[FairfieldLife] Re: Religulous
RELIGULOUSThe word is a combination of religion and ridiculous and is Bill Maher's take on this subject. I've always enjoyed Bill Maher's sense of HUMOR. His political satire shows on TV are biting often extremely accurate. He brings interesting political types to awareness.. I don't go to many movies, I'd seen some religious groups making youtube videos asking for a boycott on this one. And recently I've heard Maher say some pretty strange things about faith and superstition SO I decided to see the movie and write a blistering review of it. WELL, I've seen it and I would say unequivocally * Any person of FAITH will have NO problem with this movie. * I thought the best part was when the truckers prayed over Bill Maher Bill Maher thanked them for being Christlike. But remember one trucker got angry left when Maher started asking questions after church service. This movie is a great threat to people with only BELIEF as a guide. Bill Maher didn't make any distinction between FAITH and BELIEF which in my humble opinion was his big mistake. Faith is the result of EXPERIENCING ultimate reality (GOD) and from a point of KNOWLEDGE having FAITH that GOD is the correct reality even when we don't yet experience GOD 24/7. BELIEF - is a WORKING knowledge that something is true. You might believe milk/apple cider vinegar/honey is good for your body, You might believe the Phillies/Lakers/Steelers are the best sports team. You might believe every word in the BIBLE is directly from GOD. And beliefs DO help us grow. BELIEF is the cast to help mold us to the better values we want for ourself. But lets not become a cult of the CAST! We use structures to grow our FAITH, we get strong enough for FAITH to live in us. When we're strong and healthy we can walk without a cast. That doesn't mean we won't be walking with GOD, it just means SOME BELIEFS, some structures may have fallen away in importance. How big is your GOD? That's the title of a book I haven't yet read, but I like the idea. I think however much we travel on the spiritual path, our concept of GOD just keeps getting BIGGER and BIGGER. Where were you when I made heaven and earth? GOD ask Job in the Old Testament. With our limited little human knowledge we might really NOT KNOW all the answers. That's OK. Jesus said to Love GOD and to Love your neighbor as yourself. It seems to me if you try to love the people that are hard to love, with God's help you WILL be expanding GOD in your life. Tim Lehaye, G.W. Bush, Donald Rumsfield and Sarah Palin share the BELIEF that we need a big war in the middle east so the second coming of Jesus will happen! I'm pretty sure Jesus never said that! I think there are probably as many paths to GOD as there are people. It doesn't seem very smart to think you have the ONLY TRUTH in your little bucket. FOR SURE, whatever you believe is TRUE FOR YOU at this point in time. but GOD has that tricky trait of always EXPANDING. PLEASE LET GOD EXPAND IN YOUR LIFE! In the aspect of letting GOD expand, it doesn't seem like Bill Maher's movie is a very good ideato poke fun of religion. But if BELIEF rather than FAITH has taken over as RELIGION maybe it's an OK idea for a comedian to do what he does best. Hello Fairfielders. I didn't write this for you guys as I know you're much more snarky than my 100 first cousins I actually wrote this for.. but remember the Foo Bird!
[FairfieldLife] Re: Religulous
-thx for the critique. I'll check it out. http://wasillabible.org/ -- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I just got back from seeing it at the film festival. And I think that everyone here should see it, but I'll be the first to use the Judy-word and describe it as snarky. Snarky is just what Bill Maher DOES, and that is one of his great strengths, but it does kinda limit the audience you can appeal to to those who agree with your particular brand of snark. The film was very funny in parts, and got quite a few laughs, each of them well-deserved. But at one point in the film, Bill trots out the statistic that in America 16% of the population lists themselves as non-religious. THAT is the audience that Maher is speaking to. And there is nothing wrong with that, because a lot of those people in that 16% still are intimidated by the centuries of persecution in which it not only wasn't proper to criticize or poke fun at religion, doing so could cost you your life. His clear message is at the end of the film, and I agree with it wholeheartedly, snark or no snark. We live in an age in which many, if not most, of the predominant religions teach Apocalypse, and to fol- lowers who actually HOPE that it will happen, and that it will happen in their lifetimes. This is insanity. When you have millions and millions of people on the planet ALL believing and hoping that the end is near, well, I'm sorry, but the end really IS near. Consciously and subconsciously, they are help- ing to bring that fiery end to planet Earth by dwelling on it each and every day. Maher is absolutely correct IMO that we who are in that non-religious 16% should speak up every time we see some nutcase preaching hatred and bigotry and violence and Armageddon. I just wish that Maher had been able to find a way to speak to the other 84% of Americans, the ones who have faith. Many of us many find their faith ridicu- lous, whether it is in a talking snake and a guy living for three days in the belly of a whale and a virgin birth or whether it is a blue-skinned flute player fucking 1000 cowherds in one night and a guy with the head of an elephant and another guy who is really a monkey. And most of us know -- if from nothing else our experience on this forum -- that there is NOTHING one can do to talk a person out of even the most ridiculous religious beliefs. If they believe it now, they will believe it until they stop believing it on their own, and no amount of rational argument can change that simple fact. But we might be able to get even the most mindlessly faithful person to *think through* the ramifications of believing that the world is in its last days. That's not faith; that's ego, and really, really *dangerous* ego. That's an insecure ego shouting to the world, I'm so important that the world is going to die when I die...or at least I hope so. All in all, Religulous is a flawed but interesting and at times very funny look at some of the silly sides of religion, and at some of the downright frightening sides of religion. In my opinion, as human beings we should not only be free to criticize and make fun of other people's religions, we should almost be required to criticize and make fun of our own. The most destruc- tive dogma in ANY religion is that anything we could possibly say or do with regard to that religion or spiritual path could ever be considered Off The Program.
