaving native americans they captured during skirmishes in Utah). They can't exactly hide behind "it was just spirit of the times" either: Joseph Smith's son (who ended up starting his own church after succesion crisis) was against it and kept his position trough his life, meaning even in "those times" some still recognized slavery as injustice.
Religious Conservatives: It's okay that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, he was only 33. I had to get up and take a lap after hearing that one. Also, side note I'm 34 and I get mad at 19-year-olds when they goof off at work. But that's beside the point.
@@Ruosteinenknight yeah, that product of the times thing is nonsense. In the United States, many, including founders, acknowledged the moral evil of slavery (so did famous slave holder Thomas Jefferson). Many of those that acknowledged it as a moral evil fought to have it abolished, which led to much strife that ultimately culminated in the American Civil War. The insanity of these people is truly staggering.
@Michael Blankenship man work sucks and a lot of kids nowadays see it for the meat grinder that it is, leave the 19 yr olds alone.
@@Ruosteinenknight To be fair, the slaves were Family in the ancient Roman sense of the word. We get out term "Family" from a Latin term "Familia," but that did not mean family as we think of it today. I did not include blood relations at all, except maybe for slave children produced from the master or his sons raping a maid. Famulus (of Famula is feminine) was the term for a trusted domestic slave (the kind who lives in the same house as the master and handled menial tasks like cooking, cleaning, and childcare) as opposed to the slaves who did hard labor in the fields, mines, etc, often while wearing chains to prevent them from running away or fighting back, and slept in separate shelters. Familia is a collective noun that referred to all of the house slaves long before it came to be extended to include any free persons also living in the household. (Incidentally, the normal Latin word for the children of the household literally means "Free Person," distinguishing a legal son from a Famulus who might very well be a bastard that the Pater Familias sired on a helpless slave girl and refused to recognize as his own.)
I went to a public high school and we had an entire elective class devoted to studying the Bible as a literary text, but sure, Christians are persecuted in America
I went to catholic school for most of my life. It was a GOP factory. They use to compare conservatism and people like Reagan to Jesus all the time.
@@doepicshizzle6465 I'd like to hear one similarity of jesus to Reagan.
Don’t forget about Christian clubs
Same, same. I don't think anyone took it that seriously, but yeah, like, the bible treated in that context was weird. Thanks, Georgia.
@@falkorornothing261 Evangelicals worship both but know nothing about either
As someone who grew up christian enough to be shown the first movie unironically, the thing that grosses me out the most is the treatment of islam in the movie. The fact that they brought back the muslim father to convert him to christianity is wild.
Just think, not so long ago the Muslim family would have been Jews and Xtians wouldn't have batted an eye.
@@1MarkKeller what's wrong with converting someone
That’s because Christian nationalists are islamophobes, transphobes, anti women’s rights, antisemite, racists. Their entire “religion” is exclusion of human beings that aren’t white and right wing.
@@woobiefuntime nothing. But it depends on how you go about it.
@@woobiefuntime Depends. It can be manipulative sometimes, portraying outsiders of the religion as abusive, hateful or otherwise bad people until they convert, then they suddenly become good people. On its own it's not too terrible, but it reinforces the idea in the minds of isolated religious people that "non-believer = bad person" and "believer = good person."
That said, not all conversion stories are like that.
I have heard from many Jewish students who have been penalized for taking time off for Jewish holidays that do not permit writing, riding in a car or on public transportation, etc., despite trying to arrange it ahead of time. When my friend was a TA his department even tried to arrange the makeup test on Shabbat and did not allow an alternative time.
Somehow I have yet to hear from any Evangelical Christians about this affront to freedom of religion.
Yeah. Curious, isn't it?
Because the Religious Right does not care about the Jews at all they only care about Israel. The only reason they care about Israel is because of it's supposed part in the book of Revelations and the end of the world. If there was no mention of the Jewish homeland in the book of Revelations then Israel would just be another Middle Eastern country that would be better offed glassed i.e. nuked like the rest of the Middle East to the Religious Right.
Not to derail but I had an important test once on Eid and the teacher would not let me take it at a different time even after I explained my situation to them. Minority religions just cannot celebrate their holidays/holy days in this society.
@@pathora4484 makes sense. They don’t care about the Israelis and Jews. They wanna take Israel for the rapture. This is anti Semitic to the core
Non-Christian friends have had to make the case every year to the school principal to have their children's absence from school for high holy days "excused" in the attendance records. The school calendar in most of the US is built around Christian holidays.
My state representative led passage of a law this year to make absences for religious observances excused/protected, so now at least in a small corner of the country, there is a state law to appeal to, not just the constitution that feels too abstract to the average person in the majority population and that Christian Supremacists willfully misunderstand. My hope is that it will also make it easier for families of minority religions to advocate for excused absences. "My child will be absent on X, Y, and Z dates this year for major religious observances," rather than having to make a persuasive case that your religious traditions are legitimate and whether the observance is big enough to miss school over. Like, bruh, you already scheduled school so it doesn't interfere with your routine weekly observances. Why does my friend have to argue that their tradition's New Year observance is sufficiently legit?
I’m still traumatized from having to write “I will stand during the Pledge of Allegiance” 500 times as a elementary student in the 80’s. I grew to despise these systems of indoctrination.
@@everythingiseconomics9742 It's actually illegal for public schools in the U.S. to make students stand for and/or say the pledge, since that violates their First Amendment rights, but a lot of schools do it anyway, and just never get taken to court over it. Americans are absolutely bombarded by propaganda from a very early age, far before we're old enough to critically examine it, it's fucked.
@@everythingiseconomics9742 Ngl, the whole pledge thing sounds more like a military oath. Difference being that usually people in the military are adults.
@@Ruosteinenknight The one they make even preschool children say in Guatemala includes a line about dying for the flag. Imo it's bad enough to have adults say that kind of thing, but a small child who can't even write their own name or put on their own clothes yet?
@@everythingiseconomics9742 I agree.
"“The important thing is to keep them pledging,' he explained to his cohorts. 'It doesn't matter. whether they mean it or not. That's why they make little kids pledge allegiance even before they know what "pledge" and "allegiance" mean." - Catch-22
@@everythingiseconomics9742 It is also deeply Anti-Christian. Christ made it very clear that his followers were never to swear any oaths at all. He also made it clear that they should pray only in private, never to show off their piety in public like hypocrites. do.
Christians: we should be allowed to practice religious freedoms and pray anywhere, anytime!
Muslims: YEAH!
Christians: No. Not you guys.
Believe it or not had a great example about this. Christian cheerleaders want to pray on the field before every game in front of a crowd where people may or may not even be Christian? Court says they can. Muslim girls ask to use one small room so they can pray in private? No, cant do that cause no religion in school allowed.
It doesn’t make any sense.
@@shroomer8294 Yeah that supreme court case with the praying coach was ridiculous
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
- Wilhoit's Law
On a side note about Haiti. As Michael Brooks used to say “ the world has never stopped punishing Haiti from freeing itself” doesn’t help nature seems to never leave that little island alone long enough to rebuild.
France gets the blame for a lot of things it shouldn’t except Haiti. France should absolutely be blamed for the state of Haiti today.
@@Quinntus79 The US too. (As well as to a slightly lesser extent, western states in general.)
