I’ll admit it; Bill Maher is a funny guy. And by taking aim at religion, he’s got more than enough easy targets to hit in his film Religulous. For more than just laughs, Maher attacks the very characters I am likewise outraged or embarrassed by, often because of their hypocrisy or stupidity or both. But the very ones I tend to dismiss as fringe elements (a very small minority out of the many for whom religion matters and ought to be taken seriously), Maher takes to be representative of the whole. My objections to Religulous, though, go far beyond who counts as “fringe” and who does not.
Let’s start at the end, rather than the beginning, because that’s when Maher puts all his cards on the table. After lambasting the major western religions, he concludes his film with a passionate appeal to reject religion entirely, because “religion must die for mankind to live.” We read verses from the Qur’an and the Bible superimposed on scenes of bombs exploding. The end is near, apparently, and our only hope is to stamp out faith in all of its forms, bizarre and otherwise. In stark contrast to religious gullibility, Maher claims, “doubt is humble.” And yet, not once in the film do we ever get the impression that Maher doubts his own assessment of the situation, not even for a moment.
Theism: bad; Atheism: good. This is to me a red flag, to put it mildly. I watched Religulous over the Fourth of July weekend. Just a day or so before, I had heard on the news that North Korean leader Kim Jung Il was threatening to conduct a nuclear test, and had missiles already pointed at Honolulu and San Francisco. As a Communist, Jung Il shares Maher’s atheistic viewpoint, but obviously I’m much more concerned about the damage he could do than any harm inflicted by televangelists. So, why does atheism get a pass?
Let’s not forget Joseph Stalin, whose “Great Purge” in the 1930s was responsible for the deaths of at least 3 million (some would estimate the number to be closer to 9 million). Likewise, Pol Pot’s reign of terror in the “killing fields” of Cambodia decimated roughly a third of the population of that country. Could it be that atheism is as dangerous as religion, if not more so? And yet, Maher makes no mention whatsoever of its recent horrors.
Religulous does have its undeniably funny moments, but if Maher want to be taken seriously, it seems odd to me that he devotes the shortest amount of time in his “documentary” to probably the most intelligent interviewee on the entire film: Dr. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project. In fact, Collins later said that most of the good footage from their discussion ended up on the cutting room floor.
Surprising as it may seem, there were definitely points with which I found myself agreeing with Maher. There are problems when the line between church and state becomes blurry, no argument there. History has demonstrated that time and time again. And I also object to people who use religion as a means to get rich, no less so than Maher does.
But Religulous oversteps its bounds, in my opinion, when it attempts to make its case that the Christian story is nothing more than the first-century variation of a Mediterranean myth that had already circulated for an entire millennium. This is when, in my mind, Maher loses any claims to credibility. That, and the way he insist on calling the last book of the Bible Revelations, instead of its proper title, Revelation, of course.
Are there parallels between the death and resurrection of Christ and similar “dying and rising” myths in the ancient world? Certainly. And the best analysis of them I have ever read comes from none other than C.S. Lewis, who is perhaps best remembered as a Christian apologist, but who was also a renowned expert in world mythology. Lewis basically reasons that the theme of rising from the dead is a universal longing within the human heart, and we would expect to see glimpses of it among the stories that various cultures have told to themselves. You can read more about it in a lecture I wrote for my mythology course:
http://www.commutercampus.com/mythology/powerofmythcritique.html
Maher contends that the Egyptian deity Horus was crucified and resurrected, and thus his story was identical to that of the Christian Gospels, only a thousand years earlier. What escapes the notice of the filmmakers is that these claims are easy to make but very difficult to prove. Let me suggest a starting place: crucifixion was unknown to the ancient Egyptians. In fact, it is this same historical fact that has led many to question the historicity of another religious text, the Qur’an, because the Muslim book makes reference to crucifixions in Egypt as well. There is no evidence that executions ever took place there in such a way at that time.
My favorite scene in Religulous was when Bill Maher stopped in at a “trucker’s chapel.” There he met a few truck drivers who weren’t quite sure what to make of his claims that the Bible was full of contradictions. I guess what I appreciated was how, even though they didn’t know the answers, they didn’t pretend that they did. They made a circle around Maher and prayed for him. Maher told them thanks for "being Christ-like, and not just Christian." There often can be a big difference between the two – unfortunately, it is too easy to wear the label “Christian” but to completely neglect “being Christ-like” at the same time.
