I would recommend you not read this post if you have yet to see "God On Trial". This movie is essentially a philosophical inquiry so any review of it is almost bound to be a "spoiler" of some sort.
This movie sucks big time. Why? Because its writer was deeply dishonest. The question posed by the movie is the question of evil. If there is human suffering (and who could deny that) then is God responsible? The unthinking assumption in this movie is that "God" refers to the tribal god of the Jews. But this is not the greatest sin of the script writer. The movie (the script) moves back and forth between two ideas: God exists and has our best interests at heart, and God exists but does not seem to care about our welfare. The script pretends to examine this question fairly, considering both sides with equal interest. But here is where the script fails dismally: it assumes one common denominator to both "sides". God. When God's possible culpability in allowing millions of Jews to be eradicated is discussed - the obvious answer (that God does not exist) is not entertained. No, the debate, rather, is about whether God is good or not in light of all this suffering. About whether God's so-called Plan can encompass all this misery in a way that still allows a thinking being to hold simultaneously in their mind the idea that "God is good, blameless, and kind" and the idea that "God is all-powerful but somehow impotent in the face of human free will". The entire movie is basically an argument that it is OK to blame the victims (victims of divine non- intervention) because there might conceivably be a Plan our feeble minds cannot appreciate.
But that is not the problem I have with the movie. Blaming the victims of an all-powerful supernatural being is one argument an intelligent person can make. An opinion to have. I support the notion that people need to be free to air their opinions, no matter how unconsidered or how much I personally disagree with them. After all, I can only disagree with opinions that are allowed to be expressed and to reach my ear.
My real problem with the movie is that the script writer was deliberately dishonest with the audience. The writer had to have been relatively well educated, above averagely educated I would argue, in matters of Judaism and Christianity. Therefore he would have to have known what the Bible clearly says about the ten plagues that ended supposed Jewish enslavement in Egypt. Ignoring the latest scholarship that shows such enslavement never actually happened, the most salient of points about the Moses myth is that GOD "hardened" the heart of Pharaoh and ensured the continued enslavement of the Jewish people throughout the ten plagues, culminating in the slaughter of the first born Egyptians. Most comfortable Christians believe the Pharaoh "hardened" his own heart, that he and his people's young were somehow deserving of punishment, even in the form of the murder of children. Today it is a quite common moral lesson that one should not "harden" one's heart and be therefore uncharitable. Whoever does the "hardening" of heart is to blame, the perpetrator of moral evil. But God "hardened" Pharaoh's heart. God is the perpetrator of moral evil as judged by today's juries. And why did He do this? Merely to show the Jews (not any other human beings) how awesome He was.
And after wandering aimlessly about the desert for decades, they still didn't get it. Even divinely inscribed stone tablets were destroyed because the Jews were not convinced of God's awesomeness. These stories have an obvious point: to show people (Jews and their local enemies in those necessarily parochial times) that God is awesome. Frightening. Powerful. These ideas require, at some point in their relating, someone to suffer and die. In fact, the more, the better. Hence the plagues which culminated in the arbitrary death (supernatural murder, in fact) of children, even those of Jews who for some reason had failed to mark their houses with the blood of sheep. (Did God not know whom to kill?) Hence the requirement that Jews, even after their supposed slavery in Egypt, after witnessing life-giving water being struck from a stone in the killing desert, after the parting of an entire ocean's water for their own sake, apparently still could not believe in God's power, or in God.
These stories are myths and moral tales, and their purpose, by the very "facts" they relate, is obvious to any scholar of religion. But not, it seems, obvious to the script writer of this movie. Or rather, obvious, but then concealed. This script writer relates the entire story of the ten plagues while paying lip service to the popular idea that the Pharaoh "hardened" his heart, and that God did not in fact manufacture the end result. There is no way a script writer so well versed in Western religion would not know that God, in fact, did the "hardening". Power apparently equates somehow (for some people) to a valid argument for divine supremacy and the requirement for unconditional worship. Stupid, I know, today, but quite valid several thousands of years ago.
So, in summary, I think the script writer of this movie was biased toward a "religion positive" position. He deliberately, in the course of his propaganda, avoided relating crucial theological facts that could be seen to harm people's belief in the god of the Western bible. He sold out, in other words, to a specific religion and tried to cover his guilt.
