RELIGULOUS ss Directed by larry charles Written by bill maher
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Maher’s first film project, Religulous, is a major disappointment because here, unlike on Real Time, he aims for laughs instead of insight—and aims low. The movie opens with Maher in Israel, perched on a hill in what was once the ancient city of Megiddo, which the Book of Revelation prophecies will be the site of Armageddon. As he points out, people are now more capable of destroying the world—through nuclear technology, pollution, and global warming—than they are of understanding it. “If there’s one thing I hate more than prophecy,” he concludes, “it’s self-fulfilling prophecy.” To him, faith is a neurological disease that has to be cured before the human race destroys the planet, and anyone who defends faith is an “enabler” and a “fellow traveler.” As he concludes at the end of the movie, “Faith means making a virtue of not thinking.”
Maher might have produced a more useful documentary if he’d limited himself to the dire influence of Christian fundamentalism on American democracy. He skewers the commercial motives of televangelists in a sit-down with Orlando preacher Jeremiah Cummings (who sang with Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes in the 70s). Cummings explains that Jesus, contrary to his image as a man who shunned wealth, wore fine linens. Mark Pryor, who represents Arkansas in the U.S. Senate, mangles the English language as he defends creationism to Maher, then impales himself on the botched one-liner, “You don’t have to pass an IQ test to be in the Senate.” And John Westcott, whose Exchange Ministries offers to help people “find freedom from homosexuality and sexual brokenness,” takes some heavy ribbing for his claim that he’s a reformed homosexual. When Westcott argues that people experiment with homosexuality because they’re insecure, Maher replies, “It takes a lot of security to walk out of the house with assless chaps.”
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