(upbeat music)
- What's up, guys?
Michael here to use my philosophy degree
to examine another piece of the pop culture canon.
This time we're going back to college,
a place known for intellectual exploration,
social development and signed atheism pledges due
on the first day of class.
If that last one didn't bring back any memories,
then you didn't attend at Hadley University,
a fictional college where philosophy is taught
by a washed up Hercules who was like
really, really mad at God, like super mad.
- Yes, I hate God!
- This is the setting of God's Not Dead,
the first installment in a trilogy
produced by the company Pure Flix,
like Netflix but pure.
It presents a vision of America in which angry philosophers
are on a mission to destroy Christianity.
As both a former non-angry philosophy professor
and guy who went to Christian summer camp once,
you might understand why this film
is of particular interest to me.
So, let's see how this film portrays
the brave and potentially nefarious souls
who have gone into life destroying debt to teach philosophy
in this Philosopher Reacts to God's Not Dead.
Before we get into the philosophical nuance
of a film that lets you know a character
is a radical atheist by the "I love evolution" sticker
on the back of her car,
I wanted to take a second to tell you
about Wisecrack's podcast.
Because you're here right now looking deeply into my eyes,
I can safely assume you're already a fan
of our video content.
But what you might not know is that we also make
pretty good audio content in my totally unbiased opinion.
If you love movies, which I mean, why wouldn't you?
You should check out Show Me the Meaning
where our hosts, Austin, Raymond and Ryan
explore all the philosophical nuance floating
beneath the surface of both current and classic films.
And if you're potentially too obsessed
with everything going on in pop culture,
you should check out Culture Binge,
the podcast where we explore the weird,
wonderful and worrisome sides of the cultural zeitgeist.
It's hosted by someone you already know and love,
more of a brother than a friend,
along with Wisecrack's head of content, Alec,
and Wisecrack researcher, Surbhi.
So click the links in the description
or find them on your favorite podcast app.
Now, back to the show.
And now for a quick recap.
Josh Wheaton, no relation to Joss Whedon,
is a freshman student who shows up to his
Philosophy 150 class where his professor explains
that before they begin everyone must sign a paper that says,
"God is dead."
Josh can't do this because he's a Christian.
- I can't do what you want. I'm a Christian.
- [Michael] So the professor insists that
unless he wants to lose 30% of his grade,
he must convince the entire class that God's not dead.
- You'll get three sessions,
the last 20 minutes of each of the next three classes to
make your case.
- [Michael] This leads to a series of
awkwardly incense showdowns between Josh and his professor,
which ends with Josh rocking out at a concert
and the professor,
well, not rocking out at all, but more on that later.
And while I would love to also explore the film's
numerous absurd and often dark plot lines
including a breathtaking performance
from Willie Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame,
- So, y'all had made a fortune. Isn't that right?
- We're doing all right.
We can certainly buy a bigger tires on our trucks
and four wheelers to get out in the mud with so
life is good.
- We're gonna stick to the philosophy stuff.
Okay. Check out the first day of class.
- Michel Foucault, Bertrand Russell,
Ludwig Feuerbach, Bertolt Brecht.
What do they all have in common?
- They're all dead.
(class laughing)
- Well that would be incorrect.
Mr. Dawkins and Mr. Chomsky are still very much alive, Mr.-
- G-Dog, Geroc Drigger. (class laughing)
- He said his name was G-Dog.
- G-Dog.
Well they are, or were,
atheists.
- Okay.
The G-Dog thing has me shook.
But some of these names, Foucault, Nietzsche,
Hume, Mill, Russell, might very well
be on an Intro to Philosophy syllabus.
But others he has on here, Dawkins, Chomsky, Brecht,
would be very unlikely inclusions as they're
not philosophers.
Also, there's no way that that's his handwriting at all.
But nitpicky, basic fact checking aside,
there's a way bigger problem,
defining these philosophers as fundamentally atheist.
For example, David Hume's philosophy
isn't categorically atheist.
He simply thinks that human knowledge
has a pretty limited scope
and that even if a thing like God exists,
we don't have the intellectual ability to prove it.
This is a view shared by many non-atheists,
including some priests and theologians
I've had beers with over the years.
And Feuerbach wasn't so much about militant atheism.
He just thought that theology
is actually about anthropology,
which just means that sometimes
when we talk about how amazing God is,
we're just reflecting on some of the best aspects
of our own humanity.
