Hollywood Atheist: Difference between revisions

 

== Anime and Manga ==

** In the first chapter of the manga, Ed mutters that he's agnostic when Rose goes on about the local priest's miracles. There's also a later chapter on the Ishvalan war, in which the religious leader of the country turns himself in to save his people. King Bradley declares that his life is not worth an entire nation and laughs that if their god exists, why doesn't He strike him down for the genocide. Shortly after, Mustang and Hughes discuss Ishval's religion and how their god seems to have abandoned them.

** King Bradley goes even further, repeatedly stating that there is no God but the ones that humans make. This adds yet another dimension to his final battle against {{spoiler|[[Religious Bruiser|Scar]], a devout man whose life was destroyed on Bradley's orders}}.

* Simon from ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'' plays this one to some degree during his [[Heroic BSOD]]: {{spoiler|while still mourning Kamina's death}}, at one point he tells former [[First Church of Mecha]] member Rossiu something along the lines of, "Could your God prevent {{spoiler|Bro's death}}? Oh, yeah, I forgot, it's just a [[Humongous Mecha|Ganmen]]!" He eventually apologizes for being rude.

* Subverted by Roronoa Zoro in ''[[One Piece]]'' who was revealed to be an atheist during the Skipeia arc, but not due to his tragic past, and has no problem at all with faith in general. Furthermore, he also stated that if god did exist, he would like to meet him because he or she would be a [[Worthy Opponent]]. He's just that [[Badass]].

* Foh from B't X is a ''brutal'' subversion of this. Having given up on the ideals that gods exist due to witnessing war from a very early childhood, he eventually came to realize that does not mean he can be a jerk. {{spoiler|The fact he's responsible for one character getting a [[Dead Little Sister]], an issue he's willing to let himself get killed over in spite of the fate of the world hanging in the balance possibly is a driving factor.}} He strongly believes in mercy and compassion, vehemently hates fighting because it brings only tragedy to people, and runs an orphanage and raises kids ''right''. He even wears a religious memento from {{spoiler|his friend's [[Dead Little Sister]].}} It helps that Masami Kurumada, the series's author, is himself an atheist.

** A somewhat more reasonable atheist appears later, as a former Communist aiding a fundamentalist Muslim organization, despite not believing in a god, because he misses having a cause to fight for.

* Baran the Emperor of Light, a villain from the final chapters of the ''[[Fist of the North Star]]'' manga, whose disbelief in God comes from the fact that his [[Dead Little Sister]] died from a curable disease because she refused to take the medicine he stole for her. His non-belief later drove him to start his own evil cult.

* ''[[Gundam Wing]]'' gives us a rather...odd example, in the form of Duo Maxwell. Duo wears a clerical collar and [[Creepy Cool Crosses]], but he states in Episode Zero that he doesn't actually believe in God because he "has never seen a miracle, but has sure seen lots of dead people!" He later appears to become a preacher, but {{spoiler|It's more of a front for his [[Bounty Hunter]] work than anything else.}}

 

 

== Films ==

* As mentioned, most characters [[Steve Buscemi]] gets [[Typecasting|typecast]] as. Notable examples include the character from ''[[The Island]]'':

{{quote| '''Lincoln Six-Echo:''' What's "God"?<br />

* Nicky from ''Parting Glances'' who is living with AIDS, although to the film's credit we're never actually told that his illness and his lack of religion are connected.

{{quote| "God, I hope you don't exist, but if you do, you've got me pissed!"}}

* The main character of ''The Reaping'' is a college professor that travels the world debunking supposed miracles. However, it is eventually revealed she was a former minister who lost her faith when, while doing missionary work in Sudan, the locals blamed her preaching for the year long drought and sacrificed her husband and daughter to their deity. At the end of the movie, the day is apparently saved and she regains her faith... {{spoiler|[[Diabolus Ex Machina|only to realize that earlier in the film she was drugged and raped by the BigBad and is now pregnant with the Antichrist]].}}

* Slade Craven, the main character of ''Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal'' and a Marilyn Manson [[Expy]], is never stated to be a satanist, but has implied atheism. At the end of the film, having gone an incredible distance on nothing but his own competence, he has to convert to Christianity, in a "No Atheists in Foxholes" moment before he can resolve the plot.

