The Ledge - why aren't there more atheistic films?

So I just received the blu-ray for The Ledge whose description is below. It is probably one of the first films to openly tackle the philosophy of religion and I am looking forward to watching it. However, it got me thinking, what atheistic films are there out there, and why aren't there more films that deal directly with these sorts of issues.

I suppose, in essence, the answer to that could be quite simple - because they don't command decent enough incomes; because the negative press they would get from the Bible Belt might damage the film's chances of making good money, and so on. Indeed, the film (based on a Carl Sagan book) Contact, was unable to remain faithful to Sagan in exploring the science vs religion debate by softening the debate and changing the ending (apparently - I have not seen it). The superb The Invention of Lying by Ricky Gervais had some extraordinarily good scenes (the 10 Commandments scene is one of my favourite all-time scenes) and I would hail it as the first openly atheistic film (and the internet infidels list these as atheistic films). Many others probably have covert undercurrents of exploring such subject matter, but disguise the subtext so as to appeal to the largest audience possible.

Providence Road Baptist Church, N.C. Pastor Charles Worley’s Sermon on Gays and Lesbians

Separation of Church and State . . . Yea, Right!

Yahweh is Proven to be a Pernicious, Lofty, and Fickle God

This is an excerpt from a book that we have written which is near completion, and was inspired by a heated online conversation we had with a well known Christian. In this excerpt, it will be proven that Yahweh, touted as the “ultimate and only true god,” is nothing short of a fickle, and pernicious god, with an added air of loftiness about him when it concerns the subjects of knowledge and wisdom. To prove this, I can show where in the Bible Yahweh views wisdom as being good, and also views it as being bad.

Who Says Our Efforts Aren't Worth it?

Here's another email I received that says otherwise:

Christianity and homosexuality - the inconsistencies of a Christian

I am writing a post in reaction to something about which I was talking with my Christian friend (let’s call him Colin). We were talking about homosexuality and his approach to it given his Christian background. Some points were interesting and some I fundamentally disagreed with. Here are his views:

• As according to the Bible, homosexuality is wrong.
• This morality is grounded in God.
• He is not homophobic and detests that label as it automatically halts any further informed discussion.
• People can have genetic or environmental variables which help to influence a persons likelihood to homosexuality.
• However, to commit to a homosexual act is an act of free will, and thus falls within the moral sphere.
• As a result, it is not necessarily the disposition of being homosexual which is wrong, but the decision to act upon it.
• He has no ‘problem’ with homosexuals and has / has had homosexual friends.

Hopefully I am not building up a straw man of his position, but it does demand some serious unpicking.
Obviously, as a determinist, this is all moot to me, but let me at least give this a good seeing to, so to speak.
To start, this clearly begs the question as to the authenticity of the truth claim of the bible. Can we trust biblical accounts? If not, which ones do we trust and which ones do we accept as being potentially errant? Let us look at the various mentions homosexuality gets:

Bible Believing Fundamentalist Dr. Peter Ruckman, PhD Lectures on the Bible

If Dr. Ruckman makes more sense than his enemies (as noted at end of the video), it’s only because his enemies are Christians! (Even atheists can learn something about the Bible and Christianity with Dr. Ruckman!) .

Hell (literally) makes no sense

In response to John's post, a bit tongue in cheek, I thought I'd post a video I did some time ago about the incoherency of hell. See what you think.

I Have Been to Hell and Back, Literally!

This is true. I have been to hell, literally! Want to see?

Welcome to the World of Christianity

As a Christian, you are now following THE supreme God who created the universe. Here are the absolute truths that make your God special:

Evolution as part of a necessary mechanism (and putting Creationism to bed)

We have had a resurgence in discussing evolution recently, thanks in no small part to the Creationist mental contortions of Creationbabble over on this thread. what this seems to show, to me at any rate, is that Creationists, and any shade of person who disbelieves the theory of evolution, simply does not understand the philosophy behind it.

In short, they just don't get it. Let me explain.

Jesus as a Jewish Religious Bigot

The most harsh and racially charged position Jesus takes is in his love and protection of the faith of his nation Israel built on the exclusive covenant to the Jews have by its god Yahweh.

