Hi HandBanana, welcome to the forum!

I remember that. I had written a long response to the blog post, and it got swallowed by the internet after I forgot to copy the text. I was so disappointed I ended up just subscribing instead of re-writing it.

For those wondering, here's the context:

My post after watching Pandorum: http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/18466

Old discussion on it at A/N: http://www.atheistnexus.org/forum/topics/pandorum-2009-directed-by?groupUrl=atheistcinema

Overall I was disappointed. I've since had my suspicions confirmed that Dennis Quaid has a penchant for appearing in pro-religious anti-athiest themed movies (not the whole movie, just as a minor theme). E.g. Soul Surfer, he plays the dad of the surfer daughter, and the movie is surprisingly religious (the real girl's family is very religious, so that's no crime).

I don't see how your thesis and my thesis are mutually exclusive. It may have been making allusions to Inferno, and it may have been sub-consciously anti-atheist at the same time. Considering the idea of Hell, a place of torture for 'sinners' and non-believers, the idea is not really that hard to imagine. It would be hard for a story paralleling Inferno to not be anti-atheist.

My position is not that the film-makers specifically went out to make a specifically anti-atheist movie. I doubt that happens very much (although I know for a fact it has happened more than once -- ahem, Ben Stein). My position is simply that the brain-dead 'Hollywood Atheist' portrayal by Quaid, the silly faux-science of the 'evolution' in the story, and the whole idea that the 'bad guy' 'thinks he's god' (because hey, if you don't believe in our god, you must obviously believe that you yourself are god! <sigh> ), is straight out of the extremely common anti-atheist playbook. The film-makers probably don't even realize it, just like anti-gay sentiment would have been invisible to film-makers in the 1950s. That's the point I'm concerned with. It's a tired cliche that needs to be challenged.