Bill Maher's Religulous Critiqued

Initially Posted: October 4, 2008

Bill Maher stars in a new documentary titled Religulous, which opened in select theatres on October 3, 2008. Religulous is not an appropriate movie for children to view. Bill constantly used profanity. He also included partial nudity in one scene, along with sexually perverse statements littered throughout the movie. He even smoked marijuana on camera while he was interviewing a religious person who believed one could contact God by using marijuana. In short, this movie did not convey ethics that most parents would desire for their children to emulate.

Bill poked fun at multiple religions including Judaism, Christianity, Mormonism, Scientology, and Islam. I will only briefly address the criticisms and mockery that Bill directed at Christianity in this review. Readers can locate other reviews of Religulous here and here.

Bill interviewed Dr. Francis Collins, a scientist who is the head of the Human Genome Project. Dr. Collins was the only reputable Christian scholar who Bill interviewed. Bill asked Dr. Collins historical questions regarding who wrote the New Testament gospels. If Bill sincerely wanted to know about the strongest arguments for why Christians trust the gospels, Bill should have interviewed Christian New Testament scholars. Consequently, Bill could have consulted scholars who specialized in the topics which Bill was asking a Christian scientist about. He should have spoken with N. T. Wright, Dr. Ben Witherington III, Dr. Gary Habermas, Dr. Darrell Bock, or Dr. Craig Evans, to name only some reputed Christian New Testament scholars. Why did Bill ask a scientist questions about history?

Bill implied that Christians believe that God is a man. However, the Bible makes it clear that God is not a man (Numbers 23:19). In the same sentence he also inquired how “a man” could hear all of the prayers of millions of people. This manifests his sheer ignorance of Christian theology because Christianity teaches that God is all-knowing and eternal (meaning that God is outside of time). An all-knowing and eternal God would have no problem hearing all of people’s prayers simultaneously.

Bill suggested that there was no evidence that Jesus of Nazareth ever existed as a human being. However, he did not offer any reasons why one should question Jesus’s existence. The idea that Jesus did not exist is rooted in fringe scholarship. Bill should have at minimum explained why most historians—Christian and non-Christian alike—conclude that Jesus did, in fact, exist. Go here and here to learn about some of the reasons why the vast majority of scholars concur that Jesus existed.

Bill claimed that pre-Christian deities such as Krishna, Osiris, Horus, and Mithra were all just like Jesus. However, he does not substantiate any of his claims about these deities by providing any primary source quotations. Further, known primary sources disprove some of Bill’s assertions. Go here, here, and here for more details.

While Bill spoke with a man dressed like Jesus, Bill implied that he thought God could eradicate all of the evil in the world right now if God got rid of Satan at this time. However, historic Christianity teaches that Satan is not the only source of evil in the world. For example, humans are sources of evil, too. Bill also did not define “evil” from his agnostic worldview.

Bill also interviewed the young-earth creationist (YEC), Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis, and seemed to suggest that the YEC perspective was the only main Christian view on origins instead of macroevolution. For some reason Bill neglected to interview, or even refer to any old-earth creationists, such as astronomer Dr. Hugh Ross, the founder of Reasons to Believe .

Bill additionally portrayed all Christians as believing in the “Rapture” and that we are living during the “End of Days.” Yet, Bill did not mention the alternative Christian view known as Preterism (partial—not Hyper Preterism). One can learn more about this other view here and here.

Bill also asserted that religion has been the cause of many crimes and violent acts throughout history. However, he did not identify the absolute objective moral standard he used to conclude the Holocaust, or murder, were morally wrong. Ergo, he offered no standard by which he could call anything morally wrong.

This is only a small sampling of the problems infesting Religulous. This review may increase in length in the future. However, until then readers should definitely consult the other critiques, which I mentioned above. It is my hope that this short commentary on Religulous will help equip Christians to answer the questions that the Christians Bill interviewed could not adequately answer.