New Story Idea

In another thread, we were discussing ways to improve a script by giving more depth and humanity to the characters.

A Hollywood couple like Brad Pitt and Jolie are making their first movie together in ten years. They're laughing at the characters.

It's a movie about domestic abuse, a subject that is very important to them. They have set up a charity to help women suffering from abusive husbands, to give them counseling as well as a place to stay, free legal advice, etc.

When she goes back to her trailer, she keeps thinking about a scene they filmed several days before, where he was abusive to her. She accuses him of having an affair with a costar to embarrass her in front of her friends. At first, the husband thinks she's improvising, trying to stay in character. But then he realizes there's a problem.

They fly to a clinic where her implant is checked.

Two years earlier, she was diagnosed with a progressive disease giving her seizures and had a chip implanted without telling the public. Now, when she's concentrating so hard on getting into character for her new movie role, the doctor thinks her implant is blurring the line between reality and character.

They abandon the movie. She checks into the clinic... but she keeps flashing back to scenes from the movie. Her husband stays nearby, keeps trying to assure her that he isn't sleeping with the nurses, that his previous wife and girl friends haven't accused him of anything...

Instead of having an old movie in the chip, have them making the movie when her problems start... and if they remove the chip, she will have seizures and possible brain damage.

She finds a gun and shoots him, to protect herself.

The court orders the chip removed and the seizures start again, and this time, she also has to live with the guilt of killing her husband.

The doctors reprogram the chip and want to put it back in her brain, to stop the seizures.

Jim,

I'm not going to let you derail the creativity process with your insults.

You said you would answer my question if I posted a suggestion for improving Robbie's script. I did more than that.

But it's a process that needs time to work.

Jim,

I know you don't recognize the signs of Bullying.

But you are a Bully.

You constantly demonstrate behavior that would be classified as bullying.

So, I'm going to make it the Theme.

How do you stop a bully?

Jim said, that thread in which you said all those horrible things to that poor guy from the middle east about his religion

You're talking about a guy in Egypt?

Or some other place in the Middle East?

by the way, you do know I'm an atheist, don't you? Saying a religion is false is no big deal for me. Maybe it sounds horrible to you, but I don't think there is a God.

IN "The Futurist" by Rebecca Meegan, James Cameron says: "I've sworn off agnosticism, which I now call cowardly atheism. I've come to the position that in the complete absence of any supporting data whatsover for the persistence of the individual in some spiritual form, it is necessary to operate under the provisional conclusion that there is no afterlife and then be ready to amend that if I find out otherwise."

If I believe that God does not exist...

Yes, that gives me the right to tell anyone that a religion based on a revelation from God is false.

Atheism is a legitimate force in today's world.

William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is one of the world's wealthiest people Gates was interviewed November 1995 on PBS by David Frost.

Gates: The specific elements of Christianity are not something I'm a huge believer in. There's a lot of merit in the moral aspects of religion. I think it can have a very very positive impact.

Frost: I sometimes say to people, do you believe there is a god, or do you know there is a god? And, you'd say you don't know?

Gates: In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don't know if there's a god or not, but I think religious principles are quite valid.

In a September 28, 1997 special to the Washington Post, writer Sharon Waxman profiles Clooney in a piece titled 'George Clooney, Uncowled'. "I don't believe in Heaven and Hell," he says. "I don't know if I believe in God. All I know is that as an individual, I won't allow this life -- the only thing I know to exist -- to be wasted."

James Cameron, Bill Gates and George Clooney... I'm in excellent company. What's your problem with us?

If Joe Schmo tells me he has a book that was delivered via a revelation from God...

I have no problem saying he's wrong.

Because I'm an atheist, with a belief that God does not exist.

If you want to believe something else, I give you that right.

I don't understand what your problem is. Why is this an issue with you? Atheists have a right to post their beliefs.

@Jim,

He wrote:
"If you want to believe something else, I give you that right."

HE gives us that right? Him personally? I was wondering where my rights came from. Egotistical douchbags, apparently. :-)

@Andrew
---"Atheism is a legitimate force in today's world."

So are bacteria and there are far more of those than atheists and theists together. Why don't we ask them about God and religion?

As an European I am saddened by American theocracy and their new religious craze called atheism.

Tony A said, As an European I am saddened by American theocracy and their new religious craze

Thank you, Tony.

As an European, what form of sensible religion do you claim is better than atheism?

Atheism is the belief that God does not exist. In other words, thirteen billion years ago, when the Big Bang happened, it was an explosion without a thinking force behind it.

Ever hear of Special Creation? The idea that humans were created in their present form, without being the product of millions of years of evolution? Atheism, the belief that God does not exist, is based on the evidence of our history here on earth, not the religious nonsense of Special Creation.

Believe me, Tony, when I assue you that Atheism is not the product of American theocracy.

Jim Rust said, So why should I believe an athiests definition of God
if he doesnt even believe in it?

Because an unbiased look at the evidence shows that God does not exist.

That seems like a good enough reason.

Are you telling me, that firm belief in a big explosion is more plausible than a firm belief in grey-bearded guy in the sky?

Citing science is just as relevant as citing Quran or Bible or any religious text. Religion and Science both sprout from the same basic need to understand our existence.