* ''Saints and Soldiers'' is a perfect example of this trope. The medic, an atheist, is portrayed as bitter, selfish, and eager to kill Nazis under any circumstances. In contrast, the sniper, a Christian of an unspecified sect (but probably a Mormon) is compassionate, even to [[Acceptable Targets]] like soldiers of the Third Reich. Naturally, the bitter atheist is converted in the span of an hour and a half, and the saintly Christian {{spoiler|gives his life for his comrades}}.

** The movie was actually a subversion, once you go through it a couple of times. The atheist is bitter and angry, but a major theme of the movie is that [[War Is Hell]]. The Christian served a mission in Germany, so he knows that the Germans can be good people. (A major plot point was that a German soldier was also one of the Christian's personal friends from before the war.) All that happened was that the atheist picked up the little book offered to him by the Christian from the Christian's dead body, and it had a picture of the Christian's wife. The other characters aren't shown having a strong sense of religious faith, but are still portrayed as basically good, if flawed people. The Christian isn't exempt from this, as he has PTSD from [[War Is Hell|accidentally killing a room full of little of children and nuns]] and is falling apart at the seams. Considering the fact that Christian just died trying to save the group, wouldn't it make sense that the atheist (as one of two surviving characters, and the only surviving American) try to get the little book back to the Christian's wife so that she would have a little something more than a flag and letter? Or keep it as a reminder of someone who saved him when he wasn't obligated to? Especially since this sort of thing happened all the time during WWII?

* Fairly stereotypical example with [[Jack Nicholson]]'s character in ''[[The Bucket List]]''. He's bitter, cynical, extremely unpleasant to most people he interacts with, and claims to envy people with faith even if he doesn't understand what it's about.

* In Bergman's ''Fanny and Alexander'', the titular kids endure a lot: their father dies, and their mother marries the rigid [[Anti-Villain|Bishop Vergerus]]. Leaving behind the comfortable lives they'd known with their affluent family, they move to the Bishop's austere home (like a dungeon, with bars on the windows), and give up all their possessions. Alexander's defiance frightens Vergerus, who [[Disproportionate Retribution|thrashes him brutally]] (perhaps the boy's imaginative explanation--for the death of the Bishop's first wife--[[Accidental Truth|wasn't such an outrageous fiction]]?). {{spoiler|After a miraculous escape--but the children's safety isn't certain, not permanently}}--Alexander muses, "If there is a god, then he's a shit, and I'd like to kick him in the butt."

* In ''Second glance'' a Christian teenager is dissatisfied with his life and wishes he wasn't a believer. [[It's a Wonderful Plot|Then an angel shows up to walk him through a day in his life if he hadn't been a believer.]] From the ensuing day, we learn that atheists would never bother to stop classmates from beating each other in the hospital, don't mind if their classmates commit suicide, are sloppy housekeepers, cheat on their dream girl, [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|and don't pray for their parents marriage, causing them to divorce]] (though frankly, the parents didn't look particularly happy when they were still together) .

* Similar to the above, the Christian film ''The Atheist'' is about an atheist man taken on a trip by Jesus to examine the issue of faith. Apparently all atheists are rampant sinners who do just about everything a Christian would think of as wrong.

