A Religulous Veneer

Just who (or what) is Bill Maher and why all the blogosphere buzz over his movie, "Religulous"?

Many people of faith are up in arms over the movie because of its portrayal of religion as something for the weak minded. On the other hand, secularists, atheists, agnostics and Dawkins/Hitchens fans are rallying to use this new "weapon" Maher has created in the debate over religion.

Even cursory searches turn up all sorts of opinions on Maher. The anti-religion side thinks they have a new lion...until someone makes a plausible case that Maher's arguments are simplistic, even childish, and turns up a 2002 interview in which Maher says he does believe in some kind of God but not in organized religion. On the other side, many religionists are thinking (but not saying aloud) that Maher's "expose" of all religions is valid except for the religion to which they happen to belong.

Both sides may be missing a couple of important points:

1) Maher's tactic in the movie was clear: find the easy, low-hanging targets, ambush them with a camera and microphone, then mock them. Not exactly a scholarly approach, which brings me to my second point.

2) Bill Maher is no more a philosopher than Rush Limbaugh is a politician. Bill Maher is an entertainer with a profit motive who knows how to make money by being controversial.

Maher is a satirist, and that is no crime. I think, as many others do, that there is much in organized religion that is easily mockable (yes, even some aspects of my own religious culture). But no one should treat Maher's work as a serious discussion of the issues. Getting all worked up over "Religulous" is a rather disproportionate response, kind of like putting on a Kevlar vest for a squirt gun fight.

And Bill? Well, Bill is laughing all the way to the bank.