God Awful Movies - 86: GAM086 The Case for Christ

Episode Date: April 11, 2017

This week, Eli, Heath, and Noah team up for an atheist review of The Case for Christ; the story of a man researching a book, when all of a sudden, he writes a book eventually. And that's literally all the movie has to offer in terms of stakes. But it does offer up a cavalcade of tired, silly apologetics to test the limits of Noah's blood pressure. --- If you’d like to pick up a copy of our new ebook; Diatribes Volume 2: 50 More Essays from a Scathing Atheist, you can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Diatribes-Essays-Scathing-Atheist-Presents-ebook/dp/B06XQTJT4R --- If you’d like to make a per episode donation, please check us out on Patreon: http://patreon.com/godawful Our theme music is written and performed by Ryan Slotnick of Evil Giraffes on Mars. If you’d like to hear more, check out their Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EvilGiraffesOnMars/?fref=ts All our other music was written and performed by Morgan Clarke. To hear more from him, check him out here: https://soundcloud.com/morgandclarke

Un chapuzón, con el habito, tu serie favorita y en medio de tu siesta. ¡Ey! ¿Has visto esta? No sabes la de planazos que hay este verano en Guésville Parque Sur, con ciertas obsesiones con DJs, clases de yoga, talleres con marcas y actividades con niños, te apuntas. Un sueño de verano, ¡Buy Guésville Parque Sur! And now it's time for a learning about Jesus montage. I wanted more rocky stuff here, by the way, too, during this montage. Just like flashbacks of like typing next to Mr. T really hard,

making a giant stairway of Bibles and running up it, jumping on top. Jason around a chicken with a little rabbinical cap on Swink it around by the neck until it jokes Mooshy musky up to the mountain Not awful movie movies Movie, movie, movie. Movie. Movie. Movie. Movie. Welcome back to the Gamcast, where each week we sample another selection from Christian Cinema because the courts weren't super specific when they said community service.

I'm your host Noah Luzonz and sitting to my immediate left is my good friend Heath and right Heath. Welcome back. Thanks. So, you know, it's a great romantic evening. What's that? Driving to Rockaway, New Jersey and seeing a Christian movie with you, no illusions. It's delightful. It's one of the best dinner in a movie dates I've ever been on. Yes. Uh, and sitting 81 miles to my right is my bad friend, Eli,

Bosnick Eli. How are you? This fine afternoon, sir? Pretty fantastic. I mean, you do have to count popcorn is dinner, but yeah, I get it. I'm just saying, you know, I don't want to mislead. I put out. Yeah, I'm like, I was in the popcorn the whole time, though, and you didn't share. But anyway, yeah, you can't have it all. You can't have it all. I said, get your whatever. So So tell us Heath, what are we going to be breaking down today? All right. We watched the case for Christ. It's the story of Lee's struggle becoming a Christian because Achilles did in fact defeat Hector. He's the armor from the fastest. the God of Fire and

Metalworking. Does none of that make sense? Still want one when we're done. Nope. It'll make sense why you set it anyway. Yeah. And you like how bad was this movie? Well, if you think the best way to investigate a murder is to prove whether or not knives exist. We'll love this movie. Oh my. Okay. So now let's recognize the challenge that these guys faced, right? You know, because the book that they're trying to base a movie on is just like a nonfiction argumentation in favor of Jesus.

They're trying to make a book. I that will be trying to like make a movie out of the goddamn national Audubon Field Society guide for mushrooms or something, you know. So it was an uphill battle to begin with, but the actual apologetics that they use in this are so fucking insane. Like they, they just don't even prove the thing that they're saying that they prove. And yet the audience in the, in the theaters, just like, mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And this is bad for apologetics. Yeah. saying that they prove and yet the audience in the theater is just like, mm-hmm, no, yeah, can't get in my bed.

This is bad for apologetics. Yeah, right. There's a new school of like wave your hands and close your eyes apologetics that you just like, all right, well, if we don't care, we don't care. And I get it. But this is like the old school, no, no, no, no, let me explain. There was secret writing on invisible coins that I see 500 years later, but you can't because I'll stab you in the chest right now.

And you survive. I'll stop believing in Jesus. Us. And of course, we've already hinted at this, but this was another field trip for us. But Heath and I actually had the pleasure of seeing this on Thursday night. It was like a preview kind of big thing that we paid extra for because it included a live broadcast Q and A afterwards hosted by the Washington racist very own Kurt Cousins. Um, Kurt Cousins, I can't see it. Like it was very like a family friend. God, that's how that should have started.

Holy shit, is that how that should have started? He shouldn't just started up and he's like, hey, audience, you like that? How do you like that? Yeah, it would have been awesome. Eli's just going like, I'm sure that's funny or something. Anyway, so we go there and it's like, there's probably about 35, 40 people scattered in the theater

that would have held 300. The youngest of them other than me was, I'd say, mid 130s somewhere around there. Well, part. So what would be your general assessment of that crowd? Well, there was a pack of rascal scooters tied up outside the theater like fucking horses at a saloon. That was indicative. Oh, shit. There were like all the handicap seats are filled. Everybody's fighting over me. Yeah. No, it was great. It was great. And of course, the Q and A that

they did was at a Trump branded building and hosted by the guy who plays for the new Orlean Negro's, it's like they were trying. It's like they were, they were like, maybe the gam guys need a little more ammunition, you think? Yeah. See, I saw this at Times Square 42nd Street, where I see most of these at four in the afternoon with the usual three black ladies and my wife playing video games. So I was in my, I was in my element. Anna does everything at this point, except set up a big screen TV and play PlayStation. Well, you need to get a switch. I'm changing. We got to get off that subject quick or that's what the show's going to be about. It's going to be about

fucking games Zelda Breath of the Wild. What do you think of that game? Do you like it? So Eli, what do you think of this movie, huh? And it's factual accuracy. Oh, okay. So we should probably say at the outset and we'll break down the apologetics as they come up in the movie. There is a ton about this movie like the book that it's based on that is total fucking bullshit. We'll get to it like again, point by point. But most importantly, the entire conceit of this film and the book are untrue. Strobell by his own admission, like on his Wikipedia page, became a Christian in 1981. And the case for Christ came out in 1998 and is his fourth book about how awesome Jesus

is. The story tells in his testimony, which is available online is vastly different than the movie sets forced. So like, maybe he was an atheist who like really struggled with his wife's faith. I don't know, not inside his head. What I do know is the story he told subsequently has nothing to do with the plot of this movie. He wrote this book as a Christian for other Christians and was already a minister at the time. That's pretty damning. Well, so no, in his defense. So what, what they're saying, yes, the book came out in 1998. What he's saying is that basically he wrote it in 1978

or did all the research for it. And that's what made a Christian of him. And then, you know, whatever, it took him 20 years to put the book together, right? I don't know. But yeah, that being said, you know, like I'm even with that defense. It's a horrible bullshit. But you know, he's, he's like the guy that, you know, starts off the conversation, the email with me. Don't get me wrong. I'm an atheist too. And ends with a man.

Oh, God, there's a lot of, I should probably, I should just have a special page on the website devoted to that. Does there anything you guys want to nominate this one for being the best at being the worst at? Uh, yeah, I'm going to say best worst people we walked past on the way into the theater. It was a me. It's so no one I walk in. First thing we see, there's a large woman being chased by her even larger son, just

whining about like his popcorn's not floating in enough butter. It was. It looked like Indiana Jones being chased by a hungry boulder. Hearsten Ford was an overweight like North Korean propaganda. Doer. Yeah. There was never has it because we were just walking to the theater. I'm going like I can't decide if I wanted to be crowded or empty in here. And we walk past those two people and

I managed to get all the way by them before. This is the most wall, Martian group of a couple of human beings you can possibly imagine. I get all the way by him without laughing. And then I just turn to Heath and crack the fuck up. Honestly, I was like 50, 50, they were going to take off masks and be anine alive. Yeah. Well, it's a good thing I wasn't there. I almost really kidnapped a kid in PeekWad's pizza.

So it seems like it was just like that kid, but bigger. It was amazing. No, I wouldn't have stood for it. I would not have stood for it. I would have locked eyes with him and just whispered the word fist fight and he would have understood. Oh, you would have rolled out of the theater with him. And a giant ball of cartoon things going on. I want to know me this movie for best worst outfits. Everyone in this movie is dressed like a box of chalk that is also a prostitute.

Like a box of chalk you can pay to fuck. Usually you don't have to pay him as it turns out. I was going to go with best worst daddy issues. Now, we're going to get to it. I promise. I'm teasing you now, but at a certain point in this movie, they make a bit of an accusation about atheists and their daddy issues that I had a lot of fun with. And also just I add, this is a late ad I want to add best worst Eli not misspelling up really. I'm putting it up high bar. Don't you say really? This was me writing in the dark in a movie theater without looking so on a phone. None of that none of that fancy on a computer with time to pause grammar perfection that I usually hold myself. So just for the record, okay, before we do the show, I just go through Eli's notes with

a quick spell check. And honestly, it's less because of a patented gas and more because I don't like the little red underline in my notes constantly. So, so I go and I do that. And this is the first time spell check has just come up and been like, fuck you, dude. Like, what the fuck? Like spell check. I wouldn't shoot himself in the head. up and been like, fuck you, dude. Like what the fuck? Like, like, right, right, wouldn't talk to me for like three days afterwards. Um,

so and I am still dying to know what the fuck you were right when we get there. All right. Well, I guess the world's been waiting for almost 20 years for the cinematic adaptation of the case for Christ. And we'll be damned if we're going to keep him waiting much longer. So we're going to keep the break brief and when we come back we'll report on all the stakeless thing doing that is the case for Christ. From the makers of the case for Christ comes a film. This is super important to me about a man who didn't believe. I don't believe who learned to believe.

Well, if I'm going to investigate, I'm going to do it the only way I know how. With investigation. Into whether or not Elvis is still alive. In the search for evidence. So you're telling me hundreds of people have seen Elvis after his death. Sometimes learning the truth.

There's no question Elvis died. I have his death certificate right here. Can teach you the truth about learning. If you stacked all the people who have seen Elvis up on top of each other, they'd reach the moon. That is not true. Whatever I'm going to find a fake historian who says it is. The case for Elvis.

None of this is how learning stuff works. I have a board. Little Rico chart. The good Jesus Rico chart. Fuck with someone. And we're back for the breakdown. And we're gonna start this movie off with three production company logos,

each of which made me happier than the last. We get pure flicks, triple horse studios, which is, I guess, you know, their way of saying the end is not y'all only one horse to go. And then entertainment cinema motion pictures. You guys are so not trying. Are you fucking kidding me? Movie words, movie, movie A film screen maker controller. Then the movie opens and it opens on typing and I'm thinking to myself, oh my god,

I bet we're going to watch a lot of typing in this movie. I was wrong. I was wrong. They tease you a little bit, but they make you wait for the typing. Yeah. That typing machine, whatever, that is terrifying. Yeah. It is arm-cutting and they're like a combine.

What the fuck? You're gonna wear a tie when you typed on those. No, was it sad to lose so many good writers to industrial accidents? As a whole time, I'm watching this fucking movie. I'm thinking back on the days where like you realize like six lines later that you made an error and you're like, fuck, I have to redo that whole page now. Oh, yeah. Writers block. I just to redo that whole page now. Oh, yeah.

Writer's block. I just actually don't want to die. I'm really worried about getting mulched through my giant clicky clack machine or the letters going backwards and it punching me in the face with the strength of George Foreman. You killed like the end of Fargo in that thing. And also, and we get a lot of the whole like boy were the 70s, 70s early and often in this movie, starting of course with young Lee Strobel's mustache.

