The Invention of Lying - Movie Review

Plot Summary:

This film starts with a blind date between Mark (Ricky Gervais) and Anna (Jennifer Garner) who live in a world where everyone tells, not only the truth, but blurts out everything they are thinking:  "Yes, that dress makes you look fat" or "Your baby is so ugly, it's like a little rat."

No one has any imagination or creativity because there is nothing beyond what everyone can see. There are no white lies to save people from hurt feelings. Therefore everyone who is not beautiful and successful lives in a depressing stupor.

Mark loves Anna but she sees him as a loser who would produce fat, snub-nosed children. He is out of her league and, well, Brad (Rob Lowe) comes from a more attractive gene pool.

After being threatened with eviction, Mark suddenly breaks out of his stupor and tells a lie that makes everything better for him. And his lying makes others feel better, too. Everyone  believes everything he says because they can't imagine anyone telling something that "isn't."

Mark had been a screenwriter assigned to writing movies about the 13th century, a very boring historical period. Since there is little of interest to write about and he can't make the Black Plague exciting, he has been laid off. But, as soon as he realizes he can lie, he invents fiction, therefore his screenplays are so fantastic and interesting (albeit inane) that he becomes rich. Everyone believes his fictitious stories are the absolute truth.

Later, at his mother's death bed, Mark tells a lie to make her feel better about dying. He is overheard by the hospital staff and soon everyone believes he is a prophet.

I don't want to give more of the plot away, but the rest of the film involves the conflict of absolute truth and lying and the problems each can cause.

Opinions:

In several on-line reviews, people said the movie started out well and then went downhill, but for me, the opposite happened.  I thought most of the beginning was rather inane, but as it went on, I liked it more ---perhaps because it threw some light on why people believe the things they do.

I wouldn't call it a great movie, but I enjoyed the film. Netflix viewers gave it an average of 3 (out of 5) stars and IMDB readers rated it 6.4 (out of 10.)  Actually, the remarks ran the gamut: loved it, hated it, or so-so.

I liked that it was thought-provoking, yet (as you'll see below) simply "provoking" to some.  It had much to say about religion. As a non-believer, I found parts of it laugh-out-loud funny with lots of low-key humor in-between.

If that isn't enough to make an atheist want to see it, these reviews from Netflix might change your mind:

•"This movie is terrible, boring, not funny, and an attack on religion. If I didn't have to return it, I would put it in the shredder."

•"I thought that it was just terrible! The first 30 minutes or so were great but then they brought in religion and I found it very offensive and I didn't like it at all. It was very hard to finish the movie."

•"**SPOILER** This film is so disappointing. It completely makes fun of religion and seems to say that it is all made up. I felt like it was saying that if you are religious, you are gullible and stupid. I couldn't give it no stars so I rated it as low as I could."

•"The movie ended up being an insult and persecution of Christians everywhere. They mocked everything from God to the Ten Commandments. With the cast that this movie had it should have been really funny, but instead was a complete waste of time. It wasn't worth finishing and I would never recommend it to anyone. It I could give it less than a star I would."

I'm surprised any up-tight religious people got as far as the attack-on-religion parts. I would have thought they would have turned it off during the first five minutes when Anna blurts out that she had been masturbating when Mark rang her doorbell. (Some admitted they didn't watch more than a few minutes of it.)

Yes, it is an attack on religion, but it is fiction and it is a comedy.

Just a few more reviews from Netflix:

•"I loved this movie. It has a unique story line and makes you think outside the box. This is a true humanist movie."

•"Yeah it is anti-christian but it is hilarious...so get over it!!! This movie is great and I would suggest watching this movie."

I DON'T BELIEVE IN PRAYER BECAUSE.....

        Diane, at Diane's Addled Rambling blog, posted a wonderful heartfelt post about why she doesn't believe in prayer. I had been thinking of writing on this topic myself, but Diane said it all on her post of March 23, 2009.

