Review of Religulous (2008) by Jiana W — 01 Aug 2012

It was a good movie. It was funny at times, such as the wording across the screen when he was interviewing different people. I would highly recommend this to every Christian and I will try to get my friends to watch it as well. It encourages us to learn about our faith more. Now the complaint, from a Christian perspective, since he spends over half the movie focused on us.

I think Bill Maher is a funny guy and I like him, for the most part. But he seems to believe he is a lot smarter than he actually is. I was expecting a somewhat ground-breaking film in regards to the questions he posed, but they are really the same tired, over-used arguments that have been dealt with (and ignored) for years. Even I could answer quite a bit of the questions he asked. So nothing new as far as that goes.

Now Maher goes to (obviously) the most ignorant Christians he can find and grills them with relatively basic questions about their faith. It's a good thing to show the ignorance of some and to point out that they really have no idea what and why they believe. But it is also important that you actually go to someone who ISN'T a crackpot and who CAN give a decent defense of the faith. Maher conveniently just settles for the crackpots instead of going to people who actually know what they're talking about. Either he couldn't find them, or he just wasn't looking. My money is on the latter. In fact, I'd very much like to see him in a room with the likes of Mark Driscoll or Ravi Zacharias. Let's see how smart he is then. He'd run with his proverbial tail between his legs. So in retrospect, this isn't really a *sincere* investigation of religion. It's very heavily biased and the only real reason Maher gives for disbelief in God is the fact that it interferes with his sex life. Great reason, Maher. In spite of that, I still recommend this to Christians. If they find themselves unable to answer most of the junior high questions that Maher asks, then that should be a red flag and a signal for them to start investigating their faith immediately.