Religulous [DVD]

There's a new kind of film on the block. And Religulous is it. To call it a documentary is a palpable nonsense : its a documentary in the same way that a film without any CGI is a documentary - a record of staged events engineered to create and further an opinion : in effect, Religulous is a filmed thesis, a visual presentation of facts, scripture and evidence to reinforce a point of view. After years of being forced to sing hymns to Spacemen I don't believe in, and years of pledging allegiance to a flag people know nothing of, then I - like many people - see religion as a form of mental abuse, an indoctrination of a belief that could be very false, a wilful deception.

Aside from this, though, the film is the vehicle for the viewpoint of Bill Maher who is both smart, erudite, and very funny. There is an element of manipulation in the presentation, but no more and no less than any other film or documentary. It is never anything less than entertaining and engaging, and the viewer is never more than a moment from the humour of absurdity or laugh out loud contradiction.

Whilst some of you may see it as a tempting Religious Satire taking its cue from Borat, Religulous operates in a different and far more sophisticated sphere : instead of defacing the Trump Tower, Bill Maher simply takes himself and a camera crew to meet various philosophers and figures, many religious, some profoundly not so, and asks questions. Instead of being a parody and using that to reveal peoples innermost selves, and let their answers, and justifications - trying to rationalise the irrational - speak for themselves.

As a fierce agnostic - that is, someone who relies on evidence, and were I to meet God, I'd believe in her - this film is neither pro- nor anti-religion, but an exploration looking for an explanation : why do people believe? And why do people believe in religions - and have faith - and what is faith but an opinion without supporting evidence?

Maher travels the world meeting all manner of believers - claimed reincarnations of Christ, actors playing Jesus in a theme park, Jewish Uberinventors who go to extraordinary lengths to circumvent the Judian beliefs of prohibited Sunday Activities, a former Satanist, Jesus Truckers, and many other deominations. The film is edited with a fierce temper and literacy that pushes the envelope of interpretation, if nothing else it is a masterful example of how to manipulate the image to further the

Ultimately, Religulous is a brave polemic that concludes with a rousing call to arms that connects the illogical inconsistencies of beliefs with the ultimate, disastrous consequences : Maher calls to arms the non-believers and suggests that not only is there nothing wrong with doubt, but that it is more honest to state you do not know than to suggest that you do know. In conclusion though, Religulous is an extremely funny movie that decimates the subject with a ruthlessly logical viciousness and reveals to the believers exactly how absurd their beliefs are to the eyes of others.

But what if I'm wrong? What if there is a God? Well, the question is, which one? Do I believe in Thor, and Buddha? Do I believe in everything in the hope that one of them is right? What if we are all wrong and the One True God is in fact Quark, a 800 mile wide Nuclear Duck that made us all?

Well, I don't know, but at least I know that I don't know. And neither does Bill, but finding out that doubt is a virtue is a journey that is relentless funny and always interesting. It's a different kind of light, but a light worth seeing.

Humour is a very powerful weapon to get over some key messages and in terms of looking at religion it has to be employed for two basic reasons. Firstly, if a direct and frank approach to questioning religion is currently employed the barriers go up and two thousand years of blind indoctrination kicks in with the predictable consequences. Secondly, questioning some of the outlandish views trotted out in this DVD can only really be done through wry humour. How can you interview, in all seriousness, a reasonably educated individual and discuss in depth the historical FACT of the talking snake, the ten commandments that were chiselled into a rock (that was subsequently dropped and broken - Doh!) by a bronze age deity who created a trillion planets in one day (most of which can't be seen by the naked eye) but uses basic stone masonry and burning shrubs to communicate to his imperfect and flawed creations (well, one of them anyway - you can't have everyone in on the secret because without belief you have nothing - QED), dinosaurs being used as daily transportation by our early ancestors (despite the existence of fossils, apparently placed in the ground tirelessly by one of the many deities that are still worshipped, purely to give mankind something to dig up and puzzle over), a wooden boat that had all 6 million species on the planet on it at one time and in one location, a virgin birth, angels with wings (gravity is so awkward in heaven) and so on and so on.