Oh, yes. And by the way, this opening montage wants us to know Lee Strobel was the best reporter ever. Yes. And by the way, this opening montage wants us to know Lee Strobo was the best reporter ever. Yes. Absolutely. He won all the reporter awards, except the ones you've heard of, but all the other ones. Also, I have a music note here. And this is going to be like my singular music note for the entire movie, I believe, which is bizarrely ominous. Right? Like this movie would have this like slasher stalker thriller killer kind of a soundtrack the entire time when nothing it was as though the goddamn soundtrack guy was doing it sarcastically to get fired. Yeah, there's a Freddy Krueger movie coming out in a

year and a half. It's all like dirty, the blue, the blue, the blue, the very confusing. Want your Christian rock behind it. We just got swapped out at the last minute. Okay, that would make a lot of fucking sense. So basically the first thing that happens in this movie is that we see Lee Strobel getting promoted by his newspaper to legal affairs editor on a kind of that big Ford Pinto story. Right. And he brought his family to his in office promotion, but he was going to

make a fucking acceptance speech and like get played off by an orchestra off camera. Yeah, seemed like an odd one. Well, he did give a whole big speech, though. Like to thank the Academy, etc. Right. And it's great because it's when news like didn't have to be going all the time. So like paper was out. Fuck it. Like next ones due tomorrow at six. We got all day. Yeah. Let's all have some cake. Yeah. So we get done with that. Then we go over to the restaurant where he's eating with his wife and his daughter. And I'm convinced that there's some weird karmic thing where every Christian movie, the family has to eat in the same shitty Italian restaurant with the check tablecloths.

It's like part of a soul training agreement. Yeah, could be, could be. So, and this is where he has to bribe his daughter into eating more food. He says, I'll buy you a dessert. And that turns out to be a gumball. How 70s? Well, very 70s.

To be fair, in modern day, a gumball costs $840. That's what you got to understand. Yeah, no, that's a big deal. And of course, this only exists so that we can see that like, the daughter is choking on the gumball. We have to have the daughter's choking scene. Pull her hair. So a 70s nurse comes to the rescue. So what could possibly go wrong

there? I was expecting her to like hand the kid a cigarette and a martini's be like, you're fine. You guys wait here. I'm going to drive her around with no seat belt for like five minutes. We'll put her, we'll put her up in the back window or something. Tell her to take a nap. And of course, this lady will be the MBL of the film, the magical black lady. Bingo. Right, right, early and often. But yeah, and the lady just basically picks up the daughter, pass her on the back, the gumball comes out and the daughter's fine.

And I'm like, wow, what an important moment to record for posterity. You know some interesting shit happened in this guy's life when that time my daughter almost choked on a gumball, makes it into the goddamn movie version of his biography. Well, it's super important because when the wife goes over to thank her, she's like, oh, don't thank me. Jesus told me to eat it this particular olive garden. And I gotta say, someone could save my child's life and if they said that afterwards, I'd have been like,

ugh, off-putting. I mean, thanks, but like, you're back to zero. You're for me, right now, just saying no. You're like plus two minus two. And what a weird statement. She's saying basically like, Jesus told her that God was gonna try to choke a little girl to death, so she had to go like, Jesus told her that God was going to try to choke a little girl to death.

So she had to go to this restaurant to fix that. What? Just Dylan Roof's grandfather walks in. I was going to do this somewhere else, but I got a message from, by the way, what's Chicago doing? Miseducinated restaurants at this point? It's like what? 19th?

We'll ask Cecil. Yeah. Well, one of the best things about this movie is it's all 70 70s except for the entirely miscedulated and non racist cast. The one thing that this movie wants to insist is like, Oh, don't worry. 1970s Lee Strobel had a black boss, black friends, that guy got convicted and no way had to do with race. It was just, you know, everybody got along with everybody back then. I guess you could say America was great. Again, back then. Well, and that's what's so amazing about it is that they're clearly trying to do this

because they're sort of a obvious racist moment that makes its way into this film where at least troubles actual like on the record racism kind of crops up. So yeah, so they're, I guess they're like pushing back early on that. And also, by the way, the Heimlich maneuver fucks up our gene pool. This is a dumbass kid. She just tried to swallow a fucking gumball. Do we really need more genes from the least strobe all line? Anyway, so now we cut to that night, the, uh, they're putting the daughter to bed and she's worried about like whether she can have gumballs anymore and what happens after she dies, you know, kid stuff. Yeah.

And the little girl starts to say the word heaven and dad's like, we do not use that word in this. We are eight years. A little girl. He's like, fucking willum from malrats. So there is no Easter by this is the kind of suit. So weird. Do you think we're going to get to go to warm food? Do you mean warm food? Yeah. Yeah. So and also because the little girl goes like, what a atheist believe he's like, well, real things like tickles and he tickles her.

Tickles, sir, which is going to come back in a great way. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, we do believe in tickles as atheists. I, that is correct. Anyway, I, I mean, lots of people think I lost that debate to William Lane Craig, but just to say he tapped out first. I am challenging William Lane Craig to a tickle fight. The loser donates the money to charity. I would basically do anything

to make that happen. I mean up to it, including kidnapping, William Lane, cracks hashtag William Lane tickle fight. How do you score a tickle fight? All right. So now they put the daughter to bed. They go to their room and mom is upset because he is forcing his atheism on their daughter. Yeah, hey, I thought we weren't going to force the non-belief in claims without proof on our kids. Just like, no, we were going to let her believe in unicorns and leprechauns and invisible m- there maybe there is a monster in her closet. I don't like this side of you.

I don't like this side of you. No, nothing happens when you die. Nothing happens. And there's this thing called munging, but it's fine because nothing happens when you die. Five year old girl. But by the way, I would love to crazy billionaire remake this movie where she gets saved by a Muslim nurse and the woman's like, oh no, I'll look and she's like, great, thank you. Thank you. You want a fucking tip? So now we go to his work where he apparently works for Spider-Man's boss. Danny Glover. No, not Danny Glover. It was the guy who played Barney from my silence to the lamps. No, not him. Pot-off from Luke Cage, I think.

I got a bomb on my dick rigs. And so Spider-Man's boss doesn't give two shits about the fact that Lee Strobel just got promoted and has a different job title and everything. He still wants him to write news stories, which is still his job, I guess. Which would be a bad way to run a newspaper. It's like, I don't care that you got a promotion rigs. You're still going to work traffic duty. It was a little wait. Now who's going to do my job? Everybody, everybody's on traffic duty. Now get out of this straight jacket,

rigs. Yeah, the whole seat is just the theme is like atheists are so annoying at the office. And all right, he was stealing someone's lunch from the fridge while he's reading mind comp. Just mulling. He looks actually an atheist. I'm going to steal the sandwich. Well, you know, that was another one of those like that was like attempting best worse

for me was like best worst effort at making the atheist unlikeable. Because I mean, you know, obviously like we've seen way worse atheists in movies like the Kevin Sorbo and God's not dead and stuff like that. But like this was supposed to be the hero and nothing that he was doing within the movie was like, you know, like or nothing pertinent to the plot made him an asshole. So they just had to keep adding things in like that, you know, like every time you talk to a Christian, he's like, so you're stupid little fairy-tale religion, huh? Let me let me ask you about that. Yeah. He just keeps wandering across puppies that he keeps kicking.

Yeah. Basically, yeah. That's a bitch. Also, I want to point this out very quickly. We meet Rod here who's like the Jimmy Olson of this movie. And I only point that out because I don't know that a named character has ever meant less to a movie. I didn't know he was a named character. Yeah, no, he's, he gets two whole scenes. Yeah, he does. He does. Yeah. And he won a fucking contest or something online. So then we cut over to Leslie who is bringing the nurse, Alfie, the one that saved

the daughter, some muffins as a thank you. A muffin is a terrible gift, by the way. That is not a thank you, president. It's like, here you go. Have an afternoon uncomfortable shit. Yeah, right. Thought you might be constipated. So I made you these. But this is where Alfie sort of introduces her to the whole concept of Jesusing and whatnot. And she actually utters this line because the, you know, the wife goes, what if you hadn't been there in Alphys says, there is no what if with God? Oh, I wanted to see that get tested though, just like, okay, but what if please stop touching my lip, that's weird. What if what's happening?

I just wrote my notes like, God should get himself a spreadsheet program. You know, right? And for, by the way, for the record, she's not espousing Christianity, she's espousing hard determinism here, right? I wanted the wife to just because she believes everything else this character says to just be like, oh my God, where are my legs taking me? There is no self. I am a puppet in his evil game. But the key here is this is where she agrees to go to church with Alfie. And we go to them at church where wouldn't you know what they're doing a sermon about

finding Jesus in a child's throat. Yep. Old-timey mega church. Side note that doesn't matter to anyone but me the priest at this mega church looks exactly like 1970s pictures of my dead father. So that was upsetting. Oh, let me say, yeah, if you haven't seen your dad in three and a half years and then he appears 20 years younger in a Christian movie, it's in the shock.

I'll tell you right away. So this is why you're atheist. I get it. You guys will understand that in a minute. We'll get there. We'll get there right after the second interstitial. So, so then Lee comes home. He says to his wife, how was your day on it? She says, Jesus. Oh, I changed religions. You know, thank you, Shuaul. You're going to hell. Great. Great. I stole a sandwich.

Because I'm atheist. I don't have morals. It's fine. Exactly. That puppy was in my way. Also, okay. So they have this weird through story that is more interesting than the movie, I guess, but still not interesting about him investigating this police shooting as, as, you know, part of his reporter job. So we get a quick scene about that is sort of like an end the background thing where he goes to visit the cop that got shot who asks him to like write a new story that avenges him. Mm hmm. And we should point out at this point that there is some conjecture that this part of the movie is least robo rewriting the single most embarrassing part of his real career. We're not making any claims.

We're just saying if I, Eli, were a racist reporter who assumed a black guy shot a cop and then new evidence came out and I had to write a front page retraction. When they made the story of my life, I would also make it about a cop tricking me with a super best friend handshake. I'm just saying, not making any claims. I'm sure the movies 100% accurate. When we make the Eli Bosnick biography, I will be nice to everybody in high school. It's going to be a really long title. It's gonna be an insanely long.

The book's gonna be the title. It's fine. Yeah, right, right now. So, okay, so now we get Leslie going back to church again, that bitch, and chatting with Alfie afterwards. And there's this great moment where she's like, well, what does Lee believe in? And I wanted her so badly to start tickling.

That's good. Exactly. How an atheist now too. Does he believe in the clip? Just the facts. Alphie. Black lady, you scamp. And, and then, of course, this is where Alfie tells her that, you know, she doesn't believe in coincidence. And I'm like, okay, well, there's a character we can stop taking seriously forever, right?

Really? Like, what other dimensions do you not believe in with this for suckers? What? I also don't believe in things happening at the same time. Really? None? time. Never. Ready? Three, two, four, four. See?

It was already opposite. I win. Also, why are they having this conversation in a car? If the black lady didn't sell her drugs, there's no reason for two full grown adults to sit in a car together. That's a car. It's moving. The car is moving. Yeah.