Okay, let's see what he says next.
- This semester I propose
that we refuse to waste our limited time together
debating the existence of the big man in the sky, the myth.
- This would never, ever happen.
You just can't have a historical introduction to philosophy
that skips over the discussion of God.
Now, I don't know what's on
every philosophy syllabus in the world,
but your typical intro to philosophy course
definitely has some medieval philosophy
which is almost exclusively Christian and Muslim,
people like Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustin, or Avicenna,
and even if an Intro to Philosophy course
had some anti-God biases,
it would still be weird to skip past
philosophical heavyweights like George Hegel
or Soren Kierkegaard, along with
hipper thinkers like Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida,
and even sloppy Slovenian Santa Claus, Slavoj Zizek,
all of whom have seriously engaged
with religion and theology in their work,
all of which is to say this imaginary philosophy class
would be seriously incomplete.
Okay, let's see what this hero does next.
- [Professor] God is dead.
- Oh, is he?
- This is of course a metaphor, but an illustrative one,
meaning not that God has somehow died
but rather that he never existed in the first place.
All that are required from each of you
is that you fill in the papers I've just given you
with three little words.
God is dead.
- God, I would pay money to see this guy's
Rate My Professor page,
although I think he would get a chili pepper 'cause
he's a good looking guy.
Okay, this is just ridiculous.
It would never happen, ever, under any circumstance.
Also, if I'd ever tried to pull something like this,
my brilliant and not-idiot students would have told me
to (beep) off.
Categorical statements like this
are antithetical to the entire spirit of philosophy,
which should include space for wonder, curiosity,
and the careful examination of a wide range of positions.
(sighing) Okay.
Time to meet our friend, Josh.
- Mr. Wheaton, is something wrong?
- Yeah, I can't.
I can't do what you want. I'm a Christian.
- Allow me to explain the alternative.
If you cannot bring yourself to admit that God is dead
for the purposes of this class,
then you will need to defend the antithesis,
that God is not dead.
- This is all types of absurd.
And for a little inside baseball,
in most academic departments, syllabi and course structures
are things that are shared with
and peer reviewed by your colleagues.
So if I was teaching a course and put,
publicly declaring God is dead equals 30% of overall grade,
my colleagues would say, "Abso- (beep) not"
and there might be a further meeting to evaluate
my overall soundness of mind.
This is also God awful teaching.
The goal of academic philosophy
isn't to instill hardcore ideological concepts
into the brains of impressionable young people.
That's what the entire media
and advertising industries are for.
Rather, it's to help people
learn how to think more critically about themselves
and the world around them.
But Professor Protein in His Toothpaste
isn't encouraging Josh to get more curious
about his beliefs.
He's basically forcing him
to take on an equally inflexible position.
Once again, not the vibes of philosophy.
You've likely heard of the Socratic method,
which describes how the OG of the game, Socrates, taught
which was basically by walking around and asking questions.
The point wasn't to implant information,
but to inspire thought.
Okay, let's move on and see how our guy Josh does
at his first guest lecture.
Wait, I want to see one more thing real quick.
- For our next class,
please have read David Humes' "The Problems of Induction,"
René Descartes "Discourse on Method,"
to which you may add Bertrand Russell's
"Why I Am Not a Christian."
- Oh, okay, okay.
Wait, I need to talk about these assignments.
He didn't even hand out a syllabus
or do any actual teaching,
but now he's assigning two difficult texts
from modern philosophy.
And one of these, by Descartes,
includes an entire section where he offers
three separate proofs for the existence of God.
Well done, Professor Too Cool For Church.
Okay, now we can move on.
- Most cosmologists now agree
that the universe began some 13.7 billion years ago
in an event known as the Big Bang.
The entire universe jumping into existence
in a trillionth of a trillionth of a second
out of nothingness in an unimaginably intense flash of light
is how he would expect the universe to respond
if God were to actually utter the command
in Genesis 1:3, "Let there be light."
- Okay.
This isn't it, Josh.
It just isn't.
So here are fledgling philosophers pushing
a God of the Gaps argument in which
God is being used as filler for explanatory gaps
in philosophical or scientific knowledge.
So, we can't understand what was happening
before the Big Bang.
No problem, God did it.
Struggling to understand the foundations of mathematics?
God, obviously.
Unsure of why you find yourself sweating profusely
while wearing a t-shirt on a 65 degree day
with low humidity?