{{quote| '''Riddick:''' "Think someone could spend half their life in a slam with a horse bit in their mouth and not believe? Think he could start out in some liquor store trash bin with an umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and not believe? Got it all wrong, holy man. I absolutely believe in God...and I absolutely ''hate'' the fucker."}}

 

== Literature ==

* Of the two major atheist characters in [[Dan Brown]]'s ''[[Angels and Demons]]'' (a book exploring the concept of conflict between science and religion), one is a bitter, resentful scientist who became crippled as a result of his religious fanatic parents denying him treatment that could have prevented it, who [[Measuring the Marigolds|has no sense of wonder regarding nature]], the other is a brutal assassin. The former is a borderline case of [[Did Not Do the Research]] because a sense of wonder regarding nature is one reason many (if not most) scientists choose the career. However, to balance things out {{spoiler|the real [[Big Bad]] is the apparently progressive [[wikipedia:Camerlengo|camerlengo]] who turns out to be a crazed [[Knight Templar]] who murdered [[The Pope]] when he discovered the Pope had fathered a child. He orchestrated the entire plot with the objective of discrediting science, restoring the world's faith in religion and setting himself up as the new Pope/Messiah. It partially works, too.}}

* ''[[The Da Vinci Code]]'' inverts the above in that {{spoiler|the [[Big Bad]] is really an atheist who is manipulating a [[Knight Templar]], although [[The Movie]] removes the sympathetic aspect and makes the religious antagonists part of an [[Ancient Conspiracy]]}}.

** Sophie herself is an atheist as well.

* Adam Hauptman of the ''[[Mercy Thompson]]'' series became an atheist after witnessing the horrors of the Vietnam War and simultaneously surviving a werewolf attack. He's bitter about his memories of dying in the jungle, waiting for God to save him and his comrades. Though it seems his bitterness is more towards his own naivete, he also mocks Mercy for her belief. Mercy herself is shocked that anyone could remain atheist after witnessing the power of Christian symbols to repel vampires and other evil beings.

* In the Endworld novels, the Doktor is a prominent example. His devout atheism is due entirely to his parents being killed in a car crash before the war.

** Lewis's fiction for adults is actually a bit more subtle than that; there are quite a few examples of this type, but then there's at least one of the [[True Companions]] who remains a defiant atheist to the end.

 

 

** And when another psychic "successfully" guesses a few things and tells him about the murders, he breaks down defeated and crying.

* Inverted in ''[[Moonlighting]]''. The snarky, somewhat dark, cynic David is a devout believer in God, while his life-affirming, successful partner from a good, loving family, Maddie, is an atheist.

** The title character is an utterly cynical curmudgeon, [[Nietzsche Wannabe]] atheist as well as a bitter drug addict. Dr. House is actually a more benevolent example than most. In a few [[Pet the Dog|more reflective moments]], he explains that in the absence of definitive proof one way or another, a belief for or against God is ultimately a choice between what gives more comfort. He simply finds it more comforting to think that existence isn't a test.

** His subordinate Doctor Cameron, however, is [[Romanticism Versus Enlightenment|very idealistic]] despite being at least nominally an agnostic (she thinks God might or might not exist, but either way she doesn't believe He takes an interest in humanity). More accurately, she believes that whether there's actually a God or not is immaterial, since humanity could never hope to understand him in any case. "I think penguins may as well speculate about quantum physics."

** One episode featured a priest who called himself atheist but really had a textbook example of "God did me wrong" Hollywood atheism. Seeing Jesus floating in front of him does nothing but make him check himself into the hospital for hallucinations. {{spoiler|By the end of the episode, he had found faith again because the wrong was made right and he made peace with the person who had hurt him.}}

** House's ex-girlfriend Stacy is also an atheist, although she wears a cross she inherited from her mother (atheists can do things for sentimental reasons, after all). It's subtly implied that her husband Mark is religious to some degree; at least, while House is trying to anger Mark, he inquires about their wedding day and gets in a jab about "the atheistical bride".

** River is also known to lampoon religion on several occasions (albeit unintentionally, she's not looking to cause trouble), most notably when she begins revising the shepherd's Bible to match reality.

{{quote| '''River''': Noah's Ark is a problem. We'll have to call it an early quantum state phenomenon. Only way to fit 5,000 species of mammal on the same boat.}}

** River appears to be a subversion of the stereotypical Hollywood atheist, as her atheistic stance is scientific. She's influenced by the noted inconsistencies she found in Shepherd Book's explanations and the lack of any evidence for religion.