+
@@Quinntus79 what happened to haiti is one of france's greatest crimes. much like the congo is for belgium, the india famines and colonization and apartheid of what became South Africa, the US & Canada for the british, the residential schools and reservations, as well as slavery and Jim Crow for the US & Canada, etc.
I just started reading “Gangsters of Capitalism - Smedley Butler, The Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire” by Jonathan M. Katz - Smedley Butler instigated the system of forced labor - you might be interested in this book, too.
I still remember being a recent college grad, a VERY Christian College grad at that, and my family gathering to watch the original God's Not Dead. Everyone nodding sagely, "this what is really happening!" This is what happens when they don't allow God in schools. It was so... Weird... Intellectually dishonest... Self satisfying. Like a product of group think. It was weird.
Did you guys not remember that i led the school prayer group through middle school? I went to a Christian College, which is a thing you can do if you want an explicitly Christian education. Why are we pretending that we're being persecuted like this?
The complete lack of perspective is baffling - an acquaintance of mine recently ranted about colleges "indoctrinating" students (with nothing more than conspiracy theories as 'evidence'), seemingly amnesiac to the fact that their own university required church service attendance.
Because Christianity was born in persecution. It adapted theologically. There are biblical passages comforting the persecuted followers. Many branches venerate martyrs. To be persecuted as a believer is one of the highest honors for a Christian. And if the persecution is not forthcoming, then it must be imagined or provoked.
If you've held a position of privilege for so long and believe it to be justified or 'the way it's supposed to be', anything that seems to challenge your privilege feels like an attack on your entire world. And some will do the craziest things to stop that from happening.
It's not their faith that they want to protect....It's their ideology, their politics, and their pocketbook.
@@vylbird8014 That's also reason why early christianity emphasised role of jews in death of jesus. When you live in roman lands, it's best not to tell everyone that they were the ones who murdered your messiah. Unless you were interested becoming a part of roman show business, which involved lions at the colosseum.
Christofascism is perhaps the scariest form of fascism. We experienced it firsthand in South Africa, and it's not pleasant.
yes, on par with ethno-nationalism, which is often linked to some kind of organized religion.
@@SvenskaKrig1709 okay bud
@@SvenskaKrig1709 No.
@@SvenskaKrig1709 lmao
@@SvenskaKrig1709 What a MAGA clown
Religious Conservatives: "Our religious freedoms are being taken away!"
Also Religious Conservatives: passes abortion restrictions and anti-LGBT legislation across several US states
I recently was involved in a comment argument against this guy who claimed Christianity was the source of all morality and that human rights were a “superstition” among people of the Far East. He says Catholicism invented human rights in the 13th century and the idea of it being invented during the enlightenment was “liberal propaganda”. He then proceeded to claim that secularism itself was a “Christian theological concept” (????) and that “Christianity by virtue of its very seedbed, is impossible to be a foundation of a theocracy” 😑 He also thinks civilization is inseparable from Christianity and other cultures, especially the Aztecs and aborigines, should be thankful for Christiandom “civilizing” them. Lastly, he says that liberalism makes constitutional rights pre eminent over the “truth” that people like gays shouldn’t exist. Thankfully, and needless to say, everyone agreed he was an arrogant, bigoted fool who had his head far up his own ass. But the fact that people like this still exist shocks me.
24:45 Sir, the Roman Emperors would like a word with you. Also “traditional” marriage? Didn’t multiple Bible characters have several wives????
They've also banned Sharia Law in North Carolina.
Mosaic law, they're cool with.
And catch them screaming about terrorists if Muslim students insisted on wearing the hijab or any other Islamic associated garb lol
@@chriscortez2036
Sounds like the nonsense Jordan Peterson spouts, then will do mental gymnastics saying he isn’t actually saying it, when questioned more specifically.
before a quiz or test someone would say "oh God" and my teacher would say "God can't help you now." It always made me laugh.
Same! There's a music group called "Gooding" who released an album titled "Factory Blue" back in the 1990s -- on the back of the album cover was the ominous line "No God can save you now".
That line stuck w/ me & I've used it numerous times since then--
Some random Christian: Oh, God help us!
Me: No God can help you now.
@@zenkim6709 Also: "Crying won't help you, praying won't do you no good." --Led Zeppelin
So, let me get this straight: In an attempt to set up the Muslim father character for conversion to Christianity, the film's writers have his daughter, who previously converted, get into a horrible car accident. And they didn't stop once to consider that rewarding her conversion by hurting her just to convert her father might make they and/or their deity look like assholes?
I mean hes a man and a patriarch converting him is way more valuable to them than a old convert
And ignoring the fact of how the Muslim girl's father found out about her accident, the writers didn't see fit to kill her off as a way to have her dad visit her, but had decided to kill off Raddison in order to bring him to Christ...
@@jacindaellison3363 that’s kind of frustrating Also they could of had them reconcile and become better people and teach an actual Christian message of tolerance to other people and beliefs
That’s concerning
Being assholes and proud seems to be what gets fundamentalist Christians off.
They do not for a single second consider the optics of being asshole by a third neutral party because to them there are no neutral third parties. Only them and people they are allowed, or rather required, to be assholes to.
"The natives were merely guests at the first Thanksgiving" I mean this is just heinous
I, a European, come to your home in the Americas. You invite me into your home to sit and eat--but before finishing the meal, I stand up with a prayer thanking the lord for this bounty, and your home, your land, and your heritage as my own by divine providence, as ordained by god. Lastly, I kick you out of your home calling you a godless heathen not worthy of such things. It is beyond heinous, it is genocide.
Holy God man. You basically summarized everything I've observed as a Christian in the old churches I used to attend. COVID was my major turning point. Never been happier and never looked back.
I can relate, welcome aboard 😊
Gratz!
Welcome to the other side! We don't have all the answers, but we don't pretend to, either.
I always felt something wasn't right when I was a kid but started to pull away when I got in my 20s.. Too much going on in this world for a being to have all this power to sit back and does nothing to correct it..
Bro- if you want a REAL, TANGIBLE force to believe in: it's called LIFE. The force of life created us all. We are all a part of it. It requires not worship but EXPERIENCE. Go out and DO SHIT! Have TONS OF FUN! Life requires that you enjoy yourself or it's just a waste.
But it's true, christians are so oppressed, just ask Kenneth Copeland, how hard is for a good christian to have a private jet, it's such a pain and an humiliation.
He’s not Christian. He’s a false prophet using a very self-centered, watered down version of the faith to profit off of money-hungry and desperate people. Christians who know what the Bible says have spoken against him.
@@Window4503 and yet he has a massive flock, massive influence, and scores of defenders. Ya cant no true scotsman your war out of Copeland being a christian.
And a couple of mansions
“All Haitians came together and made a deal with the devil to get rid of the French” isn’t a take I was prepared to hear today 😂😂
Lmao more evidence that Satan's secretly a good guy /j
@@starchilde8698 Haitians did not worship Satan, they sought affiliation with their previous beliefs from Africa, many of them like Vikings, other Africans and other peoples who were new converts mix their older traditions and beliefs with Christianity
I find that hilarious considering Toussaint and many other leaders of the Haitian Revolution were believers of Jesus Christ. Not only that but originally they did try to work with the French Revolutionaries. Then Napoleon came along and it got messy real quick.
