"It's a smart, funny picture. Somewhere Socrates is up in the constellations, chilling with his gods and goddesses. And he's smiling. "

There has been as much tap dancing around this movie as there have been arguments for and against it. I will try to do neither of these things, but keep a close eye on my feet. For many religious people, Bill Maher is a modern-day boogie man. He wouldn't be so scary were he to devolve into hate-filled tirades. He's a threat because he's a dissenter. Kind of like that Christ fella. Now Maher's not Jesus Christ (though he is half-Jew): he has too much of a potty mouth to be divine, methinks. But he asks simple and fair questions of authority. And when I say authority, I mean like "The Authority." Religulous is a collection of these interviews where Maher meets people of many faiths (Christians, Muslims, Mormons and Jews to name a few). It's fun to see at least one Jesus (there are two in this film) leave him speechless. Mostly, Maher's questions provoke real discussion of faith and it's interesting to see logic and blank-check faith clash and mix and party like it's 1999.

Maher is not a religious man. He's not a man of faith. In fact, religion is pretty scary to him. He feels the answers he gets to rational questions are contradictory, padded with convenience or are just cop-outs. His questions are not in themselves attacks on faith; they are merely questions posed to people who probably have never been asked them before. His aim is to not so much make the interviewee denounce their faith (hey, one thing at a time) as it is to make them think about it.

The way of the world is that faith -- for the most part -- is inherited rather than something that is arrived at. Christians tend to raise Christians. Muslims tend to raise Muslims. And that I believe is Maher's biggest problem with religion; because even in religions of "faith," there are certain facts that must be accepted. Blind acceptance of these facts, in the face of scientific evidence or common sense or modern perspective, comes too easily to so many intelligent people. And this is what is confusing as heck to Mr. Maher. After all, we do not believe in Homer's The Odyssey as historical record, but many Christians do believe in talking snakes, resurrection, a parting sea, and a whale doubling as a Holiday Inn. Maher's film acknowledges the positives of faith (there is something to be said of Christian charity), but he's more interested in the costs: the wars, child rapes, suicide bombings and land disputes ... all in the name of a God. Nobody really gets off easy in this movie. Except maybe Zule.

Probably the most incriminating aspect of Religulous is how some people don't even know or understand the foundational elements of their faith. When the infidel knows more about your faith than you do, maybe that's a problem. So Maher's film becomes a journey about asking why people believe in what they believe, especially when they don't really know what they're supposed to believe. Yeah, you got it.

Maher really does belong to a religion though. He belongs to the church Socrates built some 400 years before Christ met Peter the Rock. It's the church of "I don't know" and of systematic logic -- both of which are the enemies of blind certainty. Like Jesus, Socrates liked to turn the system on its head and that's kind of Maher's aim here. He never says he doesn't believe in God, just that he doesn't know for sure. Is that arrogance or humbleness? Many parts of Religulous are more humble than anything and that's where the film really shines. It's a smart, funny picture. Somewhere Socrates is up in the constellations, chilling with his gods and goddesses. And he's smiling.

Grade: B

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