Religulous

[Homo Aestheticus]

I am a longtime fan of Bill Maher, going all the way back to his weekly show Politically Incorrect  on ABC, but I've always enjoyed him best when he does solo commentary on current events as a periodic guest on the cable news shows.

I haven't gotten around yet to  Religulous, his documentary-satire of organized religion maybe because I found the trailer of it somewhat disappointing. It did get mostly positive reviews from the main press though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdkyLrDpaUg

Have you seen it ? Is it as shallow as most of my acquaintances say it is ?  

[karlhenning]

Holiday weekend must be approaching:

[david johnson]

i am not a fan of maher and he is disappointing regardless of whatever he's is involved in.
crap on his performances.

dj

[DavidRoss]

Have you seen it?  Is it as shallow as most of my acquaintances say it is ? 

Yes.  What else would you expect from Maher, an extraordinarily self-impressed mediocrity who mistakes his thimbleful of knowledge for wisdom and his bigoted assumptions for insights?

Here are my comments when I reviewed the film elsewhere:

Encouraged by reports of belly laughs provoked by this movie, I watched it yesterday, expecting to be amused. Instead, I was shocked.

Maher has never impressed me favorably. He's a smart-ass who knows just enough to be almost criminally stupid, and who is too damned arrogant to even suspect that he's not really very bright. (Perhaps the funniest segment in the movie was his summary statement at the end, where he has the audacity to lecture others on the virtues of humility.)  Maher's self-impressed preening reminded me of ex-Coach Benjamin Wade, the notoriously hypocritical mental case and pompous ass from the Survivor TV show.

Maher's movie doesn't really reveal much of anything about religion, but it sure reveals an awful lot about the psyche of Bill Maher. This poor schlub was raised as a Catholic but left the Church at 14. His ideas about religion in general and Christianity in particular have not developed since that time.  Maher is still railing against a pathetically impoverished caricature of religion formed in early adolescence before he had developed the capacity for abstract and analytical thought...a sad but all too common condition among those who share Maher's combined traits of arrogance, grandiosity, and modest intellectual ability.

The film basically consists of Maher taking potshots at various caricatures of religion.  He imagines that by ridiculing TV evangelists and hucksters he's somehow discrediting religion and/or faith in God.  But the movie is a shamefully cheap polemic full of Maher's painfully obvious and willful bigotry.  If only he were a bit brighter and less arrogant, he would have realized that it discredits his pretensions to intellectual integrity far more than it discredits religious faith.

One of the first scenes is very telling in this regard.  Maher visits a trucker's chapel at a truck stop in Raleigh, NC, where the faithful treat him kindly and pray for him in spite of all his efforts to piss them off by ridiculing them.  After leaving the chapel, he confides to the camera that it would be great if Christians were really like those truckers, trying to be Christ-like in their behavior, but--he claims--the "fact" is that Christianity is really about priests abusing little boys and abortion clinic bombings and wars in the name of Christ and so on.  Good grief!  Is the man really that stupid that even in editing he could not see how revealing that is of his own small-minded bigotry!?  The real fact, of course, is that the astronomically overwhelming majority of Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and others lead decent, admirable lives given direction and meaning by their religious faith.  Perverted priests and abortion clinic bombers are infinitesimally rare as a percentage of the whole.  The latter are deviants from the faith, not examples of it--a fact obvious to anyone with even a shred of the intellectual integrity that Maher clearly lacks.

Perhaps the most telling segment in the film is his interview with Father Coyne, the Vatican astronomer.  With hardly an exception, Coyne is the only reasonably intelligent and well-educated believer Maher's film depicts. It is the shortest interview in the movie, lasting just long enough for Father Coyne to laugh at the kind of literal interpretations of the bible that ignorant believers (and Maher) insist on. Coyne describes the Fundamentalist approach to scripture as "a kind of plague."  Instead of following that up to hear the views of a thoughtful and well-educated man of faith, Maher ends the interview there.  He either edits out or passes up the opportunity for an intelligent discussion about religious faith so that he can gad about seeking more rubes he can poke fun at to make himself (and his audience?) feel superior.

Is it shallow?  Well, that depends on your perspective.  Given your history on this site, Eric, I expect you would regard it as a scathingly profound critique of religion.  Others less blinded by prejudice will recognize it as shallower than film stock--when it comes to exploring religious faith--but surprisingly deep as an unexpectedly revealing testament to the nature of Bill Maher and other bigots like him.

[Dr. Dread]

Yeah, he's a bit too cocky for me.

[DavidW]

I've seen it, and I enjoyed it but it is one sided.  He cuts off people before they can finish a thought, a sentence, or a rebuttal.  But that doesn't make the show completely without merit.  For instance I found interesting how similar Jesus' story is to other mythological figures of the past that predate Jesus.

[Bulldog]

As it happens, this movie arrived from NetFlix a couple of days ago.  I'm not going to treat it like some serious discussion about religion; I just hope to laugh some during the film.

Maher's a funny guy; I can't think of any reason to take his statements as anything else but humor. 

[DavidW]

As it happens, this movie arrived from NetFlix a couple of days ago.  I'm not going to treat it like some serious discussion about religion; I just hope to laugh some during the film.

