Your preaching to the choir Mr. Maher. I think everyone should see this movie and contemplate their beliefs a bit more critically.

Does society really need the facade of religion as discussed by Socrates/Plato, or can we have our moral values sans religion?

Its good to see so many discussions end on a good note.

That was unbelievably shit. No not THE shit, just shit. This is exhibit A in how to absolutely ruin what has the potential to be a very, very good movie. Larry Charles is obviously exceedingly satisfied with himself after having made Borat and decided to make Borat 2 and call it Religulous. Every single interview in this is so entirely FUCKED by slimeball editing techniques and fast cut MTV style stock clip inserts (OOHhhhhhh!!! look at the SHINY SHINY!), that I can almost never actually tell AT ALL when the interviewee's answers were actually to the question that was just asked, or not. Any pretense of intellectual honesty (a thing that I should bloody well think a movie setting out to criticize irrationality would hold in VERY high esteem) is entirely obliterated by snide, underhanded bullshit production techniques. This movie is the "Expelled: No evolution allowed" of the secular world. I say all of this of course as a dyed in the wool, inveterate atheist. Religion, especially the more harmful flavors, deserves to be excoriated, mocked and generally devalued, but if you have to literally rearrange the words of your opponents on tape to do it, you've failed. I can't even much enjoy the parts where the religious nuts actually DO appear to make fools of themselves without any help from Charles, because I'm constantly second guessing the context. I don't blame Maher for it at all, but this was an extreme disappointment. I recommend Johnathan Miller's "A Brief History of Disbelief" or Dawkin's "The Root of All Evil?" over this turd any day.

Some of the cuts to movie clips and what not were hilarious. I had to pause the video a few times so I could finish laughing.

Also, if that spanish guy was really the second coming of Jesus, I think I would have to become religious. He was pretty cool. I'm sure he was either crazy or just a good showman/con-artist, but still pretty cool.


On a side note, I've already edited this post 3 times to fix spelling and grammar errors that I noticed later. Smooth.

>> ^stephenfryftw:
That was unbelievably shit. No not THE shit, just shit. *snip*


Yeah because Maher and Charles really were out to make a movie dedicated to effectively discrediting religion. No documentary is going to make the faithful change their mind about their beliefs. This movie was made to poke fun at them for the benefit of the non believers in the audience, just like Expelled was made so the faithful watching it could feel self-righteous.

Now if you want a good documentary illustrating the dangers of religion, watch Jesus Camp. It's fucking scary as shit, and the great part about it is that the "star" of the movie (the scary Rosie O'Donnell looking Jesus freak lady) thinks it's a great film for promoting her camp.

Stephenfryftw what were you expecting anyways? it's a movie made by the director of Borat and has Bill Maher in it. It is obvious you are not going to get much out of this other than 'entertainment' and it is obvious it is overrated. Maher went on 'the view' to promote this thing. How could you expect any depth from this?

I saw the movie in theater a while back and thought it was more entertaining than thought-provoking. I think that anyone who wants to see this movie is already a fan of Maher, and for those religious people who see the movie, they would walk out of the theater early on (or hit stop in the browser), so it really achieves nothing other than entertainment. Though there are very few, if any, laugh-out-loud moments like there usually are on the Real Time hbo series. I was disappointed in that regard.

It could have had a lot more criticism and ridiculousness of various religions, maybe it was purposefully watered down so Bill Maher wouldn't be attacked by fanatics/nutjobs.

i thought of some slogans while watching this.

religion: because reality bites
religion: because god loves me more than you
religion: i like to kill

oh mauz, I don't expect any of that. What I do expect from a movie that ostensibly seeks to provoke thought from the mind of its audience, is fucking honesty, that's what I expect. That, and maybe, just maybe, the assumption by the film maker that little old me, the viewer, just happens to be in possession of an attention span that ever so slightly exceeds the premature ejaculatory doomed coital duration of a freshman on his first post-game back-seat feel-up.

^Waaaaait a second here, you want honesty in a movie about Religion? HAH!

*comedy
*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Friday, January 2nd, 2009 11:35am PST - promote requested by schmawy.

