| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| MisterBadIdea |
Posted - 10/07/2008 : 13:36:03
This is the movie where Bill Maher makes the case for atheism and points out the vast hypocrisy and inherent insanity and danger of religion.
It is a positively awful movie, and Bill Maher is a terrible human being. I left the theater angry. If I force myself to think really hard, I think maybe Maher has some good points, like the one about how atheists outnumber blacks, Hispanics and NRA members but don't have their only political lobbyists. But still, stuff like that is not what you're going to get out of this movie. What you're going to get is Maher being a gigantic asshole for 90 minutes.
Maher has one and only one tactic: Find some dingbat from the Hoboken Church of Dingbattery, crack jokes (all too often racist jokes) at him and walk away without letting him get a word in. He does NOTHING. ELSE. in the movie. Understand that if he'd actually talked to a real religious expert, he would have been SLAUGHTERED because he asks nothing that a real religious scholar hasn't been wrestled with all his life. He won't even talk to a real anti-religious expert, lest it takes focus off of his own smirking visage.
This is an intellectually vacant, VH1-style snarkfest of no intellectual heft. It's made by assholes for assholes. Even Ben Stein's indefensible "Expelled" (the only thing keeping "Religulous" from being the worst religious documentary I've ever seen) took the fight right to Richard Dawkins and not Joe Dumbass-on-the-Street. It truly takes a questionable breed of human being to find footage of a woman testifying that God made her kill her kids, and then play a jokey pop song over it. |
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| ChocolateLady |
Posted - 10/15/2008 : 13:58:23
quote:
Originally posted by Se�n
quote:
Originally posted by Conan The Westy
Here's a considered piece on Religulous from Gareth Higgins.
http://www.sojo.net/blog/godspolitics/?p=2854
The writer seems like the kind of guy that Maher seems to have deliberately avoided. 
Yes, and he does make some very good points. |
| Sean |
Posted - 10/14/2008 : 22:22:57
quote:
Originally posted by Conan The Westy
Here's a considered piece on Religulous from Gareth Higgins.
http://www.sojo.net/blog/godspolitics/?p=2854
The writer seems like the kind of guy that Maher seems to have deliberately avoided. |
| Conan The Westy |
Posted - 10/14/2008 : 21:26:42
Here's a considered piece on Religulous from Gareth Higgins.
http://www.sojo.net/blog/godspolitics/?p=2854
|
| ChocolateLady |
Posted - 10/14/2008 : 14:38:32
quote:
Originally posted by Randall
I haven't seen this one yet, but I do watch Maher live weekly, I did see him on the Daily Show, I do believe he's a Playboy-level chauvinist, I wouldn't want to have a beer with him, but judging from this thread, his flick seems to be achieving its objective: making people think and talk. God bless him for that.
The interview with him on Jay Leno was interesting. Jay really took him to the cleaners in refuting some of Maher's logic - interesting since it's usually the other way around. But in the part about about the movie, however, Jay made an interesting point. He said (something to the effect) that if your beliefs can't stand up to criticism and speculation (and satire), then perhaps your aren't as secure in your beliefs as you originally thought.
I haven't seen the movie, but the clip of him making a (fake) plea for Scientology in front of a small crowd seemed pretty funny to me.
(Although I doubt Scientologist would agree.)
|
| MisterBadIdea |
Posted - 10/14/2008 : 05:16:21
quote:
Originally posted by Randall
I haven't seen this one yet, but I do watch Maher live weekly, I did see him on the Daily Show, I do believe he's a Playboy-level chauvinist, I wouldn't want to have a beer with him, but judging from this thread, his flick seems to be achieving its objective: making people think and talk. God bless him for that.
You're not wrong exactly (I only know Maher through this movie so I can't really judge him beyond it), but I do want to point out that being thought-provoking isn't the same as being thoughtful. Maher's derision isn't unwarranted but he's still chosen the cheapest and easiest way to make this movie. A smarter man than I pointed out that the atrocities that Maher fears weren't always committed by religious men, but were always committed by men as arrogant as Maher. |
| randall |
Posted - 10/12/2008 : 01:43:40
I haven't seen this one yet, but I do watch Maher live weekly, I did see him on the Daily Show, I do believe he's a Playboy-level chauvinist, I wouldn't want to have a beer with him, but judging from this thread, his flick seems to be achieving its objective: making people think and talk. God bless him for that. |
| Sean |
Posted - 10/09/2008 : 23:26:08
OK, I see now where he's coming from (from the coin-flip analogy). If he believes that atheism is as invalid a position as devout religious belief then that would make him an agnostic (someone prepared to concede that anything is possible but isn't really sure about anything that's invisible and silent).
I'm as certain that there's no afterlife as I am that there are no Jupiterian chocolate cakes, and I've never seen the point in qualifying my statement "There are no chocolate cakes orbiting Jupiter" by adding "but nobody really knows, do they?" When I look into a vacuum I see and hear and feel nothing, so I conclude there's nothing there; a perfectly reasonable conclusion that I don't believe needs further justification. The onus is on those who believe there's something invisible and silent in the vacuum to demonstrate it's presence. |
| Wheelz |
Posted - 10/09/2008 : 13:08:01
quote:
Originally posted by Se�n
That doesn't make a lot of sense. He's effectively saying that he's not entitled to a strong opinion about something unless he can prove the converse is invalid. E.g., I'm not allowed to have a strong belief that there are no chocolate cakes orbiting Jupiter because I can't prove that there aren't.
I get your point, Sean, but that isn't quite how I interpreted it.
