Religulous

**** Stars

I am not a huge Bill Maher fan. I occasionally watch his HBO show when I need that occasional (and lately, frequently) uncensored Bush bashing rant, but I think he can be a complete smartass. The way he asks question is purposely slanted towards the answer he wants, which usually consists of making the other person look like a moron. He also seems to be very self-absorbed and absolutely in love with himself. However, I have to give Bill Maher some serious credit. His documentary Religulous is something you've never seen before. This guy has the balls to go to some of the most sacred places on earth and ask monumentally controversial questions to some of the most religious people on earth. This film hits you hard from the start, and ends with a finale that is the scariest ten minutes of footage I have scene since Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

For all contingent purposes, I was raised a Catholic Christian. I spent years in CCD and was confirmed over four years ago. I never really liked the church that I attended. It was run like a business and was forcing young minds to believe in such awful ideals. I am so glad I have great parents who are realistic to the issues of a teenager. They laid to me straight when I asked for truth. When I asked my church for advice, they gave me some random biblical reference to live by. I will never forget one of my confirmation classes that occurred during my sophomore year of High School. It was a dangerously touchy subject. It was the subject of premarital sex. Oh no, run for the hills! Teenagers learning about sex? That's devil talk! But don't worry, the church set it straight. NOT. (I felt it was appropriate to ad that Borat reference considering the director of this film is also that of Borat.) In fact, my church gave such demeaning advice that day, that it actually made me question the faith I grew up with, at that point, for almost sixteen years. Our teacher told us that every time you had sex with someone before marriage, regardless of age, emotional intimacy or length of relationship, that you were losing a piece of your soul, and it would be impossible to get back. It was a sad moment in my life. Sad for those around me who had to hear such words, and sad for the teacher herself, who actually thought this was the right way to approach a generation who is already in such confusion about the world.

I eventually got confirmed later that year and was no longer forced to go to church. As that force decreased, my faith actually increased. I still attend church twice a year (Easter and Christmas) not because I want to, but because it's a nice reason for my family to be together. I certainly still believe in God, but I'm afraid that people are so hypocritical and radical when it comes to religion, that Bill Maher's bashing seems to make unusual sense.

On that note, back to the film. Bill Maher begins by saying that he is not in the know when it comes to religion. He never actually says so, but we assume he is an atheist. He wants to understand what people are thinking. How can someone believe that Jonah lived inside a whale for three days? Is judgment day truly coming? Does anyone really know what Scientology is about? I really don't. I know Tom Cruise and John Travolta are apart of it. And it was created by the author L. Ron Hubbard, who wrote Battlefield Earth. I think I actually blame him more for creating the source material for that morbid film adaptation than that religion. Bill Maher actually disguised himself as a Scientologist and started preaching it on the streets of a city. Dozens of people started to listen. I mean they were really listening. Are people just looking for answers to all of the world's proposed questions? In this case, Maher makes a point. Maybe people really don't know what the hell they are talking about.

In fact, he actually applauds one Christian for coming up with such "brilliant bullshit". In Orlando, Florida, Maher travels to a place called The Holy Land Experience. It's a reenactment through songs, interpretive dance, and really bad acting, of Jesus's crucifixion (if you do go, don't worry, Jesus is connected to a microphone, so you can hear him from the back row). The actor playing Jesus tells Maher that God works in higher levels than humans. We may not always understand what he's doing but we know it’s him. Like water, it works in three different forms. A gas, a solid (ice cube), and liquid. Bill Maher is so impressed with this "bullshit" that he is at a complete loss of words.

As the film continues to bash religion silly, it does tend to get a little redundant. I wish Maher would let some of his interviews be more focused on what others had to say. It's undeniably appropriate that the man wants to play hardball, but he's flirting dangerously close towards spite's gimbal lock. Then again, you kind of expect this behavior considering it is what made him famous in the first place.

Spite aside, Bill Maher knows what he is doing. In the final ten minutes of Religulous, putting all "bullshit" aside, he abandons humor and says his final peace on this crazy little thing called religion. I think he understands that God can give us comfort when we have no one to turn to. He even admits that he has turned to him at a younger age. That's not the problem he is referring to. The problem that emerges are those who are willing to sacrifice the decency of human morality, that referring to religious wars, for something that no one can really understand but God himself. Even though it always has been so, religion is becoming more and more abused; as an excuse for creating empires and establishing dominance. We may just be seeing things clear now because we are using such apocalyptic weapons on each other. Maybe that confusion I felt in my confirmation class that day now seems more comprehensible. If abused, religion can tear people apart and create a pointless, endless war. We Americans should know. We’re smack-dab in the middle of one.