Adding video to channels (Comedy) - requested by schmawy.

Honesty and seeking to provoke thought? you fell for it. It was never about that. (and im not defending it, I could not even finish watching that crap)

It's a comedian doing a 'documentary' *brain explodes*

>> ^stephenfryftw:
oh mauz, I don't expect any of that. What I do expect from a movie that ostensibly seeks to provoke thought from the mind of its audience, is fucking honesty, that's what I expect. That, and maybe, just maybe, the assumption by the film maker that little old me, the viewer, just happens to be in possession of an attention span that ever so slightly exceeds the premature ejaculatory doomed coital duration of a freshman on his first post-game back-seat feel-up.



PS: VERY sad how this 'documentary' gets (and probably will get) more votes than all the real ones lolz
This is as much of a documentary as 'what the bleep do we know?' or 'the Secret'

Adding video to channels (Brain) - requested by mauz15.

brain?
argh stupid me, I mean stupid sifbot >_>

*nochannel *cinema *documentaries *comedy *religion

Video is already flagged long - ignoring long request by mauz15.

I find meatbag mauz15 to be an inadequate command-giver - ignoring all requests by mauz15.

sigh

*nochannel *cinema *documentaries *comedy *religion

This video has been removed from all channels (Religion, Cinema, Documentaries, Comedy, Brain) due to invalid channel assignment - nochannel invoked by mauz15. Please review the FAQ to learn about appropriate channel assignments.

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Some *nsfw moments.

This video has been flagged as being Not Suitable For Work - declared nsfw by Fjnbk.

^stephenfryftw

I dont think that they set out to make a real documentary here. They are comedians and they take liberties within their craft to create moments that are funny. Mission accomplished as far as im concerned.

does posting full movies not go against videosift policy?

"Please do not post entire episodes of television shows or movies, unless you know beyond a shadow of a doubt they are in the public domain."

I was curious when I started watching this whether Bill would have anything to say about Rumi and Sufi. Except for a 1-second clip of sped-up whirling dervishes, there's not even a whiff.

I think Bill might even approve of it, since he clearly states at the beginning that he understands people's need to have a religion, and that's it's only privilege of the privileged to choose not to have a religion. He's obviously aware of Sufi. Wonder why he didn't mention it.

Or Buddhism, for that matter, which is similar to Sufi in a lot of ways that Bill singled out as important.

Videosift FAQ

#4 Please do not post entire episodes of television shows or movies, unless you know beyond a shadow of a doubt they are in the public domain.

That's what BitTorrent is for.

I was going to post the same thing as rottenseed and cybrbeast. That rule seemed pretty clear to me when I checked it.

*discuss

Either that rule needs to be removed from the FAQ or this and quite a few other videos must be discarded.

This video is being sent to Sift Talk for discussion - discuss requested by cybrbeast.

It's not our job to be policemen of the content. Every simpsons clip embedded here is against copyright as well, but no one does anything about those. As long as it is online and embeddable, I have no moral obligations to this at all. I vote * return and delete the rule.

Okay fine, then lets change the FAQ of the Sift.

^ Agreed. Return this piece of shit movie!

Apparently I need to read up on the faq again, as I had forgotten that rule. And I honestly don't think it's a very good movie either. I posted it only because it's a much discussed movie, and is worth watching as a conversation piece if nothing else. Well, part that, and part whoring for votes

But do what you want with it, return or discard, I really don't care either way.

What does it mean to be in the public domain? That it hasn't been removed by Lionsgate?

I say we let it stay until it's removed by Google.

Ok, how about this compromise? We let it stay for now, but if it goes dead I will kill it.

Oh, and I've removed it from * documentaries, since it doesn't have much journalistic integrity. It is more like a bunch of weird clips.

I've never really liked that rule, and we've violated it so many times. Let the video stay until it dies.

Good point, and good solution. There are a large number of short animated films posted here that would also have to be removed.

