For the believers, YOU CAN NOT KNOW where you are going. Most likely there is no afterlife. You should be examining after watching “The Ledge” why you think praying to the ceiling is going to affect your entrance into heaven. You should be asking things more along the lines of “Is there really a heaven?” And, “Out of all the people on Earth who ever lived one minute, why am I so important? And why would such a murderous and inept god be the one to judge me?”

For us atheists, Gavin is not your typical atheist, more like just an unbeliever who knows enough about religion to logically reject it.

Neither Gavin nor Joe represent a religion or non-religion; they’re individuals wrapped up in themselves and the situation they’ve BOTH created. As crazed as Joe is, he certainly doesn’t represent EVERY bible-thumper we’ve met.

Matthew Chapman says: “I actually cut some lines of dialogue from “The Ledge” about the devastation caused by Catholic edicts against condom use in AIDS infested Africa (Note to self: Must put them back in the DVD extras.)”

Would it be possible for Matthew to include in his DVD extras the fact that the Catholic Church provides 25% of HIV/AIDS care in Africa, and that ‘raving liberal’ Dr Edward C Green in his book ‘Broken Promises’ states that the overemphasis on condom use in Africa is having a detrimental effect in combating this disease.

Perhaps Chapman’s DVD extras could also include this report from a recent conference on HIV and AIDs hosted by the Vatican:

Edward C. Green, the former director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at Harvard University, told the conference that there was a growing international consensus that AIDS can be controlled only by changing patterns of sexual behavior. This is not simply a moralistic point of view, but one based on practical effectiveness, he said.

He cited the case of Uganda, where a government emphasis on sexual fidelity and abstinence helped reduce the HIV infection rate from about 14 percent in 1991 to about 4 percent in 2003. But over the past eight years, he said, the focus on sexual responsibility has diminished. Drugs and condoms are now viewed as the solution, and the HIV rate has begun to rise again, he said.

Green said that while faith-based organizations have worked successfully to change high-risk behavior, they sometimes are denied international funding because they won’t support condom distribution.

“Willingness to promote condoms should not be a litmus test for working in AIDS prevention,” he said.

Unless you’ve forgotten your history, many of the USA’s founders were not atheists (they comprised Quakers, Deists, theists, and some actual “Christians”). It is correct, rather, to note that they used their belief in God to inform them of their morality, and this is made evident when they proscribed that the teachings of Jesus had a moral foundation that could be followed, just not as a essential Christian foundation. That is, they removed the religiosity of the argument and made the effect of the argument into law. This is why you have freedom of speech, for no faith was to govern another as happened in several of the colonies (Providence/ Rhode Island and Massachusetts being two big examples).

Note that religious teachings (i.e., Jesus’) tend to prohibit the overbearing of the religious over one another, to live in common with your unbelieving neighbors, to take in the poor and the wealthy as one, etc. This is sorely missed by several highly vocal, and highly influential, evangelical partisans, like Donohue.

It is also true that many people have lost their faith due to homophobia within religious communities, and often lack of rationality in many religious circles. The Catholic League should learn, for once, to stop trying censoring movies which are inconvenient to us Catholics. We should look within our own Church, work hard to correct many of the wrongs it has inflicted, and live more according to the teachings of Our Lord Jesus Christ, especially in the genuine search of the truth. Let this movie be an opportunity for self-introspection and self-correction, and let’s stop demonizing atheists.

For one thing, it’s my understanding that our legal system is based on a combination of English Common Law and Roman Law. As I recall, it was Christians (so-called) who hung witches at Salem and burned them all over Europe. So much for Christian justice and freedom.

Secondly, our democracy is based on the systems of government developed by the Greeks and Romans, and on the English parliamentary system.

So Donohue’s claim of “the Judeo-Christian ethos” accounting for justice and freedom today is just twaddle.

Also I hope there is more to his atheism than “this bad thing happened in my past and I don’t believe in God anymore” that is the same accusation we have to hear from theists all the time “you are just angry” as though we are ruled by emotion and bitter and can’t think.

The only thing that makes me think it might be interesting is the posts you have made about it, I would not have thought twice about seeing it, it looked like another dumb thriller with some preaching added in for good measure. Is it actually more than that?

re: spoiler, i didn’t see anything in your post or the quote that wasn’t already in the preview