Movie Review: Religulous
posted by The Vidiot @ 10:17 AM Permalink I used to laugh at Bill Maher, but his movie, Religulous, just wasn't that good.Mostly, I felt like Maher was just kicking puppies. I couldn't get into any of his laugh lines because I felt so bad for the people he was using, er, I mean interviewing. He was really hard on fundamentalist Christians and Muslims and only poked a little fun at Jews and Catholics. (Though, the two priests he interviewed were the best interviews of the movie.) I guess Maher is half Catholic and half Jew, so maybe it was just harder for him to poke fun at something that he was too familiar with. I don't know.
Bottom line though, the whole movie's premise was messy, and quite frankly, wrong. He started out with "I just want to understand the certainty" and ended up with "we can now kill ourselves with nukes so we better stop being religious or we'll all die." There was no connection between point A and B.
But he was just wrong anyway. We're not going to blow ourselves up over religion. I can't think of any war in modern times that has been over religion. (And one could probably even make an argument that the crusades weren't about religion, but rather about establishing hegemonic control that only used religion as its bludgeon.) Religion isn't the reason governments drop bombs on people. Capitalism is. Hegemony is. Power is. Religion is not.
If a nuke is dropped on Iran, it will not be because they're Muslim. It will be because they resisted Western-style capitalism and for that, they will be crushed. (But the guy who drops the bombs thinks he's doing it for God and Country.) If a dirty bomb goes off in an American city, it will not be because they think we're infidels and deserve to die, it will be because we've been fucking around with their government, poisoning their food, killing their people and forcing them to accept our culture. (But the guy who does it will believe he's doing it for Allah and Country.)
The only way religion will come into play in any end-times scenario is that it will be used to convince the people who are doing the killing or the dying to accept their fate.
Labels: bad Religion, capitalism, maher, religulous
2 Comments:
Actually, Bill Maher is a strongly avowed atheist. I haven't seen the flick though, so I can't comment any further. Besides, you can argue facts but each person's opinion is uniquely his/her own and cannot be argued with any success.
Maher says he not an atheist. He says, (and he's right) that atheism is just as dogmatic and certain as religion. He says, "I'm not an atheist. I just don't know."
Unfortunately, he is firmly embedded in the economic system and believes and embraces that just as much as any jesus freak embraces the teachings of the bible.
He said he questions the certainty of the faithful. But he's just as certain that a dollar is worth something. That's no different than believing in an invisible cloud being.
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