Bill Maher’s new movie about the perils of major world religions isn’t especially hopeful. But if you need a little break from all the good feelings of hope and change going around right now (or maybe just a break from hitting the refresh button on realclearpolitics.com), Religulous will give you a nice dose of cynicism to get you back on track. The ever anti-pc Maher pulls no punches skewering the world’s major religions, lampooning evangelical Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam with equal zeal — or, I should say, letting members of those religions lampoon themselves. The first ninety minutes of Religulous are great comedy — cringe-inducing, oh-my-god-he-did-not-just-say-that humor, as Maher happily pokes holes in other people’s closest-held faiths.

But then something changes. Maher draws a pair of dark conclusions about religion that might not sit so well with some nice religious folks we know… or even some of us non-believers, since we’ve been blogging about religion this week…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB8fPJ6zds8

Maher’s first point is the scariest, but one we can probably agree on here: the extremists among each of the religions named above aren’t just warning us about the End Times — they’re actually working to bring the End about. They don’t care about environmental destruction — God made the world for our use, after all, and it’s all going to blow up soon anyway — and they certainly don’t care about preventing war. (Isn’t there some dire prediction about an endless desert war in the Bible somewhere?) These guys are seriously going to kill us, and while laughing at the insanity of the Rapture or the double-standards in Islam may be fun, failing to prevent a nuclear holocaust isn’t a joke.
This leads to his second point: all the moderate followers of the world’s religions — those genuinely Christlike Christians and peaceful Muslims and Jews — are also part of the problem. By openly practicing their faiths, believers grant legitimacy to their respective brands of extremists, regardless of whether they support extremism themselves.
Really?
Maher makes a case for atheists’ rights, then calls on all of us to cast magical thinking aside, quit pretending we believe the story about the Ten Commandments and the burning bush, and do something to stop the crazy people everywhere who threaten to destroy the world. Namely, give up religion once and for all.
But are the world’s fellow travelers really so harmful? Is religion really nothing more than mass delusion? I’ve been a fan of Bill Maher since he hosted Politically Incorrect on ABC, back in the day, and I’m with him to a point. I didn’t miss Christianity too much when I stopped going to church. (Dear Lord, forgive me for knowing you’re not real!) But should I let Bill Maher call my nice Episcopalian mom one of the crazies? I may wish they all start meditating, but I can’t imagine how her fellow church-goers’ beliefs are part of the problem.
I know I’m dumping a big can of worms over the blog-land here, but what do you all think? Is religion so bad for us? Are we all religiulous, too?