@@starchilde8698 well off the top of my head, Satan is to apparently thank for a successful slave revolution and the popularity of the blues and therefore all western pop music. God blew up a whole city because they liked anal, flooded the whole damn world because ? and allows cancer to exist despite being omnipotent.
Satan absolutely is the good guy here.
@@markm2092 pretty sure they know. It is what missionaries claim
IMO it's as difficult for non-nationalist Christians to reach some of these people as it is for atheists. Someone who doesn't hit the nationalist or culture-war touchstones is immediately and deeply suspect. I got involved in a campus Christian organization as a grad student, and it became pretty clear pretty quickly that I didn't fit in. Certainly, some people were open, or even receptive to alternate perspectives on politics, economics, and culture... but they were typically international students. Not entirely surprising. I think American Christianity is quintessentially bourgeois religion. It serves the interests of capital. To challenge that is to challenge the core of the faith.
American Christianity is a subterfuge for a very unchristian agenda!
Supply-side Jesus is the worst Jesus.
progressive christians like myself are not even seen as christian to these people. if you are not hardcore nationalist they’ll say you’ve been corrupted by the world and by satan
That’s makes sense.
@@leftbehindcrazed84 ironic considering that Jesus was a peasant who went out of their way to go to other towns and was a social justice warrier.
I had a coworker who was a Christian nationalist, and the breakroom conversations with her were absolutely wild. It was interesting though, because whenever I asked her to apply her rhetoric to specific people (usually me or my kids) she would always back down immediately for like an hour, but then go right back to it.
That sounds exhausting, how did you survive that?
That's a good SE tactic, though- the outsider test of faith.
@@utubepunk What does SE stand for in this context?
@@deadfr0g guessing street epistemology. It's basically a conversational technique that helps people arrive to a position where they might be able to question their strongly held beliefs by asking them non-confrontational questions.
@@anna-lisalysell5077 100%
The first time someone said to me that Christians were the most oppressed people on earth, I laughed out loud because I thought they were making an obvious joke. They were not, that became a very awkward conversation.
Most delusional maybe
@@matthewgagnon9426 I mean, they picked Islam out of a hat. They hate Judaism too, except when they think Israel will back them up in a war. They hate all non-Abrahamic religions as "paganism." They hate actual paganism. They think of atheism as a religion, which, naturally, they hate. It's never been about the actual beliefs of any religion--or non-religion--that they dislike; most extremist Christians can't name any non-Christian beliefs besides "Jesus is not God." It's about not being one of _them,_ which itself is a tricky subject when they decide they don't like something else about you--very few executed 'witches' practiced witchcraft, they were mostly as Christian as the rest of the village that wanted them dead.
The only way their claim could be credible if you count the ways that Christians oppress each other.
From growing up in the culture, one thing I've found insanely annoying that I think is related is also the tendancy for Christians to like, expect content of anything to be within their comfort zones, and by comparison, anything outside of their comfort zone becomes everyone elses problem to mediate.
Lol this can be as simple as I've noticed family/friends being uncomfortable with people swearing, and will sit quietly and uptight when people do swear. Or maybe a coworker or two is talking about their weekend and what they did, and it's not stuff the christian would do so they just quietly sit there in an anxious tension until the topic moves on and changes. And a flipside too, of how Christians kind of poke-around-the-bushes in terms to gauge your own belief or just outright assume you do think the same way about all the same things and shit. Doesn't help how spoon-fed they are of how they're being oppressed in this way or that way, etc.
I feel like christians forget they were literally always going to die. They're narcissists who cannot help but always center the conversation on 'their walk with God,' their beliefs, or whatever the latest flavor of 'persecution' is. Meanwhile the world is being smashed to death by greed and Christianity is just one of the mediums co-opted by industry to justify it, haha. It's embarrassing to see.
@@cam4636 yeah. Bigotry at its “finest”.
There's a church in my hometown that has a serious hardon for these movies - even has the phrase "God's Not Dead" on their led sign and screens them around major holidays. Imagine a secular version of these movies with the roles reversed - evangelicals would try to get them banned from viewing and distribution.
Is there a group that can put up a sign saying, "He's not the Messiah; he's a very naughty boy" and regularly show Monty Python's Life of Brian?
whats funny is a secular version of gods not dead could literally just be a documentary about fundies violating other people's rights.
@@NewhamMatt I can definitely see the Satanic Temple doing that, particularly in towns like the one OP mentioned.
@@gibbcharron3469 As a member of TST, I would gladly fund this 😂
@@gibbcharron3469 Oh please let them do that.
Back in 1997 I walked out of a philosophy class and reported the instructor to the college because I was told that “there is no fundamental way an atheist will attain a passing grade in their class” on the first day of class. I never heard of any follow up by the school (I doubt there was any) but I was able to cancel the course with a full refund
In PHILOSOPHY??? That’s wilc
As a pagan, one time I was visibly (but quietly and for comedic effect) praying right before a biology exam. My professor, a Hindu, smiled as she gave me my test, and said something to the effect of "I remember having days like that." We both got a chuckle and no one went to jail. Then I, still in a good mood, looked to the guy next to me and jokingly asked which gods he was praying to. And that little shit said "To Jesus, the only real God." They want you to have the freedom to pray, but they get real snippy about whom you pray to.
These guys will say their god is "the one REAL god", which if you really think about it, is saying "yeah well your religion doesn't exist so I don't have to respect it!" and acting like it's a slam dunk.
But when I use the same logic against them for things like a political debate, a parking ticket or a bank robbery, I get called "crazy."
Why should I follow your laws? Your laws aren't real!
Imagine if I was observed praying to Cthulhu in my student days - I’m sure that would have raised more than a few eyebrows as such prayers typically involve a virgin sacrifice…
I can certainly sympathize with that.
Mind if I ask what kind of Pagan? Some people just use the term to mean Norse, but others include Wicca and Druidry.
ok but really, which one were you praying for?
@@wilberwhateley7569 But are you a Cthulu Ftaghn, or an ia Dagon kinda guy?
A workmate once argued that without the bible there would be no law. Hence trying to say even the moral values athiests follow are gotten from the bible. I told him joseph was in prison in egypt over rape allegations. Meaning rape by then was already a crime in ancient egypt. Waaaay before moses came along. He continued arguing.
That idiot needs to be told about the Code of Hammurabi. Not only are laws way *way* older than he thinks, they’re also often incredibly shitty and shouldn’t be held up as a virtue.
Makes sense
It's tragically ridiculous when U study anthropology & discover that even primitive tribal societies have laws despite not having them written down or not having a written language -- because *tribal law pre-dates written law*. Meaning that our ancient ancestors had no problem grasping the concept or the value of a common code of conduct by which everyone in the group is governed & judged.
Hell, the Scripture itself is merely the end product of centuries of passing down the "Word of God" *by word of mouth* -- because the ancient (pre-) Judaic people were illiterate anyway. Their religious beliefs were entirely an oral tradition until writing was introduced to them long after the fact.
By that time, the ancient Chinese had already invented their own system of written language -- wonder how God fits in there....
It's one of the bread and butter apologetics.