Why I HATE Christianity

I recently wrote a post on my blog explaining why I HATE Christianity which received over 3500 hits in one day, so I thought I would also submit it to DC to gauge the reaction here. I have put some of the Christian responses, and my counters at the bottom of the post. Enjoy!

Richard Carrier exposes New Testament problems

Here is a video, a couple of years old now, which provides some excellent questions. I am not a Jesus mythicist, but really rate the thought-provoking nature of this video. It is Carrier at his best. Much of it needs savouring and following up with detailed research and analysis.

From a God in a Box to the Universal Sky God: Eternal Blessing and Suffering for All

God is a consequentialist part 2 - the Old Testament inconsistencies

So now having exposed in the last post how God values moral actions, let me look into internal evidence from the Bible which shows that God espouses a moral absolutist code, and yet proceeds to contradict that ruling somewhat hypocritically in his actions.

Let me recap. By seeing moral value in the greater good that supposedly (this is just an assertion from theists to explain away the Problem of Evil) comes about from a moral action, God is deriving the moral value of that action not from any intrinsic character, but from the context; from the consequences. For example, the suffering and death of Jesus is excused from the greater good this supposedly entails (the confusing notion of atonement) and the 2004 tsunami killing 230,000 people and millions of other organisms is explained as morally good in the consequences which this brings about. We do not know what these consequences are since God decides it is a good idea not to tell us, but suffice it to say that we must (as theists claim) understand that this is part of God’s greater plan, mysterious as it is. Since God is morally perfect, the plan must also be morally perfect. Thus any action or omission (inaction, or choice not to act) is defined as being morally perfect. Therefore, the tsunami was both designed tectonically by God in actualising the physics of this universe, and allowed to happen by God choosing not to intervene and stop it due to some greater good which we struggle to fathom. As a result, we are assured (by theistic experts with no small dollop of question begging) that here is a greater good, and subsequently, as I have surmised, the good of such an action or omission is derived by the consequences.

Why John 3:16 is a Lie in Its Biblical Context

Compare this famous evangelical Gospel tract verse as cited in the late Gospel of John with both the older Bible traditions themselves as well as the New Testament itself.

In Defense of the Non-Ethics of Christianity

In this post, I am going to build upon one of my previous posts, namely, The Non-Ethics of Christianity, in order to further illustrate how the Pauline version of Christianity that has been adopted by the majority of Christians in our society (and many non-Christians as well) leads to moral laxity. I will use two examples of Christians who purport to undermine my case, but who in fact, support my case, and illustrate why the Pauline version of Christianity leads to moral laxity.

God is a consequentialist

In this post I will be starting to lay our what my idea of the morality of God is. Many theists, such as William Lane Craig, claim that God is the grounding of objective morality. Either that, or that God is the even less defensible basis of an absolute moral code. I will look at both of these issues.

Let me lay out some groundwork about morality. One popular secular value system for morality is called consequentialism. This broadly states that the moral value of an act is derived from the consequences which the act brings about rather than the intrinsic moral value of the act itself.

Immanuel Kant, on the other hand, was a deontologist. Deontologists believe that the morality of an action is intrinsic and is valued on how well it adheres to objective moral rules. One of the classic criticisms to this position is known as the Inquiring Murderer thought experiment and is as follows. If a murderer came to your house and asked you where his prey was, and you knew, you would be obliged to tell the murderer and thus facilitate the death since there is a moral worth in not lying. Deontologists often claim that you cannot use people for a means to an end, they are the end in themselves. Thus, in the trolley experiment, where changing the tracks will cause the death of one person and not five, it is morally bad to change the track to save five, thus allowing the one to die since you would be using the death of one person to obtain the life of five others.You would be using the one person as a means to an end.

We are not the 'Center of all Things'

The Thinking Atheist has created a well-produced video here. It gives a brief synopsis of humanity and shows us to be, in homage to Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, rather insignificant on a cosmic scale. The sun no longer revolves around us. Lightning is longer the wrath of the gods. Flood myths are that. Myths.