You stop the car, you exit the car or someone sells someone else in the car. Drugs. These are the basic rules of human behavior. One through three. Yeah, exactly. So now we get Leslie getting home where she has to tell Lee all about all the new Jesus. But I have to point this out because I get the beginning of the scene, they have to have some banter or whatever. And it's supposed to be like, oh, you remember the days, leak says to us like, Hey, we're going to have to call the repair

guy about the TV again. It's on the Fred. So I'm like, that was, there was never, that was net, was that a thing? I don't think so. Oh, so good. It's just a list of 1970s problems. Just, yeah, got to fix the TV and deice the refrigerator and bury our thalidomide baby. I don't know, man. It's stuff sucked now. And then of course Leslie has to give him the I Jesus on you while you were at work speech. Yeah. Eddie, he responds so violently. So, she's like, yeah, I told Jesus I want him in my life. Or slutty, slutty slut slut. Or she gets and that's the rest of the movie is him thinking she's a whore for liking Jesus. Oh, he is so pissed. I wrote as a joke,

I was at church and found Jesus. Was he bigger than me? but that will actually be the conflict of this moving. Pretty much. Yes. Yeah. And I love you because like they can't even make up atheist words for him to say, right? Like they, you know, he, she tells him that she's religious now. And they can't even figure out what an atheist could say if he was angry about that. You know, he's like, well, I don't like the gods. Did not do I angry? I hate my dad. Wait, the truck. We're home. We're in, we're in, we don't have a truck. Say one more word about Jesus. That day, he literally says, I can't accept it. Like, he's going to fill a buster her religiously.

Then put in a new God when he gets elected. But her response was so amazing. She goes, as she says to him, like, look, I felt when I was in church, I felt something more real than anything ever. What? Like women don't have orgasms, like, they go up. Come on. But seriously, the most real thing she's ever felt and like name some medium real

things. What we're, how does this fucking scale work? What? Yeah, that's the kind of thing. Smart people say about things that exist. Exactly. But of course, Lee just has to get out of here. So we cut to him drinking in some empty, lonely, bonky, tongued.

It's only, they always find it empty bar right away. I want to see one movie, just show the depressed guy, like going into like busy TGI Friday and be pissed. Every is loud trying to like sell him like mozzarella sticks and chill. In 21st birthday party right next to him or something. That would be awesome. Yeah. Jots.

I'm actually really just hoping to do a mo the key is for this thing is that we have to understand that her Jesus thing is a fucking existential crisis for this guy. I mean, he's so much so that he like he comes home from the bar and then we get the like he can't sleep that Nice like looking at his wife's body checking for stig modder or something. I want him to wake her up and be like I could I could pretend to be Jesus That you want. That you want? Tell me what you want. I'll do it for you. She wakes up and he's all covered in blood, strapped to a giant cross. This is what you want.

And let's not ignore here. The undercurrent of this is God forbid anyone not want to share their wife's relationship with snuffle up against. Right? Come home, my wife's talking about Stevenuffle up against. Right. Come home. My wife's talking about Steven Universe. I just start doing shots. Oh, it's a kid show.

I don't care about it that much. Call it. No, also, okay. So now we have to meet what atheist Hannibal Lecter here, the guy he goes to his atheist mentor who pronounces Bertrand Russell, like someone's sounding it out for the first time right there on screen. You've read Bertrand Rus, Russell, Russell, how did you, Ruslay, the guy from the chips? Oh, it's such a good character.

The wise old, like, atheist ninja, he goes back to a few times, like, yeah, try and snatch this Bertrand Russell book. Got it. Okay, I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready. It's a book. I have it. It's really you could. How would you close your hand around it? And look, we come across this kind of stuff a lot in Christian movies, but it's been a while. Why Bertrand Russell, right? No one who had read Bertrand Russell would be convinced by the things the characters in this movie are convinced by, right? They're have to be worst sources of atheism for you to use, aside from Bertrand fucking

Russell, right? You had to, couldn't you have just been like, I don't know, Nietzsche, right? Nietzsche is not a great, like, super well-defined, perfect source of logical atheism. Fuck you, sir. You and I shall never speak again. That's pretty solid stuff too. Yeah, I'm not as good as Bertrand Russ. He was not a Nazi. He was not a Nazi.

He wanted to fuck his sister, but he was not a Nazi. He hated the Nazis. He was crazy sexist massages as we can give him that. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm, you start talking shit on Nietzsche And I'm gonna really we're I that's gonna derail this conversation faster than asking me what I thought of the fucking water blight Ganon fight But no when I get your point like they always go straight to the best we've got and then they're like but we have

John Lennox The other thing is like Russell's whole thing is about evidence and the way we evaluate evidence and the idea of making a positive claim versus trying to disprove a positive claim. That's a tremendous amount of Russell's work, right? And then the rest of this movie is, it's basically like Dr. Seuss hop on pop and the rest of this movie is hop on what? Like, just use a different guy.

Also, not chess. Not not chess at all. And also Russell's T-Pot concept literally just ruins this whole movie's argument. Yeah, just right there, just that. Right, right, exactly. And I love to because he goes to the mentor guy and he's like, hey, how do I ungeeze this my wife?

And the first thing that the atheist mentor says is, well, I can tell you how to do that, but are you sure you really want that? I mean, I'm an atheist, but even I'll admit that Christians are way better people than us. Wouldn't you rather she stayed Christian? Right.

Fuck you. But eventually like the mentors idea as well, just disprove Jesus. That'll do the trick because you know how Christians, when they're confronted with evidence, normally, yeah. All right. And I wanted them so badly to get as specific as this movie have to like, oh, so just like disprove the existence of a miracle. No, no, no, no, no.

Disprove the idea that a guy could be killed in a crucifixion. Wait, what is that have to do with my wife's release? Well, disprove that it could be written down anyway. Yeah. Oh, Jesus. And okay. So and now we go to the other guy who's going to be like his sounding board in this movie, which is the Christian guy that he works with. Yeah. That he's completely dick too constantly. Yeah. He is nothing but mean to this character throughout the film. His first line is, hey man, you're a fucking idiot, right?

The actual line is, you're into all this God nonsense. Wow. Yeah. Even we don't start conversations like that. No. Nobody does. It turns into this weird JFK thing all of a study. I'm trying to investigate Jesus and the guy's like, just walk away Lee.

Away. So we're powerful people cut over to like Earl Warren and God loading sniper rifles in the next building. What's happening here? Godfires an actual magic bullet. This will fuck with them for years. But yeah, so the, but he asked his coworkers, like, you know, what would it take for, you know, to make you and stop believing in Christianity and the coworker sets, this is a quote, be carefully. What if you end up disproving your theories of science and reason instead? All right. Listen to yourself, Christianity, own that fucking sentence and meet right up front that that is the opposite of disproving your religion, disproving science and reason in your own fucking movie.

What if hands don't exist, they exist. What if they don't exist? What is the proof that they don't? Yeah. I feel like I'm going to have a lot of these conversations for the next 90 minutes. Oh, you are. You are. Why are there still gloves that the co-workers are? So yes, but the co-er suggests that he goes after the resurrection because if you can disprove the resurrection, because you know, you can disprove things like that. You can anyway, he starts him off by giving him a book by Gary Habermost, that is a theology professor at Liberty University. So on the one hand, we've had Bertrand Russell. Like, like arguably the smartest person alive at the time he was alive. On the other hand, we have Gary Habermas, who Google is pretty sure I was misspelling.

Man, this, this movie outdoes itself because Habermas is the probably most reliable source. We just get crazier and crazier in the couple of years. Yeah. By the end, I thought he was just gonna take him into an alley and an old guy is just like writing with chalk with both hands, the word God backwards and forwards at the same time.

All right, I guess he's the one to answer your questions. Let me talk to you for a minute. I love that you're crazy homeless person impression of your Tom impression or exactly the same. Have you ever seen a homeless person and Tom in the same room? So so Lee so he sends Lee to to Wisconsin where Gary Habermass is debating some atheist dude. Yeah, British atheist. Yeah. And he just starts talking in smart British guy talking words. And literally our theater starts like hissing and spitting at him.

They were so mad. So that part Rocky more he has a throw and shit at the screen. And the point that we're supposed to capture at the end of this debate, which will make up a tremendous amount of this movie is. And the phrase you'll find that there's quite a bit of history that disagrees with you, my Christian friend. Oh, yeah. Why would people start lying right away?

That's a big part of the urge. I'm an orange and people will continue to say I'm orange. Does that make it true? Holy fuck that guy's orange. Yeah, this movie amazing. It proves the alien. It proves Roswell and the aliens and shit. It's amazing how anyway. Yeah. So after the debate, Strobel catches up with Habermas. And this is the first of a number of like experts that they're going to wheel out to say increasingly insane shit. But this one is the key, right? Because he's, his argument is you can't disagree with Jesus' resurrection because so many people saw him after he died. Elvis was dead at this point. I'm just going to toss that

out. There's the late 70s again. Elvis, Elvis press like like there's so many. This is such a bad argument. Also, it addresses the main problem with strobe and this whole school of apologetics, the like disprove, like there's so many sources for the crucifixion thing. Again, the problem isn't whether or not an Arabic guy got nailed to a piece of wood. Whether or not that happened is relatively irrelevant. It's the him coming magically back to life part we take you with, right? Again, so they address that at this point in the movie. He goes, well, what about the miracle? He goes, I don't need to prove the miracle. And he's like, wait, why? And

he's like, go fuck yourself. That's why. Fuck you right in the face. And this will be the key that the entire rest of the argument in this movie relies on. Habermont tells him at this point, he's like 500 people saw Jesus alive after his death. According to one guy. According to one guy though, like he acts as though there were 500 separate testimonials that were cobbled together of different people who said one guy says that 500 people saw Jesus. The other gospels disagree with that guy.

Also twins, fucking twins. You know why? Cause twins are real. There's twins walking around right the fuck now. Or just similar looking guys. There are no reanimated people walking around. No, we have a 0% reanimation rate and we have a fair amount of fucking twins.

Yeah, greater than zero. Yeah, exactly. What does the evidence look like for the 500 people? He just takes out like 500 papyrus selfie with Jesus drawing. So what? What? By the way, if you do out the math, then Elvis actually got resurrected like hundreds of times.

Yeah, no, for sure. Well, also, and he says at one point, he's like, some of these reports came from only months after the resurrection. Like, you have secret stuff you're not sharing with because the other historians would love to see whatever the fuck you're talking about because not a single goddamn historical records that anyone recognizes in the world came from fucking talked about Jesus months after the crucifixion. 500 people drew Jesus really, really small.

You can't see him. Oh, yeah,. You can't see him. I drew them out small, but in large you have to look in my hat with this rock. Yeah. We used to have laser cutting for coins. And we should point out the movie does a lot of this sneaking that bullshit and like they'll make a big relatively well known apologetic claim. And then sneak an absolute bullshit underneath it. They'll be like, no one could survive the crucifixion. And by the way, his hands were healed. So what we're saying here is like, look, if you're hung, everyone died from a crucifixion, look at that. You can't, you have to do a pull up and those are tiring.

You can't do a pull up. You can't do a pull up. You can't do a pull up. You can't do a pull up. You can't pull the weight of your body up above the bar. Fuck off. But yeah, I want to point out that like the entire rest of this movie is going to be spent disingenuously trying to explain away these 500 witnesses without ever admitting that it was just one guy saying there were 500 witnesses, right? That is like again, that's the core question of this film. And now we cut away from this conversation with Habermost for just a second. I want to get back to it because there's some more great apologetics there. But we have to cut back for just a second to see his wife having the bad pregnant. Yeah. Right. So we just see that very quickly, you know, she's in the

kitchen where wives are supposed to be. And exactly. Yeah. And then we get back to the however much discussion so that this guy can start talking about things that were written, you know, centuries after it. Look again, they just talked about,

yeah, there were things written months after the resurrection and now they're talking about things that were written hundreds of years afterwards. They have not clued in the audience that we've switched. Right. This is also where we learned that Gary Haberbaus had a cancer wife. And at least trouble is still in atheists now. So he just jumps all over this. He's like cancer wife, cancer wife, unobjective, cancer wife. The 1970s version of that's not an argument.

Yeah. Well, what they're trying to deal with there is like, you know, saying like if I want, you know, if you want to find the truth, you know, kind of a Christian really be objective here and they have no answer for that, you know, he's just like, well, I really want gravity to be true. And it is. Okay. So yeah.

