The afterlife and sex education addressed on TV series

Interesting to see two frequently discussed subjects in atheist blogs popping up on two consecutive TV shows this evening.

On House, a patient deliberately electrocuted himself at the hospital in order to have a near-death experience. He'd had his first one after almost dying in a car accident a week before, and he said it was "the best 97 seconds of my life." He wanted to experience it again. Later in the show, after House is chastised by Wilson for arguing with another patient about what happens after you die (House is an atheist), House deliberately electrocutes HIMself, in order to find out if the near death experience is all it's cracked up to be.

It wasn't.

Next, on Boston Legal, a 15-year-old girl sues her school board because she got AIDS after unprotected sex. And the sex was unprotected because her school teaches only abstinence as an acceptable form of birth control, therefore, neither she nor her boyfriend had a condom on them on the fateful night. Allan Shore gives a brilliant and impassioned closing argument which I wish had happened in a real courtroom and gotten a LOT of press.

It's great to see these storylines on popular TV shows. You can't argue with a TV show...it's not a conversation. You just have to absorb whey they say and if you don't dismiss it outright you may spend a little time thinking about the message. Hopefully a lot of people will think about the messages in these two shows tonight.