Movie suggestions for an Evolutionary Creationist

Faith & Science Conversation
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Recently I got done watching the Christian film “God’s not Dead.” Prior to watching it, I felt as though I were going to be provided with something along the lines of powerful reasons for faith; after all, the movie wouldn’t have so much connotation as being a good Christian film if this weren’t the case, right? I was disappointed to find that many of the points made in the movie seemed simplistic and generally ignorant of many other points made against God. I also felt as though many of the other groups mentioned were portrayed in very odd or perhaps biased way. For example, the religious humanist reporter seemed to be portrayed as overly liberal and (especially when pitted against the “Godly” hunting business man in the church parking lot) seems to be clearly positioned as “this is where you don’t want to be.” However I say that the film did portray her story of facing certain death and finding hope very well.

I was wondering what everyone else who watched the film thought of fit. Regardless, if anyone has any good recommendations for movies that a young Evolutionary Creationist would enjoy, science or faith accepted!

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Slow down. You have like 4 discussions going already :rofl:

Don’t overload. Quality over quantity.

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The whole God is Not Dead franchise is silly, frankly.

I would recommend Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man for an intelligent and empathetic portrayal of the tension between a life of faith and a life of reason. The writer was an Evangelical youth group kid who deconverted, but clearly knows from experience how to write people of faith and people with doubts and the questions they wrestle with.

https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/a-multifaceted-conversation-about-faith-rian-johnson-on-wake-up-dead-man

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Alrighty. I just got a lot of different questions that I’ve had for a long time that I’ve just finally had a chance to have answered.

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Disclaimer: I’ve not seen “God is not Dead.”
I’ve read a summary of it, read about it, and talked with some people about it.

It sounds like anti-university propaganda with a strong message that secular universities are anti-christian and intent on destroying students’ faith. And philosophy departments are the worst of the worst.

Our churches’ kids do not need this kind of garbage to terrify them into the “safe” classrooms of a Christian college.

My profs weren’t there to bolster or refute my faith. They were focused on their subject matter and teach it.

It’s ok to watch movies that are just good movies, that tell good stories. Those are a matter of taste.

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I completely agree with you. I would argue that the atheist-turned-Christian professor was the only real genuine story line in the movie. He experienced loss that lead to his deconversion. He asked good questions on God in the philosophy class (which I felt were given very unsatisfactory answers). When faced with death, he takes a leap of faith in a very emotional scene (which of course is interrupted by that random hunting business man telling everyone to send out “God’s not dead” to everyone they know as though the movie just provided a checkmate against atheism). I feel like if they focused more on the emotional aspect of faith and perhaps presented the other viewpoints more fairly (and used ACTUAL EVIDENCE! Shocking, I now!) it would have been more of a positive movie. However, the whole movie seemed a bit “odd.” If you ever watched it (don’t recommend doing) you would see this too. The reason I get upset about this is because if someone who was like me, on the fence not knowing what to believe, watched this movie, they may find themselves relating more to the professor than the student because of how the student seems to twist reality to his basic arguments; in short, it serves as a bad witness (I also found it weird that he doesn’t try to invoke the resurrection as proof of there being a divine. Even if you proved a god existed, which god is it? To prove that God existed, you need to show that His Word, and perhaps more strongly His son Christ were true to their word). To be honest, it felt like the evidence provided was the surface level arguments I got into before I discovered Biologos and had my faith blossom in ways I never thought possible.

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Very well said. I agree–the arguments were weak or emotional, and tend to turn me off.

Have you heard of Randal Rauser? He’s a very empathetic Canadian who has posted a lot on deep thinking. He criticizes superficial criticisms like those of Frank Turek.

Thanks for the good thoughts.

Edit: here’s a great example of his review of ‘God’s Not Dead”

“God’s not Dead”: The Review - Randal Rauser

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Not many movies really fit and your choices are limited, but the enigmatic and divisive 2011 The Tree of Life asks exactly what is our personal spiritual significance in the sweep of evolutionary history. Starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain, this was a large budget feature with a reach that probably exceeded its grasp. I found it thought provoking, but the pacing is languid.

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I was a church librarian for 21 years. I have declined the opportunity to watch it for years.

