Losing My Religulous

I saw Religulous over the weekend, a very funny and challenging new movie from Bill Maher skewering various forms of religious expression. Maher is the former host of politically incorrect on Comedy Central which is a good description for this movie. I can't think of too many religious groups who would be left un-offended. Maher has nothing good to say about organized religion although he had nothing at all to say about that nebulous alternative to religion called spirituality.

His primary targets are the fundamentalist branches of Christianity, Orthodox Judaism and Islam in general with a brief shot at the weirdness known as Scientology. He also takes on the Mormons who are in a category of their own. His bottom line is that we shouldn’t be looking for ways to foster religious tolerance. Instead we should be finding ways to marginalize religion and expose the irrational, anti-intellectual, violent, xenophobic, misogynistic and misanthropic tendencies of the religions he is going after.

I think Bill Maher is one of the funniest and most intelligent satirists working today and parts of the movie were hilarious. At one point he is interviewing a "reformed" gay evangelical who insists that no one is “born gay” and Maher quips; “have you ever met little Richard?” Perhaps the best moment was his interview with father Reginald Foster, an American priest serving as the Vatican Latin expert. Father Foster refuses to wear priestly garb and comes across as a happy heretic with his progressive views on various topics. Another high point was watching the former director of the Vatican observatory, Jesuit priest George Coyne, make mincemeat of the claims of creationists.

Maher makes no claim of being fair and balanced. He offers no hint of a middle ground or opposing viewpoint. That task is left to others. This movie is a polemic; his concluding words are “religion must die in order for mankind to live.” I am inclined to agree to the extent that the religion he is talking about is the kind of fundamentalism that longs for the violent end times of Revelation or is bent on world conquest and domination violently or otherwise.

The biggest problem with the movie is that it doesn’t address the issue of why religion was invented in the first place. Human beings have always been looking for answers to ultimate questions and even if there are no answers, we need ways to talk about those questions. The movie does a great job of demonstrating how dysfunctional certain religious institutions have become but offers no alternative for dealing with the big questions. Science doesn’t have all the answers either so where to from here?

One suggestion might be to allow ourselves to evolve beyond the limitations of both religion and spirituality. The fact that humankind is outgrowing the magical and supernatural doesn’t mean an end to mystery and awe. The wonders of consciousness cannot be explained by mere reduction to biological components. Evolution is demonstrating an emerging level of complexity greater than the sum total of its parts that cannot be explained by random chance.

I would imagine that many people watching this movie might feel a bit defensive. Indeed, there are many apologists responding to Maher with varying degrees of alarm and outrage. The main reason that this movie did not have me squirming is because I do not identify with any of the religious labels being targeted. So what am I you might ask? I am an integral, evolutionary humanist. Good luck with that one Bill.