Maher's a funny guy; I can't think of any reason to take his statements as anything else but humor. 

Yeah exactly, it's just comedy!  It's like those Republicans (actually probably the same people) that are offended by John Stewart.  It's like "uh he's a comedian, you realize that right?"

[Brian]

As it happens, this movie arrived from NetFlix a couple of days ago.  I'm not going to treat it like some serious discussion about religion; I just hope to laugh some during the film.

Maher's a funny guy; I can't think of any reason to take his statements as anything else but humor.  

He is funny, but sometimes his arrogance stomps on his funny. I thought the funniest guys in the movie were the two Catholic priests he interviewed in the Vatican.

[SonicMan46]

As it happens, this movie arrived from NetFlix a couple of days ago.  I'm not going to treat it like some serious discussion about religion; I just hope to laugh some during the film.

Maher's a funny guy; I can't think of any reason to take his statements as anything else but humor. 

Yes, I've seen the film and did 'laugh' at many scenes, and guess that I'm in agreement w/ Don on this movie - this is worth a watch, and I'm not sure that one's attitude toward Maher (positive or negative) should obscure some of the points that he may be making?  But hey, this is about 'religion' - a topic that I tend to avoid on this forum (for whatever reasons -  ) - 

[Josquin des Prez]

I like his stance on feminism. He is way too liberal for my tastes and i tend to avoid his show but on this particular issue he took a wild swing towards my world view. Then again, common sense is just common sense. Love this debate in particular:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw9Q6GTEPYw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C-IyOpESeE

God, Micheal Moore is the biggest mangina on the universe. What an imbecile. Let's not even talk about Sandra Bernhard, who's as ugly on the inside as she is on the outside. Fuuuuuuuuuuuu

This is my favored though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3YDknWSM7M

Alan Keyes just slaughters everybody in the room without the slightest effort and even Maher is taken back for a moment. Liberals are trying so hard to show how intelligent blacks can be but are completely taken by surprise when the real thing comes along and tears them apart.

[Josquin des Prez]

Yeah exactly, it's just comedy!  It's like those Republicans (actually probably the same people) that are offended by John Stewart.  It's like "uh he's a comedian, you realize that right?"

Maher is not just comedy, it's political comedy. Same for John Stewart. Saying that one can appreciate their humor without taking into consideration their political views is inane.

[DavidW]

Maher is not just comedy, it's political comedy. Same for John Stewart. Saying that one can appreciate their humor without taking into consideration their political views is inane.

Well if you don't laugh at a joke, and then someone explains "oh don't you know? he's liberal", you wouldn't start laughing then would you?  Their political view is irrelevant, either it's funny material or it's not.  Political humor is humor in which you have to understand the politics being satirized, if the comedian is good you do not actually have to know his/her stance on the matter.  Of course if they are so polarized that you would have to be liberal or have to be conservative to appreciate the joke, then it's not a really joke, it's just misdirected anger.

[Josquin des Prez]

Well if you don't laugh at a joke, and then someone explains "oh don't you know? he's liberal", you wouldn't start laughing then would you?  Their political view is irrelevant, either it's funny material or it's not.  Political humor is humor in which you have to understand the politics being satirized, if the comedian is good you do not actually have to know his/her stance on the matter.  Of course if they are so polarized that you would have to be liberal or have to be conservative to appreciate the joke, then it's not a really joke, it's just misdirected anger.

But the joke can in fact be appreciated only by those with the correct political views, since 99% of the time the "joke" in question is about making the "other" side look like idiots. Their political view is not only relevant, it is at the very heart of their success.

[Brian]

Maher is not just comedy, it's political comedy. Same for John Stewart. Saying that one can appreciate their humor without taking into consideration their political views is inane.

There is a difference between Bill Maher and Jon Stewart. Interestingly, a recent study found that (to use another example), although conservatives are more likely to think that Stephen Colbert is actually conservative and means what he says, even conservatives who know Colbert is a liberal laugh at his jokes just as much as liberals do.

[snyprrr]

Is Colbert the token Gentile?

Yea, the politics are deep.

[Mozart]

Michael Moore is such a douche.

[Mozart]

"Men are destroying the ocean by fishing"

"But women eat the fish too."

F*cking sh*t..someone kill that man he is worthless and is given a voice.

[snyprrr]

But they are the enemy we "know." Better than the unknown?

[Homo Aestheticus]

Yes.  What else would you expect from Maher, an extraordinarily self-impressed mediocrity who mistakes his thimbleful of knowledge for wisdom and his bigoted assumptions as insights?

Here are my comments when I reviewed the film elsewhere:
Is it shallow?  Well, that depends on your perspective.  Given your history on this site, Eric, I expect you would regard it as a scathingly profound critique of religion.  Others less blinded by prejudice will recognize it as shallower than film stock--when it comes to exploring religious faith--but surprisingly deep as an unexpectedly revealing testament to the nature of Bill Maher and other bigots like him.

Bill Maher, mediocre and bigoted ?

No.

And remember that he's an agnostic.

What's wrong with asking fully grown adults how they come to know anything whatsoever about this supposed supernatural being and his nature and characteristics ?