Guys, I think God did this to me.
Now if I were Josh, I would have maybe brought up
the ontological argument for the existence of God,
which coincidentally was in one of his first readings,
developed by Anselm and popularized by Descartes
which, super briefly, argues that there must be a being
than which no greater can be conceived.
This is at least a philosophical argument
and not an argument for God's ability to snap his fingers
in a Thanos-like fashion to make stuff exist.
- I am inevitable.
- But all that said, Josh's argument
that God is the only good explanation for the emergence
of matter in the universe is kinda like saying
God is the only explanation for why honey and hot sauce
compliment each other so well.
Okay, let's see what happens after class.
- Do you think you're smarter than me, Wheaton?
Do you think there's any argument you can make
that I won't have an answer for?
- I never said I was smarter.
- That's the first intelligent thing you've said.
In that classroom, there is a God and yep, I'm him.
But know this.
If you truly feel a need to continue with this charade,
I will make it my personal mission to destroy
any hope of a law degree in your future.
- Okay, to state the obvious,
a professor at an academic institution
would never be able to chase a student down the hallway
to physically and verbally assault him
without being fired pretty much immediately.
This guy is like the OJ Simpson of philosophical educators.
While plenty of certifiably bad (beep) things
happen from here, sadly, none of it really
has much to do with philosophy.
So, let's skip ahead to Josh's next lecture.
- It's like this.
If I say to you that I can prove
that Spam is the best tasting food that's ever existed
because in all of history, no food has ever tasted better,
you'd probably look at me strange and say
I haven't proven anything, and you'd be right.
But when Hawking claims that the universe created itself
because it needed to create itself
and then offers that as explanation
as to how and why it was created,
we don't immediately recognize
that he's doing the same thing, but he is.
- Oh, okay.
Lot of logic bro energy right here.
But keep in mind that Hawking
is professor McGod Assassin's favorite thinker
and here, Josh is trying to slightly use
Hawking's theories against him.
Basically, my man's pulling a weird
appeal to authority card in lieu of
making an actual argument.
But again, the problem is that Hawking is,
as previously mentioned, a scientist
and not a philosopher making philosophical arguments.
Okay, let's watch our guy try to bring it home here.
- But if you can't bear to disagree with Hawking's thinking,
then I suggest that you turn to page five of his book
where he insists philosophy is dead.
And if you're so sure of Professor Hawking's infallibility
and philosophy really is dead, then well,
there's really no need for this class.
(class laughing)
- Whew, he's coming in a little hot there.
So with all due respect to Josh,
who at this point has been dumped
by his girlfriend of six years,
simply because he decided to defend God in philosophy class,
a real thing that happens in the film.
This has nothing to do with anything.
His argument is that in the last lecture,
Professor Big Balls said that Hawking was smart
and also said that God isn't real.
And since smart people aren't wrong, God isn't real.
But now the smart man is saying philosophy is dead
and if he's really that smart, wouldn't he be right again?
I just blame Stephen Hawking
in his irrational hatred of philosophy for this one,
a hatred which makes no sense because
philosophy created the very foundations of modern science.
Okay, Josh has one chance left to
once and for all prove the existence of God
and make atheism an untenable belief for the rest of time.
Let's see if he can do it.
And before we get into Josh's third lecture,
some crucial context.
Professor Big Mac No Pickles stuck around after class
to mock Josh and ended up revealing
that he used to be a Christian until he lost his mom
as a 12 year old.
This will come up again.
- It's only natural to beg God for her life.
- Okay, it's Josh's final chance.
Let's see if he does it.
- As Dostoevsky famously pointed out,
if God does not exist,
then everything is permissible.
If Professor Radisson is right,
then all of this, whatever we decide here is meaningless.
I mean, our lives and ultimately our deaths
are of no more consequence than that of a goldfish.
- This is ridiculous.
- Why does he hate goldfish?
Like, if you have one...
Maybe your parents won't let you get a dog
and you get a goldfish and you name it freckles
and it's your friend
and Josh is just out here like "Flush the (beep)."
But last time, Josh made a mistake
by tying his argument to a random quote from a physicist.
This time, he uses a quote from Russian novelist,
Theodore Dostoevsky.
Except it really isn't a quote from Dostoyevsky,
but a line of dialogue from his novel,
"The Brothers Karamazov."
