Review
I just saw this film last night...while I'm not an atheist I do enjoy seeing good arguments about the subject of religion etc and have heard some good atheist arguments as well as good deist arguments.
I understand with a film like this there is a lot of bias, a lot of judgement, etc. But I'm writing this review as a critique of an essay. I'm not saying Atheists are correct or Deists are correct. I'm just trying to say what I thought about the film...
I have to say I wasn't impressed by this film. It seemed fairly sensationalist, and more about infotainment than information. While some of the points he brought up were sound, I found that the people he chose to debate the other side were fairly weak. He chose the craziest, most fundamental, conservative people, many of which took ltieralist interpretations of various scriptures. There WERE some intelligent people, but their arguments, again, all stemmed from a similar viewpoint. I think it would have been more interesting if he had interviewed people who were more moderate or progressive about religion, or who weren't taking the bible or the Qu'ran literally. I feel as if he chose these people specifically, in order to make his argument seem stronger.
As someone who was raised in a highly Catholic neighbourhood and at a Catholic school, I've encountered a lot of talk about religion. At least where I live, most people believe in the bible not as a book of pure fact, or science, but a work of metaphor, which attempts to teach certain lessons. While some of these lessons seem skewed now, it shows how times have changed since the days that they were written. It represents a shift in culture.
There are also fairly well-known interpretations of the bible which were not considered. For example, the book of revelations was quoted as if it were truly a book about the end of the world. Many progressive christians have looked at the book of revelations and come to believe that it's actually a very runaround way of telling the story of the Roman occupation in Jerusalem, and various events that happened. Satan, being a representetive of the Emperor Nero, and not being a literal devil.
Much of his discrediting of judeo-christian beliefs came from discrediting literalist beliefs, which while important, I think should not have been the entire "documentary."
And -this comment is just my own litle thing- I don't like how he used the term "All three religions" as if Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are the only religions in the world. He looked almost exclusively at these religions and their faults, and then in his conclusion stated that religion as a whole was going to be responsible for the downfall of man. There are many other religions and many otehr people in the world besides Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Those three are NOT the only religions.
I also found that his attack on Islam was fairly weak. Islam developed in a time when the Muslims were under attack, and their people were in severe danger. While this is also true of Judaism, in the case of Islam, it seemed to develop into more of a "If you are attacked, you can attack back to defend your religion (your people)" rather than the traditional "turn the other cheek" that other Judeo-Christian religions seem to have. While it is true that some very fundamentalist Muslims have taken this out of context, have twisted it, and misinterpreted it, Islam in itself is NOT teaching people to kill as Maher suggests. Also, while it is true that the stone in Mecca may be a meteor, he ignores the fact that this could possibly be compatible with Muslim beliefs. If you believe that Allah is the maker of all things, then even if it was a meteor, you could still believe that it was Allah who sent it. (I'm not too familiar with Islam so perhaps a Muslim could argue this point better).
I didn't like how he simplified the stories of the Mediterranean gods either. The most obvious one I saw was Horus. Yes, there are themes which are consistent in Mediterranean folklore, but to say that they are all the same story is over-simplifying things. I've seen someone try to make the same argument for Jesus and Dionysus. While it was convincing to people who didn't know about Greek Mythology, to anyone who did, it was obviously flawed. He also ignores the fact that stories about Horus and Dionysus are said to have taken place in prehistory without witnesses, while the story of Jesus of Nazareth took place fairly recently (considering the length of human existence). While there may have been no true witnesses to this (as some would believe, and perhaps they're right), it is still an important point to note, as Jesus DID appear in several accounts of the time. It would have been better if he had argued that Jesus may have been several people meshed togeter, or a man who became surrounded by myth, as opposed to non-existent.
His argument that America was not founded as a Christian nation was interesting. However, showing qutoes from several American historical figures condoning Christianity only indicates that these specific people did not care for it. I'm not American and so I don't know when the Pledge of Allegiance was written, but lines like "One nation under God" seem to indicate that perhaps it WAS founded as a Christian nation (originally) even if these historical men did not believe in it.
I also had a problem with the editing of the film. There were times when people were continuing to speak and he cut away from them. Or he would point out something (which in some cases was valid) but then cut to a new shot of the person looking like they couldn't answer. Persoanlly, I would have liked to see a two-shot, rather than see them cut away, as I don't know if this was actually the person's reaction.
In the scene where they go to the amusement park in Florida, people are surrounding a re-enacment of the Passion, which is interesting in itself, and does make a valid point about the commercialization of religion. However, when people are taking pictures on small digital cameras and camcorders, I have to wonder why there are loud shutter noises going off, as if they were using older cameras, or larger, more advanced cameras. There are some made recently (I know my camera makes a shutter noise) which do make this noise, but based on what I saw, I didn't tihnk it was enough to make those noises. They were obviously added in in order to make the situation seem more ridiculous than it actually was. Furthermore, the crowd applauding when the Jesus figure was attacked could easily have been edited in from other instances, or extracted completely from another audio file. I can't remember if there were times when you saw people applaud in the same shot, but from what I recall there weren't too many.
Finally, to add the perspective of someone who is not any of the above religions, nor an atheist, I believe that he tried very hard to portray religious people as fools by using selective accounts, and selective argumentation. He chose people who were very right wing (or just completely out of it like the guy who thought pot was religious) and this was unfair because it did not show more acceptable views on religion.
Furthermore, his thesis is fairly absurd. Saying that religion is entirely evil and must be stopped, is as ignorant as saying that religion is entirely good and must be spread all over the world. It would have been more effective to propose seriously looking at beliefs, questioning, and doubting things that are simply taught- to doubt people in power who use religion as a platform, and people who seek money in return for religious experience.
I consider myself fairly moderate, and I know a lot of others in the area who are- Catholics, Other Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists. I find people here very different from the people he interviewed. They don't try to convert people, and don't seek (at least from what I've seen) to attack others' religions.
Yes, there are some crazy and/or conservative people like in his piece of docutainment, but there are other kinds of religious people too, and they should not be ignored completely, or lumped in together with fundamentalists.
Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the piece. Again, please don't take the fact that I believe in a faith to mean I'm trying to attack atheism with my review. I'm not. I'm simply takling about flaws I found in the argument presented in this film.