All right. I was very confused by this part. Do I have this right? The argument from it is. Okay. So, yeah. All right. I was very confused by this part. Do I have this right? The argument from our masses, yeah, I had a cancer wife, but I benefit from gravity and mosquito bites are itchy. Therefore, God, or that what and what this is actually sneakily saying is, hey, man, how come I can't find any non Christians that are willing to ignore the vast amount of shit you're willing to ignore?

Right. Right. True. The answer is because it's true because because anyone who looked into that would wind up a Christian obviously. Also, I love at one point he's at least points out to me. He's like, Okay, but all of these witnesses that you're talking about were Christians, right?

Like all of the people who wrote anything down, yes. And he goes, well, what about Paul of Tarsus? And I'm like, you mean the guy who founded the religion of Christianity, that guy basically, that guy who invented the real, yeah, that guy, but he wasn't born a Christian, that wouldn't have been possible. No, I guess it wouldn't have been.

Would it have been? I just love that scene so much when he's like, what about the Apostle Paul? Did you just use the word Apostle? I did. I did. I feel I feel silly. Most of the yeah, my bad. But he says that he persecuted Christians first.

Any other source for that except for him before he started the religion? No, no, no, no, no, any reference to Christians at all. No, but, but, you know, they could have been there. Yeah, and we also get to die for a lie argument. Here, you know, he, he busts out the whole, but would these people have died for something they knew to be a lie? And I'm like, that happens all the fucking time. All the time, liars, that's what, all the time that die. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I can see I have gotten myself webbed into lies where I'm just like, God, Jesus,

I'm gonna have to die for this eventually. I'm gonna have to sacrifice myself to probably, yeah, no, I mean, that's such a disingenuous bullshit argument. Like, oh, yeah, remember those guys that, you know, castrated themselves and killed themselves so they could get on a spaceship? That must be true too, huh? Well, and they even bring up Jonestown. They bring up Jonestown and he's like, I mean, no one would lie for something that they

know isn't true. And it's like, or, you know, you're part of a big group. And there's group think, it's, we've actually studied this shit. It's not necessarily about like each member of Jones time was pulled separately aside and be like, hey man, you're hundo pee on this, right? And it's like, I don't know, man, I didn't want to be last in line.

They were going to run out of cake or cool, late in the case, maybe. So, yeah, so we wrap up the, the Habermess conversation, then he's on his way home, he gets an emergency page. So 70s. And his page, he says 911. I really wanted him just rushed to a pay phone and call back 911.

Okay, page, but you called us emergency. Lee, how are you? There's only four of us now, because it's the 1970s. And we don't help black people at this point in history. It's going on.

You see Sunday's game? Do you think we'll ever need pads for football? Ha, ha, ha, ha. So, but yeah, but his wife apparently had the baby while he was fucking around in Wisconsin. He went to a mythosism debate out of town over his wife's due date. He's, I'm the ultimate 70s atheist dad.

It's crazy. Uh-huh. The only reason to skip your wife's due date is recent con. There you go. Exactly. And they're not even doing a debate at recent con. This movie makes no sense. Now, but the key to this scene isn't that now there's a child that is also going to play

a part in this movie because we're basically never going to acknowledge this kid again. The key to this scene is that when he gets to the hospital, the daughter's there and she says, Mommy felt bad, but we prayed and it was all better. And I just want to point out that this is only evidence for the existence of God if the person saying it is dead, right? I mean, the daughter was alive when they were atheists. Also, need to point out, in my theater, the response to that was awe, except for my wife, whose response was, ha, way too loudly.

And everyone in the theater, all four black ladies, turned to us and realized we were heathens watching this movie ironically and we felt their icy slash hot glares on us throughout the rest of the movie. That's shushed by four black ladies in a movie theater. Well, my wife is already playing hungry shark at full volume in the middle of the theater. This is just icing on the cake. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,

ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, wife's like, you should, should you call your parents like, fuck it. They get the newspaper. It says, do we have a kid in the newspaper? Fuck them. What an atheist. We also got a great scene of him creating the sweet hair helmet of the 1970s. Just why

we have no ozone layer. Thanks Noah. Yeah. You managed to go over the top 70s with the aerosol. Like he might as well be spraying a polar bear in the eye. But I'm a Christian like you. I just I want to point out that I probably had the lowest per capita aqua net usage of the entire 1980s and all of America. I'm still like a BP Gulf spill. No, it is. I'm just I'm just throwing that out there. So now we he makes his little Jesus office where he puts up his little Jesus Rico chart. Oh, it's great. And he's

setting up like a basement office. It's like the snow cabinet in Rocky for yes, yes, uh-huh. Running tiny little laps around this tiny little office with like a spool of yarn on his back running tiny little laps around this tiny little office with like a spool of yarn on his back Doing sit-ups tacking little piece of paper to a cork board. Yeah, every time he sits up I love to on his big Jesus board the first thing he writes fact one 500 people saw Jesus after the crucifixion and circles it really fucking things like well we're not gonna verify we as our starting position, huh? But then later in the montage it's like sit up to three four and he gets like extra facts at a time. We're doing one handed pushups while typing with the other hand.

No, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Meanwhile, he's also still doing this cop shooting thing. So nobody will talk to him about it. So now he goes to the prison to talk with the alleged shooter. And again, I just want to say, if I, Eli, were a racist reporter and I were retelling the story, I would write in a part of the movie where the black guy was super duper unhelpful. And that's why he's accused him of shooting a cop because he was a real negative Nancy.

Real jerk face. I keep it mine. I had no idea how this actually played out in the movie when I wrote this. I just wrote, you know, the, the, the alleged she goes, I didn't do anything and I wrote in Legos. Are you sure? Because you are black. And that's yeah, okay.

So yeah, but yeah, the alleged shooter, that's Hicks, doesn't want to help them. And again, this movie tells the story like he's like, so wait, tell me the story. I'm a reporter who's being totally responsible. Well, I, a black man, had a gun. I threw it into the bushes with one bullet missing. I'll let you make any conclusions you want. There is no bias behind whatever you conclude. Look, I don't know much, but I know that whatever you concluded is based entirely on the evidence I just gave you. Also, I'm a gang member who. What? And if you're wondering, by the way, how they're going to tie this into the larger movie, just keep in mind that you're wondering about that.

When we finally get to that moment, keep in mind that you've been wondering about that the whole time. Were they going for a metaphor with the Jesus? I don't. A lot of my notes are trying to figure out, like smash a metaphor into there. And I don't do well with it. They don't either. I don't, I don't know what moment you're talking about when they die this together. Let me know when that happens. Oh, yeah. No, I feel good. It's a lot of fun.

Oh, and it's terrible. It's terrible. It's like they might as well have just said, yeah, well, I had to kind of like, you know, sugarcoat this part of my life. If we were going to talk about it in the movies, somebody was going to bring it up later. So yeah, this part's just so it's like, and then this dude Occam showed up with a box cutter and he killed the cop. My gun was fired once and in the bushes with my prince, but maybe it was the Occam box cutter. You don't know it wasn't. So the next morning, we get him getting ready, brushing his teeth and just long enough to see that his wife has left him a little God loves you. Note on the mirror. Glad loves you. And so do I. And since he's still an atheist,

I wanted him to write like God says I can slap the shit out of you and just post it over the top of that on the marriage. You're like that. You're not a lot of teach me. Shit, lady. I read Timothy. And but now this is where his investigation takes him to the marriage. How do you like that? You're not a lot of teach me, shit lady. I read Timothy. But now this is where his investigation takes him to the church, the scene of the crime. This is the best scene. Oh my God. All right. So and this is, okay, the title of this scene might as well be historical documents. How do we know where they're true? And he does the thing that Christians love to do where they conflate textual criticism, you know, the process by which we find out like when something was written with how we determine if that thing was true.

Hey, what would be the worst example one could use to prove a document was based on a true story? What about stacking the copies of those things and bearing the heights? That is pretty scientific. Is there like a really, really definably untrue story that also is really old and has a bunch of copies that we could compare it to? Like with a cyclops purchase.

Yes. He basically the argument he makes totally straight faced is, well, you know, there are even more copies of the new testament than the Iliad. How could it not be true? You know, that's the story about the guy who almost makes it home and then he opens a bag of wind And gets blown back to start like fucking shoots and ladders Is the Bible four times history says four times as many copies is the Elliott so is it four times as true? What it's extra true. So yeah, the the Iliads true

The Bible's extra true. So yeah, the Iliad's true. The Bible's extra true, like hundreds of feet, truer. The Bible is. I'm just saying, we have a golden opportunity, 5,843 copies of the Bible. We on this podcast can make diatribes volume to way more true than the Bible. Amazon.com. Help us out here people. Now, okay, I want to point out that in order for this argument to be relevant, it would have to be that atheists were arguing that the new testament was never written. That would have to be the, that's the only thing that this argument could refute. Did I miss something?

Did Lee struggle like walk in and yell the Bible was never written at the beginning of the scene. And it's so obviously aimed at confusing people who don't know the difference, right? Like they so intellectually dishonest, there are times when you read apologetics and you're like, all right, you're doing your best to wiggle out. And then there are times that are like, but the ring doesn't have a hole. Can I see it? No, this one's mine. Really, I can see this ring, but not the other ring. No, this one's for me. I think your ring has a hole here. So oh, oh, so by the way, did this scene just prove that JK Rowling is a demigod. So have also Mao Zedong.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. God's like six times more powerful than Mao Zedong is what this movie just told us. Also, as if this wasn't already dumb enough, would you rather fight one god-sized Mao Zedong for six Mao Zedong-sized gods? Hold on. Does Mao Zedong get a Ditka or does he have to? I think I have full size kicker. Full size kicker. Yeah. So it also, they, as if this scene wasn't already dumb enough, they bust out the goddamn shroud of turran during this

scene. Why would you pick up the shroud turran? That's absolutely proven to be fake. Not before this, like this movie was out, but before this movie was made. The book got to like plan parenthood selling fetus tacos out of a food truck right here. Like, what are you guys doing? Okay, but then I love it. At the very end of this scene, Lee asked a big question, which is basically, why would Jesus get, if he was God, why would Jesus get crucified when he could have just used force push? That's what I wrote. I wrote why didn't Jesus just use force much? And the answer. Love.

Love. Yes, because he loved us too much to use force. Use force pull. Yeah, there you go. And now it's time for a learning about Jesus montage, featuring payphones, cutoffs, and typing. Music note, Noah is in a band. Who's in Kansas, the wayward son.

Yeah, no, yeah, little on the nose, wasn't it? Very clever. The movie, the wayward son, it's not even the story, whatever, those are just words from a Bible thing. So stupid. I wanted more rocky stuff here, by the way, too, during this montage. Just like flashbacks of like typing next to Mr. T really hard, making a giant stairway of Bibles and running up it. Yeah. Yeah. Jumping it up.

Chasing around a chicken with a little rabbinical cap on. Swink it around by the neck and pillet jokes. She must have come up to the mountain. So now it's late. That is 2.37 a.m. She wakes up. He's still not in bed. So she goes downstairs to check on him.

And now keep in mind, she at this point doesn't know he's doing his Jesus investigation, right? He hasn't told her about that. So he has to like hide his Jesus notes and everything. It very clear that the Tootsie Pop commercial is on the TV. And because he scrambles to put everything away, it very clearly looks like he's jerking off to a Tootsie Pop commercial. And I get that struggle.

I do. How many strokes does it take to get to the end of a pussy rope up? Come on, Mr. Owl. Well, the kids naked. I mean, they obviously want you anyway. Yeah. So, but they're really playing up the whole like he's jealous of Jesus thing in this scene.