Much of what comes out of that culture does. It reflects both the anti-intellectual undercurrent of American Evangelicalism and the acceptance of and application of modernest assumptions to premodern beliefs.

I imagine the professor’s leap of faith is treated as inadequate for real faith by the film makers and the real target audience (American evangelicals). It may be the strongest, certainly most honest of the movie, though.

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The Methodist minister Anna Volovodov in the show The Expanse is one of the best, most informed portrayals of an adherent of a mainstream religion I have seen in science fiction on the silver screen. She even defends the harmony between science and faith with a reference to Saint Augustine.

I overall agree that God’s not Dead was low quality as most Christian films unfortunately tend to be. To be fair though, the film does reference Christian intellectuals like John Lennox, which raises it above the level of a film adaptation of a Chick tract.

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Seconded. I saw your link to rogerebert.com and hoped the article was by Matt Zoller Seitz. No such luck. I commissioned him to write the essays to a “picture book” on Brad Pitt’s filmography 30 years ago. It was his first book. He’s gone on to great things.

Good news!

Glad you mentioned it. I love that movie. On the whole, I think most explicitly Christian art is subpar. It reminds me of the biography of Larry Norman, who inadvertently created the genre of Christian Rock in 1969 – Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music? Paul McCartney himself once told Larry, “You could be famous if you’d just drop the God stuff,” a statement that would foreshadow Norman’s ultimate demise.

I generally prefer secular works that touch upon God and the “big questions.” Of course, I say that as someone who has watched Ben Hur more times than any other movie over the course of my life, rivaled only by It’s a Wonderful Life.

Addendum: I would be remiss not to note that the director of Tree of Life, Terrance Malick, is one of my favorites. The Thin Red Line and Days of Heaven (set in my birthplace of the Texas Panhandle) are also classics.

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Don’t watch Evolution.

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Very ominous. Any reason why?

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It suffers from so many of the misimpressions people get of how evolution actually works. It might even reinforce them.

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May I suggest the Lord of the Rings Trilogy? It’s not an allegory but it is fundamentally a Catholic work.

Tolkien: "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like “religion,” to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism. However that is very clumsily put, and sounds more self-important than I feel. For as a matter of fact, I have consciously planned very little; and should chiefly be grateful for having been brought up (since I was eight) in a Faith that has nourished me and taught me all the little that I know."

The connection between lembas and the Eucharist is the most obvious.

“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that…”

“I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories), and in fact a Roman Catholic. The latter ‘fact’ perhaps cannot be deduced.”

Just to add a few quotes from here:

The Ring is destroyed on March 25th, the Feast of the Annunciation. Imagine student audiences, unfamiliar with Catholic doctrine, being told that the Annunciation was the feast of the Incarnation, when the Word became flesh, and was therefore more important than Christmas because life begins at conception, not at birth. Imagine the student reaction when they were told that March 25th is also, according to tradition, the historical date of the Crucifixion. Clearly, Tolkien chose this particular date for the destruction of the Ring for a reason, connecting it in some way with both the Incarnation and the crucifixion.

The date of the Crucifixion per Augustine and a few others. Another quote:

If the wearing of the Ring is the act of sin, the bearing of the Ring without wearing it is choosing to bear the burden of sin without sinning. The Ring bearer is, therefore, a cross bearer. This is why Frodo Baggins is, in some subtle sense, a Christ figure. And this is why Tolkien, returning to the liturgical calendar, has Frodo leaving Rivendell at the beginning of the quest on Christmas Day and arriving at Mount Doom (Golgotha) on Good Friday. Frodo’s journey is analogous, literarily and liturgically, to the life of Christ, from His birth to His death.

A lot of people would also recommend It’s a Wonderful Life.

Vinnie

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The Blues Brothers. The Big Lebowski.

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I personally don’t know of any Christian movies centered around a Christian who accepts the scientific consensus of evolution or any Christian movie focused on accepting science in general. There are nonfiction documentaries out there. But I don’t remember them. I’ve basically always accepted evolution and even when I was trying to look at the debate between stuff like intelligent design and natural selection it was so long ago.

You can google scientists and archeologists who are Christian but also accepts science and history and find all kinds of stuff though. Recovering Evangelicals has dived into it a lot.