        She said: "I often say I believe in tolerance over faith because in the end, not a one of us knows for sure."

        So click on the link to her post to read what else Diane had to say about prayer, religion, faith, and tolerance. And enjoy what some others have said about prayer below:

• "Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy."  --- Ambrose Bierce (The Devil's Dictionary, 1911)

• “Hands that help are nobler than lips that pray.” ---Robert G. Ingersoll

• "Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer." ---Author Unknown

• "Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." ---Mark Twain

• “It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Hurricane Katrina struck shared...belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while Katrina laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Do you have the courage to admit the obvious? These people died talking to an imaginary friend.” ---Sam Harris, (Letter to a Christian Nation)

• "It may be that ministers really think that their prayers do good, and it may be that frogs imagine that their croaking brings spring." ---Robert G. Ingersoll (Which Way? 1884)

• “Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish.”  ---Author Unknown

• "Praying is begging for an unseen deity to alter the laws of nature for someone admittedly unworthy." — George Carlin

• "When we talk to God, we're praying.  When God talks to us, we're schizophrenic." — Lily Tomlin

• “This doctrine of the material efficacy of prayer reduces the Creator to a cosmic bellhop of a not very bright or reliable kind.”  ---Herbert J. Muller

• "Man is a marvelous curiosity... he thinks he is the Creator's pet... he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watches over him and keeps him out of trouble.  He prays to Him and thinks He listens.  Isn't it a quaint idea?" -—Mark Twain

• "When did I realize I was God?  Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself." —- Peter O’Toole

• “The creator who could put a cancer in a believer's stomach is above being interfered with by prayers.” --- Bret Harte (as quoted by James A Haught, editor, 2000 Years of Disbelief)

• “Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats, then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.”  ---Fred Allen

GODLESS NUMBERS RISE

        According to a 2008 survey just released by American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) and reported in a story in USA Today, people who call themselves Christians in the U.S. has dropped 11% in the last 18 years. The Bible Belt is not as Baptist as it was, the Rust Belt is less Catholic, and throughout the country people are exploring fringe religions or dropping religion completely. 

        Survey co-author Barry Kosmin says, "More than ever before, people are just making up their own stories of who they are. They say, 'I'm everything. I'm nothing. I believe in myself.'"

        In  the 1990 ARIS survey Kosmin concluded that many saw God as a "personal hobby." Today, he says, "Religion has become more like a fashion statement, not a deep personal commitment for many."

        USA Today writer Cathy Lynn Grossman says that we have become a nation of freelancers when it comes to religion.

ARIS 2008 Survey findings include:

        • Americans claiming no religion is 15%, up from 8%

          in 1990

        • This non-religious category outranks every other

          major religious group except Catholics and Baptists.

        • Baptists stand at 15.8%, down from 19.3% in 1990

        • Mainstream Protestsants are in sharp decline.

          Methodists dropped from 8% to 5%

        • Jewish numbers declined from 1.8% to 1.2%

          (some surveys show higher numbers, but those 

          include "cultural" Jews who don't necessarily 

          practice their religion)

        • Muslims have doubled from 0.3% to 0.6%

        • Challenges to Christianity don't come from other

          religions but from rejection of all forms of religion

        • Nearly 2.8 million people identify with new

          movements such as Wiccan paganism.

        • While Oregon previously led the nation in those who 

          responded NONE when asked to identify a religious

          affiliation, Vermont now leads the country with 34%

        A 48 year old woman from Rutland, VT says she is upfront about being an atheist because "It's important for us to be counted. I'm a taxpayer and a law-abiding citizen and an ethical person, and I don't think people assume this about atheists."

Factors which played some role in declining numbers among the religious include:

        • News stories about sexual abuse by clergy

        • Young people affiliating with coworkers and online 

          friendships more than in churches.

