The other day, with two of my good friends, we decided to watch a documentary titled Religulous. I had heard of the movie multiple times and have always wanted to see it, considering I am interested in religion and apologetics. Expecting to be intellectually challenged, I prepared myself for a mental onslaught. However, I must say that I was deeply disappointed. Bill Maher did, in my opinion, a horrible job of pointing out the flaws in the belief in a god. Though, I was impressed by one thing.
Throughout the movie, Maher brought up the issue of the mass marketing of Christianity. He took a trip to a Disneylandish park that had the theme of the Holy Land. Personally, I found it disturbing. Christians today have settled for nothing more than cheap slogans of the Christian faith. We are now a country that displays our beliefs on cheap stickers that we stick on the back bumper of our cars. People fear delving to deeply into their faith, for they may be swayed into making changes. If you have faith in your beliefs, then you have nothingto worry about. Immersing yourself in difficult topics is essential to your faith in God and I support Bill Maher’s points about this.
One of the biggest issues I had with the film was who Maher interviewed. He began the movie stating that he was not sure whether there is a god, and he was content with this view. But if Maher trully wanted answers to his questions, he should have had discussions with people such as N.T. Wright, Timothy Keller, Francis Collins, Ravi Zacharias, Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, Peter Kreeft, Richard Baukham and John Lennox. Now, I am aware that he did talk to Collins, but they talked about history. Is Collins a theologian? No. He is a scientist and is known for his arguments that science and religion do not oppose one another. Here is their interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyWYpdCpF6M.
All in all, the movie was simply a huge strawman argument that had nothing to back it. Rather than interviewing men that meet for church in the back of a semi-truck, he should have interviewed people who dedicate their lives to dealing with these issues.
The movie seemed to me to be his response to “Expelled” by Ben Stein, Ben had no shortage of ‘experts’ in his movie.
My faith isn’t based on knowledge, while I’ve read a lot of books on Apologetics, my reason for believing is that I put God’s word the bible to the test by applying it to my life. It works for me.