John Christy is a Christian who came to the American Atheists national convention in Austin Texas last year, and he interviewed a bunch of us for this documentary film. To be sure that we were represented fairly, the movie was co-produced by David Smalley of Dogma Debate. I’ve seen portions of this film, and it really does represent our position the way we ourselves present it.
The film premiers at the Crest theater in Sacramento California this Saturday, February 15th. If you’re within range of that theater, please attend.
Will it be available for online viewing later on?
I watched the video of John Christy’s talk at the Lake Hills church, and it was very interesting. He had some good points to make, but he also made some major mistakes. He confused two of the meanings of materialism (physicalism and economic materialism) and made them sound like the same thing in advancing his argument. He frequently relied upon one philosopher’s argument that all is ultimately meaningless (which it arguably is), and used it to say that we can’t have anything meaningful without God, completely ignoring the possibility that we can (and do) create meaning in our own lives. Finally, he suggested that his religious beliefs would stop him from entering Sandy Hook and opening fire, yet so would almost anyone else’s beliefs, religious or not. The other obvious counter to that argument would be that some people’s religious beliefs (a tiny minority, thankfully) do drive them to commit atrocities — he even mentions Mohammed Atta, but noticeably not in that context.
I’d be interested in seeing his film, but I’ll have to wait until it hits YouTube.
While I appreciate Christy’s honest attempts to relate to atheists, I did catch the Dogma Debate where he was in studio and part of the show was dedicated to his defense of his faith. It was the same episode where JT Eberhard called in at the beginning, FYI.
Christy’s defense was extremely sad and shameful. The amount of crap he blatantly invented on the spot and held up as truth was unreal. Aron, I realize why they give you the night off when they feature some of these guys, but more often than not I feel you’re needed.
I wouldn’t go out of my way to see the film because I’m not sure why it needed to be made. Don’t get me wrong: it’s great that John Christy interviews the articulate people he does in order to give their views a hearing but is he actually listening? Having heard the DD episodes in which Christy participated I don’t think he is; I also don’t buy for a minute his quote at 2:02 in this clip. While this clip offers up tasty atheist red meat where are the segments where Christy espouses his views (which I’m assuming are also part of this movie)? Those’d be just as painful to watch as they are to hear when he’s on DD. I’d watch it on YouTube, though.