        • People moving from strongly-religious older

          communities 

        • The "piety gap" between those who support gay

          marriage, abortion rights, and stem cell research and

          those who don't

        "Rise of the Godless," a report in National Journal, widely read by members of Congress, stated:

        "In the past, politicians in Washington and elsewhere could largely ignore the Godless. But those days are over. With their numbers growing, nonbelievers are intent on pushing a political and legislative agenda governed more by cool reason than by faith."

The USA Today story includes much more information.

Click HERE for interactive graphs and videos.

See also: Rise of the Godless from National Journal (in pdf format)

and The End of Christian America from Newsweek.

(Thanks to FRED from NV for alerting

me to the Newsweek article.)

WHY I AM AN ATHEIST: The Bible - Part 2

In WHY I AM AN ATHEIST: The Bible - Part 1, I told how my ultra-religious family read the entire Bible, a chapter every day, and how some Biblical stories triggered doubts about it being the word of God. If the Bible were the word of God, I found it so appalling that I didn’t want to worship that God.

Robert Ingersoll: “If a man really believes that God once upheld slavery; that he commanded soldiers to kill women and babes; that he believed in polygamy; that he persecuted for opinion’s sake; that he will punish forever, and that he hates an unbeliever, the effect in my judgment will be bad. It always has been bad. This belief built the dungeons of the Inquisition. This belief made the Puritan murder the Quaker.”

In the Bible, I discovered that Solomon had 1000 sexual partners. I learned that God created evil, that God lives in darkness, that David paid for his first wife with the foreskins of 200 Philistines, that God destroyed Job simply because Satan dared him to do it, that handicapped people are not allowed in church.
I found the character of God rather alarming. People worship and praise God and say he is compassionate, benevolent and loving. Yet, as a nonbeliever, I am doomed to spend all eternity suffering in hell, no matter how good I am. I couldn’t accept such a mean-spirited being.

Mark Twain: “Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.”

Then of course, when my family read the New Testament, I learned that Jesus didn’t come to send peace on earth, but came with a sword to set men against their fathers and daughters against their mothers.... and of course this contradicted the Commandments.
My family read the Christmas and Easter stories in one Gospel. A few weeks later, we read accounts in other Gospels which were somewhat different. In a home where I was expected to believe the Bible, these accounts were different enough to seem more like the stories coming from different eyewitnesses on Perry Mason than God’s truth.

I just didn’t buy into the resurrection. I thought that Jesus hadn’t really died or else the stories of the resurrection were lies. Today, with life-saving techniques, we know people can be brought back to life, but not after 3 days and not 2000 years ago.

And the immaculate conception ----well, I could imagine if I turned up pregnant and unmarried some day, trying to pull that excuse on my parents. Soon I learned that Greek gods were always sleeping with mortals and that Christians probably stole their stories from the Greeks or earlier pagan civilizations. (See comment & my response regarding the immaculate conception.)

As a preteen and a teenager, I was smart and inquisitive. I asked questions of my parents, ministers, and Sunday School teachers.
• Why are there no dinosaurs in the Bible?
• Why would a loving God order women and children to be slaughtered? How was that following the Commandment ‘The shalt not kill’?
• How could Noah fit 2 of every species on his ark ---and wouldn’t he have to take more than 2 gazelles to feed the 2 lions? And why wouldn’t Noah have left a few creatures behind, like mosquitos or cobras? And why does a different part of the Bible say he took 7 of some animals?
• Why would God order us to circumcise babies? Wouldn’t that be terribly painful, let alone unnatural? Why would God create foreskin, then want us to cut it off?
• Why can’t God prevent an earthquake, hurricane, or airplane accident from hurting/killing people?
• Why do bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people?
• Why, despite hundreds of people praying for a sick parishioner at the church, did the person die anyway?
• If God can do anything, why can’t he stop suffering? And if he can’t why is he worthy of worship?
• Why do we have to wait to die to reach heaven? Doesn’t God have the power to make heaven on earth?
• Why would God order a man to sacrifice his own son or daughter?
• Why are some things that the Bible says are abominations (eating lobster , pork, or rabbit for example) no longer considered to be forbidden, but being gay is still thought, by many, to be an abomination? Lots of these rules are clearly set forth in Exodus, Deuteronomy and Leviticus, yet we ignore some and accept others. (According to the Bible, it’s OK eat locusts.)
• Why did God allow his only son to die to forgive our sins? If God can do anything, why not just forgive our sins and be done with it?
• What about Bible passages that contradict each other? How can those be the word of God?
• If only Christians could go to Heaven and everyone else went to Hell, that wasn’t exactly fair to someone who was indoctrinated into Islam from a young age, or someone who had never even heard of Christianity, was it?

