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Short Notice Movie
Oct. 6th, 2008 04:13 pmI just found out Bill Maher's Religulous is playing at 6:10@Westhills. Anyone interested in seeing it with me? Tonight?
Oct. 6th, 2008
Religulous - review
Oct. 6th, 2008 09:44 pmI just saw Religulous. It was good, but could have been better.
I don't usually go in for movies that make fun of real people - I always hated Candid Camera and its ilk. I avoided seeing Borat for that reason. I may have to conclude that I'm a bad person though, because when it came time to see this treatment applied to people I don't like (as opposed to people I'm merely indifferent to), I was there, popcorn in hand.
There was a difference though. People were not tricked in this movie. Bill Maher is who he s and is quite upfront about his views. He wasn't Sasha Baron Cohen pretending to be a clueless foreigner. It wasn't Allen Funt setting people up with staged scenarios. The format was simple. Bill would interview people about religion, then try to apply logic to their views. Surprisingly, the Roman Catholics came across the best (Apparently there are Catholic Priests who take a surprisingly ecumenical view of the world, don't like hypocrisy even when it's in their own backyard, and understand that the Bible is not Science. Now if they could only get Benedict XVI to agree). For the most part he dished it out evenly to the major Abrahamic religions. Jews, Christians and Muslims all got a chance to make their beliefs look foolish. He took a few minutes to go after Mormons and Scientologists.
Mostly it was a matter of him pointing out that their beliefs were not supportable and if they applied their skepticism of other religions to their own, they'd realize that.
Here and there, Bill also reminisced about his personal beliefs and how they got there. His Mother and Sister joined in on some of this.
Where the movie breaks down I think is in its turn to the serious towards the end. For most of the movie it's pretty light-hearted. The very end however turns to why atheism is important, and why having a majority of people believing in make-beleive is a unhealthy for all of us.
Short version: If you expect your reward in the afterlife, and you think God is going to end the world, perhaps in our lifetime, you're not going to be making rational decisions in your long-term planning. Why make peace if it's god's will to come back and smite the unbelievers in the next ten years? Why engage in any sort of conservation if you believe God made the world for us and gave us enough resources to meet our needs?
A better movie would have kept coming back to this point over and over again throughout, mixed with the humour of the situation - sugar to the nasty (but necessary) medicine of the message.
I don't usually go in for movies that make fun of real people - I always hated Candid Camera and its ilk. I avoided seeing Borat for that reason. I may have to conclude that I'm a bad person though, because when it came time to see this treatment applied to people I don't like (as opposed to people I'm merely indifferent to), I was there, popcorn in hand.
There was a difference though. People were not tricked in this movie. Bill Maher is who he s and is quite upfront about his views. He wasn't Sasha Baron Cohen pretending to be a clueless foreigner. It wasn't Allen Funt setting people up with staged scenarios. The format was simple. Bill would interview people about religion, then try to apply logic to their views. Surprisingly, the Roman Catholics came across the best (Apparently there are Catholic Priests who take a surprisingly ecumenical view of the world, don't like hypocrisy even when it's in their own backyard, and understand that the Bible is not Science. Now if they could only get Benedict XVI to agree). For the most part he dished it out evenly to the major Abrahamic religions. Jews, Christians and Muslims all got a chance to make their beliefs look foolish. He took a few minutes to go after Mormons and Scientologists.
Mostly it was a matter of him pointing out that their beliefs were not supportable and if they applied their skepticism of other religions to their own, they'd realize that.
Here and there, Bill also reminisced about his personal beliefs and how they got there. His Mother and Sister joined in on some of this.
Where the movie breaks down I think is in its turn to the serious towards the end. For most of the movie it's pretty light-hearted. The very end however turns to why atheism is important, and why having a majority of people believing in make-beleive is a unhealthy for all of us.
Short version: If you expect your reward in the afterlife, and you think God is going to end the world, perhaps in our lifetime, you're not going to be making rational decisions in your long-term planning. Why make peace if it's god's will to come back and smite the unbelievers in the next ten years? Why engage in any sort of conservation if you believe God made the world for us and gave us enough resources to meet our needs?
A better movie would have kept coming back to this point over and over again throughout, mixed with the humour of the situation - sugar to the nasty (but necessary) medicine of the message.
More Religulous Thoughts
Oct. 6th, 2008 10:21 pmOkay. Mormonism. A guy starts preaching that he's a prophet. His evidence of this is the translated gold tablets of an Archangel. The tablets are conveniently whisked away to heaven so nobody can confirm this. Contemporary skeptics manage to catch the founder in contradictions. Eventually, he starts having revelations as he requires, up to and including god's commandment to sleep with lots and lots of women.
And people bought this? They didn't immediately realise he's a con artist. 150 years later, where every confirmable fact in the book of Mormon (Jesus coming to the new world, Native American's being genetically related to Middle Eastern Jews of the 1st century) has been proven wrong, they still buy it.
I know some Mormons, and they've seemed to be pretty reasonable folks, but come on.
Scientology. A professional Science Fiction writer invents a religion. He's on record as saying that the best way to make money is to invent a religion. The religion involves the idea that all our mental problems are the result of alien soul implants leaking out of nuked volcanos. Every single honest description of what Scientology is that I've ever seen includes a disclaimer that these ridiculous tenets really are what Scientologists believe in.
And people bought it. Not just famous Hollywood actors, but people who haven't gone completely around the bend.
Ok it's settled. If I want wealth and regular sex (and I do), I should become a cult leader. The beautiful thing about it is, even though I'm admitting right here and right now that it's a scam, it won't matter. People will still buy it.
All I have to do is be a lying SOB.
And people bought this? They didn't immediately realise he's a con artist. 150 years later, where every confirmable fact in the book of Mormon (Jesus coming to the new world, Native American's being genetically related to Middle Eastern Jews of the 1st century) has been proven wrong, they still buy it.
I know some Mormons, and they've seemed to be pretty reasonable folks, but come on.
Scientology. A professional Science Fiction writer invents a religion. He's on record as saying that the best way to make money is to invent a religion. The religion involves the idea that all our mental problems are the result of alien soul implants leaking out of nuked volcanos. Every single honest description of what Scientology is that I've ever seen includes a disclaimer that these ridiculous tenets really are what Scientologists believe in.
And people bought it. Not just famous Hollywood actors, but people who haven't gone completely around the bend.
Ok it's settled. If I want wealth and regular sex (and I do), I should become a cult leader. The beautiful thing about it is, even though I'm admitting right here and right now that it's a scam, it won't matter. People will still buy it.
All I have to do is be a lying SOB.
