Flat Earth Atheist / Live-Action TV

• American Gods (2017): Laura doesn't give up her atheism even after seeing several gods, insisting they're not really divine but just created by humans (which is sort of the case). God singular, meanwhile, is not seen (but multiple forms of Jesus are) and it's he she most insists isn't a real being.
• Babylon 5 Zig-zags on this topic:
  • Garibaldi doesn't believe in souls, but the Soul Hunters routinely trap them. Dr. Franklin suggests that it may be possible to encode a personality matrix and create a clone of a human mind, though, and the Soul Hunters themselves do not believe in an afterlife because although they can sense the soul passing at the moment of death they can't sense it after that, hence their obsession with gathering up souls that would otherwise be lost.
  • Garibaldi's friend Lyta Alexander tells him that when a telepath is scanning the mind of a person who dies, he or she can see the person's soul going through a portal to the beyond, although she acknowledges that it may just be the only way the brain can interpret what is happening. The Minbari broke off the war with the Earth Alliance because they found "undeniable proof" of Minbari souls being reincarnated in humans, namely Sinclair and other pilots they captured. Apparently they have technology that can scan and identify souls. Except it's later revealed that it may not have detected souls so much as Sinclair/Valen's DNA. But that wouldn't explain the other pilots.
• Both Cavil and Adama present themselves as atheists in Battlestar Galactica, long after it seems that either souls, gods, or super-human / super-Cylon beings almost have to exist. Eventually, after revelations and character development, the trope applies to neither man: Adama's point of view shifts from "The gods don't exist" to "Screw you! Where were you when we needed you?" Cavil is revealed to be a Cylon who hates his creators.
• On Bones Dr. Temperance Brennan repeatedly denies the existence of God. She is repeatedly undermined by episodes that implicitly support the existence of supernatural forces, including ghosts, "faith" as a supernatural concept, and God himself. To remain skeptical at that point is not scientific, but she persists. Not to mention that the series has crossed over with Sleepy Hollow, where the supernatural unquestionably exists (although the canon status of this is somewhat muddled by a prior episode referencing Sleepy Hollow as a TV show). In the crossover, Brennan accepts the flimsy explanation that Ichabod Crane has somehow genetically inherited his ancestor's handwriting, even though that's patently nonsense, instead of coming to the realization that it's the same Ichabod.
• Eddie and Richie from Bottom are both atheists. Even when God saves them from death and they're both standing on his hand, they still refuse to believe...
• On Doctor Who, The Doctor often appears to be one of these. Generally it's more a case of No Such Thing as Space Jesus. Ghosts? Silly human superstition caused by psychic echoes in the morphic field. And that's even before you get to all the sufficiently advanced aliens (like himself). But occasionally he does run into something he can't explain, as in Battlefield or "The Satan Pit", and it generally only takes him a couple weeks to go back to disbelieving.
  • In the Expanded Universe, the Doctor discovers beyond a shadow of a doubt, multiple times, that the universe is only scientific in the first place because, in effect, his ancestors (and maybe himself) cast a magic spell to trick it into working that way. It's up to each author whether this makes his beliefs right or wrong.
  • While most examples of "ghosts" in the Whoniverse are past events being replayed, the ending shot of the Sarah Jane Adventures serial The Eternity Trap indicates there are real ghosts.
• The Flash (2014): Gods, angels, demons, the afterlife, and even magic have all been confirmed to exist in the Arrowverse, but Harrison Nash Wells scoffs at the idea of gods, insisting that anything that appears to be one is simply a metahuman or Sufficiently Advanced Alien posing as one. This drives him on an obsessive quest to rid the multiverse of one such "false god", Mar Novu aka The Monitor, which inadvertently leads to the release of the Anti-Monitor, kicking off the Crisis on Infinite Earths and resulting in Nash becoming the Arrowverse's version of Pariah.^* Ironically enough, he was technically correct about Mar Novu, who was originally an unpowered Human Alien before a time-travel experiment went horribly wrong, making him a false god by Nash's definition.
• The Good Place: Simone initially maintains that she's suffering from a hallucination as her brain dies upon dying and entering the afterlife, claiming everyone else to be a figment of her imagination. Michael relates that some people sent to the Bad Place would also claim this, although they got over it as the torments started. Simone gradually admits it's real over time after this.
• Hand of God: Pernell dips into this when angrily declaring that God doesn't exist after losing faith, despite having far better evidence of the contrary than most (repeated visions of things which later came true).
• An episode of the Hercules: The Legendary Journeys spinoff series Young Hercules featured a teenage, atheist Pythagoras who refuses to believe in the Greek gods. This puts him and everyone around him in extreme danger of said gods striking them down, until Hercules, and a run-in with Strife, manages to convince him that the gods are real after all. Or at least, he quickly adds, there are beings that seem to be gods...