** It should be noted that in one episode, McCoy fully considered himself a Catholic and suffered from religious conflict when trying to get a confession to a priest (albeit not a Catholic one) by a criminal while the criminal was in jail admitted in court. Which means McCoy may have been just given a [[Faith Heel Turn]] just for the sake of repeated anvil droppings.

** The villain of a ''[[Law and Order Special Victims Unit]]'' episode, a European psychologist who tried to instill gender roles in a young sex-reassignment surgery patient through... questionable techniques, claimed the religious backwardness of the protagonists' American culture was why they were disgusted by his "scientific progress". It's worth noting that this is [[Truth in Television|based on something that actually happened]] (save for the doctor being a Straw European or Straw Atheist).

** Although he does seem to take the faith back up for at least one episode after {{spoiler|meeting/having a vision of someone that might be an angel/God who lets him see the funeral of his surrogate father and takes a dead little girl to heaven. [[Mind Screw|It's that kind of show]].}}

** He still does not particularly like religion, stating that prayer gives patients false hope.

* Matt Albie from ''[[Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip]]''. As one character puts it, "No one delights in tweaking the religious community nearly as much as Matt does."

'''Mulder:''' I want to believe that the dead are not lost to us. That they speak to us as part of something greater than us - greater than any alien force. And if you and I are powerless now, I want to believe that if we listen to what's speaking, it can give us the power to save ourselves.<br />

'''Scully:''' Then we believe the same thing. }}

** Interestingly, the Inquisitor's 'duty' is based on the notion that life is extremely precious, a common belief in many real atheists. This would make him a [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Well Intentioned Hollywood Atheist]].

* In ''[[Father Ted]]'', Father Dougal McGuire is shown in a number of episodes to have no belief in God or any other aspect of the Catholic faith. At one point he discusses the matter with a bishop having a crisis of faith, [[Easy Evangelism|who ends up resigning his post and becomes a hippie]]. Of course, he wasn't ''trying'' to encourage him to leave the clergy. But this is Dougal we're talking about.

** Meanwhile, Finn sings a song about losing faith and the episode treated it in a very cool manner. It's still rare to find a show that's not afraid of sending the message "some people lose their faith; that's ok".

** Finn's emotional distress at losing his faith in his Grilled Cheesus is not in itself made light of. It's just presented as the logical consequence of a certain rather shallow and opportunistic sort of faith being challenged. The editing of the song sequence does, however, imply that Finn thinks Kurt, as an atheist, feels the same confusion and isolation Finn is experiencing ''all the time'' - while making it clear that actually, Kurt doesn't, and that his sympathy for Finn's situation is, for various reasons, not great.

** Except, here's the funny part about that song, it's not really about losing your faith, it's about sitting in the party, getting hammered, and losing your manners.

** Well, this is [[Too Dumb to Live|Finn]] we're talking about. Expecting him to understand that words can have non-literal meanings is asking a bit much!

** As the series has progressed, however, Britta has gotten a bit more in-your-face about her atheism, especially when mixing it up with [[The Fundamentalist|Shirley]].

** Supernatural is interesting in the regard that atheism seemed only to apply to the Christian god. A couple of [[Monsters of the Week]] were, in fact, pagan gods.

* In ''[[Star Trek]]'', the Klingons USED to believe gods existed. [[Rage Against the Heavens|Ancient Klingon warriors slew them in battle centuries ago.]] [[Deadpan Snarker|They were more trouble than they were worth.]]

== Tabletop Games ==

 

** Interestingly, the single group that would seem most like they would be atheists- but aren't- are the [[Machine Worship|Tech Priests.]] They believe that the greatest show of their love is to cut off bits of their bodies and replace them with machinery. However, they do this because they worship a being they call "The Machine God," or "The Omnissiah." {{spoiler|He's actually a [[Killer Robot|Necron]] leader called the Void Dragon.}}

** The Tau are atheists, but believe in something they call, "The Greater Good." They do believe in their own intellectual superiority, but they are also cut off from a realm of existence called "The Warp," which is where and how the various gods of the 40K-verse work their power.

