We spent most of the past week in Atlantic City; sadly, though, as hard as one might try, one cannot spend every waking moment at the poker table–so, at around 3 am on Tuesday night, we headed back to our room to flip through the casino hotel’s pay-per-view channels. To our surprise (and mild delight) they were offering Religulous, Bill Maher’s recently released mockumentary on religion.
WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW THE FOLD
I enjoyed it; however, I wasn’t completely blown away by it. My impression was that the goal was more to entertain than to seriously inform, though the final ten or fifteen minutes were well-done in terms of getting a strong and dramatic message across. There were some priceless comedic gems sprinkled throughout the general humorousness, to wit:
BILL MAHER (to “Dr.” Jeremiah Cummings, televangelist who has made lots of money in the business and is slathered in jewelry and hand-tailored clothes): I see you have a lot of bling there.
DR. CUMMINGS: Well, you know–the people want you to look well–
BILL MAHER: That’s what pimps say about their women.
DR. CUMMINGS: Jesus dressed very well.
BILL MAHER: Where is the biblical evidence of that?
DR. CUMMINGS: When he was born, they brought him gold. They brought him gold. Jesus was not poor.
BILL MAHER: So my image of Jesus as a man who championed the poor and who walked around in simple garb, that’s wrong?
DR. CUMMINGS: It was linen. It was fine linen.
BILL MAHER: Really?
DR. CUMMINGS: Yes.
BILL MAHER: But Jesus constantly preaches against rich people.
DR. CUMMINGS: The bible does not speak against being rich.
BILL MAHER: Jesus does. Very, very plainly.
DR. CUMMINGS: He never preached against being rich. The bible says, ‘It is better for a rich man to, uh, to, uh, um…”
(Film cuts to scene from The Ten Commandments–quote: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom”)
BILL MAHER (discussing miracles with a born-again Christian): They were so miraculous, you can’t remember what they were?
BORN-AGAIN CHRISTIAN: There were so many of them.
BILL MAHER: Give me an example.
BORN-AGAIN CHRISTIAN: One example I can remember was, I was at a party. It was a guy that was working for Jews for Jesus. And I asked him, can I get a drink of water? And he says, you know what? Here’s a glass. Stick your hand out the window and pray for rain! I didn’t like the attitude. I said okay, I stuck my hand out the window, and it started pouring rain. Pouring so bad that people couldn’t leave the party. To me that’s a miracle. You don’t have to believe it, but–
BILL MAHER: It is pretty lame.
BORN-AGAIN CHRISTIAN: I don’t live my life with miracles.
BILL MAHER: No, you live your life with the same sort of mundane coincidences as everybody in the world. You know, if it rained frogs, I would say you had a point. But it rains, and it stops raining–
BORN-AGAIN CHRISTIAN: Well, when was the last time you asked for rain and it started raining within ten seconds?
BILL MAHER: I don’t know. I don’t ever ask for rain. But if I did ask for rain, and it started to rain, I wouldn’t think it started to rain because I asked for it. I would think it rains because sometimes, it rains.
BILL MAHER: Do you believe in evolution?
SENATOR PRYOR (D-AR): I don’t know…clearly the scientific community is a little divided on some of the specifics of that–
BILL MAHER: I don’t think they are.
SENATOR PRYOR (D-AR): Well–
BILL MAHER: I think they pretty much agree.
SENATOR PRYOR (D-AR): I don’t know how it all happened. Certainly I’m willing to accept a scientific premise–
BILL MAHER: It couldn’t possibly have been Adam and Eve five thousand years ago with the talking snake in a garden, could it?
SENATOR PRYOR (D-AR): Well, it could possibly have been that.
BILL MAHER: Come on…see, this is my problem. You are a senator. You are one of the very few people who are really running this country. It worries me that people are running my country who believe in a talking snake.
SENATOR PRYOR (D-AR): You don’t have to pass an IQ test to be in the Senate, though.
JESUS IMPERSONATOR (working at a Christian-themed amusement park in Florida): God has put a God-sized hole in your life. You can fill it with any drugs or sex you want, it is not going to fill it–
BILL MAHER: Can I try?