• Jack in Lost is set up early on as the "man of science" who refuses to believe anything weird is going on with the island for far, far longer than any reasonable person. The worst of it is when he flatly denies seeing the island disappear right in front of him.
• In the fourth season of Lucifer, formerly devout Catholic Ella loses her faith following a friend's death and how unfair it is. She even rants about how "there is no God"...to a man who just happens to be the Devil himself, his cop partner who knows he's the Devil, his brother who's an angel, another friend who's a demon as well, a shrink who's carrying the angel's baby and, oh yes, has her "imaginary friend" from childhood is the Angel of Death. This is, however, justified with Ella, as she was one of the only main characters (and now is the only one, as of the end of season 5) who doesn't know anything about this. If anything, other characters have deliberately withheld this information from her and/or lied to her face about it. There's a Sure, Let's Go with That Running Gag with Ella, but her rationalization of Lucifer's stories and behavior as LA's weird subculture is honestly the more plausible explanation for anyone in her position. Especially given some of the cases solved during the show's run.
• Miracle Workers: Prudence comically disbelieves that anything miraculous is going on when clear divine wrath starts raining down over her and Zeke having an affair (i.e. a lightning bolt from the clear blue sky, a kid possessed by Satan, etc.).
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which is set one year after the existence of Kaiju was exposed to the world when they wrecked three major U.S. cities in Godzilla (2014): In the premiere, Cate is traveling by taxi to her Disappeared Dad's apartment in Tokyo, quietly observing all the little changes to everyday life that have occurred, like anti-Godzilla rocket launchers being set up in urban areas all around Tokyo and designated evacuation routes in the event of a Titan attack. The taxi driver then breaks out saying that all of it, down to the cities' destruction, is all a hoax and says he has a podcast on it. Cate, who is a first-hand survivor of Godzilla and the MUTOs' destruction of San Francisco, is not impressed.
• Ben Song on Quantum Leap (2022) confesses to Addison that he's not a man of faith, and isn't suitable for performing an exorcism. Ian later tells Addison that Sam Beckett believed God was in charge of leaping. That said, Sam himself had run-ins with ghosts, angels, psychics, aliens, Satan, and eventually God Himself; however, it's never mentioned how much of this the original Project Quantum Leap documented (if any of it).
• The Shannara Chronicles: Prince Arion doesn't believe in magic or demons and thinks the problems the Elves are facing are the work of Gnome assassins and that Allanon is a charlatan, despite the good evidence otherwise. He finally accepts they're real when the evidence becomes just too strong.
• Inverted in Stargate SG-1. Many worshipers of the Goa'uld and Ori see SG-1 as this. When the heroes try to explain that the "gods" they worship are in fact Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, a frequent response is "what's the difference?" This is particularly true with the Ori, given that they are ageless beings without physical form who gain power from being worshiped. Or at least they were, before the heroes killed them.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine also offers many classic examples, specifically in regard to the Bajoran Religion.
  • Despite the existence of bonafide holy relics in the form of the Orbs of the Prophets and the sworn statements of several high-ranking Starfleet officers, the Federation still treats the Bajoran religion as little more than fairy tales. Prophecies and visions of the future are almost always dismissed as hallucinations and wild speculation, despite the well-known fact that the incredibly powerful beings known as "the Prophets" exist in a state outside of time and are perfectly capable of giving visions and inspiring prophecies. A few officers at least come around to the idea that the "wormhole aliens" are definitely powerful beings that have a relationship with Bajor, but worshipping them is exclusively the province of Bajorans themselves.
  • DS9 actually spends a lot of time playing with this trope, with both the Prophets and the Founders worshipped as Gods by some groups while others view them as simply non-humanoid aliens with advanced knowledge. The question the show never quite spells out is "what makes a god?" The Founders, despite their legitimate claim to Physical Godhood, are portrayed as just arrogant genetic engineers (albeit engineers capable of uplifting or even creating entire sentient species). The Prophets, on the other hand, are left more ambiguous in the veracity of their divinity (ultimately a matter of faith): it's granted that they are essentially omniscient, but the matter of their intentions (benevolent or ambivalent) and their power over the physical (or spiritual) world can be unclear.
  • Lampshaded in the episode "Tears of the Prophets":
    Weyoun: All this talk of gods strikes me as nothing more than superstitious nonsense!
    Damar: You believe that the Founders are gods, don't you?
    Weyoun: That's different.
    Damar: In what way?
    Weyoun: The Founders are gods.
  • The show also gets a lot of dramatic mileage out of Sisko being the Messiah of a religion he doesn't believe in. He comes around to the role eventually.
