Documentary Movie Reviews
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Religulous (2008)
Rate:
6
Viewed:
5/23
5/23:
I don't pay attention to Bill Maher, so Religulous is the first for me coming from him.
While watching the documentary, I figured out why I made the initial statement: he's too much of a smart-ass intellectual.
Yes, what Bill Maher said about religion is essentially correct, but I already knew that stuff. Therefore, Religulous
is a pointless chore although I admit some parts are funny.
Of course, many people will hate hearing this and therefore become angry, but all religions are
nothing but money-making, power-hungry fraudulent enterprises. From time to time, there'll be a person who claims to
be a prophet (see Charles Manson and David Koresh), but it'll be easy to prove he's a crackpot. This does matter
because we have to go back hundreds of years to examine history closely to point out some facts about two famous religious
figures: Jesus Christ and Muhammad.
They were probably fictional persons. How do we know? Well, take away the Bible and the Qur'an which are both full of
logic problems and contradictions; there isn't any historical evidence to prove their existence. Back then, the Romans kept
extensive records on just about everybody, but there's nothing on Jesus Christ. If you think about his impact
and compare it to what Elvis Presley did for America's pop culture, it's fair to say he'll be recorded right away as
a milestone in history, but nobody bothered writing it down until about forty years after Jesus' death. That's pretty strange,
don't you think?
The truth is that the early Christians were mostly uneducated, unskilled, illiterate, and incapable of
critical thinking. The final trait is reflective of the followers today because this question must be asked: how do they
know Jesus Christ existed? Is it because everybody told them so, so they just accept it as the truth and don't want to
challenge it any further? Having failed for centuries, Christianity finally was a force after being adopted as state religion
of the Roman Empire in 380 not because of expression of genuine faith but for political purposes.
The Dead Sea Scrolls is among the oldest manuscripts in world history and is a lot closer to the original language of the Bible.
Access to them was severely restricted for almost fifty years until they were finally released due to
heavy public demand. After studying the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Bible scholars found the actual history
completely different from what's stated in the current Bible which is also missing entire pages. Hence, the text of Old Testament
and New Testament had undergone through too many changes over two millennia.
The Bible scholars are aware of it but refuse to say anything. Oh, yeah...want to know something else? There's not
a single mention of Jesus Christ in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Most of what I've said can be applied to Muhammad as well but in different ways.
As for the subject of miracles, there were many, many of them reported during the first 1,900 years. When science, thanks to
the rise of precise technological tools, was finally developed to the point of being able to explain many phenomena accurately, the
reporting of miracles declined so much, down to almost nil. If miracles do occur, they're always either in South
America or Africa where it's easy to make up shit and get away with it. One of the most famous is the story of Bernadette
Soubirous. She was probably a schizophrenic lunatic who was prone to weaving fantastic bullshit and liked to eat mud and
grass. No matter what, Lourdes, France, still thanks her for turning its town into a huge international tourist destination
while raking in millions of dollars annually.
All in all, Religulous is a good way of making some people think about religion a bit deeply, but it's almost
impossible to convince the brainwashed adherents of the truth about their faith.