Really fine review of the movie (filmed on the LSU campus) at Psychology Today here, with a number of comparisons between the film and that one Rocky film where Stallone wins the Cold War, including this:
If you recall, the Russian boxer Drago trains in a state of the art scientific facility, where they measure the impact of his punches, train him on machines and try to figure out how to make him a better fighter. Meanwhile Rocky runs out in the snow and lifts logs. God’s not Dead is very similar. The reiteration of Hawking’s statement that philosophy is dead was not accidental. It is something that the conservative evangelicals who made this movie desperately want to be true. In the real world, Hawking’s statement was met with condemnation from both scientists and philosophers,* and philosophy is so alive and well today that the Christian right-wing feels they need a movie to demonize it. But this is a part of a larger anti-intellectual movement in evangelical Christianity that distrusts what academics say on everything from American history to evolution.
The end of Johnston's piece is a little bit unfortunate.
Interestingly, I believe that many of my Christian theologian colleagues would object to this movie just as I do. The point of religious faith is exactly that—to believe without evidence. Some even suggest, as Kierkegaard did, that one should believe God exists because it is absurd. My theist friends and I will disagree about whether such belief is advisable, but I think we would all agree that trying to prove that God's not dead is a bad idea—especially if you do so by demonizing and straw manning your opponent in a movie filled with really bad arguments.
I wish Johnston had read this recent post (and this earlier one) by Helen De Cruz. But independent of the crudeness of his own treatment of faith (as believing a proposition with insufficient evidence) the piece is well worth going over for when your students ask you about the execrable film.
[*I also wish Johnston hadn't linked to yet another instance of Santiago Zabala and Creston Davis' ignorant analytic philosophy bashing. Maybe I'm being too harsh. . . please follow the link above and see what you think of their claims.]
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