Looking at this picture, you may well be nodding to yourself and thinking "that’s the bloke from Supersize Me". Well, you’d be spot-on. He’s Morgan Spurlock, and tucked away on More4, Morgan has a series of documentaries called 30 Days which sees Morgan sending someone to do his work for him. Great work if you can get it.

Anyway, last night I watched Morgan send a nice lady off to live with some devout Christians for 30 Days (hence the name of the series). It was obvious from the off that this was going to be slightly biased against the Christian community. It is easy to see why with the American approach to Christianity but it still irked me as I’d hoped it would be more even handed… but what do you expect from someone who nearly did his heart in living off McDonalds’ burgers for ages?

So anyway, this lady who was an Atheist was sent to live with some Christians and possibly due to editing (maybe not?) the approach from both parties was markedly different. The Atheist (I’m afraid I can’t remember her name) said "Hopefully I’ll make some nice new friends" whilst the religious couple quipped "Hopefully we’ll be able to show her the Christian path and CONVERT THE HEATHEN!!!" I am telling a bit of a fib there, but that’s essentially what they said.

Amazingly, if you’re an Atheist in the US, you are treated with huge disdain. Atheists are society’s most distrusted minority… ahead of Muslims, homosexuals and immigrants. Now obviously, I don’t mean to say that it’s unbelievable that Muslims, Gays and foreigners shouldn’t be trusted, but I’m staggered that Americans would say such a thing. For some reason (and it’s probably this war’s fault) I assumed that Muslims would be down the bottom and the Gay community not far behind (I’m pointing an accusing finger at you Bible belt).

Not being of any denomination myself, I was interested to see what a Christians viewpoint was. The main question was ‘what are your morals based on?’ Of course, to a non believer, the answer is easy. Common sense. Do to others as you would be done by doesn’t really need to be enforced by a God does it? My own views aside, it was interesting to see how the Atheist wanted to learn more about Christianity, whereas the Christian couple wanted to show her the righteous path. As the show progressed, that feeling mellowed as they began to understand that this woman was actually a ‘good’ person and led a decent life without the help of religion. They agreed to disagree, and both had a valuable insight.

However…

One segment of the documentary had the Christian couple meeting a group of, well, militant Atheists. Initially, the conversations were going incredibly well with the couple learning what it is like to be without God in America. It can be tough with people getting spat at and the mark of the cross being symbolically brandished on foreheads and the like. With that news, the Christian couple were rightly appalled. Then, the issue of money arose. The US Dollar says ‘In God We Trust’ on it, and when one man asked the husband from the Christian family if he would object to the motto ‘There Is No God’ emblazoned across a note, he suddenly became very angry and defensive. What the Atheist was saying was, as an Atheist who is tolerant to others beliefs, he is happy for the message to remain on the notes, but are Christians willing to show the same leniency? For this showing, the answer is no as the husband of the couple stated "If you don’t like it, move" When it was reiterated that it was merely a hypothetical question, the response was "move then". Intriguing stuff. [Mof Gimmers]