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Just wondering

Posted by Ben on Saturday, September 10, 2005 | Permalink
 

Can anybody think of a tv show or film where a loss of faith is portrayed in a positive light? Or where the wavering believer doesn't regain their faith by the end of the episode/film? While watching an episode of the utterly excellent Scrubs in which Turk has a momentary wobble on the whole omnipotent Uberbeard scenario I realised that I couldn't think of any programme that takes a 'hurray, he's becoming rational!' stance.

I'm sure there is one - and it's probably more likely to have occured in film rather than tv - but I'm damned if I can think of it.

Comments [ hide comments ]
actually, i was just watching a hilarious episode of "good times" where michael tells his family that he's become an atheist after being exposed to his atheist boss and hearing his point of view. the mother, by the end of the episode, makes the boss fire michael because she doesn't want them near each other, and in the end michael confirms his return to christianity with a big, emotional hug right into his mother's arms. it was corn-tastic. pretty funny though.
patrick, 12.09.2005, 6:10am #
Not a deconversion, but the hero of Firefly (now a movie called Serenity), Mal Reynolds, was an atheist. In one scene he even tells the preacher that he can say grace at the dinner table, but not out loud.
Tony, 13.09.2005, 5:51am #
The closest I can come is the 1991 film Black Robe. It's the story of a priest who comes to the New World and, through his interaction with "Savages", learns what a steaming pile of dung the catholic church is. This was actually a problam in early American that you seldom hear about. So many men, who were fed up with christian dogma, ran off to live with the Native Americans that laws had to be enacted to punish the families of those who "went native". Now there's some christian compassion for you, "Oh your husband ran off? Well, it's the stocks for you and the kids!"
Todd, 15.09.2005, 12:41pm #
Never heard of that one - does the priest embrace a Native American faith instead? Swapping religion seems less controversial than deciding it's all bollocks, the thinking always seems to be that to be a good person you have to have some kind of faith. Even Lisa Simpson took up Bhuddism rather than renounce the whole shebang...

Tony, didn't Firefly get cancelled after one season? It's a conspiracy I tells ya. More seriously, was there a backstory to his atheism? Was he portrayed as a cynical loss-of-faith type, or a rational freethinker?
Ben, 15.09.2005, 1:57pm #
It's been a while since I've seen Black Robe. The priest may embrace a sort of primative nature worship in the end but I'd have to check it out again to be sure. Still, he dumps the catholic church, it's a step in the right direction!
Todd, 15.09.2005, 10:36pm #
This may not appeal to folk totally rejecting _all_ religious practice.

In the movie _The Razors Edge_ (from the novel of Somerset Maugham)Bill Murrays character is treated to an enlightening moment while he realized his Tibetan Lama has put him in a situation where
his very survival depends on burning all the holy books he has in order not to freeze to death.
Joe, 18.09.2005, 6:15pm #
Me nheietr. I think I've heard that angle most often from cdesign proponentsists creationists pushing to get evolution out of science classes, which seems so bizarre. Evolution is just a religion with no evidence, but my obsession with the literal truth of Genesis is a scientific theory backed up by research! It's like the twilight zone.At least in this case, they were responding to my claim that atheists can be objective and reasonable about the Bible while Christians just have faith in it. So they were saying something more like, Our positions are both equally bad. Still a weird tack, but it's approximately 50% more true than the other assertion.
Robert, 27.02.2012, 12:59pm #

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