Rather, say somebody is going to flip a coin. A group of people are absolutely, 100% sure that the coin will come up Heads. So much so, that they base every decision they ever make in their lives on the "fact" that the coin will land on Heads. There is no doubt whatsoever in their minds about the outcome of the coin toss.
The kicker is that the coin will never be tossed in any of our lifetimes.
I think it's reasonable for a person to point out the folly of the group's faith in Heads without being equally certain himself that it'll be Tails.
|
| Sean |
Posted - 10/08/2008 : 23:34:15
quote:
Originally posted by Wheelz
I haven't seen this film yet, but Bill Maher was a guest on the Daily Show the other night. He stated quite emphatically that he does not consider himself an Atheist; his disdain for organized religion rises from the fact that its proponents possess so much certainty about that which nobody can possibly be certain. Atheism, he said, requires that same kind of certainty; therefore, he would be a hypocrite if he called himself an Atheist.
That doesn't make a lot of sense. He's effectively saying that he's not entitled to a strong opinion about something unless he can prove the converse is invalid. E.g., I'm not allowed to have a strong belief that there are no chocolate cakes orbiting Jupiter because I can't prove that there aren't.
I suppose I'll end up watching this on DVD out of curiosity, but this movie doesn't seem to have much purpose from what I've read above. |
| MisterBadIdea |
Posted - 10/08/2008 : 19:51:09
The fire-and-brimstone ending just leaves me confused. I mean, it's just so bizarre and out of place. Was it meant to be ironic? Was he consciously appropriating the methods of hellfire preachers, and if so, did he just not care about how it fit with his alleged ideal of "doubt"? Is he just too stupid or arrogant to notice?
I kinda liked that the rabbi insisted on being allowed to finish his thought before Maher interrupts. Not often I sympathize with a Holocaust denier; weird and uncomfortable experience, believe you me. Okay, all right, maybe Maher does let some people actually speak, but it sure felt like a rare occurrence in the movie. |
| Wheelz |
Posted - 10/08/2008 : 19:40:17
I haven't seen this film yet, but Bill Maher was a guest on the Daily Show the other night. He stated quite emphatically that he does not consider himself an Atheist; his disdain for organized religion rises from the fact that its proponents possess so much certainty about that which nobody can possibly be certain. Atheism, he said, requires that same kind of certainty; therefore, he would be a hypocrite if he called himself an Atheist.
It made sense when he put it like that... But from what I've read here and elsewhere, he doesn't really seem to practice that philosophy in the film, instead eschewing any actual thoughtful debate in favor of cheap shots and an I'm-so-much-smarter-than-everybody-else kind of arrogant snobbery. I guess that's just his usual schtick, but it's a shame, because I think Maher can actually be very funny on those occasions when he dials down the cockiness a bit. |
| damalc |
Posted - 10/08/2008 : 05:34:43
i liked Religulous, but there was one thing i found really interesting. in his passion for atheism, Maher is a lot like the preachers he opposes. he uses images of destruction and talks like a religious minister. he's a lot like them. he just worships godlessness.
and MBI is right, Maher can be a galactic asshole. that's the same way he's been on his shows and standup performances, and if that doesn't appeal to someone, i don't know why they'd go see the movie.
i also don't think MBI is quite accurate about Maher's tactics. in many cases he let people talk and then he made sarcastic remarks and made fun of them. there was a rabbi who wouldn't let Maher get a word in. a couple of people he just let ramble and ran captions disputing them.
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| lemmycaution |
Posted - 10/07/2008 : 16:04:59
Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have another drink.
W.C. Fields |
| MisterBadIdea |
Posted - 10/07/2008 : 15:50:04
Good thing I'm not God then.
Actually, I guess my by-assholes-for-assholes assessment is not really accurate, since I, in fact, am an asshole and I didn't like the movie at all. But seriously, something like this really shows how good Michael Moore is at his job. If Moore had footage of something as horrible as a woman drowning her kids in the name of God, he'd let the scene have some real power, and he certainly wouldn't play silly music over it. I want to make clear that I'm not hostile to Maher's ideas at all; I'm hostile to Maher. He's smug and dumb, a bad combination. |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 10/07/2008 : 14:44:29
quote:
Originally posted by MisterBadIdea
This is the movie where Bill Maher makes the case for atheism and points out the vast hypocrisy and inherent insanity and danger of religion.
It is a positively awful movie, and Bill Maher is a terrible human being. I left the theater angry. If I force myself to think really hard, I think maybe Maher has some good points, like the one about how atheists outnumber blacks, Hispanics and NRA members but don't have their only political lobbyists. But still, stuff like that is not what you're going to get out of this movie. What you're going to get is Maher being a gigantic asshole for 90 minutes.
Maher has one and only one tactic: Find some dingbat from the Hoboken Church of Dingbattery, crack jokes (all too often racist jokes) at him and walk away without letting him get a word in. He does NOTHING. ELSE. in the movie. Understand that if he'd actually talked to a real religious expert, he would have been SLAUGHTERED because he asks nothing that a real religious scholar hasn't been wrestled with all his life. He won't even talk to a real anti-religious expert, lest it takes focus off of his own smirking visage.
This is an intellectually vacant, VH1-style snarkfest of no intellectual heft. It's made by assholes for assholes. Even Ben Stein's indefensible "Expelled" (the only thing keeping "Religulous" from being the worst religious documentary I've ever seen) took the fight right to Richard Dawkins and not Joe Dumbass-on-the-Street. It truly takes a questionable breed of human being to find footage of a woman testifying that God made her kill her kids, and then play a jokey pop song over it.
I've heard someone/thing called god has been known to be quite forgiving.  
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