The only good thing to come out of this movie as far as I am concerned is that I was motivated to write this unfavourable review. I do enjoy the irony of that. So, watch it but watch it.
This movie sucks big time. Why? Because its writer was deeply dishonest. The question posed by the movie is the question of evil. If there is human suffering (and who could deny that) then is God responsible? The unthinking assumption in this movie is that "God" refers to the tribal god of the Jews. But this is not the greatest sin of the script writer. The movie (the script) moves back and forth between two ideas: God exists and has our best interests at heart, and God exists but does not seem to care about our welfare. The script pretends to examine this question fairly, considering both sides with equal interest. But here is where the script fails dismally: it assumes one common denominator to both "sides". God. When God's possible culpability in allowing millions of Jews to be eradicated is discussed - the obvious answer (that God does not exist) is not entertained. No, the debate, rather, is about whether God is good or not in light of all this suffering. About whether God's so-called Plan can encompass all this misery in a way that still allows a thinking being to hold simultaneously in their mind the idea that "God is good, blameless, and kind" and the idea that "God is all-powerful but somehow impotent in the face of human free will". The entire movie is basically an argument that it is OK to blame the victims (victims of divine non- intervention) because there might conceivably be a Plan our feeble minds cannot appreciate.
But that is not the problem I have with the movie. Blaming the victims of an all-powerful supernatural being is one argument an intelligent person can make. An opinion to have. I support the notion that people need to be free to air their opinions, no matter how unconsidered or how much I personally disagree with them. After all, I can only disagree with opinions that are allowed to be expressed and to reach my ear.
My real problem with the movie is that the script writer was deliberately dishonest with the audience. The writer had to have been relatively well educated, above averagely educated I would argue, in matters of Judaism and Christianity. Therefore he would have to have known what the Bible clearly says about the ten plagues that ended supposed Jewish enslavement in Egypt. Ignoring the latest scholarship that shows such enslavement never actually happened, the most salient of points about the Moses myth is that GOD "hardened" the heart of Pharaoh and ensured the continued enslavement of the Jewish people throughout the ten plagues, culminating in the slaughter of the first born Egyptians. Most comfortable Christians believe the Pharaoh "hardened" his own heart, that he and his people's young were somehow deserving of punishment, even in the form of the murder of children. Today it is a quite common moral lesson that one should not "harden" one's heart and be therefore uncharitable. Whoever does the "hardening" of heart is to blame, the perpetrator of moral evil. But God "hardened" Pharaoh's heart. God is the perpetrator of moral evil as judged by today's juries. And why did He do this? Merely to show the Jews (not any other human beings) how awesome He was.
And after wandering aimlessly about the desert for decades, they still didn't get it. Even divinely inscribed stone tablets were destroyed because the Jews were not convinced of God's awesomeness. These stories have an obvious point: to show people (Jews and their local enemies in those necessarily parochial times) that God is awesome. Frightening. Powerful. These ideas require, at some point in their relating, someone to suffer and die. In fact, the more, the better. Hence the plagues which culminated in the arbitrary death (supernatural murder, in fact) of children, even those of Jews who for some reason had failed to mark their houses with the blood of sheep. (Did God not know whom to kill?) Hence the requirement that Jews, even after their supposed slavery in Egypt, after witnessing life-giving water being struck from a stone in the killing desert, after the parting of an entire ocean's water for their own sake, apparently still could not believe in God's power, or in God.
These stories are myths and moral tales, and their purpose, by the very "facts" they relate, is obvious to any scholar of religion. But not, it seems, obvious to the script writer of this movie. Or rather, obvious, but then concealed. This script writer relates the entire story of the ten plagues while paying lip service to the popular idea that the Pharaoh "hardened" his heart, and that God did not in fact manufacture the end result. There is no way a script writer so well versed in Western religion would not know that God, in fact, did the "hardening". Power apparently equates somehow (for some people) to a valid argument for divine supremacy and the requirement for unconditional worship. Stupid, I know, today, but quite valid several thousands of years ago.
So, in summary, I think the script writer of this movie was biased toward a "religion positive" position. He deliberately, in the course of his propaganda, avoided relating crucial theological facts that could be seen to harm people's belief in the god of the Western bible. He sold out, in other words, to a specific religion and tried to cover his guilt.
The only good thing to come out of this movie as far as I am concerned is that I was motivated to write this unfavourable review. I do enjoy the irony of that. So, watch it but watch it.