Curtis A. Bronzan

I finally sat down to watch Bill Maher’s documentary Religulous the other day.

IMDb reports that Maher and friends used the working title ‘A Spiritual Journey’ and did not include his name when booking interviews with persons of faith. This presents a sort of undercurrent of the film, with Maher questioning why no one would want to talk to him. Even in light of their aforementioned “precautions,” I join Maher in this question, and personally, would welcome any and all of his questions.

Many of those with whom Maher discusses matters of religious faith have a hard time engaging with him however, and often even react as if they are being personally attacked. Unsurprisingly, his questions – and statements – are entirely indebted to a modernist epistemology.

He questions, for instance, the historical reality of the “talking snake” in the Garden of Eden (alongside recent songs by Cursive and David Bazan). Since – by his reasoning – there was no talking snake, Maher concludes that the whole idea of religious faith must be a fraud, instead of actually engaging thoughtfully with some thoughtful people. In doing so, Maher is really setting up a sort of fundamentalist paper tiger, which is easily tackled (though that might not be the best way to treat real tigers, no matter how strong your faith – or it’s denominational background).

He’s an equal opportunity offender, however, which won him few friends – and many enemies no doubt – through the filming. In fact, hardline atheists are probably upset with his shoulder-shrugging agnosticism, though not nearly as much as the folks in Florida’s Holy Land Experience theme park. The closest – and possibly only – friends he does make in the film are a couple Catholic priests, who discuss theology with Maher after he’s thrown out of St. Peter’s.

I thought of a couple previous posts (this one and this one), when Maher asserts

Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don’t have all the answers to think that they do. Most people would think it’s wonderful when someone says, ‘I’m willing Lord, I’ll do whatever you want me to do.’ Except that since there are no gods actually talking to us, that void is filled in by people with their own corruptions and limitations and agendas.

Though I’m sure it would upset some of my friends something awful if I were to list the things Maher says that I actually agree with – especially if I were to try going down the rabbit trail of thinking through how some doubt can be a good thing, which I’ll just leave to Peter Rollins and John Caputo – I will include his final closing thought (with some minor editing) for comment.

The irony of religion is that because of its power to divert man to destructive courses, the world could actually come to an end. The plain fact is, religion must die for mankind to live. The hour is getting very late to be able to indulge having in key decisions made by religious people. By irrationalists, by those who would steer the ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken. George Bush prayed a lot about Iraq, but he didn’t learn a lot about it. 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 intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction… And anyone who tells you they know, they just know what happens when you die, I promise you, you don’t. How can I be so sure? Because I don’t know, and you do not possess mental powers that I do not. The only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions is not the arrogant certitude that is the hallmark of religion, but doubt. Doubt is humble, and that’s what man needs to be, considering that human history is just a litany of getting [stuff] dead wrong. This is why rational people, anti-religionists, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves. And those who consider themselves only moderately religious really need to look in the mirror and realize that the solace and comfort that religion brings you comes at a horrible price. If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence, and sheer ignorance as religion is, you’d resign in protest. To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a mafia wife, for the true devils of extremism that draw their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travelers. If the world does come to an end here, or wherever, or if it limps into the future, decimated by the effects of religion-inspired nuclear terrorism, let’s remember what the real problem was. We learned how to precipitate mass death before we got past the neurological disorder of wishing for it. That’s it. Grow up or die.

Maher is obviously following up on a recent trend (of say, the past few thousand years) of looking at religion for all it’s evils and wrongs. And there are many.

Yet there are a few (people, that is) in the world for whom faith actually drives them toward an all embracing love, and away from “bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence and sheer ignorance.” I’m convinced such all embracing love is the faith one is called to when one is called by the One, which has been revealed in and through the person of Jesus. And the (I’ll quote again) “bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence and sheer ignorance” that persists in His name may be a religion vaguely justified about Jesus, but it’s not the religion of Jesus.

And that makes all the difference in the world. For while religions continue bring forth death, Jesus continually asserted He brings life.