Madison group offers $40,000 for funny atheist sitcom

[rug]

By Doug Erickson
Wisconsin State Journal
Posted: 04/29/2015 12:01:00 AM CDT

Ever watched a sitcom and thought, "I could do that?"

The Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation and The Center for Inquiry are looking for writers to create a television comedy that reflects a positive view of atheism. The competition is called the "No God But Funny Contest."

The contest will award $15,000 to those crafting the winning sitcom script and $25,000 to producers of the winning webisode.

In a press release, James Underdown, executive director of the Center for Inquiry Los Angeles, is quoted as saying that "of the few atheist characters on TV, virtually all are unlikeable. You know TV would be in big trouble if any other group were so unfavorably portrayed. We happen to know lots of godless folks who are great fun to be around. So we are challenging writers to develop funny, fun and well-adjusted atheist characters."

http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_28013571/madison-group-offers-40-000-funny-atheist-sitcom

http://nogodbutfunny.com/

There's already been a show about nothing.

[cbayer]

1. I like it. Anything that can make atheism an accepted normal way of

being works for me, and I think this approach has been instrumental in other fights against prejudice.

Look forward to seeing the winner.

[immoderate]

2. How many atheists does it take to change a light bulb?

ONE!

--imm

[cbayer]

3. How many agnostics does it take to change a light bulb?

We can't possibly know.

[rug]

4. None. That would be proselytizing.

[nil desperandum]

6. Atheists Proselytizing

[cbayer]

7. ….

[nil desperandum]

8. Existentialism

[cbayer]

9. Vegetarians

[nil desperandum]

10. Evening Prayers

[cbayer]

11. Ok, you win. I can't go any lower than that.

[nil desperandum]

12. Superhero

No need to concede...apologies all around.

[nil desperandum]

5. Actually

the answer is two, one to actually do the work and another to record the event so fundamentalists won't claim it was done by god...

[rug]

17. You left out the one to post about it on the internet

and the fourth to note there were no light bulbs among Bronze Age goat herders.

[MisterP]

13. a CSICOP sitcom? what would the plot points be?

Chandler tries to get Bell's theorem taken out of the local high school's textbooks because it's woo; THEN he goes into the school library and finds history books written *after 1919* and all hell breaks loose
Ross eats nothing but GMO foods for a month, and washes it down with a glass of DDT (episode unaired)
Monica tries to have a statue of Semmelweis put in the town square to commemorate the system always working
Phoebe's shut down all the local tarot readers and helped Pastor Jack burn their witchy paraphernalia: now she's going after the muffler shops because the u-joint was invented by some astrologer
Rachel goes to a special-ed class to speak on how the students should be gathered together in a suitable place and have it demonstrated for them what their procreation would mean for the human race
dozens of Joey's experiments keep giving the wrong results! should he just say his hypothesis is confirmed, or start having anyone who reveals it blackballed!

also, they want a *funny* sitcom?

[cbayer]

14. That's some good stuff.

I think you could do some setups where non-believers find themselves in awkward situations where it is assumed they are believers.

Ricky Gervais could be genus in a comic role.

But what I would most like to see is "normalization". I would like to see the anti-atheist prejudice displayed and then destroyed by an atheist who is lovable, funny, intelligent, respectable and someone you would love to have over for dinner. In other words, someone just like most people.

Ellen Degeneris did this particularly well.

[Fumesucker]

15. Happens to me constantly, even by people who "know" I'm not a believer

I've damn near posted about it several times in the last few days but I get the post half written and change my mind because I can't decide just what I want to say about it. Another one of those minor irritations of being a tesseract shaped plug trying to fit in a society where all the holes appear to be ellipsoidal.

[cbayer]

16. Hey, let's cast you!

I think you would be great. You could write your own scenes, but you have to remember that this is a comedy.

I'm one of the plugs that don't fit either, fume sucker. I pretty much stopped trying to fit about 10 years ago.

[Fumesucker]

19. I look a bit like Bernie Sanders after a three day drunken binge, could that be made funny?

I could do the crusty, decrepit old codger who is trying hard to hide a heart of gold. Not Wilford Brimley, more like say Walter Brennan.



Get off my lawn yer little varmints!

[cbayer]

20. Yes! Walter Brennan is exactly what I'm thinking.

Lovable but reluctant to be loved.

[rug]

18. All you need now are new lyrics.

" . . . . no one's there for us . . . ."

[Humanist_Activist]

21. A couple of things, first off, I don't think this is completely necessary...

and second, atheism should NOT be the focus of a sitcom, some atheists characters in a sitcom, sure, but not as a focus.

We already have had unbelieving characters on TV before, in fact, most sitcoms either don't mention religion, give it scant notice, or are dismissive of it. Festivus for the rest of us comes to mind. Another thing that comes to mind is The Big Bang Theory, whenever Sheldon's hyper fundamentalist mother comes around, laughs are had at either her attitude, or the situations she puts the obviously secular, if not atheistic characters of the show, in.

ON EDIT: I feel that, if we were to have a sitcom or any creative media product whose focus is atheism, it will go over as well as much of Christian media, it will be horrendously bad, with poor plots, poor writing and poor acting. Maybe it could be done more lightheartedly, but I can see it easily fall into "God's not dead" levels of badness.

Perhaps movies like "Saved" should be used as a template, that movie was funny.