Episode 1 was not about God at all

filmbridges

Watched Episode 1 on 4/3/16 of "The Story of God" with Morgan Freeman. Didn't know what to expect except that I thought it would cover beliefs about the divine from earliest times. This first episode had nothing to do with God. It was about humans and their beliefs about the afterlife which, although most people who believe in an afterlife also believe in at least one divinity, has no necessary connection to gods or belief in a god.

Regarding afterlife itself, the relatively minute numbers of accounts of people who have technically died and came back to life, reporting certain experiences, is no proof at all of the following claims made by guests: 1. that everyone who has died or who will die had or will have this apparent sort of experience of afterlife wherein people receive them into the Heaven-like "place" 2. that the experiences are of people and a "place" that are real beyond human life in this world and are not simply subjective experiences that humans have, and 3. that belief in the afterlife began in ancient Egypt. This claim is certainly false. We have discovered many graves tens of thousands of years old that contain artifacts useful to the deceased in the next life.

So, for this episode at least, the title was totally misleading. Plus, it contained enough mistakes and was shallow enough that I'm totally uninspired to watch any more of it.

score 3/10

filmbridges 5 April 2016

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3446301/