A movie review.

I just watched Bill Maher’s documentary, Religulous. It’s been in my Netflix queue for some time now and I recently let it ride to the top. I watched it on my second monitor while doing some relatively mindless work on the other.

The movie was just what I expected: Bill Maher trying to talk reason to religious zealots. While his breakaways to movie scenes and comic subtitles were generally amusing, much of the rest of the movie was quite disturbing. It isn’t Maher’s views that bother me — I share them. It’s the stubbornness of the religious zealots he spoke to. They simply did not want to listen to reason.

Want some specific examples?

He spoke with Christians about Jesus and pointed out that an ancient Egyptian god named Horus shared much of Jesus’s history, from virgin birth to crucifixion and resurrection. This is documented in ancient Egyptian writing. Yet the Christians refused to acknowledge that the Egyptian myths exist. How can they be so stubborn?

He pointed out to Christians that the New Testament, which forms the basis of Christianity and Christian beliefs says nothing about homosexuality being a sin. He pointed out other things that are and are not in the Bible. If what he said contradicted current Christian beliefs, however, these people denied what he said. They clearly had no clue what was in the holy scriptures they swore was the word of god.

He pointed out to Muslims that the Koran contains multiple references about violence against non-Muslim “infidels.” They either denied the meaning of those references or tried to claim that they applied to another time.

He had similar confrontations with Jews, Mormons (and ex-Mormons), and members of other religions.

This went on for nearly two hours.

This was exactly what I expected and, to be honest, I didn’t enjoy it very much. It’s an argument he’ll never win. None of the atheists will. People have faith — blind faith in whatever it is that they believe. They ignore the evidence that they’re wrong. They go on believing, thinking that they’ll be rewarded someday while the non-believers — or the people that believe in Brand X religion — will be punished.

Meanwhile, they keep fighting and hating and killing and keeping their women and children in the dark ages intellectually — all in the name of their god.

It makes me sick.

I’m not quite sure what Maher intended to do with this movie. He’s obviously not going to convert anyone. There wasn’t enough comedy to make it fun to watch. Was he just trying to give atheists a bit of support in their quest for reason? To convince us to speak out as he has?

What’s the point?

This reminds me of a post I read last week on Think Atheist, “Why Talk About It?.” In it, the blogger compares religion to collecting stamps:

When you are in safe company, you poke fun at the stamp collectors and their silly beliefs. You find comfort in the fact that you are not the only sane person around. In a world of stamp collectors, you are one of only a few non-stamp collectors.

Maybe that’s what Religulous was all about: To remind us that we’re not the only ones who don’t collect stamps.