Unbiased look at the evidence shows that we can neither prove or disprove existence of God, not absence.

Your firm belief in atheism is a religion in itself. you just renamed your God into Science.

Please, understand that your society is making you distinguish and laugh at some else's belief. In it's benign form it's shitting over people who haven't reached your enlightenment, but in more severe form that translates to WAR. And all wars on our planet are religious. And you are waging one weather you want it or not, because you are a product of your society.

Crap, I can't believe I have something so big in common with Andrew.

Okay, here goes. The big case for atheism not being a religion is that is definitively linked to scientific discovery, and - perhaps more importantly - the need for proof. It's very simply: "I'll believe what can be proven."

The other big misunderstanding - and in some cases a bare-faced lie by Creationists who have studied at a scientific level - is the misuse of the word "theory" when making the case against certain scientifically-sound facts. In science, a "theory" is when someone asks a question, and scientists take all the evidence to come to best possible explanation. Other scientists then test the crap out of that explanation and try to poke holes in it. When no holes can be poked in it - as is the case with the big bang and evolution - it officially becomes a "theory". The only reason they do not become an outright "law" (like gravity, having been merely a theory until relatively recently) is because they cannot be replicated in a lab, and observed in real time.

In other words, the terminology in science is slightly different to those we use in everyday life. So evolution is not a theory the way "I have a theory that Obama is going to take our guns" or "I have a theory Mitt Romney will make poor people into slaves"; those are feelings, hunches based on hyperbole not facts. Scientific theory it's looking at your two year old covered in chocolate next to a plate where a chocolate bar used to be, and concluding that she ate it. You can't prove it definitively without cutting her open but it's the best possible explanation, and I'd be very, very surprised if anyone can prove otherwise.

However, if evidence DID emerge that evolution or the big bang or, for that matter, gravity was proven (with facts) to be a crock, science and, indeed, atheists would happily go with it. Because they start with the question - where do we come from? - and seek answers, seek truth; religion starts with the answer - God made us - and seeks to find proof of that, and twist anything contrary to that answer into confusion and untruth.

Of course, for those who find religion to be a personal thing, those who feel they have a personal relationship with God, who believe God has spoken to them, I say good luck. I have no actual problem with religion or the majority religious people; I just have a problem with those who seek to lie about science in order to promote their religion ahead of facts.

From my personal perspective some years ago I weighed up the following ideas and asked which was more plausible, and which has the most questions.

A big bang, in which everything exploded out from a teeny-tiny singularity, an event which sent light, gravity, and mass expanding constantly, and thus creating linear "time" as we know it. An effect that can still be seen today, and yet still scientists have many, many questions to answer.

or

An entity that has always existed and will always exist and who wills matter into being, an entity that demands worship and gets really stroppy when you don't, and yet is unwilling to provide one scrap of evidence that it/he/she actually exists. And - despite the universe and humanity "clearly" needing a creator, somehow this Alpha & Omega entity doesn't need a creator.

It's clear to me which way to go.

Tony A said, Are you telling me that belief in a big explosion is more plausible than a grey-bearded guy in the sky?

Of course it is.

The current scientific theory is multiple universes.

Imagine you have an atomic bomb. About ten pounds of plutonium is converted into energy. Ten pounds.

Now, how much matter is there in the earth's core? In all the planets? In the entire universe?

Imagine the energy that must have been present in the Big Bang, before there was any matter, when it was all in the form of energy.

Imagine that other universes were filled with energy, and when two of them collided, it resulted in energy forcing itself into a new universe.

A grey-bearded guy is a child's view. Because everything in their universe comes from two parents who love them.

Science isn't a god. Atheism is a rejection of the idea of a god.

---"I have no actual problem with religion or the majority religious people; I just have a problem with those who seek to lie about science in order to promote their religion ahead of facts."

My thought exactly.

The word theory is generally misused. It should go this way:
idea -> notion -> hypothesis -> proposition.
And you need several proven and lab tested propositions to create a theory.
Which can be refuted.

But fundamentally, there would be absolutely no science if we did not believe, that we can describe our world with rigorous observation.

To me the clear way is to go all available ways and explore humanity as well as observe the world around us. I only have about 100 years to do that and I'm not discarding 10 million years of human development where a clear notion of God was formed in so many different cultures.

Tony said, Please, understand that your society is making you distinguish and laugh at some else's belief... in more severe form that translates to WAR. And all wars on our planet are religious. And you are waging one weather you want it or not, because you are a product of your society.

whether you want it or not, not weather you want it

But I'm okay with that.

Most atheists don't understand the war.

Religion has declared war on atheists. We didn't start it. We simply assumed that science would eventually prove religion is false and that would be that.

I know there's a war. I've seen it. And I know who is going to win.

Atheism is going to win.

Tony said, not discarding 10 million years of human development where a clear notion of God was formed in so many different cultures.

We're trying to get rid of slavery. We're trying to get rid of bullying. Humans try to make progress. There are always folks who cling to the old ways, who don't want to give up their slaves, or their right to ask for donations on TV.

A belief in God is found in many cultures because we all start out as babies, and we see our parents as deities that are beyond understanding. Then, twenty years later, we realize that we don't heed "god" to explain anything.