This is where they have their yelling fight. It's such a great jealous. Like, he's like, why do you smell like fish and Judaism? Are you cheating on me to Jesus? What's this in your purse? Is it a cracker? A piece of his dick? Is it a piece of his dick? In your purse body.

And it was say, yeah, and of course he's drinking beer like an atheist. Right, and she's like, are you drunk again? And he's like, don't judge me. I live in a loft. He's a deep, deep cut right there. So she goes upstairs and pray because apparently they didn't have a closet back in the

70s, who the fuck knew. But then he's editor saying like, Hey man, you're slacking on your work, you know, whatever it is your work. And I was taken away from the cops shooting thing. But then he has to go because he's got a phone call from William Lane Craig. And of course, he's a Jerusalem because he's so legit and like all offices in Jerusalem, you can see the dome of the rock out of his fucking window, just like you know, when you're in St. Louis, you can see the arch from all the windows. It's like that. Yeah. No, of course

you can see the arch from all the windows. It's like that. Yeah. No, of course, you can't. They don't all face inward and shows every window. All of New York City is just a giant circle around the Empire State Building. It's a very hard to navigate. That'd be pretty easy. Well, you know, yeah, right, right, exactly. Now, okay, so what they're going to, they're going to try out a series of experts, Bill Craig, being one of them to do,, basically to tackle different arguments people may have about the resurrection of, of Jesus and whether it's true. Bill Craig apparently is here to tackle the, what if Jesus was fed to dogs? Here he is.

This is a weird one. And so the argument takes the proximate form like this. Like, Lee store was like like and maybe dogs ate Jesus and Bill Craig's like did they did they Maybe maybe maybe yes, yes And it doesn't this really just get to the heart and like it's in a very stupid round of about way. It doesn't just really get to the heart of how dumb their arguments are because it's like,

okay, but even if you're right, this is all based on the fact that his body wasn't in the tomb. And here's a half dozen of reasons why there would not be a body in the tomb, you know, but yeah, and also Bill Craig's only fucking argument back is, uh, well, right, but maybe he wasn't also. Maybe he wasn't. And then he brings up the contradictions about the women, like how many women were there, which women were there?

And he's like, no, no, no, because nobody would lie about women because women weren't real back then. Okay. This is a, this isn't a apologetic. You hear an awful lot. It's insane, right? Because they're saying, like, well, if they just made up the story, they wouldn't have made it women finding the tomb. They would have made it men finding the tomb because women were considered

unreliable witnesses. Just look at the laws. Yada, yada, yada. The argument from bitches be tripping it doesn't matter who finds an empty tomb. That's nothing. That's literally that's nothing. That's not an evit. That's just, there's an empty tomb. Well, right, right. Exactly. It's not like only women reported seeing him afterwards. We have 500 people who saw him after work.

And then we get my favorite moment of the movie where he goes, well, I mean, the contradictions are there. Like, we agree the contradictions are there and when we go, the contradictions are there. And when I'm great, it goes, yeah, but don't you know that when police interview someone, if all of their stories are different, but it's like kind of the same, that's how they know it's true. Consistency is suspicious. Yeah, it's such a weird theory.

Like so therefore whenever witnesses tell all different stories than all the stories are true the first one is You can't even form that idea with words very I had a lot of trouble like what well, okay But so this is the argument then because it obviously it's really hard to miss you know the gigantic Contrictions within the fucking Bible and key shit that's contradicted. So what they try to say yes, yes, but the core of the story is the same. Just like if we all witnessed a traffic accident, we would all get some of the details wrong and everything. And they try to downplay that like some of these details are like whether or not he was born of a version.

What city he was from? What city he was born in? Who didn't, didn't try to kill him? You know, like when did he die? Well, where is the last word? Big fucking deal, kind of shit, but Craig's argument is, well, if everybody had the exact same story, it would be a little unbelievable, right? Now I want to tackle specifically what he says about the cops, right? Because he's like, well, if cops interview a bunch of witnesses in their stores are exactly

the same, they find that suspicious. And I'm like, well, what are the cops do when they find out for sure that each of the witnesses was copying off the last one? How much ferocity do we then give to their testimony? Or like, look, if we also a car crash and some of the stories involved, the car turning inside out into bumblebee and blast it up in the space, it wouldn't be like, I don't know, guys, like the four of them all agree bumblebees there. I think we would instead be interested in the possibility of bumblebee, not how many people say they saw bumblebee. Yeah, specifically. Yeah. And of course course Craig also gives me like, you know, you can't handle the truth moment

at the end of this conversation. And then we cut to Leslie talking with Alfies tomorrow and they're talking about Lee because fuck the back deltas. This is a Christian movie. Right. And basically she's like, I don't understand how to turn my husband to Jesus and she's like, have you tried listening to him? No, and I'm not going to for the rest of the movie.

Never. No, exactly. I don't even know why they included this scene. Usually, well, how did you reach him before? It's like, well, I would let him put stuff in my butt, but now I'm a Christian. So that's out. And then we got the, like he catches the break

with the cop shooter story. He realizes that the guy who shot him was like an informant and the cop that got shot was his handler. And in this scene, he goes and meets with like one of the guys who's the head of secret cops. Yeah, that's a cover cops. Okay. None of this is verified, but if I were writing my autobiography and I had to print a retraction of a story because it turned out no one could confirm my source for the racist newspaper article I read, I would include a scene in the movie where the source was totes McGotes real and I wasn't just a racist. And she was really pretty. Yeah. So yeah, this is where he breaks the big Hicks was an informant. And that's, and

that's basically the story that he writes is that Hicks was an informant for the cop and he shot the cop and then now the police don't want to do anything about it because they want to keep their informant. Yeah, this is news how Trump thinks it happens. Yeah. Are they still working on the metaphor here? So it would be the Christians were protecting Jesus because he was a snitch on the Jews. So is that makes sense?

Jesus was black. Jesus was black. That's the lesson. That's the matter for well, he turned to the guy and he goes, come on, man, I need a source on this. And I wanted him to just drop like 500 ancient copies about a black guy on the table. I'm going to leave these here and go to the bathroom. What you do with them is you are busy. Also a copy of the Iliad by comparison. Here's his shroud. Also a copy of the Iliad by comparison. Here's his shroud. This should prove it. He's a Canadian mountain. He just trots off on a horse.

So now we got we cut to him sleeping on the you get no pussy couch. His wife makes him up and and made him some coffee. I bet it's drip to go with their baskets of steak from the last scene. Semonies were gross. Can we talk about that really quick. He bribes the secret, secret, secret cop chief of secrets cop with a handheld steak in a basket. That's like how he gets this giant, giant conspiracy to come out.

So weird. Until there are no wants to go eat every time we get together. I like hand steak. What? I wanted to do it like a drug deal, just like, palm a steak and try to pass it to them all. Dude, it's like a whole, my hands all, it had sauce. How you doing? How you doing? Good to see you.

Oh, it's hot. Yeah. I feel like by and we Eli's guy in China town. I'm a different. But but then we get him like waking up on the couch and his wife wants him to go. This is the, I guess, listening to him scene where she tells him what to do. Um, because this is where she invites him to go to church with her. Yeah.

And he like panics tries to start coming up with excuses. Not to get like, can we just have brunch with your super interesting friends instead? Could you, no, just tell me about your co-workers dream for four hours. Awesome. She is a bitch. And eventually though he he caves, he agrees to go, but only if he gets to sit in the back and listen to the scathing atheist on one headphone the whole time.

And my dad seems to be giving the sermon here that God wants to be your daddy. All you got to do is take it. That's what I got from the service. Well, see, I was expecting this to be yet another. I didn't know church could rock so hard scene because like they come in and the music planner, whatever, but ultimately all this scene really has to offer is Lee taking Alfie aside after the service and telling her to fuck off with her crazy jukeh. Yeah.

I want to just walk over and start peeing on his wife, right? Okay. You get me. And Alfie does an equally bad job. He's like, Hey, look, I know we're really grateful, but could you not do the whole? And she's like, she's not brainwashed. Wow.

I think you are the first one to use that word all the time. Aren't you? Yeah. You are. And the movie thinks this is like a typical atheist meltdown that we would all have. Nobody asked you to save my kids life. Yeah, universe is supposed to be indifferent.

My world is crumbling. Like, what? So stupid. So is the sermon, by the way. The theme of the sermon was the only problem with church is human beings. Yeah. By the way, besides the human beings involved were the best. Right.

Yeah. The sermon very clearly says all the bad stuff, that's people, all the good stuff, that's God. And that's almost a quote, right? That's basically a quote from the sermon. And then they had home all pissed off. And wouldn't you know it? Leaves parents show up to meet the new baby. God damn it.

He's in an atheist'sit as, as we get. He gets mad at his dad because his dad wanted to name the kid John and he doesn't want to do it. It's eight off Stalin strobe a deal with the dad. Also the dad was Robert Forster. I like Robert Forster. Damn it. Damn it.

Jerry. Ladies and gentlemen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Although I will say him and that leisure suit was damn near worth the price of admission. Oh, my goodness. Did they make that color pink illegal? That's right.

Like were you there when they took all those shirts from you and Andrew and just burned them in a big pile? I lobbied for that color of pink to be made illegal. I don't know if they ever dead. Yeah. Um, but I love to because like there's so much of this movie rests on the daddy issues that he has, but they never actually set up what it was, right? Like they never say that the dad was abusive or that he ignored. It's just like, apparently he has dad issues because he's an atheist and hates everyone. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's no such moral code in any of his books about honoring thy father.

Oh, that's not going to do that. And he's so inappropriate, too. He's like, oh, I thought you'd name the kid John, because that's also what hookers call the people who fuck them, dad. Fuck them hard and fuck them long. So it's called the things that shit in. He really says all that. We have a nuggety diarrhea.

He was shit in my son, I think not. So eventually dad hops off in a SNET and shit and he's succeeded in making everyone angry, which is kind of what atheists want out of life, right? Mm-hmm. And then he has to go back to his mentor because he just can't crack the case against Jesus. He's checked everything, but Jesus is just so hard to disprove

because disproving things is not how it works. And he's really complaining about like how changed his wife is. And I don't know if anyone else got this. Did you guys get a subtext in this scene of blow jobs? Yes. I feel like it's a no more blow jobs conversation. You just won't say it. And I get it. Like that's a relationship, Bender. We didn't talk about those things in the 70s the way we do today. And I feel like why is old Atheist Ninja should have had a better game plan for like making the wife Atheist and give blow jobs again. Yeah. All right. So just off top of my head, find her mom and give her cancer, right?

Oh, or feed your daughter gumballs at home. There you go. Or a white-only restaurant. There's like a lot of ways to get around this. A lot of ways through that. In the 70s, all of those things were possible. Yeah, no, they were all legal. You buy uranium in a store.

What a mess. It was wear any in a store. What a man so much easier for Marty. Yeah, and I guess if we waited for a dramatic moment to take an interstitial break, it would come after the outtake. So we might as well take it now. But first, let me give act three of the hard sell here. Did he start a slow clap about three quarters of the way through the credits? Did all the Christians and the audience awkwardly join in for fear of being the only person that didn't clap for Jesus?

They had to, they did. Did anyone buy my reaction to this was actually a cough that just kind of sounded like a laugh at the beginning? Find out the answers to these questions and more when we return for the monotonous conclusion of the case for Christ. I cast a God-awful movies here with a very important announcement. After watching 86 Christian movies, it's become clear there's something we need to share. We don't hate our dads.