In spite of all the many flaws of the film, if Religulous is a reminder not only that such hypocrisy exists, but that it has also been the very thing that has caused many (Maher included) to give up on religion entirely, then perhaps it has served a valuable service.
Let’s start at the end, rather than the beginning, because that’s when Maher puts all his cards on the table. After lambasting the major western religions, he concludes his film with a passionate appeal to reject religion entirely, because “religion must die for mankind to live.” We read verses from the Qur’an and the Bible superimposed on scenes of bombs exploding. The end is near, apparently, and our only hope is to stamp out faith in all of its forms, bizarre and otherwise. In stark contrast to religious gullibility, Maher claims, “doubt is humble.” And yet, not once in the film do we ever get the impression that Maher doubts his own assessment of the situation, not even for a moment.
Theism: bad; Atheism: good. This is to me a red flag, to put it mildly. I watched Religulous over the Fourth of July weekend. Just a day or so before, I had heard on the news that North Korean leader Kim Jung Il was threatening to conduct a nuclear test, and had missiles already pointed at Honolulu and San Francisco. As a Communist, Jung Il shares Maher’s atheistic viewpoint, but obviously I’m much more concerned about the damage he could do than any harm inflicted by televangelists. So, why does atheism get a pass?
Let’s not forget Joseph Stalin, whose “Great Purge” in the 1930s was responsible for the deaths of at least 3 million (some would estimate the number to be closer to 9 million). Likewise, Pol Pot’s reign of terror in the “killing fields” of Cambodia decimated roughly a third of the population of that country. Could it be that atheism is as dangerous as religion, if not more so? And yet, Maher makes no mention whatsoever of its recent horrors.
Religulous does have its undeniably funny moments, but if Maher want to be taken seriously, it seems odd to me that he devotes the shortest amount of time in his “documentary” to probably the most intelligent interviewee on the entire film: Dr. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project. In fact, Collins later said that most of the good footage from their discussion ended up on the cutting room floor.
Surprising as it may seem, there were definitely points with which I found myself agreeing with Maher. There are problems when the line between church and state becomes blurry, no argument there. History has demonstrated that time and time again. And I also object to people who use religion as a means to get rich, no less so than Maher does.
But Religulous oversteps its bounds, in my opinion, when it attempts to make its case that the Christian story is nothing more than the first-century variation of a Mediterranean myth that had already circulated for an entire millennium. This is when, in my mind, Maher loses any claims to credibility. That, and the way he insist on calling the last book of the Bible Revelations, instead of its proper title, Revelation, of course.
Are there parallels between the death and resurrection of Christ and similar “dying and rising” myths in the ancient world? Certainly. And the best analysis of them I have ever read comes from none other than C.S. Lewis, who is perhaps best remembered as a Christian apologist, but who was also a renowned expert in world mythology. Lewis basically reasons that the theme of rising from the dead is a universal longing within the human heart, and we would expect to see glimpses of it among the stories that various cultures have told to themselves. You can read more about it in a lecture I wrote for my mythology course:
http://www.commutercampus.com/mythology/powerofmythcritique.html
Maher contends that the Egyptian deity Horus was crucified and resurrected, and thus his story was identical to that of the Christian Gospels, only a thousand years earlier. What escapes the notice of the filmmakers is that these claims are easy to make but very difficult to prove. Let me suggest a starting place: crucifixion was unknown to the ancient Egyptians. In fact, it is this same historical fact that has led many to question the historicity of another religious text, the Qur’an, because the Muslim book makes reference to crucifixions in Egypt as well. There is no evidence that executions ever took place there in such a way at that time.
My favorite scene in Religulous was when Bill Maher stopped in at a “trucker’s chapel.” There he met a few truck drivers who weren’t quite sure what to make of his claims that the Bible was full of contradictions. I guess what I appreciated was how, even though they didn’t know the answers, they didn’t pretend that they did. They made a circle around Maher and prayed for him. Maher told them thanks for "being Christ-like, and not just Christian." There often can be a big difference between the two – unfortunately, it is too easy to wear the label “Christian” but to completely neglect “being Christ-like” at the same time.
In spite of all the many flaws of the film, if Religulous is a reminder not only that such hypocrisy exists, but that it has also been the very thing that has caused many (Maher included) to give up on religion entirely, then perhaps it has served a valuable service.
Please note: the image of the film above is included here only as part of a critical film review - if so requested by the copyright owner, it will be immediately removed.