* The atheist in ''[[Scribblenauts]]'' has the same sprite as "philosopher", and will run away from God in fear, unless the atheist is armed, in which case he attacks God.

** Subverted in the sequel Super Scribblenauts (except for the fact that he now was a goth look); the atheist will cause God to disappear on contact.

** [[In a World|In a game]] where the only religion is a clear parallel to the [[Church of Happyology]], the atheists will be the sane ones pretty much by default. It's heavily implied to be a case of [[Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions]] for the majority of the human race.

* Happened quite a bit in ''[[Tales of the Abyss]]'', in which religious fanaticism has more or less wronged several of the primary antagonists in several ways.

** Largo perhaps goes the most in-depth, since his {{spoiler|[[Dead Little Sister]] is actually his dead wife while his daughter was taken away from him to replace the still-born princess Natalia. They were more or less instructed to have a child because the Score predicted that the real Natalia would be stillborn, but Meryl, who is the adoptive daughter of the king, was taken from her mother who committed suicide out of Grief.}}

** {{spoiler|General Van}} probably has the most horrifying experience with it {{spoiler|at the age of 12 he was hooked up to a machine to amplify his powers and forced to destroy his own home town, because the score said he would, you can understand why he wants to destroy it.}}

* In the wii [[Survival Horror]] game ''[[Cursed Mountain]]'' Frank Simmons is a total intolerant jerkass about the Tibetan religion, this attitude towards their beliefs and rituals (along with not doing them properly or not doing them at all before climbing their sacred mountain) leads to a very, VERY angry goddess and basically starts the plot of the game. Eric Simmons, the protagonist, while more respectful to religion, steadfastedly refuses to accept that there might be a supernatural explanation for what's going on, instead insisting that he's suffering things like hallucinations from lack of oxygen with the desperation of a drowning man clinging to a lifebelt.

* When trying to recruit Liberals or Moderates in [[Liberal Crime Squad]], they can randomly say: "[[Played for Laughs|Oh my Science!]]".

* Joel in ''[[Concession]]'' is an open atheist, who hates religion, going so far as to say it "Suppresses free will and punishes scientific progress" amongst other things. Whether Immelmann shares Joel's views on religion or not or if it's simply a part of the story is best kept hidden to prevent [[Flame Bait]]. Technically Joel is listed as Spiritual/Satanic on the cast page, but he does share many traits with a Hollywood atheist (hating religion, {{spoiler|a [[Dead Little Sister]], a highly religious abusive father...}}).

* The Tiger Barb from ''95 Gallons'' proves to be one during the Christmas storyline; somewhat amusing, given that he's generally a [[Satan]] analogue.

* Penny from ''[[Goblin Hollow]]'' was revealed as the [[Dead Little Sister]] flavor in the aftermath of her telling off a slick backed Benny Hinn-style preacher. Her best friend killed herself after about of depression and in the aftermath of this, she heard a radio preacher reference the death in context of how godless and out of control young people were.

 

 

== Western Animation ==

** Of course it doesn't help that at other times Brian often fits into the stereotypical "egotistical atheist".

** Given the outspoken views of the show's creator, it's almost certain that he didn't try to make Brian this way (especially given the negative portrayal of religion), but instead tried to make the atheist character the most sane, logical and rational one on the series... that his condescending views toward religion were picked up as jerkish was likely unintentional.

** It doesn't help that [[Flat Earth Atheist|not believing in God in a world where you've met Jesus and Death makes one illogical,]] unless he thinks they're robots or something. Sane people don't hold people hostage and rational people don't condemn others for simply believing in a higher power.

** Given the comedic [[Crapsack World|crapsack nature]] of the world they live in, this has more to do with the overall [[Jerkass|jerkassery]] of the cast than being an atheist. The crippling and ever-advancing [[Flanderization]] doesn't help either.

{{quote| '''''[Marge begins praying while the doctors take notes]'''''<br />

'''Doctor 1''': Excuse me, what are you doing?<br />