We don't hate our dads. Our dads are fine. We're atheists because we reject God claims. Not because our moms have cancer. My mom is fine. Not because our dads abused us. Great dude, love space. But because we thought about a subject, we reached a decision that had nothing to do with our dad. So on behalf of all atheists and to all Christian movie makers, please, we're not atheists because we hate our dads. We're atheists because we hate our moms.

Exactly. 100%. My mom listens to this show. She gonna murder me for that's good. Oh, then you're puggle being atheist. Oh pugtheist And We're back for more of this shit. We're gonna start off with Leslie up early in the morning underline and more Bible passages Oh, he comes in and he's just like what you doing and she's like just studying Bronze Age morality He's just like, what'd you do? And she's like, just studying Bronze Age morality. Do you know why I'm an object? We're actual answer is, oh, you know, feeling grateful.

Yeah. So many times someone said that to me and then looked at me like, you're going to ask, and I'm like, nope, I know this. I know this. Try, nice try. Me too. Yeah. Right.

Right. But this is where he asks her out on a date. Oh, I really want her to be like, yeah, definitely. I'll go out to dinner with you. Um, but can my boyfriend Jesus come on? Oh, really? I don't, I don't want to ruin our friendship. Well, this is where I wrote to like, what are the goddamn stakes of this movie? Is she going to say yes or no? And also it's supposed to be dancing. It's dinner and dancing. I would have been so happy if we got a dance battle at some point between Lee and Jesus.

That's exactly what I'm going about. Amazing. You got saved. Yeah. So, but now we have to go to court where Hicks, the guy, the informant cop shooter alleged it, whatever is pleading out and going to jail for 15 years. And it's all because of that story that Lee Strobel wrote, which is probably the only true thing that shows up in this movie.

He's a cop shooter and a snitch. Well, no, but yeah. And the cop shooter is very upset with Lee for writing that story because he says, hey, man, if you're innocent, like you said, you were, why would you bleed out? And he goes, huh, it's almost like somebody wrote a goddamn front page article about what a dick I am and what a cop I shot and left me with no fucking choice. But I don't blame you if by shot and let me with no fucking choice. Uh, but I don't blame you. If that's what happened historically, just know really my vagary earlier in the movie is to blame. Not your bias.

You don't see color. What race am I? You don't even know. At this point, I wrote my nose like, wow, I'm checking the time every five minutes. And I don't know the movie's runtime. I don't know what we're aiming for. Yeah. Just what a no time is passing.

Exactly. Exactly. It's like when you're at work, you know, and you have that shitty job as a kid, you're like, I'm not going to look at the clock for another hour. And it was like two minutes later. Yeah. Scrape, scrape, scrape. Scrape.

That's a deep gun. And then we get that all important husband and wife date scene that we've been waiting for this whole movie. And their date is at a barbecue. Where the fuck are they? They went dancing in someone's backyard where there's one single guitar player doing a regular gig in this backyard. It's so fucking weird.

But I felt like it was about to hand them like a person sized rack of ribs, like the Flintstones for. Yeah, it was bizarre to say the least. And then of course, we get some conversation with them after all the dancing. And we almost get Pascal's wager, but we only just get the tip. At this point, don't worry. We will go full Pascal eventually. Well, he revert. He starts it. He reversed Pascal's wager. Her which she replies to with Pascal's wager. And if you're wondering what that

looked like in the movie, it was what if you're wrong? What if you're wrong? See you. Yeah. Yeah. Are I just... Are you? Am I? I just want to throw something in. Hey, God, no one, Eli, they're serious, but I'm totally joking about all this stuff. I've been doing this. Yeah. She's joking.

Not them, they're serious. So yeah. And another thing, too, she offers up as evidence for God. She's like, but since I became a Christian, I love you even more now. Feelings are more important than facts, aren't they? Aren't they? My feelings are a valid experience, a direct quote from this movie and too many fights with too many women. So many messy fights at brunch, just like that. Well, I also love because he sort of dances around the whole like, I don't like you now

fit of this. You know, like, and the actor, to the actor's credit, he does a pretty damn good job selling the, I was about to say, I don't like you. And now I have to back away from that. Right. But basically his ultimate here is, unJesus or I'll divorce you. Said, nobody ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever.

I wanted him to kick his Christian kid out of the house, maker, become a gang, just like, no one in my house. Get down there. Exactly. The argument from you are that needs to be a new man.

You pierce your nose or you get out of this house. Take off that overcoat. Come on. Now I'm going to show some skin. We're an atheist family here. Oh my god. She literally says in this little conversation, she's like, I can feel it. It's real. And he's like, no, you can't. Real things. I'm your husband. You can feel and touch and see me. And she's like, I feel this more than that. And it's like, I don't think you know what see, feel and touch mean then. No, I feel like you're confused.

Well, and again, it's just stupid conflation synonyms, shit that the fucking Christians love to do, right? Because like, she's like, no, I feel that. He's like, when I say feel now, I'm talking about tactile feeling, not emotional feeling, like that's an important distinction to the point that I'm making. But then they act like that, like there is, like there's only one form of feel, like there's only one form of the word faith. Oh, you have faith in your wife and therefore you must believe in God, kind of bullshit. Right. Yeah. Anyway, so then she goes to see Alfie again because she just

doesn't know what to do. And of course, Alfie's advice at this point is, God will do it. So. Don't worry. Jesus is going to fix your marriage. And I wanted it to flash cut to Jesus appearing at the door as Will Smith. Yeah. Right. The new plan from magical black ladies, it's like the Paul Rudd thing from forgetting Sarah Marshall, the surface, just like do less, pop back down. Surfing and drowning pretty much the same. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. But now is time for the chapter on psychology. We're in Lee wonders if all of those 500 witnesses that we definitely know were real and not made up were just all hallucinating the same thing or hypnotized. Well, or this is not the silliest straw man.

We will knock down in this movie, but it's close. What if Jesus was all like Got to disprove that He's a journalist that's just as important as this one. Yeah So now he goes to see Dr. Roberto Waters agnostic. Oh Faye Dunnoway. Faye Dunnoway still looking pretty damn good. Yep. Yeah, she is she is sewn to that. That is the only way she remains upright and did not turn into dust during the scene. I've just sit here.

No, you come down here. No, you're right. Here, there you go. And she, in her professional opinion, does not think mass hallucination is a very likely explanation at all. 500 people could never be wrong. Well, yeah, I mean, her argument is basically like the resurrection is way more likely

than a bunch of people being incorrect or lying or being made up later by a motivated third party. The miracles are way more likely than those verifiably true things that happen. Are they? But then, and the scene is like super quick. things that happen. Mm-hmm. Are they? Yeah. Is it? But then, and the scene is like super quick, she's basically like, no, that would be stupid, but that would be even a bigger miracle than the resurrection. She's like, hmm, that's a good line for the book.

But then before he leaves, she calls him back, she does the Columbo thing. Oh, one more thing. She's the Sherlock psychologist. Yes, yeah, right, right, yeah, exactly. She goes, tell me about your daddy issues. And he's like, what, I mean, wow, that's crazy. I do hate my dad, but why do you ask? And her answer is, you know all atheists hate their dad, right?

All five of them. All five atheists in history. She names the five of them. I forget who the other two were besides three of them. All five, eight, eight, eight, eight, eight, eight. She names the five of them. I forget who the other two were besides three of us. And they all made their part. This was, like, honestly, like most of this movie, I was pretending not to laugh. I go, or something like that.

No, I had so many fake cops in Larry's. I had to fake cop to not laugh at him. That fake cop. This was the one point where I didn't even try. When this came up, when she's like, yeah, well, all atheists hate their dad, that's why they're atheists. I was just like, fuck you. The audience at the audience is like at this point, like, yeah, that was a little much. What does she call it? Daddy wounding dad wounds.

The father wound. Yes, that's it. Yeah, just cut to Darth Vader loop. This podcast is called waking up. Okay. He's going to stay reasonable throughout this by. Oh, yeah, don't worry about all of his guests are great. And always will be.

I'm going to be like, Okay. He's gonna stay reasonable throughout this by, oh yeah, don't worry about all of his guests are great. That's it. And always will be. Yeah. So, the wife is Bible underlining some more. Well, Lee works away in his Jesus office. Just real quick, but I really wanted this to happen at the end of the last scene with F on away just like one last question one best picture

So then the wife is we cut to the wife underlining some more Bible passage just well Lee works away. It is Jesus office Right, but she's now also like casting a spell because also like casting a spell because Alfie told them like hard God will unharden your heart and replace it with one of flesh. So we see her over and over again throughout the rest of the movie being like, please God, maybe you come home. Fly fly a bird far far away. She's like Jenny from fucking forest gum. Also, I love you rights on his on his big Jesus Rico chart board or whatever he writes.

Mass hallucination bigger miracle than resurrection and circles. Really? Really? So the Iliad literally happened and my drug dealer is more powerful than God. That's what we've learned. And just then officer Kobylnsky, the God that got shot, comes by to thank him for helping put Hicks away. But during this conversation, we visibly has a thought and goes back to the Koblinzki files.

And this could not be more clumsily written, just like, hey, just want to thank you for putting away that guy who totally shot me from above, from inside my own pocket. Sorry. What? No, my thanks. Nothing. Nothing. I got to pocket. Sorry. What? No, my thanks. Nothing, nothing. I gotta go. Yeah.

So, Leon Hicks lawyer go off to investigate and it turns out that the cop had a secret ink pen gun in his shirt and shot himself. Is that what they were saying? Well, like that, I guess when they were russing around it went off by accident. This so. The metaphor is getting way out of hand now. So, the Jews killed Jesus with a pen or Jesus killed himself with a pen to by writing the right now.

Right. Yeah. The pen might be right here than the sword got it. Yeah. Paper beeth rock. Katta nine tails is the black guy. Black people fit in. The pen and the sword be black people.

Eli answers that. The pen and the sword before Eli answers that. The pen and the sword people. We don't need an answer for that question necessarily. So Spider-Man's posture is pissed off about him getting the thing because this is, this is where it all comes out that like, oh, wow, you wrote that whole story about how he was definitely a cop should turn out you were wrong. Boy, is that libelist is all fuck.

Yeah. And boy, do we have to print a front page retraction of the story you wrote. And again, I'm just saying, this is a very generous telling of this story. I don't know what happened. I'm not making any claims, but all my editor was a real bitch about me not psychically knowing

about pen guns, and that's why he told me to take a vacation. Yeah, yeah. Go on for a minute. Go on for a minute as all we'll say. Yeah. And then we get Leslie being dunked underwater for Jesus. Yay. But we just can't take it. He has to leave mid-dunk. Baptisms are so creepy, especially with adults, but no, it's even worse because with kids making them feel like they're drowning also very creepy Maybe worse. Yeah, so I reported for Christ now being protected by the power. I was I really wanted an alligator attack right there And then just like sliver when shows I was gonna go to a different lake Stingray attack and he gets killed. Yeah, right. Right. Stingray is like, I'm not even supposed to be here today but I just told I should

Jesus on me to grab a bunch more goannas y'all they really hate it when he does that just us like at a stake restaurant with a Stingray across her musk basket of steak across from us basket of steak. Here's what I want you to do. If you can stand my wife, just leave the tip. That was my stingray noise. Yeah, no, I just made him was he making it rain like a really big tip. Sound like a lot of bills. So, so, but of course, he gets home later, Lee gets home later. and he's all drunk and angry. So he has to have a yelling drunk fight with the wife. It's amazing. He's like, you want me to love Jesus?

I don't love Jesus. The daughter comes in and she's like, Daddy, stop being an atheist. He's like, fuck you, fuck you. I really wanted Lee struggle to walk into his bedroom and just like Jesus lying there smoking a cigarette. Sorry, bra.

