Or, as I like to call it, “Bill Mahr wants you to know that he’s smarter then you, oh, and religion sucks and will kill everyone”.  Since, it’s in theaters now I’ll just link to a trailer rather than describe the basic structure (here).  I had a lot of problems with this movie, both as a student of religion and as a fan of film.  Instead of tying them all together into a paragraph, I’ll basically just do bullet points.  Two disclaimers: 1.) I’m normally a fan of Bill Mahr and 2.) I’m an atheist, myself:

  • Bill Mahr is obviously coming at the whole subject from the angry-atheist school of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins.  I am not a fan of this school of thought.  Namely, because Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about.  Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist, not a scholar of religion, but at least he’s educated.  Harris on the other hand is not trained in the field at all and basically just spews angry teenager arguments against religion.  Even better, he’s one of those enthusiasts of “eastern religion”, who posits that the eastern religions are somehow intrinsically better then their western counterparts.  I could go on and on about how this whole world-view is essentially a product of the nineteenth century colonial enterprise in India, but why bother?  Anyway, all these “scholars” (in scare quotes as none of them are actually scholars in the field) suggest that by somehow eliminating religion (and how exactly would this occur?  none of them seem to be able to answer this.  Nor, do they explain how exactly religion exists as a separable part of human society/culture) the world would be improved as a whole.  This is utter bunk, it posits that religion somehow acts as a malevolent force within society, distinct from the forces of culture and human nature.  As if people would be nice, if only it weren’t for big bad religion.  Ugh, I could go on about this point forever, but won’t belabor it anymore.
  • Bill Mahr spends a large portion of this film mocking people for being stupid.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, stupid people are funny.  However, there comes a point where it stops being funny and just starts being cruel.  I feel like Religulous crosses this line fairly early, for the reason below:
  • Mahr/Director Larry Charles (of Borat) edits the film in what I view to be a borderline unethical manner.  Essentially, they cut in shots that clearly aren’t in context (As in, Mahr will say something then a reaction shot will be shown that is clearly from a different part of the interview) in order to either make a joke or make the folks Mahr is interviewing look dumber.  The question is: what level of distortion is acceptable in a documentary, even a comedic one?
  • Bill Mahr gives very little time to anyone who’s actually knowledgable about religion and when they are given time their views are misrepresented.  Here, I’m specifically thinking about the Roman Catholic theologian who states some modern Catholic theology, and is basically presented as an Atheist with a collar (as my friend Jason put it).  This is also a questionable distortion, although I wonder if Bill Mahr even knows that this is, in fact, actual modern theology?.
  • Finally, and I’ll make this my last point, Bill Mahr presents some information in the film as authoritative/definitive that is far from it.  Here, I’m specifically (although not exclusively) thinking of the whole Egyptian god’s/Jesus comparison.  It’s crap scholarship.   The problem comes from the fact that people will see this film, take this crap seriously, and then repeat it, spreading bad info outward (see: my issues with the load of excrement that masqueraded as a book: The Da Vinci Code).  The sad part is that a lot of the people that will do this are otherwise intelligent, well informed individuals.  People who will go out of their ways to learn about political candidates, or global issues, but just regurgitate anti-religious crap because it fits into their world-view.  Sigh.

So, it’s pretty obvious that I didn’t like this movie.  Was there anything worthwhile within it?  I won’t deny that there are some very funny moments.  However, after a certain point, I stopped laughing as the problems with the film either continued, or grew worse.  The end of the film was especially bad, as Mahr just goes off the rails ranting about how we should go out and destroy religion, this attitude is somehow not as bad as fundamentalists who believe that we should go out and destroy the wrong religions.  Anyway, if you couldn’t tell I do not recommend this movie at all, avoid it.  If you must see it, wait till it comes out on video and be aware of the distortions/misinformation/skewed world-view contained within.