Ridiculous Religulous

This week as I sat at a friend’s house and did my religion homework he began to ask me a multitude of questions regarding why I chose to have a religion minor. I explained simply why I loved religion so much and why I think it is important to understand religion. This encouraged him to bring up a movie he saw a few years ago. He wanted to know my opinion as a religious studies student on what to think of the documentary Religulous. Religulous is a documentary staring Bill Maher and his attempt to criticize religion throughout the world.

I agreed to watch this film out of curiosity only to be enraged throughout the entire film (similar to the experience I had in class the while watching the film on Islam). I found this documentary to be a sad display at what I think Bill Maher thought was an educated attempt at approaching religion through an atheist point of view. I found disgusting displays of racism, stereotyping and sexism throughout the entire film and an extreme amount of ignorance for every religion he mentioned in the film. On a personal critique I found this film a waste of time, energy and a sad attempt at trying to be intelligent and witty. However, for the sake of this class I am going to put my personal opinions aside to explain this in a more intellectual way, with Marxist Analysis.

While watching this film and not so silently raging inside I was able to pick up on the most obvious representation of False Consciousness and Ideology. I have never seen a more obvious example of these two things before in a media source. However, this film took the cake. The first thing that you need to consider while watching this film is to understand who the directed audience is. For this particular film it was most definitely for atheist, non religious and critical religious viewers. Once I understood this I could see the ideas of False Consciousness rearing its nasty head. How this occurred was through the power that has come out of the atheist movement in the United States recently. Since this was a film directed at atheists this gave the narrator a instant source of power. He himself as a (in)famous TV spokes person and political figure he holds an outrageous amount of power and in this situation can be seen as the power source that is leading the ideas of what would be considered the ruling class. Therefore, the viewers who are seeing him in a light of superiority would be fooled into thinking that he has the ideas that represent all of the ideas of the ruling class and in this case the atheist movement (which is not the case).

The second theory that I noticed was the theory of Ideology. This again has to do with the power of the atheist movement in the United States in recent years. The Marxist definition of Ideology explains that what is being said is considered an applicable socially political belief (42). In this case even though I personally find no relevance in what Bill Maher has to say it is not uncommon for people with less religious understanding to take what he has to say to heart. The Marxist definition also explains that when it comes to ideology it makes it difficult for ordinary people to understand that they are being exploited and victimized (42). In this situation I could see this happening. With the Atheist movement becoming so strong, religious individuals are accepting their criticism as more of a normative practice. Therefore, with Bill Maher making such heartless jokes and irrelevant comments I can see how religious individuals would not even notice anymore that they are in fact being targeted.

In conclusion with this evidence supporting my decision, I find Religulous completely ridiculous.