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I have just watched Bill Maher’s “Religulous”, it has it’s good points and it’s bad ones but I liked it a lot.

Some have said the movie goes like the following:

“Heh, look at this. Stupid huh? Next scene… Heh, look at this. Stupid huh? Next scene… Heh, look at this. Stupid huh? Next scene…”

I kinda have to agree, and while I enjoyed a good laugh at the “stupid” I also noticed, the second time I watched it, that there is some good stuff hidden between the stupid stuff… the movie is more like:

“Heh, look at this. Stupid huh? Good bit… Next scene… Heh, look at this. Stupid huh? Good bit… Next scene… “

He has also been widely commented that Bill chose only soft targets to talk to, certainly to include in the film, people who he could intellectually dominate. This is, of course, a stupid argument because it supposes that there are rational religious people out there who Bill could have talked to that were stupid enough to get into a conversation with him on camera.

I do wonder who the film is for, it has no real depth, it is very much “Dawkins light”. While the points Bill makes are good and true and, in a few places, quite powerful and painful, religious people are not going to be swayed by the weight of Bill’s arguments and loose their religion, non-religious people are only going to have good laugh at the fools Bill manges to talk to, anyone who looses there religion after watching this film was already 95% of the way there.

The final ten minutes or so are a particularly powerful bit of cinema, Bill’s monologue is fantastic - it took me a while to find the transcript of it so I thought I’d put it here on my blog too so other people may find it more easily….

The irony of religion is that because of its power to divert man to destructive courses, the world could actually come to an end… Plain fact is, religion must die for mankind to live.

The hour is getting very late to be able to indulge having in key decisions made by religious people. By irrationalists. By those who would steer the ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken.

George Bush prayed a lot about Iraq, but he didn’t learn a lot about it…

Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It’s nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith and enable and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction.

Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don’t have all the answers to think that they do. Most people would think it’s wonderful when someone says, “I’m willing, Lord! I’ll do whatever you want me to do!” Except that since there are no gods actually talking to us, that void is filled in by people with their own corruptions and limitations and agendas…

And anyone who tells you they know, they just know what happens when you die, I promise you you don’t. How can I be so sure? Because I don’t know, and you do not possess mental powers that I do not.

The only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions is not the arrogant certitude that is the hallmark of religion, but doubt. Doubt is humble, and that’s what man needs to be, considering that human history is just a littany of getting shit dead wrong…

This is why rational people, anti-religionists, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves.

And those who consider themselves only moderately religious really need to look in the mirror and realize that the solace and comfort that religion brings you comes at a horrible price…

If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence, and sheer ignorance as religion is, you’d resign in protest. To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a mafia wife, for the true devils of extremism that draw their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travelers.

If the world does come to an end here, or wherever, or if it limps into the future, decimated by the effects of religion-inspired nuclear terrorism, let’s remember what the real problem was. We learned how to precipitate mass death before we got past the neurological disorder of wishing for it.

That’s it. Grow up or die.