Has anyone seen Religulous

[Comrade Anarchist]

I just saw it online and loved it but i heard nothing about it but a few commercials and no one at my school talked about but that is because i go to a school with about 90% christian population with another 8% religous. I loved it and if you havent then you must see it.

[LOLseph Stalin]

Isn't that the movie mocking religion? I bet i'll love it too. In fact, most of my family would.

[R_P_A_S]

I just saw it online and loved it but i heard nothing about it but a few commercials and no one at my school talked about but that is because i go to a school with about 90% christian population with another 8% religous. I loved it and if you havent then you must see it.

post a link!

[Janine Melnitz]

Once upon a time a valiant fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only because they were possessed with the idea of gravity. If they were to knock this notion out of their heads, say by stating it to be a superstition, a religious concept, they would be sublimely proof against any danger from water. His whole life long he fought against the illusion of gravity, of whose harmful results all statistic brought him new and manifold evidence.

[Communist Theory]

Isn't that supposed to be like the Borat on religion?

[mykittyhasaboner]

post a link!

http://www.atheistnation.net/video/?video/02542/atheist/religulous-full-movie

Courtesy of Atheist Nation. This is where i saw it online, it is quite funny.

[Yazman]

I thought it was pretty good, Bill Maher isn't quite as ruthless as Richard Dawkins (I wish he was) but he does a pretty good job.

[LOLseph Stalin]

Thanks for the link, Mykittyhasaboner! I so have to watch this now!

[The Intransigent Faction]

All I've been able to find is a preview. I'd like to see it though. Thanks for the link.

[autotrophic]

I think it was very good:) All Bill Maher really did was ask a bunch of questions to religious people that they had probably never asked themselves.

[ckaihatsu]

Yup, definitely worth seeing.





I was watching Bill Maher's "Religulous" and one part of it got me thinking -- *plenty* of people, *especially* religious types, are essentially cultural roadkill. Instead of dealing with the actual multicultural social / political / economic world that we live in they stop at the kindergarten cardboard-fort level of identity and refuse to test themselves further. By keeping things conveniently simplistic they ignore entire continents of issues thereby limiting their identity to little more than that of a glorified goldfish.





Modernism everywhere saw the rise of monotheism, because the new mercantilism that was beginning to challenge royal and feudal rule needed to be more portable than what the local gods could provide. Monotheism was a lighter load, replacing hundreds of gods with just one which freed up time for commerce over longer distances, and encouraged a new acceptance and cosmopolitanism among many peoples.

[Qayin]

Its pretty funny actually

he gets thrown out of the vatican

[Nietzsche's Ghost]

I loved this movie! The part where he was talking to the guy who claimed to be a descendent of jesus was great.

[Pirate Utopian]

I just saw it. Funny stuff.

[CHEtheLIBERATOR]

it's the worst movie ever!no matter what your views are on religion it is absolutely foolish to mock others peoples beliefs and ideals spiritual or not

[Pirate Utopian]

Not if the ideas are bollocks.

[Random Precision]

Bill Maher's a Zionist. At one point in the movie he interviews an anti-Zionist rabbi, who wears a Palestinian flag pin. He edited one of the rabbi's responses to make him seem dismissive of the Holocaust, and accused him of being in league with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Then he storms out of the interview after the rabbi consistently refuses to be caricatured.

How curious that he didn't interview any Orthodox Zionist rabbi in Israel. He might have found a lot more to make fun of in their often violent racism. Although of course, that would have made him ask hard questions about his own politics.

[Sean]

it's the worst movie ever!no matter what your views are on religion it is absolutely foolish to mock others peoples beliefs and ideals spiritual or not
You're posting on a revolutionary left board urging me not to challenge established but foolish beliefs? I'd be interested to know if you actually watched the film or not to be able to declare it as the absolute worst movie of all time, or if you're just shouting loudly that you don't like people laughing at religion. I haven't watched it yet, but I'm about to.

[The Intransigent Faction]

I just finished watching it yesterday.
I thought it oversimplified the issue of middle eastern conflict (religious extremism there seems more related to geopolitics than was let on, i.e. the Palestinian conflict does relate to religion, but there's more to suicide bombing than simply people being religious, i.e. conflicts over land ('holy land', but that's still another factor that doesn't apply to southern baptists or mormons, for example), U.S. backing of Israel and other past corrupt governments in the middle east, and a feeling that the only option left is to blow themselves up. In other words, I don't see "suicide bombers are religious, therefore religion is bad", as a well thought out argument.
In other words, I agree with Random Precision.

Otherwise, it was generally solid, and funny at times.
The Anti-Zionist Jew he interviewed happened to be one who was at the Holocaust conference in Tehran. While I find that conference deplorable, this seems to give the notion that anti-Zionists are an anti-Semitic fringe, which is absurd, and furthermore he echoed the "wipe Israel off the map" crap that has been debunked since.

[Oneironaut]

I laughed my ass off the entire way through. There are some high quality torrents of the video. The little clips that are placed throughout are hilarious. My favorite part was when they were smoking pot and that guy's hair started on fire.

[Pirate Utopian]

The favorite in between bit is around 16:16 when Jesus got *****slapped.

[Janine Melnitz]

I like the part where Bill wakes up in a motel room and makes sleepy advances on his bedmate, who he thinks is a beautiful lady but turns out to be an orangutan named Clyde

[Cumannach]

I don't think it was that great. Does anybody really find Maher that funny? I don't. And he constantly chuckles like a real life Dr.Hibbert. Stop it damn it. I think you're better off watching Dawkins. There was one really funny bit though, when he was talking to the Senator, "there's no IQ test to get into the Senate heheheh....." And yes Maher is a total Zionist.