1. Morality can only come from god
2. humans have morality
3. Therefore god exists.
Except they are missing the fact that statement #1 is just an assertion.
Apparently he knows nothing about the peoples of the Far East - who never heard of the Judeo-Christian deity until recent centuries and yet created whole cultures and systems of ethics using a philosophical basis that is completely unrelated to their religious traditions…
Whether its worship of the flag, national colors, politicians, the police, solidiers, or even the romanticized philosophy and history of the nation. Nationalism in all these forms is the religion of the Nation State
Agreed. I grew up Evangelical, with my parents working at an international school in Asia. We got to go "home" to the US in the summers, which means we got to see American Evangelical churches celebrating the 4th of July. It really skeeved me out to see such hardcore nationalism in a church setting. It's like they were _worshipping America._ That's basically syncretism, which Evangelicals typically condemn.
_(I'm no longer Evangelical and take a less judgmental stance on syncretism, since it's kind of just one form of cultural blending. But IMO the syncretism of any religion with nationalism tends to bring out the worst aspects of both.)_
_(EDIT: Caveat that not_ all _Evangelicals or Evangelical churches do this kind of syncretism. Some do deemphasize nationalism. But I worry that they are less common, especially now. Nuance and complexity are rarely as emotionally compelling as righteous anger over a binary "good vs. evil" narrative.)_
That’s the one thing that frustrates me about American Christianity at times. When you say things like “God bless the USA” , “God given rights”, ”God bless our troops”, and even include Christian prayer breakfasts that our politicians get involved in just for looks creates this image to regular America citizens that this country is great because God deemed it so. Also, idk if it’s just me, but Christian nationalism especially these past 5+ years have really pushed me to my edge. I feel like it’s been the worst it’s ever been. Celebrating the 4th in church makes my eyes roll, but throwing in someone like Trump (regardless of your political views) who’s shown to be a terrible person just infuriates me.
When your whole religion is based on “main character syndrome with a victim complex” you get the problems you described and man is it annoying.
Jerusalem syndrome but it's in burger-land and it's mostly hateful
What I learned today: Thomas Jefferson was the oldest kid in human history..
Today I learned I'm still a kid 😂
Based on his feuds with Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, that’s not completely untrue. Hiring a journalist to call your political opponent a hermaphrodite is pretty childish.
...Up until their new favorite gets called out, and then there'll be an 80 year old "kid"
Steve Buscemi is heartbroken y'all.
Yep. As the saying goes, when you’re accustomed to getting your own way all the time, justice can feel like oppression.
They made a FOURTH ONE!
I'm a Christian, and I believe some things should be allowed to stay dead.
Oh dear, I'm a Christian too, and I PRAY that these films will cease to exist. Although the 3rd GND movie was good (B), I can definitely say that rest are bad, like (F) bad. The 4th movie was in my top 5 worst movies of 2021. I've seen Christian truths weaved beautifully in Dune, Wonder Woman (2017), heck, when I recently saw The Dark Knight, the Joker wanting to prove to Batman that ppl in Gotham are secretly corrupted and will fall a part the moment crap hits the fan. It reminded me of the Devil saying to God that Job is only good b/c everything's going right. Take everything away=he'll curse you. Batman is trying to prove to the Joker that there is still good in these ppl, and he'll do whatever it takes to keep Gotham on the straight and narrow.
@@jacindaellison3363 could you elaborate please on what you said you found in wonder woman? It's just that a movie with Greek mythology as a core focus of it's lore doesn't seem to me like something with any Christian influence in it and I would like to know what you had meant by that
@@Relichunters01 sure! So, Wonder Woman believes that Ares is behind the war in WW1, behind all of evil. But since it turns out that all he really does is just tempt ppl for what they want, like when he gave Dr. Poison the idea on how to strengthen her concoction. The devil is the same way. He doesn't force us to do anything bad but tempts us with things we know we really want to do that's sinful. WW, the character, I see as "Jesus type" character, wanting to save humanity but by love and not bu condemning them. That's what I got out of it. I'm pretty sure that's not what the creators had in mind, I just thought it was interesting to see a secular movie pull off Biblical themes WAY better than some Christian movies.
@@jacindaellison3363 i’m actually curious about your take on Dune, since it’s famously poised as a criticism of “charismatic leaders”, with Paul and his father being as flawed as the Harkonnens and Emperor, albeit in different directions. Thank you in advance!
@@casualskeleman6377 It was small, but what I caught on with Dune was how Paul was a messiah-like figure. He did something that one of the ppl who were residents on the Dune planet recognized, quoting some scripture, like what one of the Gospels in the New Testament to some of the things Jesus did that was foretold.
Not that I'm saying Dune is a Christian movie-I beleive it's more inspirer by Islam, correct me if I'm wrong.
Whenever they pull out this “Please forgive the harmful & inhumane indiscretions of this young man of the pure & innocent age of 25!” argument to defend slavery or the similarity lazy one of “We can’t judge those living in such a different time”, they should always be rebuffed with the reality that the adult, elderly & actual literal children & teenaged slaves at the exact same period knew good and well that their abuse & exploitation was wrong. You can literally read diaries & accounts from black slaves of varied ages & genders where they discuss their horrid treatment & desire for freedom & equality. How strange that the individuals who financially benefited from the generations of backbreaking slave labor, who weren’t classified as owned/property instead of human beings & weren’t forced to risk so much for generations to fight for that right to be human, who weren’t regularly whipped, brutalized and/or raped by their “owners”, & who weren’t victims of or forced to see loved ones lynched for insignificant & even outright made up indiscretions get to be the naïve waifs who had no idea that the inhumane institution they participated in & benefited immensely from was inhumane.
this! Also - "it was a different time" completely ignores the fact that there were states that had banned slavery.
i know its pretty wholly unrelated to the GND films, but i was really happy when Red Dead Redemption 2 came out and finally made the argument that no wholly immoral action is ok, regardless of the time period. Arthur Morgan canonically hates slave owners, racists, KKK members, and you should too. Even with a morality system that judges you for various actions, that system actually rewards you with "good" morality points if you remove these people from society.
@@wildcatste I mean we don't need states. England, the country, had banned slavery way before America ever got around to it. And England even went out of their way to enforce their ban on other nations that had not.
Using the comparatively young age of many of the founding fathers as an excuse for their faults always annoys the shit out of me.
"Oh he was only 25! He was just a kid you can't be mad at a kid!"
My man I'm 25, and if you found out tomorrow I was keeping people in my basement and forcing them to maintain my home for no pay you would be calling the cops. 25 is a young adult sure but certainly old enough to know the difference between right and wrong.
There's another movie that's pretty interesting, A Matter Of Faith, which was advertised as the Christian alternative to God's Not Dead 1. Let that sink in.
That movie is surreal because it doesn't give an exaggerated view of universities and treatment of Christians, but its still treated as oppression. The professor teaches evolution because its what is accepted as science both by himself and general consensus in his field, but it plays out like he is personally trying to destroy the faith of his students.
Oh ffs. I wish I was taught evolution in school. These Christian propaganda films are gonna make me jealous.🤣
If a Christian's faith would be destroyed by understanding that evolution is true, then the basis of their faith was build on sand.