  • Of course various Star Trek crews have met many instances of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens. Since some have claimed divinity and others haven't, it makes sense for Starfleet officers to doubt it, even with concrete evidence.
  • In particular, the Q Continuum are literally omnipotent, but they normally don't claim to be gods. The Q who usually interacts with Starfleet characters once claimed to be God in Star Trek: The Next Generation, but only to troll Picard. He later admits to having lied in that case, though he also claims to be personally acquainted with the Judeo-Christian God and never renounced that particular claim. And Captain Picard averts this trope. Though he never comes off as religious, his rejection of Q's claims to godhood never involve claims that God doesn't exist. He simply rejects the idea that Q could be God, because despite being omnipotent, Q is ultimately just an immature trickster. Picard might well have believed him if he claimed to be Loki, Coyote or Puck. Picard seemed open to some kind of creator existing, but justifiably felt it would have to be a far more wise being than Q.
    Picard: I refuse to believe that the afterlife is run by you. The universe is not so badly designed.
  • And then there's the Klingons, who sidestep the issue by believing their ancestors killed the gods that created them.
    Worf: Our gods are dead. Ancient Klingon warriors slew them millennia ago. They were more trouble than they were worth.
• In The Suite Life on Deck episode, "The Ghost and Mr. Martin", Cody scoffs at the idea that there's a ghost on the ship despite the fact that in the previous series, he and Zack had encountered a woman's ghost at the Tipton hotel. Lampshaded by Zack when he points this out to which Cody dismisses that experience as them being "hormone-crazed 12-year-old boys seeing women popping out of a lot of places".
• The show Supernatural is much like The X-Files in how it features Flat Earth Atheism. Dean is the primary example. While he very easily believes in the supernatural (hence the name of the show) and Hell, he simply flat-out refuses to believe in things like angels, Heaven and God. "Gods" are simply very powerful monsters, but you can still "gank" them. Dean is forced to face his lack of belief after he returns from Hell when faced with the angel Castiel. Cas becomes a regular on the show, as does their "prophet" Chuck Shurley who is later revealed to actually be God. Even the demons (re: Lucifer, who is actually a Fallen Angel) end up stressing the fact that God exists—He might not be around, but He does exist.
  • Dean's an interesting case in that it's not the angels and God part he struggles with - it's the fact that benevolent powerful, omniscient beings can exist while doing nothing about the suffering and death going on. He accepts them more readily when it becomes apparent that "Angels are dicks with wings" and God Is Flawed. Dean's worldview hasn't fundamentally changed and in fact, he's actually proven right.
• In The Swarm (2023), Prof. Lehmann utterly refuses to believe that there could be something intelligent behind all the phenomena that have been affecting the ocean and driving sea creatures berserk, despite all the evidence.
• Torchwood's Jack Harkness is a possible example. The finale of the first series opens with him scoffing while another character reads from The Bible. By the end of the episode, he's fought a monster named Abaddon. Whether or not a lot of the characters are supernatural, though, is ambiguous. Justified in that at this point Jack has died and come back to life several hundred times and does not consider the resulting experiences consistent with the existence of God. He's also been consistently searching for proof of something after death, but all he's gotten from people who've been there is, "None, I got nuthin'." However, Owen says maybe they're not meant to remember.
• Klaus of The Umbrella Academy calls himself an atheist, and he's somewhat justified in doing so: none of the ghosts he summons ever mention Heaven, so why should he believe in it? He keeps up this belief even when talking to God Herself in Heaven after being temporarily killed at a rave however.
• In a non-fantasy version of this trope, United States of Tara features Bryce Crane, one of Tara's multiple personalities who doesn't believe in DID.
• The X-Files:
  • Scully was like this early on sometimes, due to her default skepticism, and Mulder often called her out on the fact. However, she did get better slowly.
  • Doggett. Doggett simply proclaims things impossible and refuses to discuss it further, in spite of all evidence.
  • It was eventually revealed that the reason Scully and Doggett are such hardcore skeptics is that they're afraid of accepting the existence of the paranormal due to their own personal reasons.
  • Mulder qualifies on notable occasions. He is more than happy to believe in Yetis, Psychics, Vampires, and Little Green Men, but any hint of God in the equation and he suddenly becomes more skeptical than Scully at her most ardent. Which makes quite a bit of sense if you consider that he does not need an omnipotent god to explain anything strange until such a being is necessarily part of the occurrence. Scully herself, a Catholic, reverses roles with him on any occasion when the phenomena is religious (nearly always Christian) in nature, immediately shedding any skepticism. It gets very bad in the eleventh season when Scully denies ghosts and the Devil exist- both were shown to be quite real in earlier seasons.

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