"A-" Rating by Robert W. Hammerle

Bill Maher's "Religulous" is a splendid, equal opportunity offending documentary. A scathing indictment of organized religion in all of its forms, I dare say that you will never see a documentary that is more socially relevant to our troubled times.

While I must admit that I watch little that is on television (other than The Daily Show, of course), I have always considered Mr. Maher a little bit too smug for my taste. Despite the fact that I find myself agreeing with him far more often than not, his frequently dismissive, condescending attitude is more designed to piss off than convince.

However, even though there are admitted moments where Maher reduces his subject matter to low-level sarcasm, they pale into insignificance given the biting wit of this intelligent analysis of the pompously absurd foundations of all faiths.

No one is spared Maher's poison pen. How did the simple teachings of Christ result in justification for TV evangelists regularly pandering for money in his name? How do these same evangelists justify their opulent lifestyle which rests on the contributions of their gullible flock?

Since Christianity is based on the New Testament, how can you follow Christ's teachings and still discriminate against homosexuals? After all, Christ said nothing about it.

Along that same line, where do you find any basis in Christ's teachings to permit the Catholic Church to condemn birth control? Or to discriminate against women by denying them the ability to become priests?

And what about the Mormons? Are we really suppose to believe that angels of the Lord personally visited Joseph Smith?

If orthodox Jews really want everyone to believe that God told Abraham to kill his only son, then wouldn't one have to conclude that Abraham would have arrested for attempted murder and Isaac whisked away by Children's Protective Services to be placed in a foster home?

And why is it that God has such a propensity for appearing to individuals in secret, asking them to go forth to preach in his name? Why did the Lord speak to Moses as a burning bush and not allow the rest of the Jews to see it for themselves? Maher asks the question, and it is a fair one, that if a normal definition of insanity is a person who claims to hear voices, then don't you have to accept insanity as the foundation of all religions?

And Maher doesn't let Muslims off the hook either. In that regard, I insisted that my Saudi Arabian exchange student, "Z," see this film with me. I felt that he needed to see a few darts and arrows thrown at his religion also.

After all, how absurd is it that his faith would issue a fatwa against the author Salman Rushdie simply because they considered his work to be sacrilegious? Or how about killing people in the Netherlands who they considered responsible for cartoons that were critical of the Prophet?

Additionally, Maher confronts the tragic fact that religious wars have killed millions of people throughout the centuries, and continue to do so to this very day. Catholics and Protestants kill each other in Northern Ireland. Jews kill Palestinian Muslims while Palestinian Muslims kill Jews. President Bush solemnly declares himself to be an avid follower of Christ, and yet proceeds to single handedly reintroduced the concept of torture into our national lexicon. What's after waterboarding, crucifixion?

As Buffy Sainte-Marie sang in the long forgotten "Billy Jack" (1971), "Do it in the name of heaven, you can justify it in the end." It is nothing less than bald face hypocrisy for all religions to declare themselves to be proponents of peace and then go out and kill in the name of their particular faith.

The point of Maher's penetrating documentary is not simply to call out this hypocrisy, but also to prompt all of us to think how it is continually tolerated by the masses. The great Holy Books of the world, from the Bible to the Koran, are a collection of stories that are meant to be a guide towards living a decent life, nothing more and nothing less. It is absurd to take them literally, and all societies are ill used by pandering politicians and religious leaders who preach otherwise.

For a great many people in this country and around the world, we do not deny the existence of a deity so much as we simply doubt. Quite frankly, it continues to disgust me to see politicians pompously wear their "religion on their sleeve" while they simultaneously steal from the public collection basket.

This is an important documentary, although I doubt that it will be seen by the people who should allow their faith to be questioned. As for me, I left the theater reminded of the famous story about Machiavelli on his deathbed. As the notorious non-believer is taking his last breath, his family snuck a priest into his room and the following exchange is reported to have occurred.

  The Priest:  "And now my son, will you reject the 
                 works of Satan and accept the Lord

Jesus Christ as your savior?"

  Machiavelli:  (As he struggled to grab the priest by his tunic 
       and pull him close to his lips) 
      "Now, father, is not the time to risk making new
        enemies."

In the end, "Religulous" is not so much an attack on faith as it is an attack on how it has been institutionalized for such devious ends. Frankly, I have come to believe that before any religion is entitled to have one follower, its first tenant of belief that all adherents must accept is simply this,

"Respect all other faiths, or the Lord will be entitled to club you to death in your sleep with a hammer."