Bullshit! Case In Point, Joel Watts

Joel is a high ranked Biblioblogger, just under DC in hits. I didn't quit because I failed. I succeeded. I didn't quit because no one listened to me. They did, on both sides of the fence. And I'm not gone. I am just done wasting large chunks of my time here. I said I might post something from time to time too. Furthermore, Christianity has emphatically not survived the attacks of the skeptics. Joel is so ignorant he doesn't even realize his Christianity is different than the Christianities of the past because of the attacks of the skeptics. It's so different he would be burned at the stake for heresy a few centuries ago. And I am NOT coming back to the faith. I eschew faith. Here is a Master's level student majoring in the exegesis (or the interpretation) of Mark's gospel. Where the hell are his exegesis skills? The same ones required to exegete a Biblical text are required when interpreting a blog post from me. Sheesh. If anything I quit because I'm tired of butting my head against the wall of stupidity. If anything I'm not going to play nice anymore. This is just a mundane example of what I dealt with daily for years. It's idiocy. And he thinks he can be objective about his faith? Bullshit!

Yahweh Condones Thievery--Well, Only in Certain Cases...;)

According to Christians it's ok to "steal" as long as it is from an oppressor, and as long as you are putting it to "better use." This, according to Bill Pratt over at "Tough Questions Answered." where he implies there are "conditions" to the commandment of "Thou Shall Not Steal." For the sake of argument, let's assume that Bill Pratt is correct.

It has been shown (by myself and many others) that the Bible has many contradictions in it, and Bill's example is just one more example to put in the file cabinet. Apparently, with their clever(?) use of Humpty Dumpty semantics (i.e., making words mean whatever they want them to mean) Christians now consider their thievery not to be thievery when it is put to a "better use," or, when it is thievery against a non-follower of Yahweh--which seems to be ok with him. Let me explain.

The Non-Ethics of Christianity

Why do normal people believe ridiculous things?

Why, indeed, do normal people believe ridiculous things? We have heard much from John Loftus about the OTF – the Outsider Test for Faith – which essentially illustrates that religion is a (geographical) accident of birth. It claims that if believers used the same critical powers they use to assess, and dismiss, other religions and their claims, then they are obliged to turn those critical faculties on their own. If they did, John would claim, then they would surely end up dismissing the claims of their own religion (this is a simplistic view of the OTF, no doubt).

What is interesting to me here is not so much the fact that people do special plead their own religion in this way (though that is incredibly interesting and important in itself), but how this comes about. I will put forward a theory which is fairly well accepted anecdotally, and see what you think. I will use an example which I experienced the other night which should show the theory with clarity.

Okay, The Time Has Come, I'm Done

[Edited July 6, 2012: Below is my original post where I said I was done arguing with Christians and done wasting so much time here. It wasn't long before I was back, this time arguing mostly with the atheists at Freethought Blogs, which can be read here in reverse chronological order. Now I am done arguing with atheists too, that is, unless there is something egregious that needs to be addressed by me. Again, I'll stick around, comment on occasion, and update people from time to time. I have assembled a good team of bloggers here so enjoy them. Back to your regularly scheduled program.]

I have no more desire to engage Christians. They are deluded, all of them. I have never been more convinced of this than I am now. I have better things to do. I spent 39+ years of my adult life on a delusion. If I add the years of my childhood that's almost my entire life. Yet this is the only life I will ever have. It's time to move on, or at a minimum take a very long hiatus. I just finished what may be my last book, on The Outsider Test for Faith, to be published by Prometheus Books early next year. How many times do I need to kick the dead horse of Christianity? I don't think I need to say anything more. If what I have written isn't good enough then nothing is good enough for some Christians. What I intend to do is turn this blog over to a few qualified people. I'll still be a part of it and I suppose I'll post something from time to time. But I see no reason to waste large chunks of my time on this delusion anymore. [Edit: For further clarification I commented below.]

Articulett Responds To The Question of the Origins of the Universe

Jeff Foley wrote: Let us keep it simple, then: prove or disprove the necessity of at lease one "being" which has the power of being "in and of" itself (aseity). All that exists is the result of this/these "being(s)." As a scientist and philosopher, you should be familiar with the proposition: Ex nihilo, nihil fit (from nothing, nothing comes.) I am using the proposition as a postulate; at least one "being" must "be" (has aseity.) Either something must have aseity, or things pop into existence from "thin air." Let us call this/these being(s) God. Should I assume that you do not believe in God, and instead you believe that all that exists came from "thin air"? Articulett responds: