I wonder what Amenabar will say when he’s confronted with the real history of his subject.

Alejandro Amenabar

The more I read about this film, the stronger my Agora-phobia becomes. It’s just so PC to paint Christians as history’s villains. Imagine what would happen if people started rewriting history and portraying , say, homosexuals… or environmentalists… or African Americans… as responsible for crimes and atrocities that were not really their responsibility. The mainstream media would make quite an event of it, tarring and feathering whoever dared to distort historical accounts to indulge a particular prejudice. But if someone writes historical fiction that looks credible, and casts Christians as the maniacal villains in place of the folks really responsible, mainstream audiences nod solemnly as if this is, and has always been, the way events play out.

The ever-resourceful du Garbandier has pointed to the most thorough take-down of Agora‘s spectacular misrepresentations of its subject that I’ve yet seen.

And this article’s by an atheist who writes:

…as usual, bigots and anti-theistic zealots will ignore the evidence, the sources and rational analysis and believe Hollywood’s appeal to their prejudices. It makes you wonder who the real enemies of reason actually are.

[UPDATE: My favorite film critic, Steven Greydanus, has posted his own commentary, and it’s well worth reading.]

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