Although some of these questions were from a naive youth, I would ask most of these same questions today. I still don’t have the answers.
I don’t remember even one answer any more enlightening than “God works in mysterious ways.” My father told me to pray and God would answer my questions, but He didn’t.

After several years of doubt, I couldn’t take the Bible seriously. Soon everything else about religion sounded absurd to me. By the time I graduated from high school I was an atheist, but I didn’t quite know it yet.

Now, I believe that the Bible is a book of fiction. I happen to love fiction and I think fiction can teach truths about life. However, I could learn most of what I need to know about life from many other books of fiction ---and without the guilt.
Most of the Bible was recorded years or even centuries after the supposed events, so I do not believe it is the word of God, but the words of men either trying to interpret what they thought was the word of God, or attempting to convince readers that they knew what God wanted.

Susan B. Anthony: “I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”

Writing the Bible, decades after the events (if they actually happened) would be like my attempting to write an account of the Kennedy presidency with no written records, no TV, no audio or video tape. I lived through those years, but little of what I remember is from actual memory. Most of it is from books or film that I have read or seen many times in the years since 1963. Taking everything I can remember, I might be able to write two or three pages. Of course, like men who wrote the Bible, I might misremember or, without written, audio, or video proof, I could make up the rest.
The men who wrote the Bible had no special powers. They were humans like you and me. God didn’t guide their hands when they wrote the Bible any more than he guided my hand in writing this blog post.
Why do people believe that 2000 years ago, magical things happened that don’t happen today? But then I remind myself that many people believe in astrology, ghosts, and miracles. They think they see images of the Virgin Mary in their toast and are sure their dead parents are watching over them. I call it wishful thinking.
People think God talks to them or to religious leaders. If God talked directly to anyone, then everyone in the world who prayed for guidance would receive the exact same message and there would not be multiple religions and denominations.

Despite my having read the Bible through my teen years, I haven’t read it much since, although I do use internet Bibles to find passages on occasion. Most of the atheists I know, know the Bible much better than I do, and I know it better than most Christians.
Many Christians are taught a few nice Bible stories in Sunday school and they might listen to Biblical verses at church services, but most know little about what the Bible really says.
In a recent survey by the Pew Forum, 45% of U.S. adults seldom or never read the Bible. Surprisingly only 39% believe it is the literal word of God. A full 18% believe it was written by men and is not the word of God at all. Only 1% said living life in accordance with the Bible was necessary to be admitted to heaven.
A Gallup survey found that less than half of Americans can name the first book of the Bible (Genesis), only a third know who delivered the Sermon on the Mount (Billy Graham is a popular answer) and a quarter do not know what is celebrated at Easter (the resurrection, the foundational event of Christianity.) Sixty percent cannot name half the ten commandments; 12% think Noah was married to Joan of Arc. George Gallup, a leading Evangelical as well as a premier pollster, describes America as “a nation of biblical illiterates”.

Mark Twain: [The Bible] “is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.” (Letters From the Earth)

copyright 2009 by C. Woods

Why I Am an Atheist - Part 3 In God's Name

Look for future posts in my ongoing series of Why I am An Atheist.

WHY ARE THERE ATHEISTS?

