Bill Maher's "Religulous", and the Problem of Religion

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When I was a little kid, I was completely convinced that by the time I was 50, human stupidity would be naturally selected out, and the vast majority of people in the world would be very bright.

Somehow, it appears, we've managed to defeat the mechanisms of evolution, and people around us seem to be just as dull as ever, if not duller. Certainly if clinging to superstition is any measure of dullness, dullness is alive and well, even possibly on the rise.

We were recently watching Bill Maher's movie Religulous (2008), and I was stunned by the sheer gullibility of the people interviewed in the movie. In addition to the regular lay people (i.e, not clerics of any religion), there were also clergy. The remarks of the latter were also often confusing and confused. The exceptions were a couple of high-ranking Catholic clergy whose thoughts were very clear indeed. It all goes to show that the clarity of thought of the upper echelons of the Roman Catholic Church is in regrettable contrast to the muddy thinking of (some of) the Roman Catholic laity. In other words, it is not that the intelligentsia among the Catholic Clergy don't know any better; it must be that they think it not worth their while, or an exercise in futility, to attempt to demythologize their religion for the benefit of the masses.

Having said all that, and having acknowledged that some of Bill Maher's remarks (in the form of monologues, of course) are very insightful, I must say here that I was very unhappily amazed at the way in which Bill Maher baited some of his victims. Some of them were either charlatans or imbeciles; of course one would expect him to bait them. But others who were incapable of seeing the contradictions within their statements, to them we would expect him to make his point quickly, and cut away. But he (Bill Maher) stays with the interviewees, continuing to ridicule him or her.

In the photo at right, we see an actor who portrays Jesus in a theme park in Florida, called, I believe, the Holy Land Experience. The actor insisted on patiently trying to convince Bill Maher that he was wrong. Regrettably, Bill cut away from the interview without allowing "Jesus" to have the last word. This put me, at least, on the side of the interviewee, because it seems unfair to wield the advantage of having editorial control so heavy-handedly.

When Bill Maher interviewed islamic folks, it was most difficult to watch. The Islamic world, of course, is not as far along as the Christian World is, in terms of dealing with the extreme views of their respective holy books. It is much easier for Catholic philosophers to put the bellicose old-testament exhortations in perspective than it is for enlightened Islamists to do the same for fire and brimstone in the Koran. (Bill Maher was equally scornful of the obviously irrelevant parts of the Bible and the Koran, assuming that most Christians and most Muslims would be equally shocked at the idea of discarding even the most minute passage from their respective holy books. I believe, though, that the majority of Christians would reject the mythical parts of the Bible as being irrelevant to their "faith", and a significant minority of Islamists would do the same, understanding the greater importance of lasting principles vs. the lesser importance of instructions that had to be taken in historical context.)

Maher's main thesis throughout the movie was, very appropriately, the violence of religious extremists generally. Religious extremists have been responsible for some of the worst decisions that have ever been taken in history, counting both Christians and other religions. Even Nazism, Maher declares, could be considered a religion, and he gives his reasons.

Bill is thrown out of the Vatican (since he has, apparently, been black-listed by them for some years). His attitude towards Catholicism has been colored by many Sundays spent in Catholic Sunday-School, which he describes as hours and hours of boredom interspersed by moments of terror. But in the movie he manages to connect with a priest who is happy to join Bill in rejecting the most idiotic parts of typical Catholic behavior, such as the many layers of mediation between the believers and The Founder, e.g. saints, priests, the Virgin Mary, the Pope, and so on.

The most refreshingly reasonable of Bill Maher's interviews was conducted at a church for Truckers, where a half-dozen born-again truckers carefully explain to Bill why they believe what they do, and why he is to be pitied. These are big guys, and we heave a collective sigh of relief when Bill is mostly polite to them until he beats a hasty but dignified retreat.

Bill kept his most vicious attacks for Mormons and Scientology. His denunciation and ridicule of those sects was deservedly no-holds-barred. Two ex-Mormons said that for a Mormon, choosing to leave the religion was "social suicide". As far as I'm concerned, no words are too harsh for those belief systems, though of course there must be thousands of members of those sects who do not subscribe to the most ridiculous portions of their respective mythologies.

[Added later: oops; in the paragraph above, I'm confusing Scientology with Christian Science. They are not the same, though in my opinion both religions are misguided.]

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