Oh my god aye, Forrest Valkai made a great video on it
Black Christian films are way different than white centric one's its typical about us black people trying to use faith to persevere through deep hardships having hope of a god who'll carry us through hardship hence why slaves even after being freed would us churches as gathering spots political and community organization its why they played a major role on civil rights movements
I’ve noticed this as well, black Evangelicalism seems to be a faith of liberation and perseverance not domination and control
Some one should make a video breaking this down
Can you recommend some "black christian films"
Wow, thank you for sharing this.
There’s a lot of truth to this, but at the same there’re plenty of black televangelists who seek control over large sums of money and to abuse their power
The Bible specifically advocates chattel slavery in the form of taking slaves from other nations.
Liberation politics and Christian theology are very specifically at odds.
I was raised southern baptist and escaped it as soon as I could. My memories are full of angry, petty, intolerant, racist people who loved to talk about who saw who doing what where and when while doing the same things themselves when they thought no one was watching. One of the deacons was also a teacher in my school and he swore at students during the week and talked about drinking beer while preaching to the congregation on Sunday. The preacher was relocated for an incident involving some underage converts. No one even checked his background when they hired him and put him in charge of the youth ministry.
Hypocrites.
Spot on. It's very awkward that almost every "Good Christian" I knew growing up was secretly watching pornography while still publicly decrying "Sexual immorality" and judging people for the exact same shit. But because of the doctrine of "Cheap grace" they could just confess that they had sinned and go back to doing it a few days or even hours later.
@@Phoenix0F8 Yep
Southern Baptists have always been hypocrites, pharisees, and whores.
Damn just when I was thinking “I hope I didn’t miss the latest Renegade Cut video”. Thanks for all the content over the years.
Yea RC consistently putting out solid content
I was thinking “damn, I missed the latest God’s not dead movie” 😁
My highschool tries to dodge the 'no staff led prayer' rule at pep rallies and stuff by just having a student volunteer in the place of a staff member. It's obviously still unethical because this is something planned ahead of time by the staff to be done with a captive audience, but I'm the only one who seems to see past the surface-level technicality. I never want to hear that Christianity is 'banned from schools'. The rules are bare bones, and yet several schools still violate the principle of them with little consequence, and it's almost always Christians doing it.
Do most graduations still have benedictions? Cuz there's another "captive audience" situation. d-:
Unethical perhaps. Questionably legal, certainly. The test is if they would let any student lead the prayer equally. If someone were to ask to take the place and pray to Allah, or even Satan, what are the chances of the school allowing it? I'm guessing pretty slim.
I'd argue that such public prayers are an example of Christians being persecuted, as Jesus was very clear in his opposition to public prayer. No genuine Christian would take part in that. Real Christians would only pray in private, as Christ commanded. True Christians would also have to refuse to swear any oaths, including the pledge of allegiance
@@vylbird8014 This would be perfect for The Satanic Temple. It turns me stomach because I don't want a young student to make themselves the ire of their school, but any who did volunteer to lead a prayer for TST would be outstanding.
Fantastic as always, Leon.
Christian Nationalists AND the Japanese Happy Science cult both (deliberately, IMO) misinterpreted Nietzsche's "God is dead" in almost the same ways. And both made garbage propaganda movies grifting on that misconstrued conceit, as a climactic call-to-arms to get further garbage nationalism into their respective public institutions of government! However, Happy Science only has the dubious honor that I'd watch THEIR awful propaganda movie, if I were drunk with my friends. White's work isn't even so-bad-it's-funny for me. I'm grateful for whatever luck there is that Christian Nationalists can't pull or fund animators quite the way they used to.
My 6th grade elementary school teacher had us read a passage from the book of Daniel while learning about the neo-Babylonians and it was all okay because it was in a historical context, trying to give us a better understanding of a period, etc. If he was making us pray after reading the passage, that wouldn't be allowed.
I would pray the rosary before I had big tests, and there was a Christian student group that met before school once a month to sing hymns and pray, and it was all okay. If all students had to pray before a test or join the Christian student group, that would be illegal.
This isn't hard to understand yet the Christian right still fails to comprehend this!
It's motivated reasoning. They fail to understand because it's advantageous for them to do so. They wouldn't be able to claim they're the oppressed underdogs, instead of the domineering authoritarian bullies they are.
@@unnamedenemy9 BINGO!
Exactly. It’s insane and ridiculous
We read sinners in the hands of an angry God (sermon by Jonathan Edwards) in 10th or 11th grade English class, but as a work of literature. Our teacher seemed to be a skeptic, and almost definitely wasn’t a practicing Christian.
The funniest thing about the first movie is that in a real life philosophy “Gods is Dead” just means we as a species are moving past the need for religion as we advance. But the makers of the film can’t understand that so they take it literally. “ gods dead and we killed him” just means that we are moving past the need for religion as we become more socially and technologically advanced not that god exists and we killed him.
It also means that changes in society have replaced religion with empty goaled nihilism. It's almost a "sadly, God is dead".
@@professeurgideere5856 nihilism???
@@professeurgideere5856 nihilism is when no religion I guess lol
@@heavens_best1905 ...Yes, Nietzsche was a nihilist
@Professeur Gidéère No, it doesn't mean "sadly, God is dead," it means "we've moved past this nonsense"
@@cam4636 no, Nietzsche wasn’t a nihilist necessarily. Nihilism, to him, was the inevitable result of a world that had rejected God/religion as a source of meaning and purpose; he was warning people about it’s approach. Nihilism is, after all, the belief that there is no meaning (perhaps more nuanced?). So, Nietzsche’s goal and philosophy was rooted in the idea that in such a godless society, one must decide his own values, synthesize his own understanding, and carve out his own place in the emerging society (the times that we live in seem to be bearing this out in reality, with hyper-individualism on the rise in the west). This can be done by first acknowledging to oneself that all life possesses at its root a “will to power,” that is, to exist and to have the ability to effect one’s environment.
That said, Nietzsche was much more nuanced than most people give him credit for (including myself until I decided to check him out), and often misunderstood. His work often has him battling with himself and attacking various ideas by targeting the fallacies and (useful) lies that generally underpin most social structures. At least, that’s the impression that was left on me, so take it with a grain of salt lol.
When all you've known is privilege, equality feels like oppression.
I don't know why it took me this long to be led to this conclusion, but I was really really struck by the truth of what you pointed out about the moral exclusivity of conservative Christian Fundamentalism. The idea that they believe they have the absolute singular authority to dictate human behavior, thought, and development to the exclusion of literally any other person, entity, or institution that exists, did exist, or may ever exist is staggering arrogance. It completely explains their dogged persistence in insisting we all buy into that article of faith (a very accurate encapsulation of this fallacy) through the propaganda and exploiting the tolerance that freedom of religion actually entails. Good job just nailing it.
"The Native Americans were merely the guests to the Christian Thanksgiving."
*raises eyebrows*
Excuse me, what?!
We’re not important to white Christians in the founding of the United States.
Isn't it nice that the Americans let the indigenous people stay in the US?
