Bricks in Motion
We are a friendly filmmaking community devoted to the art of stop-motion animation using LEGO® and similar construction toys. Here, you can share your work, join our community of other brickfilmers, and participate in periodic animation contests!
A place to discuss, share, and create stop motion films.
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Yeah, I mean seriously guys. You can't go anywhere without there having to be a discussion on religion. 
Not sure what you mean by ruining our reputation as brickfilmers because most of us don't even have a reputation to begin with but other than that yeah please stop arguing
I can't believe I started all this nonsense
I'm so sorry 
Yeah... this is heading in a bad direction... Please--- CLOSE THIS THREAD
Reading eberts article sourced by smeagol, now I know that it's not just his reviews that were way off base. But what seems to be contradiction (he's an atheist but calls himself Catholic), is clear to me and I see in complete perspective. Because, I know social justice. I could write much about this topic, but will not because this isn't the place and I don't want it posted here by myself or others. We don't need this thread to explode into an inflamed argment. I love BiM and this community; this is my escape from all these stresses.
I'm only mentioning this at all because it affected me personally. Avoiding details, this movement reared its head in my diocese, and directly within my own parish. Those involved led people astray from Christ's teachings, and drove others away in disgust, and members of the parish had to take action against it. In the end, the pastor even fired the deacon, one of those involved. (He retired after being fired.) We're still dealing with an unpopular local priest who writes columns praising Marxism and other things of a nature that I won't discuss here. But it did a lot of damage to the faithful before we fought back.
I have a policy of Don't Ask, Don't tell with my brickfilms. I don't reveal characters' sexuality, political views, religious outlook, and so on... If someone wanted to make a "fan fiction" sequel to one of my films, they could explore ANYTHING, as the characters, to that point, aren't developed, and could go any direction.
Having been on youtube for nearly 5 years now, I know that if your content doesn't have highly argued subject matter, then it WON'T be such a bulls-eye for trolls, and less likely to be a "battleground" for religious debates in the comments. This isn't 100% true, but if things do pop up, you can delete those comments on your channel.
To be honest, I think this is kind of a shame. I mean, what is a film if it doesn't represent something you feel strongly about? If you don't challenge people, they'll never have any impetus to challenge their beliefs. Obviously I'm not saying every film should make people uncomfortable or have some big overarching moral but I think intentionally being non-confrontational in your own films for the sake of not offending anyone isn't really doing favors in the long run. In the same vein, I disagree with HoldingOurOwn's assertion that social critique has no place in film reviews. Art is about ideas, and the ideas being presented are going to play a role the reviewer's enjoyment of a work. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that in a review- if anything, it's better than giving the film a terrible rating with no explanation.
And seriously guys, if we can have civil discourse about this (maybe a bit optimistic... but miracles happen) I personally don't see any problem with discussing it. This is a site for filmmaking, after all. If we want to understand why we get so many bland, unremarkable brickfilms, this could be a decent place to start. If Smeagol or one of the other moderators decides to close the thread, I won't complain- but I don't intend to close it myself. If it makes people think more about the things they're creating, maybe the site needs a little drama.
You know what, you are right. This website does seen a bit lonely. But it's no place for insulting other people's beliefs, which is what I think we should avoid. If a mod says that this kind of discussion is ok, then that's cool. I was afraid of saying that because I am not a mod, but now that it's been said I will go along with it.
Now I didn't see anything about making nonoffensive films or something but I agree that one should make their art meaningful, be it film, review, music, or anything. I'm just bringing up the example of Reppelling Spider's Valentine's day film, which had a religious theme in it. People seemed fine with that, he was just expressing his beliefs. For a long time I have been contemplating writing a film about atheism. How would people feel about that? I feel that it would offend at least one person here. But I'm not trying to insult others, my film is just denying the existence of any gods rather than making fun of Christians. And Spider's film was not saying anything against atheists, just denying the non-existence of God (confirming the existence of God.) if people can look at debates on religion, and any other heavy topic this way things would go well. Just because someone includes atheism in their film reviews does not mean they are insulting theists. On the contrary; they are expressing their beliefs. I don't think this kind of belief should be taken as offensive by people.
Tl;dr what squash said
EDIT: Maybe we should make a new thread for this discussion though. I feel like I'm being disrespectful to Mr. Ebert. You should put it in this forum instead of the Community forum though so we can all keep discussing politely.
Last edited by topit (April 21, 2013 (10:31am))
For future reference -- requests to "CLOSE THIS THREAD" followed by an attempt to get the last word first aren't likely to be honored. We've had problems with people doing that in the past and it makes it sort of unfair to close the thread. It's my feeling that we shouldn't try to silence with civil discourse about controversial issues, especially when they end up having some kind of relevance to filmmaking like this.
Admittedly, my post was made mostly in frustration about a thread about Ebert becoming a debate about atheism, considering Ebert was fairly careful to avoid self-categorizing. I don't think it's an unimportant issue on its own, but Ebert did a lot for film critique and the internet film culture and it's odd to me that people would jump straight to this when he was fairly careful to dodge making it an issue himself.
I have never said, although readers have freely informed me I am an atheist, an agnostic, or at the very least a secular humanist – which I am.
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