She warned you. Next scene they're just arguing about shared custody. And drop her off on top. Saturdays are my time. I need the whole afternoon. Lee struggle dress like Mrs. Doubtfire. So we could have been so much better. So many so many different.

And justice historically accurate. Yeah, yeah. So he breaks stuff and yells at kids like an atheist would. And then of course you have to have the scene where he tries to apologize to his daughter, but she's not having any of that atheist bullshit because he's not Christian enough. Yeah. And he uses the stuffed animal. He's like, Bernie, you're sorry.

And I wanted toy froggy to like talk about the problem of evil. Mama doesn't seem to understand this, but as posed by the ancient Greeks, if God is all powerful, why is there evil? He is either cool or indifferent. So, yeah. So, with his family and arrears as such, he flies to LA to see a medical doctor because he wants to find out if maybe Jesus didn't die on the cross, they just thought he was dead and then they put him in a tomb and then he snuck out and got better because

that's the kind of straw man bullshit they deal with in this film. Yeah, and this guy is science up. He does like 15 unrelated sciencey things within a minute on screen. I wonder if through a lab the whole time he's talking like microscope, titrations, all the people for no reason. Blood gloves, uranium thing. Relax. None of that relates. None of that's a doctor stuff here. What are you doing?

Oh my God. Yeah, this guy takes off of his lab because he has a smaller lab code underneath it. Oh my God. Yeah, no, they could not have more. This is a science man with this character. So, and I love to. This is the third and I think final audible audience gasp that we got where Lee Strobel goes, well, to be fair, the Quran

says that he didn't die up there. The audience is like, well, that's the last proof right there, isn't it? Evil brown people said it. Right. And this character, very casually is like, I'm sorry, I'm not to offend everybody, but the Quran is a monkey book made for monkey to do it to savages. Turns to camera. Oh, I don't select to add you are.

Yes. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, if we look at how many surviving copies there are of it, it's definitely at all really happening. Yeah, we're gonna figure this out by height. Like dodgeball. Yeah, no, there you go. And okay, so then the doctor offers up,

because he's like, well, what if Jesus wasn't dead? And the doctor's like, do you know how a flogging worked back in Anxious Rome? So it goes into all this graphic detail and they start overlaying like pictures in shit. Like old illustrations of how the vlogs were done. As this character is, this has not been a documentary up to this moment. I just want to point that out. But do they start doing a whole Ken Burns thing with fucking ancient Roman manuscripts and shit on crucifixion? Just jazz in the background.

And of course, we also have to get all the details on as fixation after crucifixion where it explains how you have to pull yourself up to breathe and push up on your legs and whatever. Okay. That's a stupid question. I can breathe in my hands up. Yeah. Well, if you're holding your weight by him, it's quite a different thing actually as it

turns out. I can, I'm going to do it right out. I'm gonna do it right now. I'm holding myself up. That would be an honest. If that happened in the movie, if Lee just starts hammering himself up to a cross going, no, I really don't think this is going to kill me or whatever. I wouldn't be a hundred percent surprised. We go to Eli's apartment. He's not there. He was resurrected Yeah, when Eli shows up on next week's show, you'll know Eli is God Also the Dodger character says at the at one point in this conversation This is an actual quote from the fucking movie, which is also a quote from the book the Dodger says and I quote

Jesus's crucifixion is the most attested event in ancient history. What? Just, okay, first of all, can we at least maybe throw a bone to the fact that for a thousand years, the guys who are in charge were only saving the Christian books and shit? Right. You know, we at least throw that a bone at some point. That's like saying we never stutter when we speak because we've edited out all of the times.

We're like, fuck, I messed that up. I'll do a retake. Yeah. Right. Exactly. The scathing Atheist speak perfectly for 285 episodes in a row. Anyway, even know how many episodes they've done. It's amazing. It's amazing.

I wanted so badly for lead at turn to them, you just be like, so if you made a patient who wanted everything described to you by a guy 599 years ago, how would you feel? Like, is that a good way to diagnose? Yeah, right. I just wanted house to walk out and beat the shit out of him with a cane. It was lupus. God fucking damn it. Medical opinion that she's yeah, we all know it's possible to die while nailed to a cross. What the fuck are we talking about?

Exactly. I mean, he goes into this whole thing like, well, according to the Bible, when he was stabbed with the spear, water came out and how could they possibly know that that sometimes happens when asphyxiated people were stab with spears. And it's like, um, because they stabbed asphyxiaid and guys with spears, nobody is arguing that crucifixion itself isn't real. Yeah, my medical opinion, a bullet through your brain is fatal. So it was Lyndon Johnson and the Yeti. So it was Lyndon Johnson and a Yeti. That's locked in. You can use a fake example. People will be confused if you use Lyndon Johnson.

Back into the left people. We're true. That was on the show. LBJ was it. So, and also, I love the doctor, you know, because he says at one point, it seems like the only people I talk to who are convinced are the Christian people. The only people who find this evidence compelling are the Christians. And he's like, well, yeah, because anyone who looked at the evidence objectively would become a Christian, obviously, I was like, oh, yeah, no, I figured. And

then he busts out the big guns. He says, do you, do you trust the AMA to which Lee Strowbles character says the American Medical Association, the most respected medical institution in all the world? Unimpeachable source of the AMA. Exactly. And he says, well, look, the AMA also thinks Jesus was crucified. No, they fucking don't. What the fuck?

They said that the story is consistent with a crucifixion again we know that crucifixions happened and people wrote shit down about them and we also know it wouldn't have mattered if it wasn't consistent what we've already learned that consistency doesn't matter so we stabbed him and cool it came pouring out we caught it in a big jug and then it turned infinitely into jello Lee show what would be like yeah, well if you ever see a cop he probably has a bullet pen in his gun out on the man You don't want to believe But they literally sell this quote as though the AMA has laid down a position on who our Lord and

Savior is and why he died for our sins. And then he gets a call from the wife. His dad has died of a polyester overdose. I'm sorry. Clearly. Don't worry. He'll show up in a Christian movie three years later. I'm sure.

And then the funeral and then the wake and then small funeral might add way better than his just saying. It's like 14 people there, whatever. Yeah, I was a little, little lame. And okay, so and this is where like this whole scene, this whole sequence exists so that like he can be in his dad's office and find the like least robo article that dad always kept in his wallet. And it turns out his dad really did love him.

Could not be more clumsily written. He pulls out like a binder. He's, he's framed everything he's ever written. On the side it says, I love my son, no matter how I behave, dad. Well, yeah, and that's the thing is they have not established anything that the dad did to make Lee such a dick. So there's no way to undo this now. And loving someone secretly, which is the assumption we're supposed to make from this movie, is not, in fact, loving them. No, right? If I'm just, if I, every time I see you, I tap you in the dick with my knuckles and then at home, I frame all of your articles, I am a dick to you.

Nope, that's true. That is true. I just wanted them to cut over to Luke, finding a picture of Leia and Darth Vader's wallet after he died. Fuck, is she my sister? See, this is why I'm an atheist. It's, it's stuff like this. Of course, it's bullshit.

So yeah, then he's driving with the family. They're playing word games with the daughter and the car radio comes up to tell everyone that Hicks got the fuck beat out of him in prison and the and the guards didn't do anything about it because he was a cop shooter. So good. It's like the radio is like, this just it. If anybody knows the main character, tell him he almost got that black paper. Also, one point out, they are playing the game

that the demons were playing in the apocalypse series earlier in these episodes. So just saying, we do influence these Christian movies. Well, clearly, I'm thinking of it. Literally the game they're playing. I was like, well, Christian movie. I got, how do I lamp in this? Yeah, so the radio DJ Oh, Christian movie. It was. I got debit. How do I lamp on this?

Yeah. So the radio DJ says, you know, it was probably because somebody wrote a story about how he was a snitch and a cop shooter. And that guy must feel like a real asshole right now. So then legal is to see Hicks at the hospital. And Hicks says it happens. It's not super happy to see him.

Yeah. He's like, I'm sorry. I couldn't see the truth. And he says, you didn't want to see it., he's like, I'm sorry. I couldn't see the truth. And he says, you didn't want to see it. And he's like, oh, just like Jesus. And I wanted it so badly for the Hicks to be like, actually, I was talking about societal racism and bias in reporting it. Oh, and police saying, no, he's gone. And that is not get better for me. And that, by the way, is the whole goddamn payoff to that entire storyline.

Yeah, because I'd be pissed if I found out that you can go to eternal paradise. It's an atheist. I'm really rooting against eternal paradise being an option. Yeah, that's right. I don't want to see it. Right, right. Exactly. So now it's time for him to go yell at his mentor some more, where he goes back to the atheist

ninja to tell him like, I've tried everything, but I just can't disprove Jesus. And this is where his mentor conveniently tells him that you know atheism takes equal faith to Christianity. Really, I just flipped a coin. I don't know why you didn't just have your wife do that. They're both completely exactly the same in the amount of faith required. Who knows? And that is the crowning argument of this movie.

Well, not believing in God still takes a leap of faith. No, it doesn't. It's the opposite. Actually, it takes incredulity across the board. That's what it is. Anyway, I feel like you don't know what words do, bro. I feel like you don't know what words do, bro. I feel like you don't even understand the concept.

Yeah. For the cheap seats in the back, believing there's an elephant behind you that you can't see does not require the same amount of faith as believing there's not an elephant behind you that you can't see. That's how believing things work. That's what it. Yeah. And if that doesn't convince you, you will die of blood cancer if you don't give $10 an episode at patreon.com. Yeah. Oh, gosh.

Got off. You want to take that risk? Associated with awfully low rates of blood cancer by me just now and evil before that. So now we have to go back to his office so he can bitch at his Christian coworker because Jesus is so damn hard to disprove. And again, he's just such a dick to Kenny the entire moon. Fuck you Kenny. Fuck you.

Tell me if Jesus existed. You know the secrets. And he actually opens this up by going like, oh, you people with your God and all your evidence. Last part's never been honored by human lips. So well done movie. You've found a new combination of words. And the guys response, by the way, is perfect.

He goes, look, man, this is where the chili meets the cheese, which I will say in all emergency situations for the rest of my life. If there's ever a mass shooting, I'm gonna run at the guy being like, this is where the chili meets the cheese. Because that'll confuse him. He'll stop shooting me like, I'm sorry, did you just say, ah! I don't put cheese in my- You mean the multi area that they touch? They kind of mix together, don't they? I don't- That makes pressure.

What's the sound? I don't get, like't get like deep put it on very confused by this is that God in the She's got this on the hot dog. Yes, yeah, speaking of chili and cheese, where does CS Lewis fit in? Yes, Lewis was a famous pedophile. I mean skeptics question. C.S. Lewis was a famous pedophile. I mean skeptics. Yeah. The Christian co-workers hero was C.S. Lewis. And C.S. Lewis said, Pascal's major motherfuckers. No, no, no, he just rams it right home there. And C.S. Lewis one said, the lion's Jesus. He is. But he is. Plus they made those Narnia books into movies. And you know, imagine that stack of DVDs. That's very cool. Right. Come on. That's a very tall stack. If you had the copies that ever sold you reach the moon. Yes. That's a real. That's a that's a post that can send cars are real.

