...of disbelief in Christianity, "The God Who Wasn't There" suffers from a somewhat arch and supercilious tone that robs its blatantly one-sided approach of any lasting impact. Assertions are made without much in the way of serious evidence, and various other rather sophomoric tricks of argumentation are utilized to shoot down easy strawmen and undermine the strength of writer/director Brian "Bat Boy: The Musical" Flemming's polemic. Truth is that a goodly amount of the two commentary tracks that accompany the DVD presentation is more interesting than the film itself.
Much like Bill Maher's "Religulous," Flemming's position piece (it's really not much of a documentary, per se) tries to mask its biases with cheap shots at clay targets, along with an unwillingness to put other religions in its sights as well.
This is an okay watch, I'd suppose, for relatively unschooled atheists looking for rhetorical backup for their own forays against certain smug theists, but so far I've found films like "Jesus Camp" to be far more effective and well made documentary material.
Much like Bill Maher's "Religulous," Flemming's position piece (it's really not much of a documentary, per se) tries to mask its biases with cheap shots at clay targets, along with an unwillingness to put other religions in its sights as well.
This is an okay watch, I'd suppose, for relatively unschooled atheists looking for rhetorical backup for their own forays against certain smug theists, but so far I've found films like "Jesus Camp" to be far more effective and well made documentary material.