@@michimatsch5862 well the ones that survived the genocide, which is another great biblical tradition
@@michimatsch5862 that South Park joke about Aliens being present at Thanksgiving has layers
**Angry Creek Muskogee noises**
The Founders wanted to avoid all things that could lead back to a monarchy ( the divine right of kings to rule) so deliberately avoided overtly religious speech in the Declaration, the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. There is a difference between being a Christian Nation & a nation made up of Christians. Besides, which sect of Christianity is the correct one? Europe had been torn apart by just such wars, I doubt the Founding Fathers wanted to start a new country with old prejudices & internal religious strife. That is what bothers me about modern Christian Nation proponents. They aren't being truthful at all since they have a very narrow set of beliefs & literal reading of the bible that not all Christians hold. Christian Nation is just another dog whistle.
"deliberately avoided overtly religious speech" haha are you for real
James Madison explicitly said that the separation of Church and state was for the US to avoid the bloodshed of Europe. He also said that that separation would benefit the purity of both the government and the institution of religion. Other founding fathers opinions of Christianity were less kind...
While intended to give Christians the freedom to worship as they wished, the United States itself has never been and should never be a Christian nation.
@vodkaboy @vodkaboy In fact many of them had quite unsavory things to say of Christianity:
Thomas Jefferson: "Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man" - Letter to Joseph Presley March 1801
Thomas Paine: "It would be nore consistent that we call [the Bible] the word of a demon than the word of God. It has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind." - The Age of Reason
"the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion;" - The Treaty of Tripoli, 1796, ratified by the Senate and signed by John Adams.
It is worth noting though that the "enlightened" founding fathers did not represent the beliefs of the whole US population by a long shot in this regard. Many of them were Deist, believing in a creator but not a God demanding worship or dooming us to eternal damnation, and it was a popular belief held by many during the enlightenment. It is to that which TJ refers in the Declaration of Independence, not the Christian God, though the development of the deist concept of God is intrinsically linked to Christianity by the nature of it's orgin in European, that is Christian society, and some Deist didn't separate their creator from Jehovah / Yawheh, reflecting the beliefs Christian orgins even if it explicitly rejects core tenants of Christianity (by the way to a certain extent this is true of almost everything. For most of human history the majority of people have believed in deities and supernatural things, and that has influenced our languages and customs. Even in modern secular society our thinking is to some degree unconsciously molded by religion)
As the United States was originally founded, the only allusions to God I know of are "his creator" in the declaration of independence, "Annuit Coeptis" on our money ("He favors our undertakings", he being the creator) and the tradition started by Washington of taking the oath of office by swearing on a Bible.
Nevertheless as time went on this rather clear division would blur, most painfully so in the early - mid 20th century which saw explicit religious allusions be adopted by politicians to counter pro-labor and socialist sentiments at the time. It is from that that we have the motto "In God We Trust" and the pledge with "One nation under God". Religious fervor in the US in the 20th century was further exasperated by the high profile threat of nuclear armageddon.
The damage done to the secular intention of our institutions during the 20th century is quietly guiding the ever more insane Christian right of the 21st century.
As a french person, I'm glad someone finally talks about my favorite history lesson, about Napoleon The 3rd Orwhatever. It really helps put things in perspective.
They used to make us pray in my high school every day during announcements and right after the pledge of allegiance. Was a very conservative small town. They just called it a "moment of silence" but it was heavily heavily implied to be a prayer.
Wait, the moment of silence is prayer time? I spent my whole school life thinking it's for those who lost thier lives in the american revolution or something since it's right after the pledge of allegiance.
They started the moment of silence after 9/11 at some point. Not a thing in my private Christian elementary school, but happened every day at my public school. I never thought it was supposed to be for prayer, it was always explained to me as a memorial for, well, 9/11. Which kinda makes me wonder why they'd be still doing it now...
i had a class on "religions" my entire elementary school. It never occurred me that praying, writing a biblie verse everyday on our notebook and coloring jesus was definitively not ok, until I went off to a different school and realised all the time wasted they could have used to teach things high school would actually require us to know, like idk math? I'm still so pissed about it
"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."
~Founding Father *Thomas Jefferson*, in a letter to Horatio Spofford, 1814
Makes sense.
You don't understand, he was just a kid when he wrote that.
I think we should made a parody of these movies.
I say we take the basic characters, keep as it mostly, but put them in situations that counter the movies’ narrative. Have a Christian girl be ‘concerned’ about her Muslim friend, and think shes forced to wear a hijab, but actually the Christian girl is a busy body is just infantilizes her friend, but is dumb struck to learn the girl’s parent aren’t abusive Middle Eastern caricatures, but fairly liberal Muslims so they don’t force their daughter to wear her Hijab.
Have a Duck Dynasty guy stand in totally sh*t the bed during a interview, and spend the movie trying to do damage control.
And of course, the main character is a religious boy who buts head with his atheist professor, but their debates are actually a exercise in philosophical debates the prof does every year with his new class. But the kid crosses a line and by digging up the death of the prof’s Mom, and accuses him of ‘hating god’ because of it.
It all collimates is the concert scene the (not Duck Dynasty guy tries to distract from his embarrassing PR by talking about issue at the University. But the Professor shows up and makes piece with his student, admitting to having crisis of faith when his Mom died, and is now contemplating a return to his religion, but here’s the twist, since he doesn’t die, and makes piece with his student, there is no reason to attack the university with a text message campaign.
It’s just a rough idea I muse about when the topic of these movies come up. I call it “God is (missing and presumed) dead.” A title that involves just as much understanding of the original Frederick Nietzsche quote as the original movie title.
I’m Christian, but I was thinking alike on the first part, but I was thinking more of a satire of these movies! Like make it political and about persecution complex and everything the right wing loves so much! 😆
@@c.lineofficial Big Joel made a video about this series and in one scene of the second movie iirc a white guy talks to the poc priest about how he feels persecuted and the priest just goes: "Brother, who do you think you are talking to?"
This should be the entire film direction.
@@michimatsch5862 It was the third movie actually. The least successful of the movies because it's argument was more nuanced than the others.
you guys need French atheist satire in your life
Makes sense. It should be done to expose this. People who are religious like myself is seen as a joke because of this.
In school I remember being told many times about Rome's founding myth, of Romulus and Remus. I wondered why we needed to be told this tale that was so obviously false, when we already have a more accurate understanding of the founding of Rome. Now I understand
Pat robernson at 24:47 kinda just forgeting about the Ancient greeks, Romans, Ancient Chinease, Ancient egyptians, Anciect mesopotamian, Pre contact pacific islander, Pre contact/pre colonial Philippines. all of whom had either acceptance or at the very least tollerance of both gay and trans individuals and were easily as succseful if not moreso than the united states
he didn't forget, forgetting implies that it's unintentional. it's clearly intentional to exclude these groups as part of "barbarity" and non society. which plays again into conservatives rejecting "democracy" as another perversion of the greeks.
PureFlix's "God's Not Dead" franchise and Hulu's "The Handmaid's Tale" exist in the same cinematic universe
scalding take and you should say it
God’s Not Dead is the prequel series but from the perspective of Gilead supporters
Great video, thanks, man. Have you ever heard of the televangelist Jack Van Impe? He had a production company called Cloud Ten Pictures that made all these weird, x-filesy action-thrillers about the "end times". I think most people remember the Kirk Cameron 'Left Behind', but there's an untapped treasure trove with films like: 'Tribulation' starring Howie Mandel, Gary Busey and Margot Kidder. 'Revelation' starring Jeff Fahey. 'Judgement' starring Corbin Bernsen and Mr. T where God gets put on trial.
