Grow up or die

Watched the Bill Maher documentary Religulous last night, and for the most part it was exactly what I was expecting: Bill humorously preaching to the converted (so to speak) about how silly organized religions are. He uses a milder version of Michael Moore's strategy of engaging folks from "the other side" in dialogue, poking and prodding and getting them to say things that might sound normal in other contexts, but which, in Maher's context, sound irrational, bizarre, and ridiculous. What I liked was that he subjected all religions to the method, not just the born-again creationists and the Mormons and Muslim extremists, but also mainstream Catholics and Jews. He ridicules Scientology, a pretty safe tactic, but then turns that around at those who are laughing and says, "Hey, your religion has tenets that are just as crazy!" One of my favorite bits was his ridiculing of a guy who has built a religion around smoking dope; you might expect Maher to be sympathetic to him, but his agenda here is clear: anyone who thinks they've found the answer to the meaning of life in an external force or thing is a little bit crazy, and maybe dangerous.

The bulk of the film is made up of these encounters from across the world, in churches, in sacred sites, at the Kentucky creation museum, and at a Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando (I'm a little scared that my partner Don was serious when he muttered something about wanting to go there--see Bill with Orlando Jesus at right). Maher uses humor to make the situations lighter than they would be under Michael Moore, and most of the interviews are short enough that they don't get too uncomfortable--I am not a fan of the Daily Show feature story interview style in which folks sometimes get roasted to the point of viewer discomfort. If Maher truly doesn't know the answers and is just asking questions, as he keeps proclaiming, than he's a glutton for punishment, as trying to get any religious people to enter the realm of rationality is doomed to failure (since the very definition of faith is belief in something without rational evidence, as I have faith that Woody Allen will again make a really good movie someday).

But even though the interviews get to feeling a little same-old, same-old, it's worth sticking around to the end, when Maher gets serious about the destructive role of religion in history and in society today. I believe that on an individual basis, religion can be a force for "good," but too often on a mass level, religion has been responsible for so much hatred and war and death. Maher has lots of quotable quotes in the harsh last minutes of the movie, but I got a chill when I heard the following: "Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it, are our intellectual slaveholders--keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction. Religion is dangerous, because it allows human beings who don't have all the answers to think that they do." Maher says it's time to "grow up or die," and though I can't imagine he or anyone else really thinks that's going to happen, it's bracing to hear such words.