If the first two humans to walk to earth – Adam and Eve – created two boys, Cain and Abel, how/where did the rest of human life as we know it come from?
That’s the question that prompted my religion teacher (yes, I went to a catholic school) to kick me out of class, sending me straight to the dean’s office in 11th grade. I know, it was just a question, right? Apparently it was more along the lines of blasphemy.
Bill Maher employs this very same strategy in his new documentary Religulous, which gets him kicked off the front lawn of a Mormon temple in Salt Lake City.
The movie questions everything about religion, including talking snakes, homosexuals, the Sabbath, evolution, bogus prophets, violence and various “holy” locations around the world.
“I’m just asking questions,” Maher explains in his first forum scene with members of the Truckers Chapel in North Carolina. One actually walked out based on the fact that he didn’t want any part in Maher’s movie if its basis is “messing with my God.”
That’s the issue here: religious zealots, fundamentalists and your average, everyday churchgoer will flip out on you for questioning their faith and are completely content in believing in something that can’t be understood or even proved.
I once heard someone say that asking questions is a sign of strength, and not asking them is a sign of weakness. I guess that applies to everything except religion.
Religulous is only showing at select locations – The Esquire Theatre and AMC Newport on the Levee 20 in the greater Cincinnati area – for obvious reasons. Religion is an extremely sensitive subject for those who believe in it.
Maher believes that “religion is detrimental to the progress of humanity,” and is a “neurological disorder.” Well said.
Religulous examines how truly silly the idea of religion is, no matter which one you believe in – constantly prompting the question of why someone would believe in anything without evidence.
Last time I checked, you can’t convict someone of murder based on the fact that someone wrote it down in a book of short stories as evidence.
While Maher interviews Jeremiah Cummings, the “Ambassador for Christ” in the Worldwide International Campaign for Christ, Cummings says, “Turn to God and see what happens.” The screen fills with a clip of a suicide bombing. The irony is sometimes too much to handle.
Maher visits Democratic Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor, an evangelical Christian, to ask him how he can believe in nonsense like the 10 commandments and the notion that humans walked alongside dinosaurs. Pryor tries to emphasize the “literacy” of the Bible, while Maher explains that his intelligence won’t allow him to accept that. Pryor replies with, “You don’t need to pass an IQ test to be in the U.S. Senate.”
A few seconds after realizing what he just said, the look on Pryor’s face is priceless and
Maher doesn’t need to say anything more.
Maher also visits The Holy Land Experience, an interactive biblical museum in Orlando, Fla., where he meets Jesus, an actor in the museums’ shows, who explains that the holy trinity (father, son and the holy spirit) is like water (ice, steam and liquid). Clearly impressed, Maher explains that the story of Jesus Christ and the ridiculous idea of a virgin Mary is not exclusive to just the Bible, citing the similarities of stories like Krishna of India, Mithra of Persia, Horus/Osiris of Egypt and a few others.
“Well what if you’re wrong Bill?” Jesus asked, to which Maher replied, “What if you’re wrong?”
|Another priceless facial expression and Jesus is at a loss for words.
Religulous gets particularly interesting when Maher delves into the Salman Rushdie situation – he wrote the novel The Satanic Verses and received death threats from the Iranian government and the entire Muslim community, causing widespread violence – in London in 1989.
Maher brings this up to illustrate the point that with religion, almost inevitably comes violence. He believes that religion is responsible for the world’s violence, flashing clips of demonstrations with gun-toting religious fanatics and suicide bombings. Then, he brings it back to the point that it’s ridiculous to call a death threat on someone for writing a book.
To back up his point, Maher asks several members of the Muslim community to explain why, if the word Islam translates to “peace,” the general view of the Islam is associated with violence. The answer every one of them gave: politics.
Religion within politics is what gets Maher really going: “It worries me that people are running my country who believe in a talking snake.” Not only that, but claims that America is a Christian country by politicians and Sen. John McCain saying that our founding fathers clearly had Christianity in mind is just ludicrous, says Maher.
Freedom of religion was what the founding fathers said, and Maher’s use ofThomas Jefferson’s “Christianity is the most perverse system that ever shone on man” quote has bloggers up in arms about the quote being taken out of context. Either way you look at it, separation of church and state was made for a reason, and I think that was Maher’s main point.
Religulous will certainly not please anyone of faith, or anyone who already hates Bill Maher. But for the rest of us (16 percent of the population not associated with a religion, according to a poll cited by Maher) who see the irrationality of “making a virtue out of not thinking” should get a kick out of it.
The News Record > Sections > Entertainment
Religion is Religulous
Bill Maher questions religions, believers, makes enemies along the way
Published: Sunday, October 12, 2008
Updated: Sunday, October 12, 2008
 "Photo: Photo courtesy of MCT Campus")
Photo courtesy of MCT Campus
16 comments
Will Knot
Haven't seen the movie yet but I wonder if Maher only supports his bias. Did he give equal air time to those who can accurately and intelligently explain the message Christ actually delivered? Because every church in the country devotes every other sermon to the virtues of agnostic skepticism? If they did, you would be right for asking this of Maher.
Rick
Haven't seen the movie yet but I wonder if Maher only supports his bias. Did he give equal air time to those who can accurately and intelligently explain the message Christ actually delivered?
Bill W.
Maher is a sack.
FAITH19
THE MOVIE IS A FAILURE!! WHEN YOU MOCK GOD HE WILL MAKE YOU PAY/ HE IS REAL AND HE IS ALIVERELIGULOUS BOMBS AWAYNOW PAY YOUR CAST!!
Raven
The thing that people seem to be missing about Religulous is that Maher's intention wasn't to convert believers to atheism, but to exhort non-religious people to find their voice and not feel excluded from what is supposed to be a free and equal society. His critique of religion is unsophisticated, but if you're criticizing the film based on that, you're missing the point.
