'Religulous,' Maher's argument against faith, is laughable

"Religulous" has the theological depth of a religion documentary by a seventh-grade church dropout, which is exactly what filmmaker Bill Maher is.

He uses a more fundamentalist reading of Scripture than most fundamentalists do. He doesn't even know the proper name of the New Testament book that he reviles as a threat to humanity. It's "Revelation" not "Revelations," and the vast majority of the world's Christians do not share the doomsday interpretation of it that Maher most fears. The vast majority of those who do have no desire to hasten the apocalypse.

The film is an alleged quest to find out if "religion is detrimental to the progress of humanity." He concludes that it is, even though most of the believers he meets treat him with far more respect than he treats them. He makes no mention of any good ever done in the name of God, or of the millions killed by Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot in the name of atheism.

His fears focus on Scripture, but at no point does he interview an actual Bible scholar or theologian. The closest he comes is a Catholic priest who is also a Vatican astronomer and another whose job at a Vatican-related seminary is to translate terms such as "automated teller machine" into Latin. Maher seems shocked that the Vatican sponsors scientific research, revealing his own ignorance. The Latin scholar may overstate some changes since Vatican II, but that may have been necessary because Maher seems to have missed the council entirely.

He explains that he was the product of a Catholic-Jewish marriage, which may tempt some rabbis to cite this film as evidence against intermarriage. Maher thinks anti-Semitic stereotypes are funny, telling a bargain-hunting Pentecostal, "You shop like a Jew."

Few Jews have met any like those featured in the film, such as the rabbi who participated in Iran's conference of Holocaust deniers. Maher's thesis seems to be that the lunatic fringe of any religious group is that faith's truest expression.

A young Muslim woman was the only person permitted to give an intelligent response on camera to his questions about difficult scriptures. In this case it was a command in the Quran to kill unbelievers. When she said the verse was about a specific situation in the seventh century and did not apply today, Maher replied, "That's not how people read holy books."

But that is exactly how theologians and scripture scholars read them. Their job is to study the historical context of ancient words, to find what something meant on the day it was written and try to work out how it applies to today. Sermons in evangelical churches are filled with references to life in the Roman Empire and the meaning of Greek verbs. The best-selling Bible in the United States is the "Archaeological Study Bible."

Dangerous distortions come from people who try to teach scripture without a background in history or ancient languages and literature. The guy who wrote "88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988" wasn't a theologian, he was a rocket scientist. Osama bin Laden isn't a theologian, he's a civil engineer. Bill Maher isn't a theologian, he's a comedian.

There are intelligent arguments to be made against faith. This is not one of them.

(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette religion writer Ann Rodgers can be reached at arodgers(at)post-gazette.com.)

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