Really there's just an amazing sub genre of Evangelical apocalypse porn that I haven't really seen any youtube essayists or reviewers dissect yet.
Diamanda Hagan Has reviewed all three "Left Behind" films and all four "Apocalypse" films (those films with Busey, Fahey, Bersen, etc, are in that series).
Uh, yes, Brett. I am familiar with Left Behind and the end times. It is what I am most known for. th-cam.com/video/hRxN1DXmSdA/w-d-xo.html
@@renegadecut9875 yeah it’s an insane movie You need to reveiew more of this stuff
Seth Andrews did a pretty good breakdown of several apocalypse porn movies form the '70s starting with A Distant Thunder. Man, those movies are bad! But the reviews scratch a particular itch that it sounds like you're looking for.
My favorite line about tradition is that it's just peer pressure from dead people.
Also, I was excited to see a little cameo from Salvation Mountain in this video. I've been there, didn't get to meet the guy who painted it but it was a charming place.
it's even worse when you realize that dead people can't defend themselves anyway
@@vodkaboy tell that to conservatives on MLK day.
A common misconception that is repeated in these movies is that Atheists think "God is dead", or want him dead.
A fictional character can't live or die.
🤷🏾♂️
"you're just mad at god"
Or that anyone who would disagree with them or their actions would either be an atheist - or convert in the end.
Tbf, the phrase "God is dead" is an actual term used in philosophy. The thing is, it's not a term to be taken literally. It's referring more to the death of the concept of gods, the fact that as we understand more about the world and how it works the less we need that concept to serve as our default "answer" for anything we don't understand.
Yes, @@bloodybutterflygaming1242. Although I don't think this "movie" series knows that.
i wanted plenty of fictional character dead. gollum and sauron for instance. that doesnt mean i believe gandalf exists.
Wow. Just wow. Just when I think this "series" of movies CANNOT possibly find new ways to disgust me, they trot out Isaiah Washington to defend slavery...I mean...It's like someone went out of their way to be as offensive as humanly possible.
Even Pucci would be kinda pissed at this.
Can we also point out that the movie basically says that you HAVE to forgive and get back into contact with family who ABUSED YOU AND THREW YOU OUT just because they converted to your religion and are sorry? Cuz like...yikes...
I'm a Pansexual Christian and I've come to accept that not only will I never see myself represented by Pure Flix, but it's likely the people at Pure Flix probably hate me and don't consider me a Christian in their evangelical little world.
They vote to actively take rights from my community and have the nerve to cry about being persecuted.
Same here as a bi christian
Yeah - they think that they have a monopoly on Christianity.
I'm bisexual, and I went to a fairly relaxed church, and I still distanced myself from it because I knew they wouldn't accept me
I agree.
I left chtistianity. Just because youre american does not mean christianity has to be your defualt.
Sitting here sipping my coffee, turns out I'm about to get the tea! Love these videos.
I got various statements to the effect of "Isn't it wonderful God made it that way?" in a public high school biology class when I was a teenager. This was back in the 80's, so perhaps more tolerated than now, though still outside the law.
"Look, see how God made all blood circulation dependant on a single heart, so even a brief disruption would lead to sudden death? Ohh, and these teeth are only rated for a thirty-year service life. Isn't God's design wonderful? Could maybe use some redundancy though."
Bobbun
I wonder what they thought when they got to parasitic organisms.
_Puts a carton of strawberries on the desk and starts eating loudly_ "Uhu. Yeah." _munch munch_ "God."
@@Felladin LMAO
Well, you just made my day! Looking forward to watching this 😊
'Oh, chiristianity is outlawed now! buhu!' *Creationism literally being taught in science classes in many states*
Whew imagine the sense of spiritual relief one must feel when Pat Robertson tells a little story about how Haiti freed themselves "from Napoleon the 3rd or whatever" by praying to the devil. Do not trouble yourselves with ponderings on why God would let such terrible things happen to the Haitian people, dear Christians. It is their own fault for bowing down to Satan, yasee, definitely a thing that happened and we are helpless to change.
If you really want your blood to boil, read up on the charismatic christian idea of "Generational curses" sometime. These people actually think that God punishes the great great grandchildren of people who displeased him over a century in the past. And that he's justified in doing so.
Persecution is when society fails to grant you more rights than everyone else I guess.
Persecution is when the state takes away your right to persecute other people.
"26 year olds are just kids."
Me who is 26: Do kids go to work 5 times a week and pay car loans?
The natives were guest in their own country?
and sometimes they got blankets as present for the guest.
My new favorite line is
Owning slaves is not a youthful and indiscretion and is not like spray painting a wall.
Christian nationalists can get out of the embarrassment of the founding fathers being slave holders, by being historically honest: Washington and Jefferson in fact were deists. But then Christian nationalists would be in a quandary; that the founding fathers were not Christian and America is not founded on fundamentalist Christian ideals, so America is not exclusively Christian. But they must have it both ways. Therefore the film explains the following: Jefferson was a devout and humble Christian AND was not really an evil racist. It was only a youthful indiscretion.
The other soution they have is to downplay the slavery. "Oh, yes, he owned some slaves. But he was really nice to them, not like some of those other slave owners, so it's no big deal. What was he supposed to do, pay them and run his plantation out of business?"
Let's be real, they're biding their time until it's once again acceptable to outright revel in owning other people. Christian slave owners had a million excuses why slavery was Christian; now their great-grandkids have a million excuses why they didn't know what they were doing. It's just a big kid beating up a little kid and saying "it was an accident, I didn't mean to" when the teacher notices; soon as the accountability is gone they'll go right back to it.
Yeah. Exactly
American Evangelical Christians: Woke busybodies are trying to erase our great nation's history thru revisionism!
Also American Evangelical Christians: [tries continually to cover up embarrassing, uncomfortable facts about America's past via dishonest revisionism]
Me: Uhhh ... hypocrisy, much? Doesn't the Gospel of your precious Bible indicate that Jesus Christ Himself had a very dim view of hypocrites?
Oh, the irony!
One thing that stands out to me is that Christianity is declining a bit in the Americas and Western Europe, but Christianity is rapidly growing in Africa and Asia. Funny how they only care about the White Christian population declining but ignore the areas where Christianity is expanding🤔
I should make a Parody of these movies
God's is Undead.
A vampire fundamentalist propoganda
“Oh my, yes! Sweet Zombie Jesus!”
~ Professor Farnsworth
There was that Dracula cult in Castlevania
I'm not an actress, but sign me up. I wanna be a part of this
Thats basically implied in True Blood.
'But God hates fangs'?!
I've not yet got past the idea that Native Americans were simply "guests" of the Europeans on their land.
Prepare for God's not Dead...in space!
Is that the one where the cars are about to crash leading to another deathbed conversion and then an evil atheist tries to prevent it by launching the vehicles into space-- but ends up launched into space himself, where he converts before burning up in the atmosphere?
"Godfellas" from Futurama??
@@rgs8970 Yes! Also, some guy says: "it's a cause for celebration "
They would do that.
