BEFORE: I'm snowed in at my parents' house, today was originally set aside for post-Christmas visiting with friends, but that was made impossible by a blizzard - as it is, I'll be lucky to leave on schedule tomorrow to drive back to New York. I'll continue with another religion-based documentary.
THE PLOT: Bill Maher's take on the current state of world religion.
AFTER: Bill Maher interviews Christians, Muslims, Jews and Scientologists in an effort to point out the hypocrasies and discrepancies inherent to their faiths. Faith is portrayed here as the opposite of rational thought, a substitute explanation for things that cannot be explained. Like with Rev. Billy, I appreciate Maher's message, but not necessarily all of his methods - though I myself enjoy getting into philosophical arguments with overzealous believers, such as preachers on the subway.
I admit I'm hard-pressed to think of a better way to deal with religious people other than arguing with them - and I also admit that like Maher, I consider most of them misguided, if not ignorant. I'm no longer a practicing Catholic (I figured that I practiced enough, and I wasn't getting any better at it) and I suppose I identify as more of an agnostic than an atheist. I'd like to believe that there is a higher power, but I've seen no direct evidence of it, and I'm not arrogant enough to say for sure how any of it works, or which religion, if any, is correct.
In fact, the very presence of multiple religions was the deal-breaker for me. Why would my religion be right, and the others wrong? Why were the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Pagans any less correct than today's believers? Maher even points out the similarities between Jesus, Mithra and Horus - all of whom were supposedly born to virgins, had powers to heal the sick and raise the dead, and who all died and were resurrected three days later? When you realize how much of Jesus's story was co-opted from other religions, it all starts to sound like a giant con game. And, just like with Santa Claus, if any part of the story isn't true, then most likely the whole deal isn't true.
Maher suggested that the silent majority of rational non-believers rise up and band together, to counter the smaller but more vocal evangelistic groups that seem to have control over certain elements of our government, even though we're supposed to have a separation of church and state. My only question - where do I sign?
My major complaint is that the documentary is quite unfocused, jumping around from one minor point to another, without ever congealing them into a major, definitive statement. And it didn't really need to poke fun at fringe religions like Scientology, or ones based on things like marijuana - those factions do enough of a job ridiculing themselves.
RATING: 5 out of 10 prophets
No comments:
Post a Comment