The 2014 film “God’s Not Dead” attempts to close the debate on the existence of God in 113 minutes of poorly acted and atrociously written film garbage. However, the movie provides no actual intelligent debate, instead opting to use common stereotypes of atheist and straw man arguments to rally young fundamentalists into singing Christian rock songs.

By misrepresenting secular arguments, providing a completely illogical setting and capitalizing on the false claims of Christian persecution in the United States, “God’s Not Dead” is an insult to the most important intellectual debate of all time. Even more sickening, a sequel is on its way.

The movie itself follows protagonist Josh Wheaton (Shane Harper) as he takes on his atheistic philosophy professor: the cross burning, child devouring Professor Jeffrey Radisson (Kevin Sorbo).

Along with a multitude of pointless subplots and odd cameos by Christian celebrities such as Willie Robertson of “Duck Dynasty,” “God’s Not Dead” strays away from common cinematic themes such as character development and a sentient plotline.

Instead, the movie chooses to portray atheists as some evil, dismissive authorities and Christians like Wheaton as a sort of knight in shining armor attempting to fight against the beast of secular society.

The only non-Christian characters are portrayed as both violent and abusive, as is the case with a Muslim father, or ignorant, as is the case with a Chinese foreign student.

The main plotline of the film begins with Radisson adamantly requiring students of his introductory philosophy class to write “God is Dead” on a piece of paper as a supposed attempt to move on to more important questions. Our faithful hero refuses to do so and challenges the very unphilosophical philosophy professor to a debate.

Radisson, who apparently has no essence of a syllabus in his strange, backwards class, allows 20 minutes at the end of every class to a bastardized dialogue on the topic.

It’s obvious that the makers of this film have never had a rational discussion with an atheist, nor have they ever taken a philosophy class. If they had, they would realize that the idea of a philosophy professor requiring a consensus of his or her students on such an important topic is moronic.

Since the basic principle of philosophy is to seek wisdom, and the only way to do so is through intelligent debate and asking questions, no honest expert in philosophy would attempt to put such an important idea off the table.

While the movie’s portrayal of philosophy is misguided and almost entirely falsified, its portrayal of atheists is downright insulting. Every character who denies the existence of a god in the film is represented as an intolerable, misguided, liberal jerk. From the mustache-twirling professor to the soulless businessmen, the movie relies solely on its false representation of atheists to perpetuate any kind of argument.

The film conflates atheism with subject matter it has nothing to do with, such as the educational elitism and Misotheism — the hatred of God. By making the “antagonists” of the film as unlikable as possible, the filmmakers showed that their arguments are completely useless without some emotional appeal to their Christian audience.

The few arguments that “God’s Not Dead” actually presents are either logically flawed or do not address the fact that the burden of proof falls on the person making the affirmative claim. What this means is that, logically, one cannot disprove anything. It instead falls on the shoulders of the person trying to make the claim of existence — or of reality, etc. — to do so either beyond a reasonable doubt or at least beyond the logical capacities of any other claim.

One of the most laughable arguments the movie tries to portray as the be-all and end-all of the discussion happens during the second debate of the film.

After Radisson quotes Steven Hawkins in the first debate, Wheaton presents a quote by the infamous physicist that simply states, “Philosophy is dead.”This is supposed to be an attempt to discredit the foundation of the atheistic professor’s argument: philosophy — or at least the bastardized version that this movie portrays. However, this seems to be an argument of authority, which if presented to a real atheist would fall flat on its face.

The idea of listening, without the ability to disagree, to a person’s claims based solely on who they are, and not their contributions to a certain area — Hawkins, while a brilliant physicist, is by no means a philosophy expert — seems to be an exclusively religious practice. Wheaton’s attempt to discredit Radisson’s original comments by finding a quote by the same individual in which the professor may disagree is not an argument. It is a straw man.

During the third and final debate of the movie, the filmmakers attempt to climax the film in one last insensible yelling match between the two main characters. In a final attempt to end the debate once and for all, our young hero screams out to the professor, “Why do you hate God?” A question to which Radisson replies, “Because he took everything from me!” And, as if striking the final blow, Wheaton replies, “How can you hate something that doesn’t exist?” A dramatic pause ensues, and the evil professor is finally bested.

Except, as I described before, atheism is not the hatred of God. That by definition is misotheism. Atheism is simply the disbelief in any sort of deity. The movie essentially makes no real claims against the idea that there is not enough evidence to support the claims made by Christianity.

Instead of actually providing audiences with a sensible dialogue on the most important question faced by humanity, the filmmakers bastardized philosophy, misrepresented atheism and created a web of illogical word vomit to coax Christian filmgoers into seeing their poor excuse for a film. Now, the medial success of their first disaster, these filmmakers are attempting to dilute the conversation yet again with “Gods Not Dead 2,” a film anyone with any sense of intellectual honesty should avoid.