JESUS IMPERSONATOR: You can try all you want. You’re going to end up hurting yourself and burning yourself up.
BILL MAHER: If I was God, I would create people without the hole to begin with.
JESUS IMPERSONATOR: Well, have you ever had a little small voice in the back of your mind say some things?
BILL MAHER: We’ve all had that. That’s not God, that’s you.
JESUS IMPERSONATOR: That’s called the Holy Spirit.
BILL MAHER: Oh, the Holy Spirit.
JESUS IMPERSONATOR (gesturing towards the air): Feel this wind right now?
BILL MAHER: Yeah.
JESUS IMPERSONATOR: What is it?
BILL MAHER: It’s called “wind.”
JESUS IMPERSONATOR: That’s like the Holy Spirit.
BILL MAHER (speaking to Jesus de Luis Miranda): Who are you? Biblically.
MIRANDA: I’m Jesus Christ, man. The second coming of Christ. I am. The Old Testament speaks of me clearly. And the new testament also.
BILL MAHER: Why do you think God chose you?
MIRANDA: Jesus of Nazareth had a wife. So after they killed him, his seed kept going, maybe through France, Spain, and then from Spain to Puerto Rico.
BILL MAHER: Puerto Rico?
MIRANDA: The bloodline comes from Abraham, Abraham to David, to Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth, to me.
BILL MAHER: Oh, okay. I thought a second coming was the reincarnation of the Christ himself. Not a descendant of.
MIRANDA: No, no. It is a descendant. That’s me!
DR. MOHAMMED HOURANI, coordinator of the Center for Peace and Reconciliation (showing Bill Maher down to the site where Muslims believe Mohammed ascended to Heaven): I just want you to go down to the rock, to take a look. For one minute, just to take a look from the inside. Hurry, hurry, hurry! Please. The direction of prayer, you know, when you start your prayer, you have to know exactly how to face the Kaaba, in Mecca.”
BILL MAHER: A rock. The Kaaba…isn’t that–
DR. MOHAMMED HOURANI : No, no, no. A black stone.
BILL MAHER: Well, a rock, a stone, kind of the same thing–
DR. MOHAMMED HOURANI : We don’t know the history of this stone.
BILL MAHER: Why is that?
DR. MOHAMMED HOURANI : The Muslims believe that this stone came from Paradise.
BILL MAHER: But we now know it to be a meteorite.
DR. MOHAMMED HOURANI : It’s black. And in the area there are no black stones.
BILL MAHER: But does it make a difference that we now understand what a “meteorite” is?
DR. MOHAMMED HOURANI : This is the stone of God!
(Dr. Hourani, leading Bill through a mosque): I can be inside, because I am Muslim.
BILL MAHER: I thought I wouldn’t be allowed to walk in a mosque. I thought only someone of your faith was allowed to do that.
DR. MOHAMMED HOURANI: No. In Islam we are enough tolerant to accept that fact that non-Muslims are able to be inside, to take a look, to have a short stroll, to ask questions.
(Just then two more Muslims approach, start speaking rapidly and clearly angrily in their own language.)
BILL MAHER: Why are they angry?
DR. MOHAMMED HOURANI: This is what I expected.
BILL MAHER: Are they angry you’re talking to me?
DR. MOHAMMED HOURANI : Yes.
BILL MAHER: Women, in your culture, seem not to be as equal to the man as they are in ours.
DR. MOHAMMED HOURANI: (points) You see? We have a woman here. (points to a niche behind a pillar where a woman is wedged in, kneeling.) They have a special corner.
A more serious discussion in Part Two!
This aggressively editied film is stupid. Cummings who has a Doctor of Divinity degree in religous studies from Israel and the United States is being made famous. We have heard and have seen him all over the world and this is not the one we know and have heard as he really is on this make believe film. His website is wicctv.org check him out
Shame on you Larry Charles and Billy Maher
“Doctor of Divinity degree in religous studies from Israel and the United States”
A what from where?
Doctor of Divinity. Apparently in the USA it’s an honorary degree.