[mykittyhasaboner]

I don't think it was that great. Does anybody really find Maher that funny? I don't. And he constantly chuckles like a real life Dr.Hibbert. Stop it damn it. I think you're better off watching Dawkins.
I don't find him that funny, and his politics are crap obviously, but I thought the movie was hilarious because of the people he interviewed and the various clips the movie showed.


There was one really funny bit though, when he was talking to the Senator, "there's no IQ test to get into the Senate heheheh....." And yes Maher is a total Zionist.
That was my favorite part of the whole movie. :laugh:

[Plagueround]

I just watched it last night. It was ok, but the way he obviously tore apart the scenes with the anti-Zionist Jewish man makes me wonder how much else he edited to make himself look better.

[Sean]

I watched it and was dissappointed, although I don't know why, I'm not a Bill Mayer fan boy. One of the biggest problems with the movie was that he spend the first half of it laughing at Christians for blindly taking everything written in the bible literally instead of just extracting morals. Then at the end he goes up to muslims and challenges them about passages in the koran that say infidels should be put do death. When the answer he gets from all those people is "yeah its an old book you dont take everything literally in it" his comeback was to sit in his car after the interviews and say to his producer/cameraman "I think they do take it literally but they just wont tell an outsider". How are you supposed to win against that? You can't because he just talks over you or in the case of Rabbi Weiss just got up and walked off. Its also pretty obvious that he used deception to get to do the interviews because about three people turned around and said when the realisation dawned on them that it was an attack piece "I don't know what your documentary is about but if its about challenging God then I dont want to be part of it". All in all its the exact same movie as Expelled: No Intelligence allowed, which was slated by atheists for the exact same reasons I'm slating this.

[ckaihatsu]

I watched it and was dissappointed, although I don't know why, I'm not a Bill Mayer fan boy. One of the biggest problems with the movie was that he spend the first half of it laughing at Christians for blindly taking everything written in the bible literally instead of just extracting morals. Then at the end he goes up to muslims and challenges them about passages in the koran that say infidels should be put do death. When the answer he gets from all those people is "yeah its an old book you dont take everything literally in it" his comeback was to sit in his car after the interviews and say to his producer/cameraman "I think they do take it literally but they just wont tell an outsider". How are you supposed to win against that? You can't because he just talks over you or in the case of Rabbi Weiss just got up and walked off.


My beginnings in political life date back to when I was a teenager still in grade school and got interested in atheist, or state / church separation issues, through a classified ad I found in the local paper.

I consciously *left* the strictly atheist camp when I came around to revolutionary socialist politics in college -- certainly state / church separation issues are *always* topical and important, but atheism itself doesn't make for a comprehensive set of politics, unfortunately. By the nature of the issue itself the political worldview becomes constrained to national borders.

This sectarian mindset is unavoidable when dealing with global topics, including -- ironically -- religion. The part I recall most readily from 'Religulous' was Maher's interview with a Muslim (Imam?) in a mosque, and the guy was trying to explain that there's a difference between the religion and the political world that some Muslims happen to be active in. Maher simply could not comprehend this and wanted to just lump all activity on the earth into religious camps.





Its also pretty obvious that he used deception to get to do the interviews because about three people turned around and said when the realisation dawned on them that it was an attack piece "I don't know what your documentary is about but if its about challenging God then I dont want to be part of it". All in all its the exact same movie as Expelled: No Intelligence allowed, which was slated by atheists for the exact same reasons I'm slating this.


A (socialist) political worldview is much better to have when viewing -- and discussing -- religious issues. As Marxists we would *not* discriminate or exclude people based on their religious affiliations, though we could very well discuss and argue about why religious belief is backward and even counter-revolutionary.

[Yazman]

Bill Maher's a Zionist. At one point in the movie he interviews an anti-Zionist rabbi, who wears a Palestinian flag pin. He edited one of the rabbi's responses to make him seem dismissive of the Holocaust, and accused him of being in league with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Then he storms out of the interview after the rabbi consistently refuses to be caricatured.

How curious that he didn't interview any Orthodox Zionist rabbi in Israel. He might have found a lot more to make fun of in their often violent racism. Although of course, that would have made him ask hard questions about his own politics.

This was the part of the movie that disappointed me in a very significant way and almost turned me off of Bill Maher. His treatment of the anti-Zionist rabbi was pretty fucked.

[Charles Xavier]

Thought the movie had good points but overall was insulting and divisive.

[Riot11]

My favorite aspect of this film was that Bill Mehr does not just question Christianity, but all religions. Which surprised me a little. No one ever goes after say, the Mormons(which are fuckin' nuts), or the Muslims. It was nice that he covered all the bases.

[choff]

I went to see this in October when it first came out, and loved it. I have since purchased the DVD and rewatched it frequently; it's great for spurning debate between your friends, whether or not they believe in anything.

While Bill Maher is obviously not an objective perspective, he is [relatively] passive in his interviews. I've been able to show it to a handful of my more sensitive theist friends without them getting too offended.

On a side note, has anyone been able to confirm that the man standing outside the Vatican who calls Hell the "Old Catholic thing" hasn't been excommunicated? He said some interesting things about the religion he seemed to model his life around.

[DesertShark]

It was ok, I think it could've been better. He could've pushed a lot more on some issues and really made people question their beliefs. I don't think he followed through enough or tackled enough religions.

[bluerev002]

That shit was funny as fuck. When the Senator says "You don't need to take an IQ test to be a Senator" XD

[Decolonize The Left]

I thought it was alright. I enjoyed how open the film was about critiquing religion, but Mahler certainly took it easy on Judaism and burned Christianity and Islam as hard as he could. I found this bias disturbing and felt it weakened the film.

- August