Should I Be Offended?
I had a different post written out for this. It was full of jokes about thinking Bill Maher was Dennis Miller and sarcasm about the people that Bill Maher found not being the “right” people to talk to. I’ve taken all that out and written this because I think my original post was making light of the questions he asks and the points that he makes.
I’m going to try my best not to make assumptions about Bill Maher. I’m analyzing his method of interviewing and what that infers about him and his beliefs.
There are a few times in the movie, that he says that he’s “preaching ‘I don’t know’” and then goes on to know exactly what he thinks is wrong with everything.
I’m not saying that it’s a wrong stance to take. Sure, many people out there “don’t know”, but he does know. He knows what he believes and what he doesn’t. He isn’t “preaching ‘I don’t know’”, he’s preaching anti-religion. He believes that religion is the cause of just about every war, and that if there wasn’t any religion, we could live in, at least, a semblance of peace. He even says, in his last line that people need to “grow up” and stop believing. This is not a stance of “I don’t know”, but a stance of “I know it’s wrong”. And those are very different.
I think some of his questions are valid questions that even I’ve had at times, and quite a few friends have had too. The way he asks his questions is always with an air of arrogance. “You don’t really believe there was a talking snake, do you?”
Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. I’m honestly not sure. In Velvet Elvis Rob Bell says that “the most important part about the story of Adam and Eve isn’t that it happened but that it happens” (emphasis by me).
The problem is that when you’re being questioned like that by anyone not just a fairly famous comedian with a camera crew, you’re bound to sound like an idiot, because that’s the way he’s asking. He wants their ideas to sound stupid. That’s his point.
HOWEVER! I say all of the above with a caveat that some of the people he interviewed, like Jeremiah Cummings who claimed that Jesus wore “fine linens” and refuted Maher’s (rightful, and accurate) claims that Jesus spoke out against being wealthy, and this other guy named Jesus that claimed he was the second coming of Christ whose bloodline went to Puerto Rico somehow and ended up in Miami and stated, “even if I was Satan, I would do my job well”, are not preaching the faith that Jesus taught.
In the very beginning, he goes to this little (literally) church and those men actually do a fairly good job, doing the best they can. Even Maher remarks, “Thank you for being Christ-like, not just Christians.”
They don’t answer all his questions to his satisfaction (and most likely, no one ever will), but they are good to him. And hopefully, someone can say that to all of us someday because that’s what it’s supposed to be about. Not religion.
