Television–The Wave Of Self-Righteous Entitlement Seems To Be Receding…

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis

If you’re anything like me, then when some religious reference appears in a TV show or movie, the ears prick up, an eyebrow arches, and a somewhat irreverent smirk curls your lip.

Personally, it drives me a bit batty. I can’t begin to count on my fingers and toes the multiple times when a usually excellent show approaches religion with kid gloves, especially when it braces other topics with a far more critical and skeptical point of view. Far worse in my opinion, are the deliberately religious nonsenses that pollute the airwaves. You know, the shows like Saving Grace (according to that logic, we should all have cigar-chomping good-ole boy angels trying to save our atheist asses), the moronic Medium (it’s imminently watchable, until you find out that Allison Dubois is a complete fraud in reality), idiocies like the Ghost Whisperer (hey, I like pretty underwear models as much as the next guy, but there are limits to what the little head has to say in that, or any, matter), or arbitrary fantasies like Touched By An Angel (more like Touched In The Head). I’ve even seen two episodes of Criminal Minds, a usually fantastic and interesting show, that plays accomdationist with the faitheist meme. In one, we find out Derek had been molested by a priest, and subsequently had ‘lost his faith’, but the ending was predictably apologetic. In another, Reed is being influenced by a religious serial killer, and Jason tells him “don’t listen to him, he’s twisting the word of God!” Just recently I was watching an episode of StarGate: Universe (an SG spin-off that doesn’t suck ass, is pretty good actually), and some crew members on the ship are reciting the lord’s prayer.

However, more skeptics and skepticism is appearing on television shows. On an episode of Bones, the main character Temperance refers to a “zombie Jesus”. She’s a skeptic. On TV’s House,  one episode dealt with the good doctor being so curious about the afterlife, that he temporarily died to find out (His prognosis? “There’s nothing.”)  One of my latest favorites is The Mentalist, where the protagonist is a former psychic who does a 180 and declares “there’s no such thing as psychics!” (I figured out who Red John was by half-way through the 2nd season, but I’m not telling). Psych is a fairly amusing show, as the main character is someone pretending (very convincingly) to be psychic. However, the slacker-super-observer is accepted by the police of Santa Barbara (albeit it’s because he gets results) as a psychic.

So it’s getting…slightly better.

And of course, there’s always the Family Guy, and the show’s ongoing barrage on religion in general.

So hang in there, folks. The message is getting through. It’s an uphill battle, but it’s not looking so Sisyphean anymore.

Till the next post, then.