The answer is you can't. What Bill does here is ask a wide variety of people why they hang onto these bronze age beliefs and gently points out the contradictions and absurdities with a good humoured non-confrontational belly laugh. So for an hour or so you get the priceless daftness of the Holy Land theme park (imagine Santa's grotto but with a bit of crucifixion), the creationist museum (Flintstones for adults, but less real), the Islamic cleric with Kashmir by Zeppelin as a ring tone on his mobile (I'm not making this up) and the bizarre Jewish faculty for designing clunky machines that allow no work to be done on the Sabbath. All of which is very, very funny.

Naturally the joke of religion, in reality, isn't remotely funny and the final 5 minute peroration of this excellent DVD is chilling and frightening in equal measures. This is the film's power - you laugh and then you are dragged back to the grim reality - religion, it says, is extremely dangerous and Bill's message is stark and portentous. So, rather than force feed children in schools tales of a lowly carpenter, who apparently heals a few blind people with grit, or wooden arks, angels, demons in red jump suits with little horns and talking snakes we should show them this DVD as, unfortunately, they will have the grim reality one day of squaring up, without humour, to the growing dangers that Bill describes so eloquently in this film.

According to the film a majority of American's believe that THE RAPTURE! is coming in the next few years (note the sexual connotation of the word), and the World will end immediately as a result (which is seen as a jolly good thing if you are in the Jesus club) - so order your copy of this hilarious but hard hitting DVD now as it may be the last laugh you get.

With a Jewish family history and raised as a not-too-strict Catholic, Bill Maher grew up and started to question the different flavours of blind faith. His exploration into faith starts at home when he questions his mother as to why they stopped going to church. The answer is a simple one, as she used birth control then Catholicism ceased to fit their lifestyle. It was in many ways a brave move and contrary to a long history of making religion fit, branching it off into new and ever more bizarre sects which attempt to move along with the times or align with political bias.

Maher is a well established comedian who's political themed stand up has taken him into television and now sees him fronting TV shows with liberal agendas, often mocking right-wing politicians and 'the establishment'. His views on religion are fairly well known in America and he seems comfortable interviewing people from various religions and asking questions which seem so obvious and yet very rarely get asked! We should question things which have become established 'fact', they have no exclusive right to remain unchallenged and nobody seems to be able to give convincing answers to such questions as "Why is faith good?" and "Why are the ten commandments seen as a wise set of rules?". He also separates Christianity from the Bible - by pointing out that integral Christian elements such as Immaculate Conception and the Papacy are more recent religious bolt-ons and don't appear in the good book itself he demonstrates how ridiculous the whole system is, the Christian system of belief is (as he points out) "shamelessly invented as they go along".

His interviewees may get defensive about the fairytales they have decided to subscribe their soul to but surprisingly there aren't really any aggressive responses. Mayer banters with believers, he does goad them a little and make cheeky jokes in the hope of a knee-jerk response but he also has a laugh with them and thanks them for their honesty. He treats them not as misguided folk, instead he tries to get them to question their beliefs and points out some of the flaws. He doesn't try to convert them and he doesn't promote Atheism, instead he encourages people to admit "I don't know" when it comes to the issue of whether there is a supreme being or not.

Most of the religious figures he interviews come across as very likable, they may be mocked a bit and the quick editing is done to emphasise the humour but the treatment of the God Squad isn't savage. Some of the clergy he interviews are very rational, one Papal scientist even says that the scriptures can't contain any science because the era of modern science is separated from the time of the old/new testament by such chasm of time. Although this isn't a balanced documentary, it's not a crusade either and at it does at least represent, albeit in a small way, moderate religious views as well as the extreme or plainly bonkers ones.

This DVD isn't simply a dig at religion, it asks some genuinely very profound and culturally significant questions. For instance, it begins to explore why America has become so gripped by religion considering that the founding fathers distanced themselves from it, It's always intrigued me how such a modern country could be so retrograde in terms of theological progression. It states that Faith is ultimately lazy, handing power to those who call themselves the spokespeople of that faith - and they are often despots and hate-mongers. This is an hour and a half in duration though and therefore barely manages to scratch the surface, but it does at least start to ask important questions and hopefully encourage the viewer to think and try to find answers for themselves.

In a nutshell: Maher points out that not having faith is a luxury, and he can see how if he were in prison for example, that finding Jesus would be a comfort if it were all that he had - but that doesn't mean he exists. He argues that humanity would be better off without religion and may only survive if it lets go of stories which have been retold and borrowed over millennia and simply accept that there's no way we can know who or what God is, or even if there ever was one in the first place.