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Permalink Reply by Kent Ellington on April 4, 2011 at 5:56pm

Police officers hate CSI for the some of the same reasons you hate House. It gives unrealistic expectations for victims in similar situations in real life. For the rest of us, ignorance is bliss.

I understand people being afraid of "coming out." Especially where you're from. The damn Texas board of education wants to pretend that Thomas Jefferson didn't exist because he was openly critical of Christianity. Similarly, the state I live in has a creation museum that's going to build a life-sized replica of Noah's Ark filled with baby dinosaurs.

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Permalink Reply by Kent Ellington on April 4, 2011 at 5:23pm

I had totally forgot that Dane Cook joke. You know when comedians tell a black joke or jew joke these days, they at least make some effort to show that they are being facetious. Dane Cook seems genuinely advocate every one of these stereotypes.

And what if the joke were about an arrogant Hindu or Buddhist person getting reincarnated into a an alligator and then Dane Cook said we should make him into a pair of boots and a leather bound bible cover? People would be a little more angry then.

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Permalink Reply by Kent Ellington on April 4, 2011 at 6:57pm

yep. and if you call them out on bigotry, then you're being "whiny" and "over-sensitive."

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Permalink Reply by Kent Ellington on April 4, 2011 at 9:05pm

He jovially describes the violent destruction of a tree that represents a human being. That gets him past the controversy of a joke of actually murdering a person. It's a little fucked up. Joking about asians being bad drivers is one thing. Joking about killing them in their next life is a little bit worse.

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Permalink Reply by Brian George on April 4, 2011 at 6:38pm

I don't think there are to many instances of openly atheist characters on TV, but when they do make an appearance, they're usually portrayed as being "lost" or disillusioned with religion. What irritates me is that they very rarely delve into the character to reveal anything else, such as someone who has used reasoning or the study of religion to come to their own conclusions. As someone else said, they are normally portrayed as being angry at god, and just going through a stage of religious rebellion. You can guarantee if there's any religious vs non-religious happenings going on, that by the end there will be some kind of "sign" and the atheist will conveniently fold and return to the flock with that asinine "I should never have doubted" look about them.

 

I'd love to see a true atheist character on TV, instead of a sociopathic Dr. House. Wouldn't you like to see an episode where some religious bible thumper spouts off about how great it will be when jeebus returns, only to be reminded that jeebus himself says in the bible that he should have already been back about 2000 years ago? It'll probably never happen, but it would be nice to an atheist character that stands up for what he has learned for himself.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Black on April 5, 2011 at 12:17am

I didn’t know that there were any generally accepted atheist stereo types.  From the few episodes of House that I have seen, I really like the character of Dr. House.  I could think of a lot worse representatives of my worldview.

I’m afraid that this thread is just looking for an excuse to be a victim.  If you think of your self as a victim that is all you will ever be.  Look where this thinking has gotten some of the other minorities.

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Permalink Reply by qıƃ ɟ ǝıɔɐɹʇ on April 7, 2011 at 3:02am

So, is the way one would point this out something along these lines:

 

"Mister/Ms special kind of believer who thinks that all but your special kind of believers are immoral, is there anything in particular that you do or don't do that others do not?"

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Permalink Reply by paul babcock on April 7, 2011 at 2:24pm

Imo we generally are portrait as bright. House is outright brilliant tho admittedly a brilliant self obsessed asshole. I may be incorrectly premature in labeling Gorren an atheist simply because he is so Sherlock Holmes rational and smart. But he is another atheist Hollywood character admirable precisely because he is so bright.

I find our portrail in Hollywood to be the least of our concernce.

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Permalink Reply by Jonel Burge on April 7, 2011 at 3:44pm

I think there is some stereotypes, but a lot of it grows out of the whole idea that we're just "angry at god", when no, we're not, we're angry at the people who follow god.

I will say I object to the title--fat people are still stereotyped as gluttonous bodies with no heads, and the one show that ever treated them like real people was canceled after 10 episodes---no one likes seeing fat people as real people. So no, not just atheists. Lots of people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictitious_atheists_and_agnostics Here's the list that Wikipedia has, some are, of course, Perry Cox and House, but others, like the Scientist from Contact and Dexter are you know, good people who just happen to be athiest, and are not angry at god in the least--they also tend to be extremely intelligent, which is another thing I've noticed--you never find a completely idiotic atheist.

I dunno, I'll compare it to the stereotype of the "young male gamer" atheist, the guy who doesn't believe in god and frequents 4chan and lives in his mom's basement, and is gonna be a virgin for a long, long time--stereotypes do have a grain of truth behind them, but I think the way atheists are portrayed is due to their lack of frequence in various other media--how many fictional muslims are on tv? How many fictional fat people? Not many, definitely not many.

And most fictional "fat" people are like Faye of Questionable Content--who's a little curvy, with like 10 extra pounds on her--OVERWEIGHT. No one is my size, except for the kids on Huge---I swear it's the one place where there's actually been people like me -allowed- near a camera. Also, Will--I so want to say that she's atheist--or at least agnostic. We also have an adorable jewish dude in the show. But Will questions why someone would go to church while at camp, and while everyone else is inside praying for thighs that don't touch, she's outside, with Ian, the jew. <3

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