...in 4D
When Republicans 10 years ago began trying to convince me that Michelle Obama was a transvestite and her two children were conceived in Petri dishes, I left God and the Republican party in my rearview mirror.
Lol, that's a new one.
@@undersatan5685 I hadn't heard the "Children conceived in petri dishes" line but people on the christian right trying to insinuate that Michelle Obama was "mannish" was a very common thing in my circles growing up as well
3:20 This reminds me when Kentucky schools were forced to display "In God We Trust" in their schools. I remember reading that and feeling icky about the whole thing
Hey Renegade Cut, I watched your video on Left Behind. Comments were understandably disabled, so I never got to thank you for finally letting me find peace in my faith. That, and my political shift to Democratic Socialism, have helped my mental health (depression) tremendously. Thank you for basically saving my life!
12:45 lol bro napoleon was 24 years old when he reached the rank of General, 27 when he beat the Austrians the first time... and 30 when he made himself emperor quite the kid XD
I highly recommend Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers by Brooke Allen. It offers a detailed breakdown of each founding father's religious (or lack thereof) beliefs. I had to read it for my intro to historical methods class in college and it's fantastic.
I wish Thomas Paine had more influence.
Wow!
The drunken Fox Opinion Network shouting lady is in the movie (as a judge, no less).....!
Why am I not surprised? 🤦♂️
I knew i've seen that face somewhere...
I wasn’t sure if that was the actual Jeanine Pirro or not
Dang, the makers of these movies are really anti-education. College is bad, high school is bad, elementary school is bad, just homeschooling and then nothing.
Because education and the ability to critically think is the bane of religion, as religion as an ideology and system of analysis is full of holes and contradictions and moved goalposts from being so old and based on ideas and concepts that seemed true when the text was written, but over time have proven to be more and more incorrect.
centuries of trying to adapt with with the times and appeal to people have left religion a hollow mess. That, and stupid people are much less likely to convert away from your ideology or question the authority members of your system than intelligent people. Stupid people more often lack sex education and are willing to have large families (therefore expanding your membership and reach) despite the financial costs and changing precepts of modern life.
The "G-N-D cinematic universe" line made me have an involuntary chuckle.
When I came out as transgender at 24, I was forbidden to return home. I then spent a desperate sorrowful year traveling for work and watching my family and extended family cut me off one by one until I can say with certainty that I no longer have a traditional "family," outside of those I choose myself. It's insufferable to these invertebrates imagine discrimination after discrimination upon themselves while I was locked out of the house for disagreeing with my parents, called demonically-possessed, and left to accept that after exhausting every other possible explanation, that I was woefully abused, mistreated, and ultimately abandoned by people who claim absolute love. i wish they could see the world that I live in now, for it's far better than anything they can imagine. But, I will no longer reach back for them.
I am so sorry your family cut you out. If you were my child, I'd be your ally and welcome you with open arms. I'd never turn my back on you and accept you. I just don't understand how a parent can turn their back on their child. You're supposed to love your children unconditionally. Again I'm so sorry you had to go through that.
I literally went to a Catholic school and it wasn't anywhere near as religious as evangelicals want schools to be. We had science classes, and discussed other religions as part of the religious curriculum, and our chaplin was always very kind and understanding to atheist kids in school including me at the time.
I love how all of these movies look exactly like the stock footage b-roll you use in your videos. Like, they're almost indistinguishable. Great video as always!
Mere details: The cartoon strip "Pogo" produced the phrase in the early 1970's "God is not dead, He is merely unemployed." One of the other famous phrases: "We have met the enemy and he is us."
I am not american, nor am I christian or in any way highly religious.
But your analyses of these films has some magnetic effect on me. I cannot say why, but each time you present on of these movies I like to listen. Maybe its some bile fascination, like having a car wreck you cannot look away from. I do not know.
But thanks a lot for your effort to sit through this terrific series of films.
Greetings from central europe and best whishes.
14:10 Oh, the famous "I'm not racist, I have black friend I've paid to say I'm good" gambit. Jesus, I don't understand why we respect actors, and not sexworkers.
the only thing that peeves me about this video is when they call Patrick Henry and "orthodox Christian". i know in this scenario it means something different, but to say "orthodox Christianity" when there is literally a large sect of christianity known as "Orthodox Christianity" it is confusing at best
Reminder that if a Muslim teacher lead their students in prayer, white Evangelicals would probably start a riot
Great video as always!
Your film analyses are what first drew me to your channel, and the political videos are what kept me coming back. So I love seeing you fuse those two elements together in videos like this.
"A 'kid at 33' is an even more ludicrous statement."
...You take that back right this instant.
God's Not Dead truly taught me that the best way to attack fake religious persecution is to enact religious persecution.
"I say the whole world learn of our peaceful ways. By force!" - Bender
The fact that this is a quadrology is proof enough for me that there is no god. If God can see everything and is forced to watch 4 of these, God would have Robloxed himself by now.
This series of films is basically the christian right collectively going "God's *not* dead! He's *not!* Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh!"
More relevant than ever now. Can't believe this
"If Christian nationalism is to be defeated, it will have to be by other Christians."
I would even go so far as to say -- it must be from inside the movement; it must be Christian Nationalists who, as individuals, come face to face with their doctrines -- and find those doctrines wanting.
The Sermon on the Mount -- the same Sermon from which MLK and Gandhi drew heavy influence for their non-violence -- is a direct threat to nationalism, because nationalism is built upon fear and self-preservation. The Sermon on the Mount flies in the face of violent self-defense, violent expansionist, factionism, exceptionism, and imperialism of any kind --
It is the complete breakdown of everything Christian nationalism holds dear --
And that is terrifying to anyone who is caught in that dogma.
I have known several former Nationalists who were forced to turn away from nationalism after revisiting the teachings of Jesus -- and realizing they were acting out of fear and indoctrination.
The truth of what they were ingesting had to come out of their minds like poison drawn from a wound -- and only compassion and love could accomplish that.
It sounds cheezy, but it's deadly serious -- the only way to defeat Christian nationalism is to replace the fear in the hearts of Christian Nationalists with Love.
And that is both dangerous and counterintuitive.
Physical miracles (e.g. healing, transformation, resurrection) are easy enough to believe in because of the absurdity of quantum physics.
What I find nearly impossible to believe in is the transformation of a fanatic, fear-mongering fundamentalist into a humble and gentle and loving agent of peace.
That is the true miracle --
Even more unbelievable, I have seen it happen.
I know this not about the 4th movie but one of my favorite things about the evil "Atheist" professor is that right after telling everyone to pledge that god is dead, he tells them to read Descartes mediations as homework ... proof that the writer of these films doesn't even a passing knowledge of the subject he is vilifying
When I was in fifth grade I had a teacher who said 'In my class, we're going to start every day with God's word.' Wherein she would read a 5-minute passage out of a christian proverb book. In the beginning of the year she made the very gracious concession that 'I know some of you may have parents who don't want you to hear God's word. If that's the case then I can let you stand out in the hall while I read it.'
Of course I was only 10 years old at the time and was raised in the bible belt, so I didn't understand at the time that what she was doing was wrong and didn't think much of it. Come to think of it, I remember her abruptly stopping that practice after the first 2-3 months of the school year, maybe someone told on her for it.