What do you mean, wish? Some unusual and scary things abroad tonight!

I look at religion and supernatural as stories. Yesterday i watched Alice Sweet Alice. I'm open to all of it. I've been working on (writing) a movie about a pair of haunted mirrors. I have been stuck on some things. I know the religion and superstition. It just feels weird for me trying to sell these ideas. I'm much better writing when religion is not involved. BUT ... As far as watching.... I think if a story is well made, yes please.

Theatre film radio requires SUSPENSION OF BELIEF....to become an audience one lazer focuses eyes/ears even occasional noses to smell what goes on stage....that active being audience is more than believing and less than a cult
....we join the ephemeral....like Roberta Flack KILLING ME SOFTLY WITH HIS SONG ....I LOVE FIELD OF DREAMS base ball reincarnation of Shoeless Joe because my late father played Western League Ball where ReaGUN got his fame announcing innings that never happened on radio....there are no gawds but there is IOWA heaven where dreams come true....where country doctors instantly save the lives of little girls choking on a hotdog.....and Star Trek doctors grow a new kidney with a single pill ... all film even documentaries are part fiction as we want to believe we have learned the whole story just by being entertained as audience

I used to thrive on them as a younger man. Once I became an agnostic/atheist any ideas of things supernatural seemed to vanish. It's almost laughable now. Invisible things without a body do not scratch, cut, or bite you. They do not change temperatures, etc. and are not trying to talk with you or have you make contact. The reason for this should be plain to a great many of us. These things are simply not real.

Sci- Fi and horror used to be the movies for me. Today my non-belief in gods and anything supernatural limits what I can watch and enjoy tremendously. The Warrens hit it off with investigations that ended in a popular movie series about a possessed doll. The movies are to scare you. The real doll involved was a Raggety Ann. Sorry. I do not believe.

No, I don't believe. Fiction is fiction and for entertainment and occasionally for building some sort of a learning curve. I wrote and put out a novel about a ghost returning to an old past broken friendship to request a favor. I have no doubt such things don't occur. The story was more about putting things back together after years of broken.

First I don't wish they were real. I like to think that even things we can't yet understand will eventually be explained. I like a world with predictable and repeatable consequences for actions.

I used to enjoy supernatural horror, but most of the real psychological terror has been replaced by blood and gore which aren't realistic. Another popular horror movie trope is the jump scare. I am not affected by them; so the vast majority of horror is really weak.

I see a some comments saying "believe" and I actually never asked you if you believed TV shows or Movies etc were real. I asked it you wished they were real. I know I'm addressing non-believers and I'm asking why would you watch or read something you may oppose.

For example: I think a lot of people use the superhero genre as a wish fulfilment genre. It's not a belief system, but an outlet for some unfullable desire to do something out of the ordinary.

I'll use myself as an example: I love fantasy, sci-fi, etc. as an escape from reality when I want to relax. I even imagine fanfiction scenarios in my head to fall asleep to. So it's calming after a long day of reality being filled with crap. I don't care about the religious aspects if I'm entertained.

And OMG is Fingered By An Angel BOORING! In fact, my joke name sounds ten times more entertaining than the actual boredom.

The CBS TV series "God friended me" caught my eye because it came right after 20-20.

Having watched a few chapters....I like the concept. The story line goes something like " a computer wizard "tags" an atheist/agnostic vocal podcast producer with folk who, at first, he doesn't see why someone named "god" on the internet/facebook would single this "tag" out as a "friend suggestion". But the podcaster seeks the person out...finds out how he's "connected" to the person....does something to "help" that person, and then the show ends...but not before a new "friend suggestion" pops up at the end of an episode.

After several episodes, we see the podcaster re-connects with his father ( a very good and seasoned actor who plays a minister in a local church) a smart cutie (for the romance/eye-candy aspect/hook), an asian/middle-eastern computer wizard, and eventually the Computer wizard" who's playing "god" and proposing these weird "friend suggestions".

