MovieChat Forums > Do You Believe? (2015) Discussion > Looks like another Christian propaganda ...

Looks like another Christian propaganda film


Looks like another Christian propaganda film That will be seen by about 200 people in the country.

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I would much rather see a good movie like this than a hacker slasher movie.

This movie is about God and Jesus, but it is also about how people care and help each other.

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It's not propaganda, it is about a personal relationship with our Lord and Savior, Jesus and growing spiritually. When you give your life to Jesus, everything is better and there's nothing greater than having God living within you, The Holy Spirit.

Jesus is above all, my Lord and Savior. He died for me and I live my life for Him.

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So what’s wrong with propaganda? Hollywood makes tonnes of it. “Message”films Some are well done, and others not. People tend to complain about messages they don’t like to hear. “Will and Grace” was a message Tv series. George Clooney makes one when he is trying for the elusive Oscar. There have been many message films about the Middle East, but the best one, by Clint Eastwood, Hollywood hated.

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Hollywood does not hate anything that makes money. When these movies cannot reach the vast majority of movie-goers or cannot make a huge blockbuster profits hollywood does not want to make them. Its basic supply and demand. Are you saying Will and Grace did not make money? Of course it did! A lot! One of the most popular of its time. This is not the liberal message is good ole fashion money making.

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The Atheists are really worked up! It's entertaining how their zealotry is identical to those of religion.

I. Drink. Your. Milkshake! [slurp!] I DRINK IT UP! - Daniel Plainview - There Will Be Blood

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This movie has made $9,811,000 in three weeks time that is way more than 200 people in the world. There are millions upon millions of believers all over the world. Old people, youths, teenagers, etc and the population of Jesus followers are growing and growing. I seen miracles working in people's lives: Jesus is REAL. We don't see air but we know it's there. In the same way, as believers of Jesus; we believe that Jesus exists even though we don't see Him. This is America, the land of the free and we can have faith in Jesus if we choose too. You don't believe in God that is your choice but don't try to take the choices away from others. These movies are made for people who want hope. Jesus offers hope and that is better than not having hope when we are facing death or the death of someone close to us. Jesus comforts us when we are ready to just give up. Jesus gives us strength to keep going instead of seeking drugs, alcohol, etc to medicate the pain which is only temporary. Jesus is the only one that can lift us up when we are at an all time low. Nothing else satisfies or comes close to what Jesus can do in our lives. I am living proof what God has done for me.

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I imagine breathing is a reasonably good indication that air exists. I don't die after five minutes without god. In fact, the longer I go without god, the better.

http://tinyurl.com/kz5er35

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I think those type of movies are for people who already know the Lord. I don't think person in a natural thinking will be converted by seeing this movie, or even understand God's miraculous ways. There are very few good Christian movies which make good point and bring the message to people who don't know the Lord yet. I can think of Left Behind and God's Not Dead. Although God's not dead story itself is for Christian mindset. I don't even think Bible mini series had good message for non-believing people.
I am waiting for Audacity movie by Ray Comfort which supposedly will have a message for all people, not just Christians.
So no, I don't think this movie can be considered as propaganda.

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There are very few good Christian movies which make good point and bring the message to people who don't know the Lord yet. I can think of Left Behind and God's Not Dead.
You're not seriously suggesting that God's Not Dead would ever convince a non-believer to look more into Christianity, are you? That film will likely make atheists more secure in their beliefs, pushing them even further away.

Please stop.

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That outlook could be attributed to the cynically minded, but not all people think the same way. And atheism overall is seen as an extremist viewpoint by many Americans who believe in God, apple pie and the Republican Party. Which is why conservatives control Congress. This film is for Christians, and the intent is to remind them about the value of faith and prayer.

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And atheism overall is seen as an extremist viewpoint by many Americans who believe in God, apple pie and the Republican Party. Which is why conservatives control Congress.


But you're a liberal...riiight...

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Conservatives control congress because of gerrymandering. If you look at the hard numbers and dont take into account for districts or the electorial college for presidential elections, Dems overwhelmingly win.

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If the Holy Spirit leads, and if a person wants to know God, I think God can use any movie and any situation. As Jesus said "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear".

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Absolutely. The best way to convert me is to make me feel really terrible about myself? I will never understand and don't want to.

