The Antichristian Phenomenon

I never liked Bill Maher; A comedian who laughs about his own jokes is nothing more than irritating. Nevertheless, I found myself watching Religulous over the holidays season to kill some spare time. After having watched it, I still didn’t like Bill Maher, even though he argued for “our” side, that is to say, the nonreligious one. Religulous is categorized as a comedy/documentary film, but instead of keeping the documentary and comedy parts separated, he blends them together in a nasty mix which dissolved the aspects of both. To me, this was neither comedy nor a documentary.

If it was a documentary, it was as much as documentary as like categorized spawns from the beast that is Michael Moore – a one-way road into a dark abbyss. The only different between Maher and Moore in the making of documentaries is that Moore at least tries to approach the subject in a serious manner. Religulous is also proud to call itself religious satire or parody, forgetting the fact that repeating dogma in a redneck accent does not make a good satire or parody. Maher preceeds his actual “documentary” by saying he will approach the matters at hand with an agnostic attitude, even though he titles his work with a portmanteau derived from the words “religion” and “ridiculous”.

In all his interviews except the one with his sister and mother, Maher shows no respect to his interviewees. He does not have the decency to let the person finish and jumps in mid-sentence with some or other bad remark that was probably intended as funny, laughing to himself as he does so. This is not only annoying for the interviewee but also for the viewer of the film. If Maher didn’t manage to intercept with some half-wit’s pun on the spot, the editors of the film have made sure that the interviewee is ridiculed in other ways. Maybe it is funny and I simply don’t get it, but one has to agree that before the interviewee is able to answer a question Maher jumps on top of him or her. The only thing Maher does reasonably well is ask questions that are difficult to answer for those who intellectually rely on no more than faith. Maher does this particularly well on interviewing the U.S. senator Mark Pryor. Personally I thought this was the best of his interviews, but maybe that was because this senator ridiculed himself enough for Maher not having to intercede on his behalf.

As you might have guessed, there are little to no real arguments that Maher puts forward in his film. This is why I think anyone who is engaged in opposing faith or religious doctrine, either as a secularist, an outspoken atheist, a bright, or otherwise, has no need to watch this film. Many people of this actively nontheist calibre have already heard of all the blatantly unrealistic claims, have already researched religious dogma, and have already heard all the arguments for and against that this film puts forward. In one of the first interviews with some truckers in a roadside ministry Maher did not seem to detect one of the truckers used the famous Pascal’s Wager argument. Instead of replying “Well what if you’re wrong?” he could have listed several reasons why such an argument doesn’t have any intellectual merit. Any one of “us” who have debated theists time and time again would have been able to come up with much better ways to counter the theistic arguments, without having to resort to simple ridicule which doesn’t take require too much effort to begin with.

There were a few scenes in the film that I did enjoy. One was the interview with the (former) director of the Vatican Observatory, who had the complete opposite views regarding the age of the earth, the universe and evolution as the former interviewee, the nutcase young earth creationist Ken Ham from the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum. Another funny interview was with father Reginald Foster, the Pope’s principal Latinist. He seemed a very jolly fellow and agreed with Maher on almost everything Maher said was wrong with religion in general and some dogma in particular. Neither Maher or I had expected this and it made for a fun diversion from all the fundamentalist crackpots.

In conclusion I just want to recap my recommendation: if you’ve debated religionists before, if you’ve studied the doctrines, if you’ve studied theological arguments, there is no reason for you to go see this film because you will not hear anything new. It would not have been a waste of time if it was funny, but frankly I didn’t think it was. I’d say you’d best save it for a moment of desperation in which you feel the need to fill your time with hopeless ad-hoc and reductio ad absurdum.

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