The God Who Wasn't There

As a second-generation atheist, I walked into this movie knowing as much about the historical aspects of Jesus as say, your average Christian; not much. This movie opened my eyes to the mythological aspects of Jesus and the attempts made by the Christian church to turn him into a messiah. I was particularly impressed by the interviews with Sam Harris, Richard Carrier, Alan Dundes and Robert Price, to name a few. Each one was able to put forth very clear reasoning as to why we should question the existence of Jesus Christ.

I highly recommend this movie to those of all faiths, or no faiths at all. Critical thinking and reasoning should be present for all of our personal tenets. If you haven't yet questioned the foundational pillars of your religion, there's no better time to start.

While I am agnostic and this film was preaching to my personal choir, I had some issues with it. Chiefly, I had the strong sense that Flemming was working out his personal issues, particularly in the last 15 minutes of the film, taking out his resentment against the fundamentalist school he attended as a child. I was surprised the superintendent sat and debated with him as long as he did; as we all know, fundies are not much for having their beliefs questioned. And I think Flemming did indeed mislead the guy about why he wanted to do the interview. I don't blame him for getting up and leaving the interview (which of course was exactly what he wanted the guy to do), and I have to commend the supe for sticking with it as long as he did.

Yes I am a bit surprised to hear myself sticking up for a fundamentalist, particularly one who makes his living brainwashing children. But, I'm also into reality and that's the reality of this film.

One thing I did enjoy about this film was all the clips from the various Jesus movies of the past. Good god what horrific acting in those old films! It was like watching MST3K.

This was a bit clumsy of a film. Film-making is an arduous process, so I think Brian Flemming must have some really serious issues with his former beliefs to go to the trouble of making a film about it, in order to make himself feel better. I hope it worked and I hope he makes a better film next time.

Meanwhile, if you're into Biblical skepticism, a far better investment of your time would be to read Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus". This film was more of a diatribe and unlikely to be taken seriously by anyone not already a skeptic of Christianity. Ehrman's book is a serious, scholarly work well worth reading, particularly if you find yourself in the situation of debating family or friends about the Christian mythos.

This movie (more like a documentary) was very well put together, entertaining and very informative, and like with any documentary, the information contained should be researched and verified. Brian Flemming makes it easy to do. The content is not derogatory to Christians (although, they may disagree) and the information included should be known to them (although, their churches would disagree). The movie makes some very good points about the most basic of peoples beliefs and will lead to a heavy debate (unless you watch it alone). I have shared this movie with quite a few people already, most give great reviews, the only negative so far...it's not long enough. While I enjoyed the bonus interviews, I found the background sounds a bit distracting.

This is an interesting film for Christians and atheists alike, and not at all what I was expecting. Rarely is faith approached in such a commonsense, factual way. The film maker's personal investment in the documentary is a big part of what makes it compelling. The first half of it is basically a summary of the known historical facts around the figure of Christ. The second half of it delves into modern Christians' (particularly American Christians) knowledge and understanding of the origins of the modern religion. There are some pretty tense moments when the film maker discusses the foundations of the faith with his former school principle. All in all, an interesting film well worth watching.

This program may have 10 minutes of good information; otherwise it's snotty putdowns of religious people. It's as if director Brian Flemming only recently discovered both atheism and sarcasm, and feels with these tools he can easily bludgeon his opposition.

As for his "Christ never walked the earth" thesis, it doesn't get a chance here because Flemming wanders extensively into his own personal issues, and they take over the movie, never getting back on topic. I'm not studying the writings of Saul/Paul to find out how air-tight this all is, but a quick browse of Wikipedia suggests most of these arguments are discredited.

Anti-religious people will want more data. We don't need to be told that religious people are nutty, any more than American Jews need to be told how annoying Christmas music gets by mid-December.

Religious people tend to discount skeptics whose objections to religion are obviously rooted in abusive upbringings. Arguments from such victimized people are dismissed as irrational, and therefore unconvincing.

In the best scene, the Superintendent of Fleming's childhood Christian school rather insightfully confronts the director on his motivations. That seems like the most honest part of the movie, and it was short. If Fleming were a bit more self-aware, he might have a good story in him about his own (past & current) relationship to Christianity, and the abusive institutions that indoctrinated him in his youth.

The bonus interviews are pretty good, tho they don't bolster Fleming's thesis much. Sam Harris is a good spokesperson for the anti- religious POV, and he doesn't go light on those other, non- Christian religions. Harris also has some good (and easily Google'd) interviews on Salon.com , Amazon.com , and Samharris.org .