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I'm sorry if people have tried to make you feel really terrible about yourself. They should try to make you feel loved, that's what Jesus did.

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Is it possible for there to be a Christian film, and you not call it propaganda?

No?

Then you're just a troll.

I joined the Navy to see the world, only to discover the world is 2/3 water!

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For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 1 Corinthians 1:18

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I'm being absolutely certain when I ask this: if the original post was clearly a trolling remark from a troll, why did I just read through five pages of comments, many of who simply called a troll a troll? I came here because trolls are funny, and for some reason I get a kick out of seeing posts like this (the best ones are when the troll posts the original message and never responds, just watches the fireworks, such as they are).

That being said, I'm an atheist with liberal leanings, but I also share some conservative viewpoints (particularly fiscal conservatism). However, instead of the conversation being liberal vs. conservative, democrat vs. republican, religious vs. atheist, why can't we broaden the conversation a little if any side is to make progress. First, how about clearing the air on what an atheist is and it not. Simply put, it is one who believes in one or more less gods than religious folks (the "or more" referring to religions that have more than one god). Their reasons for not believing in any gods are likely different than the reasons a Christian, say, or Muslim does not believe in Thor or Apollo. If people wrote off other gods simply because theirs is the "right one" for whatever divine unique or original reason (every god, dead or not, claimed to be the right one, the divine one with unique qualities from the others), why can they not view their god through that same lens? Atheists have taken a step back from ALL gods to make an informed decision. To my knowledge, no atheist woke up one day and said, "I think I'll be an atheist today."

My de-conversion from Christianity (various sects, baptized Episcopal, went to Catholic school for a few years, attended wife's church, which calls itself non-denominational) was gradual. They all had their own views of what Christianity was, and yet they were all contradictory to one another: the same basic religion was at odds. I tried a few other churches, talked with a few well-respected religious people, pastors in some cases, and they all preached the wrongness of the others more than the rightness of their own.

So I did what many pre-atheism atheists do. I read the bible myself, asked god myself, prayed myself, as the group think was pretty divided, and it bothered me. First, I came to the conclusion that god was not moral. There were so many mass murders and sexually offensive things done in god's name or directly ordered by go that I had never been privy to (amazing what one finds researching and thinking for oneself). I wondered why this sect of Christianity worried about baptized babies and that sect was obsessed with being saved. Why these problems instead of all the dead men, women, and children at god's hands, sometimes for very insanely stupid reasons? Minor disobedience toward elders? Worshiping another god (if Yahweh is the one and only, who gives a $hit if they worshiped a golden calf). Then I realized that god killed the calf-lovers because he was jealous. I believe he even proclaimed his name to be Jealous!

Even while I was a Christian, I was against war. I've always seen violence as a last resort to as much failed diplomacy as there can possibly be, and in the bible, violence was done as a first and last resort to some pretty petty issues. "God said kill all but the virgins, so we killed all and took the virgins" was the mentality. There was no moral dilemma raised by such actions and behaviors, no character speaking out against it. I got a lot of flack for focusing so much on the Old Testament, as though that (which is something like six eighths of the entire bible) were an excuse for god's psychopathy. The answers to my questions of "what makes a god who does this, commands this, demands this under penalty of death, a good god at all?". My questions were usually answered with zero hesitancy, as though all this violence in the bible could be shrugged off, and the answers, in my opinion, were unremarkable excuses, nothing more.

There were people who told me I'd misread it. Nope, kill everything that breathes, kill the livestock, kill the women and children, save the women who have not known a man for yourselves, says it right here. No footnote, no "just kidding", nothing that I could read any way but the exact way it was written, very direct language.

Others told me it was a different time: okay, but the same god, right? He doesn't wish to see the virgins of people of other faiths kidnapped and forced into marriage with the murderers of their families? Not anymore? Well, I must have skipped that part. Sure, Jesus apparently said that he fulfilled the old law, that HE fulfilled the old law, for everyone else, not a jot or tittle (I believe these were his words) of the old law would pass until all was accomplished. And it wasn't his death that accomplished all because he's coming back again, right? So being "a different time" really means nothing.

My faith dwindled when the respected faithful failed to simply address what I had been thinking: God is a murderous psychopath, immoral and lacking any decency. Even in the bronze age, was it necessary to murder children? God is petty, I thought, and uses his power for evil. Made Abraham think that sacrificing his child was a good thing. Yeah, he stopped it last minute, why? Because the sick bastard was actually gonna do it, and god was pleased. That's not a man who represents the cornerstone of faith and god's love, as I was taught. That was a sick person willing to kill his baby for an insecure, jealous, murderous deity, who undoubtedly would have killed Abraham had he just said, "You're nuts, I'm not gonna kill my son."

Some people went to far as to say that those people got what they deserved because they were sinners. Whatever the excuse was, I felt nauseous and anxious around people who I once revered and thought of as highly intelligent, but the answers they gave were a bunch of vacuous excuses that sounded as though they couldn't do well enough to defend their faith from little old me, a twenty-something kid with some questions that I thought would have been answered with great precision. I really wanted to believe them, and the sad part is, I don't know how much they believed themselves concerning god's immoral actions. "He's mysterious, we can't be expected to know why he did those things." Sure we can, says right here, if kids mouth off to their parents, they get rocks thrown at them until they're dead. If someone works on the Sabbath, they are killed. Those are but two examples of minor transgressions leading to a death penalty.

I prayed for long periods of time, deeply prayed that god put some understanding into my heart, show me a way to put an end to the conflict I was having, prayed for an end to my doubts. I was glad when he did not because a year or two later (it's hard to pinpoint the actual moment), I was an atheist and not because of my anger. I credit my anger with deciding to take a breather from the bible and church and praying and read some truly great books, particularly Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World", Dan Barker's "Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became one of the World's Leading Atheists" and Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything". In the end, I learned to think for myself.

I was an angry Christian in those waning days of belief. I felt lied to and betrayed by people who were supposed to be experts, people who cared about me, people who said they loved me, and quite possibly they did, but in the end, I had to care about and love myself too, regardless of what they would feel about my soul's fate, and I felt that betraying my doubts would have been far more detrimental than brushing them aside and pretending that there was no problem.

And for anyone who says to get right with Jesus, I tried that as well. Reading the New Testament showed me that Jesus talks a lot about where you will go if you do not accept him and worship and praise him, and it ain't pretty. I hear it's very hot and it lasts forever. He also gives some good advice on how hard one should beat their slave because that human being is their property. Different times, I understand that defense, but coming from the revered son of god? Surely he knew that owning people and beating them was wrong, regardless of context. So, a deity (and/or the son of said deity, depends on the believer) who is so important that his story is written years after his alleged death, he leaves behind shabby evidence that he was ever here and promises to return to send non-believers to hell for that horrid sin of not believing in things based on bad evidence, is supposed to be good? I find that horrible. The faithless, the sorcerers (even Jesus didn't know that there's no such thing as sorcerers) and idolaters are all going to burn forever for the sin of...well, nothing. Nothing I would call enough of a reason to burn forever and ever. That seems a bit harsh. That's another reason I figured it was all BS. Jesus and god are so insecure that if you doubt their existence, you're a goner. What better way than fear to keep people in line.

God is love...unless you don't believe. God is love...unless you blaspheme the Holy Spirit. Through god all things are possible, except snapping his fingers and turning me (and many others) into a believer. After all, beyond our non-belief (which we obviously don't see as a bad thing), even Jesus would say we're not such bad guys and gals. Just a little mixed up, perhaps. But alas, we must burn and be tortured for eternity by someone who loves and embodies love and can do anything. And no free-will talk please. God hardened Pharaoh's heart more than once, made him let no one free. Where was his free will? That's pretty early in the bible, so why keep on about free will. And call it indentured servitude or slavery or that I'm misrepresenting what either of them means, not a whole lot of free will there either. In fact, the concept of free will, which is discussed highly in many sermons, was never actually mentioned in the bible, not that I saw. If we don't have the right to disbelieve stuff on bad evidence, how is that free? According to Christian belief, that comes at a great price, and not believing in what cannot be displayed or is evident (ala Bigfoot, UFOs, etc.) is perfectly natural.


Atheists are NOT angry with a god they don't believe in, as was depicted in God's Not Dead, as that professor, clearly a very cardboard misrepresentation of atheism (you'd be hard-pressed to find an atheist who would deny a student a good grade and thus denying him his human rights for believing in god, and if you found that professor, he wouldn't be teaching...he'd have been fired and quite likely sued, tenured or not).

