Religulousosity

Bill Maher gets religulous.

From Bill Maher takes on religion for laughs -- and more:

Bill Maher has taken his crusade against religion to the big screen.

Maher, who has been picking on organized religion for years on his TV shows "Politically Incorrect" and "Real Time," zealously traveled the world for "Religulous," his documentary challenging the validity and value of Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths.

Raised in a Roman Catholic household by a Catholic father and Jewish mother, Maher decided at an early age that the trappings and mythology of the world's religions were preposterous, outdated and even dangerous.

"Religulous," directed by fellow doubter Larry Charles ("Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan"), is intended to inspire similar skepticism in others -- and perhaps get nonbelievers to talk more openly about their lack of faith.

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Surprise, surprise. Some Catholics don’t like it that Bill Maher got religulous.

From Bill Maher’s Ridiculous Religulous by Rev. Robert Barron:

It seems that every time I turn on the television, I hear the comedian Bill Maher bad-mouthing religion. In the last several years, Maher has appeared dozens of times on Larry King’s show, where he consistently mocks the beliefs of religious people, especially Christians. Well, he’s come out with a new documentary film on his favorite subject, and he’s called it, subtly enough, Religulous. I had the opportunity to see an advance screeing of the movie last week in a theatre on the near north side of Chicago. Please don’t go to see it — and I say this for two reasons. First, it’s a mindless and utterly unpersuasive attack on religious faith, and second, it’s remarkably unfunny. Religulous is basically a one-joke movie: put Bill Maher in the presence of simple-minded folks and let the clever comedian take apart their beliefs. This might have worked as a five-minute sketch, but twenty minutes into the movie, I was gazing at my watch in boredom. Practically all of Maher’s interlocutors — Christian fundamentalists, anti-evolutionists, a holocaust-denying rabbi, or even a man who thought he was the re-incarnation of Jesus — had in common a complete intellectual incapacity to deal with the standard objections that the comedian raised. Again and again, I found myself muttering, “Come on, Maher, pick on someone your own size.”

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