The Invention of Lying

I watched the movie The Invention of Lying.  A world without lying, ceteris paribus, is also a world without skepticism.  So our protagonist has little difficulty inventing his world’s first religion.  The propaganda point is postmodernist:  humans need religion, not for the veracity of its truth claims, but to give us comfort in the face of death.  But the writers faced squarely the full implications of God’s sovereignty in a way that I can’t recall any other general audience film doing.  Not that I agree with all the conclusions, but it does ask the right questions.

The Man in the Sky

Oh yeah, the film also dares the audience to have sympathy for men at the margins of the sexual marketplace, and it does it without conjuring fantasy female figures that like short, pudgy, balding middle-aged guys.  Yes, Ricky Gervais does win Jennifer Garner in the end, but only after he becomes rich and invents the world’s first religion!  I mean, really, why all the feminist vitriol?