i'm an atheist and i think that people shy away from arguing about religious belief too much. religion is regularly cited by politicians as the reasons for their actions, and yet questioning the tenet of their belief is considered to be out of bounds. so mrs. noz and i went to see religulous last night. i'm not a big fan of bill maher, but i did want to see how he steamrolled over some of the taboos that get in the way of direct and confrontational discussions of religion.
there are some genuinely funny moments in "religulous" but the more i think about it, the more i am convinced that maher was the wrong guy to make this film. he has one quality that a movie like this would need: the ability to directly question people's religious beliefs and to ask follow-up questions rather than back down when they get uncomfortable with the line of questioning. the problem is that maher is also a comedian. and so he's not just trying to find the truth or to have a genuine conversation with people about religion, he's also trying to crack jokes and make fun of them. as a result there is less conversation than their could be, the religious tenets he encounters are treated as caricatures, and maher doesn't end up making that strong of a case for his position.
here's an example. at one point he's interviewing a member of the satmar sect (satmars are jewish, but anti-zionist). maher asks a question and then as the satmar begins a longer than 3 word answer, maher would interrupt him and make a joke. the satmar kept saying "don't interrupt me" and tried to continue answering maher question. maher would just roll his eyes, interrupt again, or edit in a film clip to mock his interlocutor. it's pretty clear that maher is either not trying to have a real conversation with the guy, or he edited the clip for comic effect rather than letting the believer make his point. and that's too bad. as a stand-in for atheists, maher portrays atheists as a bunch of snide assholes, not as people who can actually hold a real rational conversation about religious belief. maher's very technique undermines one of the points that he's trying to make.
but maher's main point, the one he ends with in a sermon delivered from the ruins of tel megiddo, is that religion is a threat to humanity. the screed is interesting because it's a point that is rarely asserted so directly, but ultimately i disagree with it. maher makes the mistake of attributing all the bad things done in the name of religion to religion. (he also neglects to mention any of the good things done in the name of religion). it seems to me that people do bad things and look for justification for it. religion often is that justification. but without religion, they'd probably just find something else to serve as the excuse. it's not the case that violence and environmental destruction (both of which maher claims are caused by religion) came to an end in the officially atheist societies of the 20th century. communist societies had no problem at all doing bad stuff even without a religious justification. when maher questions muslims about violent acts committed in the name of islam, they all respond "that's politics, not religion." maher mocks the response, but if you recognize all of the violent clips he shows to try to undermine the muslims' point, those violent acts actually were political. maher doesn't consider whether they might be right. he presumes that religion must be the problem and never addresses any counter-arguments. that means that anyone who doesn't already agree with him will be frustrated to see their actually views unaddressed by this film. i don't see how "religulous" could convince anyone who doesn't agree with maher from the start.