It's an interesting line from an interesting novel
and lots of philosophers
have interacted with it over the years,
but it's less of a forceful argument
than a starting point for an interesting discussion.
But Josh uses this quote in the context
of a larger argument about how without the existence of God,
we have no reason to be moral.
And a lot can be said about this because
most ethical and moral philosophies
don't have the existence of God as their first principle.
One of my personal favorite arguments
for a system of humanist ethics
not grounded in theological principles
is articulated by noted amphetamine enthusiast,
Jean-Paul Sartre in "Existentialism is a humanism."
In it, he argues that if there is no God
to give us moral principles,
we have to take on that responsibility for ourselves
and engage in an ongoing process of figuring out
how to live a good life.
You should read it.
It's easy to find.
As Jay-Z once said,
"Type it in, Google's your friend, bruh."
Even though Josh is a much more sympathetic character
than Professor Steroids Smoothie,
and I'm weirdly rooting for him,
he's not really saying anything here.
So, let's see his final argument.
Who are you really looking to fail, professor?
Me or God?
- I wonder what God's GPA is.
- It's a very simple question, professor.
Why do you hate God?
- Because he took everything away from me.
Yes, I hate God!
- How can you hate someone if they don't exist?
- Whew! That's a lot.
They really built some tension there.
But now, we're diving into the realm of the
theological effects of psychological trauma on a teenager.
Both Professor Big Penis and Josh are bad at philosophy.
But, at least Josh has an excuse,
which is that rather than teaching in philosophy,
his professor has been busy physically threatening him.
Still, rather than providing any convincing argument,
Josh finishes Professor McPushups by pointing out
that his intellectual framework
is simply a reaction to his mother's death.
While we have sympathy for Josh here,
bullying your opponent about a traumatic loss
isn't the way to win philosophical debate.
But hey, when I was a college freshmen,
I didn't even know you were supposed to
wash your sheets more than once a year.
So, who am I to judge?
Okay, but if I were to judge,
clearly the filmmakers have no idea
what philosophy actually is, or what it does,
or what a philosophy class is actually like,
nor do they appear to have been
anywhere in the vicinity of an open book of philosophy.
Instead, they just cooked up an entire film
based on a misreading of a line
from German philosopher, Friedrich, Nietzsche.
The line, "God is dead and we have killed him."
This was a way for Nietzsche
to criticize European culture and philosophy,
not some simplistic reporting of the homicide of a deity.
He was pointing out how the rationalism
of enlightenment philosophy
had explained away the need for God.
But since folks didn't notice this,
they were incapable of thinking about
what meaning and morality without God even looks like.
Of course, knowing this would have required the filmmakers
to read three to four full sentences
and I'm sure they were real busy doing God stuff.
Well, there you have it.
A two hour film about a philosophy class
that's almost completely devoid of actual philosophy.
It's a low bar, but you can probably
learn more about Nietzsche by watching Gilmore Girls.
- This girl could name the state capitals at three,
recite the periodic table at four,
discuss Schopenhauer's influence on Nietzsche
when she was 10.
- [Michael] Oh, and just so we don't leave you hanging,
at the end of the film,
Professor Cold Cuts gets hit by a car,
flies through the air, hits the deck like a ton of bricks,
and dies as he's converted to Christianity
by two ministers on their way to Disney World.
- Are you willing to put your faith in Jesus Christ?
Are you willing to take that chance?
- Yes.
- [Michael] And then, while he's lying in the street dead,
the dude from Duck Dynasty makes fun of him
on a jumbo tron at a Christian rock concert
and then the crowd boos him.
- One of your professors insisted that God is dead.
(crowd booing)
- All while he's lifeless on the street
a block away with two grinny ministers standing over him.
In philosophical terms, this is what we call
what the (beep).
So, what do you guys think?
Should I be forced to watch the two sequels
to try and uncover the brilliant philosophical core
at the heart of this trilogy
or should I have taken Christopher's advice
in Gilmore Girls and joined the military?
- Well, if your dreams don't pan out
and Nietzsche's no help, it's a viable option.
- Let us know in the comments.
And please leave me suggestions
about any other philosophically-minded shows,
films, or games that I should check out.
Huge thanks to our patrons for all your support.
Hit that subscribe button like you're a distracted driver
trying to end the life of a washed up philosopher
and ring that bell like it's the end of
an intellectually stimulating semester
at Hadley University.
And as always, thanks for watching. Later.
(upbeat music)