Bill Maher - Religulous

I watched the comic documentary film Religulous yesterday evening. The film starred Bill Maher, a well-known talk show host in America known for his irreverent take on religion. Through the film, he interviewed various people from the various religions of the world such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, questioning them for their beliefs, and basically taking a satirical stance on religion.

Through the show, Bill interviews and lampoons religion with satirical questions about their religion. He makes fun of some of the beliefs inherent in people’s religion, such as the Christian’s creation narrative, especially the ‘talking snake’, and he contrast this with the creation beliefs of the scientologist, who believe humans came from some extra terrestrial space aliens. He interviews a certain scientist in the jewish community, who had come up with all sorts of ingenious devices so as that the people practicing Judaism can practice the Sabbath without flouting their sabbatical law prohibiting use of electricity. At one point, Bill asked them whether they were trying to outsmart God, to which the jew replied that if God had allowed for a loophole in the law to exist, he must have purposely allowed it so that it could be taken advantage of. It seems that the Jews' rather positivistic stance towards their religious laws remains to this day.

Bill went around visiting the likes of the average Christian American Joe, who have a small community gathering in their small church. They tried to put up some defence for their Christian beliefs, but were easily stumped by Bill Maher’s interrogation. But they accepted Bill’s request to pray for him, and they prayed for Bill to be able to find answers to his question despite them not being able to. I think Bill admitted that there is good in Christianity when he praised them for their practicing out their Christian beliefs instead of what he calls ‘just being Christians’.

Bill also went about interviewing the more intelligent Christians like the genetic scientist Francis Collins, who are ready to talk about the evidence that grounds his beliefs in Christianity. There was this person who roleplays Jesus for a play, whom I thought gave quite intelligent responses to Bill’s questions. Bill seemed to have been stopped in his track of cynicism when he was presented the analogy of the trinity as water in its various states.

Bill also went around visiting really weird characters. There was this man from mexico who thought himself to be the second coming of Jesus, and who has a congregation who worships him. He thought himself the incarnation of Jesus based on his assertion that Jesus and Mary had children, and that the second coming of Jesus would be through a descendent of his, of which he is the one. Then there was this character who leads a religious group which advocates the use of pot and mushroom in order to obtain the spiritual experience. He talked with a slur and who seems cognitively impaired from his prolonged drug consumption, and Bill was leveraging on the man's mental slowness to poke fun at him.

At the end of the show, Bill concludes that when it comes to the big questions such as the existence of God, it is better to be admit doubt than to profess certitude in a faith. And I think it was the purpose of his documentary to portray religion as silly.

I think it is all too easy to frame a religion as silly by propping it up as a strawman and shooting them down in your documentary. I have seen a short documentary clip carried by Christians into the atheist community, where they similarly portraying atheism as silly by interviewing the average atheist, whose substantiation of her atheist belief similarly came off as weak and silly.

I would say that Bill’s conclusion that doubt is the approach to take is rather dogmatic position as well. The existence of doubt does not deny the possibility of truth in the matter. Ultimately, one tries his best to analyze the truth of the matter, and then proceed on the matter of faith. Each position have their problems. Religion come into difficulty in finding sold evidence that God exist, and that their faith is the correct one. In my opinion, the lack of conclusive historical information about the veracity of religious accounts, as well as the seemingly unapparent nature of God in today’s world make it difficult to be absolutely certain about the truth of religion.

However, the atheists too run into many problems for their belief, such as having a basis for morality, finding meaning in life, finding meaning in altruistic values such as selflessness and unconditional love, and similarly, to find solid proof that there is no God.

There is this really insightful article about religion and agnosticism. It asserts that many of us are actually agnostic when it comes to having an intellectual basis for our religious position, or lack of it. But one is still justified in taking a religious position despite the lack of intellectual conclusivity. Religious beliefs are not easily rebuttable as simply delusional or foolish. But just because we might have doubt is not enough of a reason to conclude that we cannot profess our opinion or position on the matter. I think in religion, as well as in many other things in life, we can try to find out more by reading and studying more about the truth of the matter, and then we take a leap of faith.

Personally, I will remain a Christian, because I think I have many weaknesses that I need God's help with, and I am comforted by a belief in divine providence and guidance, and Christianity gives me a paradigm to identify sins, temptations, and human depravities, and to avoid them. I believe that it is difficult to find a basis for objective morality without religion. And I think it is also easy to observe how religion, or the absence of it, plays out it people’s lives. I do wish that I could feel and see God’s love more personally in my life, and that God would help me more in my life. It would certainly bolster my faith in God. But barring such personal encounters in my life, I think I will choose to hold on to Christian faith even though things in life do not go the way I want or pray for them to go.