Atheists are angered by bad ideas, age old nonsense that makes good people do bad things and preach bad things and believe bad things simply because they were taught to be afraid not to by other people who were afraid not to.

If we look at things through the lens of human decency, put ourselves in the shoes of others instead of viewing things as what's a sin and what isn't according to old books, much can be accomplished.

Getting better and cheaper education should not be a liberal or conservative issue. LGBT rights should not be a liberal or conservative issue (though you'd be hard-pressed to find either who is against it for any reason other than their religion). Religious freedom should not be a liberal or conservative issue. Corrupt bankers screwing people out of their homes and their money should not be a liberal or conservative issue. These should be issues that simply address humanity and morality, no matter what political ideals one holds. If your humanity comes from reading into a situation and deciding what is best for society, then kudos to you, whether I or anyone else agrees or not. You've looked at all sides and made a personal, informed decision. If your humanity comes strictly from your religion, then you can't make up your mind, as it's been made up for you and demands you keep it that way, lest you face a fiery furnace. Where is the freewill in that?

Cheering for movies like this, like God's Not Dead, is up to the viewer. Just know that, in the case of God's Not Dead, there is a huge anti-academia undertone, and it's simply not true. Professors do not behave in this way, even if they are atheists. There's another Christian movie with Eric Estrada called Uncommon, and it's based on a true story of a group of kids wanting to start a Christian club but end up being harassed and bullied in a public school. The true story it is based on actually happened to a secular group who tried to form at a public school. It was mainly the Christians who bullied their group and sent threats to them. This obviously does not encompass all Christians, but it does show that many are willing to lie in order to further an anti-atheist campaign. If atheists are not a threat, why all the movies that seem to be centered around the jerks who are atheists, the dangers of being an atheist, or the bullies that atheists are? It seems to be the hot topic of selling, a fantasy version of atheism (in reality, the professor in God's Not Dead could have mopped the floor with that debate as a first-year philosophy student, let alone teacher). Atheists are not close-minded (for the most part). It was opening it that likely led to atheism, if raised religious. Atheists don't say, "There is no god." We simply cannot force ourselves to believe in any deity based on poor evidence for their existence.

I know many believers hate the "burden of proof" argument, but why should anyone have to disprove what seems obvious? If I show you my bare hands and say I'm holding a great deal of marbles, the doubter shouldn't have to prove that there are no marbles. I should be made to whip my invisible marbles at the wall and have them make a loud noise or break a window. I should be able to throw my invisible marbles on the ground and make people trip on them, and those experiments should be tested repeatedly under controlled conditions to ensure that I'm not creating an illusion. You shouldn't believe me simply because I say that the marbles are in my heart and changed my life and that they're all around us if we just believe in them and that my marbles exist and that's a fact because of the uniqueness of my book on marbles, and if you don't believe in my marbles, bad things will happen to you.

None of those are good reasons for the existence of my magic marbles, and I would hope that if I said, "Prove to me that there are no marbles in my hands," that you would say, "I shouldn't have to. I'm not making a claim about marbles. In fact, I could care less because I don't believe in them, but since you seem to be so sure and you're saying that bad things will happen to my children and me if we don't believe in them, go ahead and give me what you've got. I'm willing to look over and consider all of your evidence before I simply say your marbles do not exist." You see? Burden of proof is on the one making a positive claim. The sheer obviousness of my marbles' invisibility, the fact that you cannot pick up on them with your senses should be enough to shift the burden of proof my way, where it belongs. Bad analogy, sure, but it's the same concept. What makes your claim based on a lack of evidence more unique than mine besides popularity?

Please take no offense to this long rant. I was tired and read too many posts that misrepresented atheists and atheism. If I share my story, maybe others will too, and you'll see that they're not a threat to anything but bad ideas, and everyone else should be as well. That idea of decent people burning forever because they cannot see your marbles should be the first thing to go. We don't want pity or prayers from people who claim to know what happens to us when we die. Trust me, if your book is correct, I'm going to hell because accepting Jesus is not in the realm of possibility for me. But don't pray for me. I'd rather go watch Bill Hicks and George Carlin do some back to back stand-up and listen to John Lennon jam out. Three of the most talented and influential non-believers on a long list of talented sinners. Hey, at least I'll THINK I'm in heaven. Shouldn't that count for something?

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