Imagine all the young, young, sweet innocent children who will read my books. Anyway, I turned out to be a parent by maybe. So also at the end of the scene, Kenny, the, I'm just going to cut that out and that's going to be the whole fucking All episode is just gonna be Eli say and that So oh and this is where my spell check killed itself Eli is there any chance that you can remember what you are trying to write in this last before you say it? I want to read for the audience what you actually wrote absolutely change my his finand Change my jive jiz vanand. Yeah, this is

This is a change my mind God change my mind What really yeah, there's not even the like same number of words. No, trust me. I actually didn't understand what you were talking about until I looked at it because I saw he's put special notes under my notes that was like, what the fuck is this? And I and I looked at it and I was like, change my mind. God change my, oh no, those aren't those letters. and I was like, change my mind, God, change my, oh, no, those aren't those letters. But change my blank, change my blank. Pretty obvious. Oh, I think if I change my heart, change my mind, maybe change my heart, change my mind. Yeah, okay. All right. Yeah. Cause Jizz Vanand looks like mind and his

Vanand looks like, I mean, that's what it says on the inside of my wedding. I don't like the super personal on the show, but it change my his fan and change my giz fan and by sales. Never I'm just going to put that as the description of this movie and the in the notes. All right. So now we've been in chocolate

diamond. So now we literally get the rolling up his sleeves to get to work on his Jesus thing once and for all. I wrote in my notes here, okay, Jesus, time for you and me to karate fight once and for all. I guess.

Well, and then this is where we get like the, you know, 15 minutes of flashbacks of lines that were uttered earlier in this movie. So just like, remember, all these good arguments that we put together. And even this movie's own dialogue that you just heard is being presented in a misleading order, you know, and now he's switched to South Pawn. He's doing pushpins lefty. It's going crazy. Just back and forth him in Dawkins typing super hard porn sweat. Yeah. And now Lee believes in Jesus, and I just wrote my notes. I could have been playing Zelda Breath of the Wild, y'all. I mean, it's fucking Sora.

The damn is being threatened by this giant fucking elephant. And I'm here in this God damn theater watching Lee believe in Jesus. Oh, so yeah, so he gives up. He admits defeat and it goes home to get his first fucking nine months or whatever his motivation is here. And he basically sits his wife down and gives her the like, I'm cheating on you talk, but then he switches it to Jesus. He's like, I haven't been completely honest with you.

And she's like, fuck, let's go get tested. Let's go get tested. I'm begging, swap your cheek now tested. Let's go get tested. I'm big and swab your cheek now. It's not a big deal. Just go. And he's like, no, no, no, I changed religions. And she's like, oh, me too. Yeah. Yeah. No, he totally gives it the, I fucked your sister opening and everything, which is pretty wise, though, if you're going to give some bad news, make them think it's fucked their sister first, you know, and then whatever it actually turns out to be, oh, you just have cancer. That's better. But he tells her like, you know, I tried, but I just can't

disprove Christianity. It's true. It's like too true. Like it's had complaints. It's so true. The actual quote, the evidence for your faith was more overwhelming than I could have imagined. Yeah. At which point my theater started to say the word yes and clap very loudly. We did not. I think our theater was asleep by then. They were all fairly chair read, right?

Yeah. We woke them up again at the end when he when he started doing a slow clap. She says, let me show you what I've been working on and it's her underlying Bible, but I wanted it so badly to be a series of Polaroids of her fucking black dudes, just like saying, this is what happens when you are mean to me. But and of course he says at one point he goes like, you know, all the evidence was so great, but even more than the evidence, what really convinced me was the fact that you loved me. Wow, that kills your credibility. He doesn't know why would you put that in the movie?

You just kind of admitted that you didn't make this for logical anyway. Yeah. So she hugs him and he just comes all over himself because it's been so long. And now she, she shows him an indecipherably useless Bible passage. I don't even remember what the passage was, but his reaction is like, okay, I'm trying to be nice about your nonsense. Now, but what the fuck does that mean? Those words don't mean a thing. Do they? And of course, her response here is, she says, he's like, what does it mean? And she says, believe plus receive equals become, as though that now makes more sense. Is that in the Bible?

I don't even know what the God's up there. I'm excited. It sounded dumb in our make, but that totally ended up right. I'm in the beginning and believe and receive. That's big. It's no. Yeah. And he doesn. It rhymes. No. Yeah. And he doesn't know how to Jesus.

He's like, what do I do now? Do I get a face tattoo? Do I? Is there a hat? So do I have to, because why do I have to chop anything off of my dick? Because it's really not, I don't really have a lot to spare there. And I, she says, there's no wrong way to love Jesus. And I was bored at this point and I realized that we could make a t-shirt that says there's no

wrong way to love a Jesus that looks like the recess thing and we would make a million dollars. I was thinking when you first said that I thought you were going to suggest there's no wrong way to leave love Jesus and then just have a picture of various sexual positions on the back that you could try. No Christians buy t-shirts more than you're right. You're right. They do. They buy a lot of T-shirts and nobody sues them for copyright infringement. See, there right?

We're going to, okay, we're going to put it on our, we're going to put a poll on our Facebook page. If you do eyes, don't mind us caching in on this one time. One time we watched 86 movies for you. We just want, just want that sweet, sweet, pure, flex money. Yeah, no shit. They have their own apple app. So I, you're gonna wear this at a straight parade. I'm not. Also, I love to because she's like, he's like, I don't know how to

pray. Can you help me? And she goes, it doesn't really matter how you do it. And I was like, wow, that's not true of anything that's real. Is it? Yeah. Oh, except for this, honey, except for this thing that's real, but everything else, it matters what you do if you want to get results out of it. Yeah. If your connection to the universe requires less thought and practice than a card trick, you're doing it wrong. So, yeah. So he prays like he's asking God to junior prom. Um, and then we get some weepy kisses and the movie should be over.

Now it really should, but it's not we could just say it's over. That's right. Yeah. We don't have to fucking talk about the last. So yeah, so he heads back to work as he has to pitch his Jesus story to his boss. This is where we learn that ultimately Hicks was released. So, you know, all he got was a few months in prison and the fuck beating out of him. It wasn't that bad.

Wasn't that big a deal, okay? Yeah, okay, directly into camera. Okay. And this is also where Lee pitches his boss the Jesus story, but Spider-Man's boss doesn't want that nonsense because who the fuck would print that in a newspaper? The black Jews control the media.

Well, right, right. Yeah, obviously. So he goes home to tell his wife that she won't take the editor won't take a story, and she goes like, what about a book? Like, oh, yeah, you know, that wasn't his thought on this when he put out his fucking re-go chart. He started flying around the country to interview experts, yet and even considered a goddamn book. Oh, well, that would make the thousands and thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of interviews

I've done makes sense. Yeah, book. Yeah, book you say. And this will be my fourth book on Christianity. Yeah, right. Another one of those. Yeah, great idea, hun, that you just made up on the spot there. And finally, finally, we get the fucking typing. And man does this actor suck at typing. I realized at that point, that's why we didn't see more typing in this movie. This guy is literally pecking out eight fucking keys and then hitting the return bar eight keys hitting the return bar. Okay, amazing. In his defense, typewriter's keys are 25 miles apart. You got a, you got an elbow drop them from the ropes, like the fucking undertaker to get a single button push.

And if you make a mistake, you have to wait till one of your kids dies of the rickets and use their skin as white out. No, that is, that is how they worked back then. You did have to, you did have to get up on the, on the top ropes to get the space bar down. Yeah. Um, so yeah. And that's it. I, well, we get a little like a breakfast club closed to tell us that, uh, you know, he sold over 14 million copies of his book and then he became a pastor. How objective wrong, by the way, it became a pastor. Well, yeah, right. And then so forth. Yeah, right, right. Exactly. And it even says, and then he milled 20 more books out of that bullshit. Money. Same fucking thing again and again. Yeah. And also they offer up as evidence.

At the end, he's like, and Christianity was so right that even the six year old daughter was convinced enough to convert after both of her parents did. They really say that. They really say, and the daughter was so impressed by the change in lead that she became a Christian too. She's six. I wish it was so bad it was a Muslim nurse

and she turned Muslim because she got detoked by a Muslim No, oh guy. Well, and then their son the little baby that was born in this got a degree in theology. So he's useless Completely useless. All right, so the evidence is in you guys have seen it. You're the jury. What's the verdict? Islam is right. Ice pick. He was an ice. Jesus stood on an ice cube. And that makes perfect. Because that would explain the pile of water. Yeah. Yeah. It was the Cubans. So now, as I've already said, Heath and I watched a special like pre-opening airing that included a live Q&A that was broadcast to theaters nationwide. And during that broadcast, they were taking questions via Twitter. Heath offered up some questions, but they didn't take them.

So rather than finishing up by hiring a surveyor who can ensure our thumbs are pointed exactly down, I figured we could close up on a few of the tweets that we wish we could have snuck into their Q&A. All right. Uh, at least, Strobel, please ask Kirk Cousins why God hates the redskins. Yeah, snuck coincidence. It was on purpose. All right, how about at least Strobel, if you had become a Christian sooner, do you think

all those Pinto owners would have died? At Pureflix, since this was Strobel's fourth book book about Jesus do you plan on doing prequels a la star war. All right, I actually sent this one out at the case for Christ. What is your second favorite religion after Christianity and why? You really did.

That's why I stayed later by the way after a chunk of the Q&A. No, it's like, all right, what the fuck is I'm leaving. And I was like, I'm just going to stay a little bit more. He's like, all right, weirdo. The fuck you do. That's why I really was hoping they would answer my second favorite religion of the

Jews, the Jews, definitely the Jews. Or maybe they would have said the Mormons. That would have been great. I had one for the writer too at Brian underscore bird. Be honest, you were just hoping people would confuse you with Brad, right? When you went into this as a line of work. Yeah. I know. At everyone involved in this movie, please give Noah back his clothes. You're done using it for costumes. And while that's going to do it for our review of the case for Christ, that's not going to

do it for the episode just yet because we still need to coach your back next week. So Eli, tell us what's on deck. Revenge of the vultures, disc one. I watch revenge of the vukery because that's what you wrote in the notes. I watched the wrong fucking move. No, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Eli is going to be out of town for a week. So that means we're going to be knocking down what is this? Is this the fifth vultures of a horror episode we've done? It should be the fifth filters of horror episode we've done. We're running out. There are so many more.

We are not better. We are not running out. No, it would have hacked with amazing movies. Well, that's true. Yeah, like once we get done with this one, we can just switch to the next and all you would think that YouTube seems to want me to watch. Yeah. And they have the same actors.

Oh, really? Oh, yes. It's all the same. They have the same actors in Nigeria. Two sweet Anon is in every Nigerian movie. Is she? Awesome. I like her. So with that to look forward to, we're going to bring episode 86 to a merciful close. Once again, huge thanks to all the Patreon donors that help make the show go. If you like to cut yourself among the orangish, you can make a per episode

donation to patreon.com slash God awful. And thereby earn early access to an ad free version of every episode. You can also help us out a ton by leaving a five star review on iTunes. And by sharing the show and all your various social media platforms. And if you enjoyed this, show be sure to check out our sibling shows the skating Atheist and the Skeptocrat available on iTunes Stitcher and wherever else podcasts live. If you have questions, comments or cinematic suggestions, you can email God off on movies at gmail.com. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the law offices of P. Andrew Torres, our

theme song was written and performed by Ryan Slot and the evil drafts on Mars. All other music was written and performed by our audio engineer Morgan Clark and was used with permission. Thanks again for giving us a chunk of your life this week for Heathen right in Eli Bosnick. I'm Noah Lucien's Promise and to work hard to earn another chunk next week until then we'll leave you with a breakfast club close. Thousands of Jewish kids. Can you choking to death on gumballs every year? Noah did the math.

And it turns out we're gonna need you all to buy about 800 copies of the new book per hour for a couple of years if we want Dietrives Volume 2 to the moon. And on it. The killing curse is deadly 100% of the time, proving Harry Potter is real. I turned out to be a purd by all maybe I'm a pet of I'm maybe the preceding podcast was a production of puzzle and a thunderstorm LLC copyright 2017 all rights reserved Be a purd by or maybe I'm a pet of I don't maybe The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle on a Thunderstorm LLC Copyright 2017 all rights reserved