A 2006 Study of America’s Nonbelievers

        In a book titled Atheists, A Groundbreaking Study of America's Nonbelievers (by Bruce Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer, 2006) the study of atheists in America confirms that most atheists, like most religious people, form their beliefs from their upbringing.
        About 30% of the atheists taking part in the study had at least one agnostic or atheist parent and most of the rest had parents who believed in God or maybe even belonged to a particular religion, but didn’t regularly partake in religious activities or emphasize religion in their homes.
        Yet a quarter of the participants in the study had come from homes that emphasized religion to a “moderate extent” and more than 10% to an “appreciable extent.” The members of this latter group were dubbed, in the study, as “Amazing Atheists” because despite coming from very religious homes, they rejected their religious training.
        How could there be such a complete religious turn around in the group of “Amazing Atheists”?
        The authors interviewed 46 “Amazing Atheists” in depth, to determine the cause of their dramatic change. Their conclusion was that the indoctrination didn’t fail completely, but instead worked rather well. The “Amazing Atheists” group overwhelmingly stated they gave up their faith because they could not make themselves believe what they had been taught. They decided that the religious dogma was not true. This adherence to the truth came, ironically, from their strong religious upbringing. As children they had been taught to do the right thing, to be ethical and have integrity. However, when religious questions were not answered to their satisfaction, religion took second place to truth.
        The authors stated, “They were trapped...and had no other choice. So as a first cause, their upbringing was not repudiated by their apostasy, but startlingly fulfilled by it.... If they had cared less, if their home religion had not fostered a strong drive for the truth and integrity in them, and if they had not overcome their fear of going it alone, they probably would not have quit it.”
        Another factor in this group was intelligence. The members of the “Amazing Atheists” group were quite bright and may have searched for answers through reading and study. When they found flaws in traditional religious teachings, they wanted to decide for themselves rather than accept religious teachings on faith.
        In the total study which questioned both religious and non-religious people, almost everyone admitted to having doubts about their own beliefs at some point in their lives. However, most of the religious people who remained religious after a period of doubt, dropped the questions or resolved them in their religion’s favor. Many consulted parents or ministers who, of course, shepherded them back to their religions.
        Those with weaker religious backgrounds or those who were both inquisitive and intelligent were more likely to search more widely and their questions may have turned into active doubts.
        The authors of the study found that many atheists from non-religious homes admit to having gone through a religious period in their lives, usually starting around age 7 or 8, and this period may have lasted several years. In most cases, non-religious parents don’t preach against religion, but rather expect their children to decide for themselves. Some children, of course, decide to stay in the religion, but many eventually see the flaws their parents saw and leave.
        Serious doubts about religion among the “Amazing Atheists” usually emerged in adolescence (median age of 15, but ranging from age 5 to 50.) What triggers these doubts? Most skepticism began over ideas.
        More than any one thing, atheists say reading the Bible started them questioning. Some say interest in science or evolution was a trigger. Some mentioned reading books by atheists or freethinkers. Hypocrisy in churchgoers bothered others. A few started doubting religions when they learned there was no Santa Claus. Many doubted reports of religious miracles, bleeding statues or were skeptical of the sincerity of TV evangelists. Most realized that all religions couldn’t be true, so maybe none were. Many were put off by religious intolerance, including homophobia. Many were disturbed by the history of religion, including atrocities committed in the name of God during the Crusades and the Inquisition, and more recently by religious terrorists.
        One additional factor was that many were turned off by the Religious Right and its attempts to interfere with government. Thus, by their aggressive tactics and inflexible opinions, instead of attracting more people to their religious beliefs, they actually drove people away from religion.

        I grew up in a highly religious home. What triggered my atheism? Probably all of the above to some extent or other. But I have to agree that reading the Bible was the trigger that started my doubt and was the biggest factor in my rejection of religion. Once a little stone fell out of the structure of my parents' beliefs, more cracks formed as I found more and more inconsistencies and impossibilities in religion. Eventually it all crumbled before me. 

Please see my post: WHY I AM AN ATHEIST: The Bible - Part 1