For starters, the film is legitimately funny.
Maher starts at the physical site of Armeggedon and delves into organized religion’s heart of … well, not exactly darkness… more like silliness. A truck-stop church in a trailer. The Bible Land theme park. An anti-Zionist rabbi. A chubby Puerto Rican who claims to be Jesus Christ. An Israeli institute for creating Sabbath-law-circumventing gizmos. A fit, trim, very-well-groomed ex-gay. A creationism museum. An extraordinarily-full-of-shit Islamic rapper.
Though Maher goes into the project with a definite agenda, he is respectful enough to let the people he’s mocking do most of the work of making themselves look silly themselves. The resulting humor is more subtle than one might expect, mostly earned by the reactions and glances and tone of the interviews.
He also spends considerable time in thoughtful conversation with his family and others about the subject of faith, and belief. And whether people would or would not be better off without it.
It’s a lot of fun and definitely gives the viewer plenty to think about.
In the final two or three minutes, though, Mahar drops the levity. And the hammer.
The silly movie clips stop. The fun music ends. Shit gets serious. Maher matter-of-factly delivers the central message of the film in stark and electrifying terms. The three main monotheistic religions ---Christianity, Judaism, Islam --- all explicitly and rapturously predict and End of World cataclysm of destruction and death. For humanity to embrace these religions while simultaneously possessing the means to bring them about --- nukes and pollution --- endangers all our lives.
It’s a powerful ending to an entertaining and insightful… documentary? No. Comedy? Not really. Filmic essay? Yeah, that.
That said, I do have a problem with it. Two, actually.
First, I don’t think he goes far enough with his condemnation of organized religion. And, though I wouldn’t expect all religious foolishness to get equal time, the victims of his expose don’t get equal whacks from Maher’s mockery-stick. Second, I think Maher gives human nature too much credit, believing that chucking organized religion would fundamentally improve humanity’s chances of survival.
To make a gross and highly distorting generalization, Maher’s encounters and conversations with representatives of the three monotheistic religions can be summed up thusly.
1. Christianity has a Saying Stupid Shit problem.
2. Judaism has a Following Silly Rules problem.
3. Islam has a Killing People problem.
In reality, fundamentalist Christians and Jews do things much worse than spout off nonsense and create religious-law-loophole-defying devices. Though they don’t go for the kind of mass, frenzied blood-rallies that Muslims do over cartoons and books --- if you happen to cross them over something really important to them, they will gladly murder you for it in God’s loving name.
Just look at the abortion doctors gaffled in the U.S. or assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for examples of the Christian and Jewish faith taken to the deadly extreme. Though I understand his desire to keep things light, I wish that he’d taken the gloves off a little bit more with these lunatics.
Secondly, Maher’s solution --- or rather plea --- is for humanity to simply get over religion. He implies that with that silly, superstitious, violence-encouraging deadweight off our collective neck, we could use our rationality and logic to create a better, more livable, more sustainable world.
I wish.
Personally, I happen to think that the problem isn’t religion. It’s people.
Again, specifically, the problem is the three-quarters of humanity occupying the less-than-prime territory on the fbomber’s Heart-Brain Quadrant.
The Smart & Mean quartile is always going to try to run things, the Dumb & Mean quartile is going to obey them, the Sweet & Dumb crowd will look confused and the Nice & Smart set will gnash their teeth while watching impotently.
For some time now, the Smart & Mean group has used religion as mind-control to ensure a docile and obedient population. But religion is by no means the only possible method. Other belief-systems have worked just as well.
The godless Communists of the Soviet Union and China each wasted a substantial of their own population without having to pray over it. The Nazis combined nationalism, a weird racial superstition and a dash of Darwin to justify treating millions of people like animals to slaughter. Pol Pot’s massacres were inspired in part by the Greek Philosopher Plato’s belief that anyone over ten years old was already too tainted to help build an ideal society. In the fbomber’s adopted home of Los Angeles people regularly get killed for going into the wrong neighborhood --- without religion’s help.
Which I think proves that it’s the mean people and stupid people who have to go, not their imaginary friend, God.
What’s my solution to that problem?
It’s radical, but simple. Make a single, strategic purchase at a hardware store. Then wait.
The most irretrievably Mean & Stupid people among us historically do a pretty good job of taking themselves out of the population without any help --- through wars, suicide bombings and driving Ford F-150s drunk on Wild Turkey.
Lately, however, they’ve greatly accelerated their removal process even more. Not through violence, though. Through architecture.
Above all other thing, Mean & Dumb people love to all get together in big groups to be stupid assholes in front of one another. And indulge in frenzied, showy rituals of empty self-congratulation.
Go to any backwards, unlivable shithole in the world --- right now, I am specifically thinking of Houston, Texas --- and the biggest, most impressive buildings in town aren’t going to be the hospitals, libraries, universities and City Halls. You know, those drab, neglected places where actual service to the community and improvement of the mind happen.
No, the shiniest, most capacious structures in town are going to be places for the Mean and Stupid to get together in mass numbers for high-volume, emotionally-charged, intellectually-vacant exercises in tribal reinforcement. In the Western world, that means churches, and their new incarnation, Mega-Churches --- or their secular equivalent, sports stadiums.
In the Muslim world, the biggest enclosed gathering places are mosques capable of holding thousands of kneeling, ass-raising worshippers at a time.
In Israel, the religious fanatics have taken a different path. Instead of individual buildings, they’ve built a single wall for themselves around the entire city of Jerusalem and much of their country so they can hide from the other religious fanatics.
The Mean & Stupid pack into these structures on a regular basis to hoot and holler and parade their unthinking loyalty to tribe. The Smart & Mean show up --- in a more comfortable and expensive section, naturally --- to exercise leadership and cement “regular guy” credentials. Lastly, the Sweet & Dumb crowd tags along too, just to see what all the excitement is about.
Historically, the Nice & Smart crowd has distrusted these large rally-type settings and stayed away. And for good reason. They know that if you get enough amped-up retards in one place, someone --- probably someone wearing glasses and carrying a book --- is going to wind up getting hurt badly. Consequently the Smart & Nice crowd has sniffed disdainfully, and tried to disparage this kind of indoor herd migration. Maher’s movie is an example of this disparagement.
But I think this is the wrong idea.
Instead of being discouraged, all the dummies and assholes of the world should be encouraged --- nay, exhorted --- to fill these churches, stadiums, mosques, synagogues and gymnasiums as often as possible. And in as large numbers as the buildings can physically hold. And to yell and stamp and chant moronic slogans as much as their ignorant, hateful hearts desire.
Because buildings have walls. And walls have doors.
And the Smart & Nice people --- if they have followed my advice and gone to the hardware store --- have padlocks to put on those doors.
From the outside.
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