Cute story. Not a bit #religulous but they don't ever "assume" the supernatural elements are either true nor "correct"...but they do point out that they are benevolent (almost beyond belief)

For me I live in reality, movies books and TV that involve fiction like you talk about it's just that it's fiction. still trying to figure out how to get the warp drive to work though. It'll come in handy when I perfect my weirding module. I tried folding space once too but it left a crease.

To be honest, I really don't watch much in the way of TV shows or movies about sci fi, fantasy or supernatural stuff. It usually doesn't interest me. Most of what I watch is about actual mortal people, altho with some imagination thrown in so it is more interesting than real life, as well as biopics or movies based on true stories as well as documentaries. To give you an example of my tastes, I think that Mad Men and The Sorpranos are the two best TV shows I have ever watched. The Shawshank Redemption and Office Space are both two of my favorite films.

I think it's just eintertainment value. In the end, religion is like mythology and it's another way to amuse ourselves. I don't see the difference with ancient mythology. I studied Roman and Greek mythology in elementary school.
I studied Norse mythology after high school and I resumed it now because I think it's just entertaining. On YouTube there is a Swedish guy who tells Norse stories in English and it is just another way to relax.

I find value in fiction. It gives my imagination a boost. But I do not want to become confused between fiction and nonfiction. I insist on knowing which is which. That's the problem with religions; they teach fiction as if it were reality. Then they use their false reality to scare you into giving them money. It's a scam.

I write books like that, and I'm an antitheist atheist. I do wish superpowers and magic were real, which is just for entertainment value and the ability to paint vivid pictures with words. But I write about gods and such religiosity to point out how ridiculous it/they (the concepts thereof) actually are, so that is for entertainment value, education, and my own personal amusement. But, first and foremost, I read and write books like that because they tell good stories that appeal to my sense of modern mythology. I consider them good stories, with relatable characters, and a bit of flash thrown in to add sparkle and keep the reader's interest.

neither. why is that the choice? my reaction is neither of those but a third option: i do NOT wish those most of things were real. i wish they would stop being written into supposedly realistic shows as if they WERE real, as if they were part of my culture (they're not -- tv assumes everyone is specifically christian, too). if it's a fantasy show, that could be different, depending on the assumptions. joan of arcadia was clever and made points that were not sappy religious ones, and the people in the shows, and their problems, were complex and real. touched by an angel (or as i call it, molested by an angel) on the other hand was just crap in every possible way and made assumptions about people's belief systems instead of presenting those elements as part of the fantasy. the angel was fantasy but all the pseudo-religious crap was presented as part of everyday reality and not part of the angel shtick. i ADORE doctor who, and i know there's no tardis, no gallifrey, no doctor, and YES i wish those things were real, but not to the extent that i am going to build a belief system around them lol.

g

I've enjoyed fantasy literature as a genre since my eldest siblings gave me The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings for my birthday as a precocious 7-year-old. I read those books twice a year for the next 7 years along with a bunch of other fantasy (The Dark is Rising, The Wizard of Earthsea, etc.). Around age 14 I became rather deeply involved in fantasy RPG with a couple friends in the neighborhood. More recently I've enjoyed movies and TV shows about magic and superheroes although they are often a bit silly.

My enjoyment of fantasy has been steady my whole life although I went from being a devout Christian to an atheist at age 22. Apart from a few childhood daydreams, the attraction wasn't about having such powers or wishing such things into our universe. Rather, fantasy has simply been an escape into imagination of other worlds.

Your question is probably not addressed to me. I don’t read many works of fiction but when I do, I want them to reflect real life and be believable.

I do like to read about the scientific inquiry into psychic phenomena. I don’t consider psychic phenomena to be supernatural however. The lumping together of every eerie topic under the heading “supernatural” doesn’t seem rational to me. Rather than dismiss potential fields of knowledge as supernatural I would rather maintain an open mind.

I have written a book called “The Staggering Implications of the Mystery of Existence”, available on the Kindle Store. If you like to read woo, this is it.