I vote to return, as well. The rule needs to go. I'm not 100% sure on the law in the States, but if the embeddable video content is copyrighted I think it would be the fault of the original submitter (the guy who posts the Simpsons' clip on YouTube) not those who copy and paste the embed code.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

OK, lets *return it then. It's a guideline- and I'm thinking this could actually be legitimate as Google Video has at times hosted full length movies in lower quality as a way to promote DVDs etc.

Returning this video from Sift Talk - return requested by dag.

You people need to stop being self righteous about this being a documentary or not. Did you even watch it fully?

Maher says himself from the start, that its an exploration of faith from his standpoint. What he believes and why he thinks it is dangerous in our time.

I liked the film a lot more than I expected, and appreciate the sifter whether we're violating the FAQ or not =]

>> ^Farhad2000:
You people need to stop being self righteous about this being a documentary or not. Did you even watch it fully?
Maher says himself from the start, that its an exploration of faith from his standpoint. What he believes and why he thinks it is dangerous in our time.


It took the whole thread for someone to point that out?

I didn't like the movie all that much either but I didn't take it as anything other than Bill up there venting either, if I remember right he said he didn't expect to change any minds with it. Just to start conversations. Never even occurred to me to see it as a documentary rather than him up there venting a bit, an extended production of one of the same types of rants that you might see on his TV show. Either you like him or you don't, that isn't going to change much for doing it feature length instead of as a bit.

^ Exactly.

Some of the inserts were funny, othertimes they got in the way of a discussion I was enjoying (the 'maverick' from the Vatican)... but this movie is aimed fairly low because it runs with the pretty correct assumption that those who are atheists are, for the most part, of the more intelligent set, while the religious are the lower spectrum of education.

So aim low to try to get those who are religious to question, and if you miss those who already are not religious... what does it matter?

There are other documentaries you can watch if you want a serious discussion of the issues pertaining to religion and the damage it does on an individual, social and global level, but I enjoyed this one because it made me laugh.

i watched the whole thing, why no examination of Buddhism?
Also now i have to research Horus and the apparent laundry list of similarities to Jesus.

one thought - Bill's position regarding god is:
I don't know. But i choose to disbelieve and proselytize that disbelief to others.

How is that position morally or intellectually superior to:

I don't know. But i choose to believe and proselytize that belief to others.

Bill just "knows" he's Right? I think he planned the whole thing so he could smoke dope in Amsterdam.

I think the tags are right now, it's a comedy movie about religion. Very funny at times I thought.

The only point made that I could ruminate about is at the end when he states that when I take casual comfort in some belief in God, it comes at a terrible price. But I don't go to church, vote or make political contributions based on scripture, don't proselytize or persecute, and try not to let it color my opinions of others. So what harm am I doing by holding myself accountable to a greater power?

Schmawy, you are doing no harm because your belief in a higher power does not affect your behavior, or at least, you don't vote or make political contributions based on your belief or spend time in Church.

Maher doesn't make the distinction, but I don't think the casual comfort you are taking falls under what he is talking about since you are not supporting an "organized religion". Or perhaps you are in ways you don't realize it. If you label yourself a Christian to others, that supports organized Christian agendas, albeit in a very small way (think butterfly effect).

Thanks, Flood. I don't feel bad now.

Most of his barbs are justifiably pointed at religious leaders, but there's some serious mocking of the individual believers as well. He does point out that atheism is a luxury for him, and he's right. I don't take it for granted that if I can live without God, I can do so because I've got love and guidance and belonging from people in my life, so I don't have any need for a magic Dad in the sky.

I think a lot of the time we accuse the faithful of intellectual laziness or ignorance without acknowledging that they are just trying to get what so many of us are fortunate to have.

didn't see "Religulous" yet, and Maher is just another American who knows the real badasses of the cause are always near (Dawkins and such), but he's not that bad, in fact he's route is coherent - make fun of all the pseudo-populist-slash-ignorant side of religion.

For some serious bizness with not a hint of mockery, sadism or vulgarism towards religion, but plain ole Reason, i recommend this documentary from BBC4 called "Brief History of Disbelief". When I was told about it, I immediately sensed the win in it from the title. I imagine to not be the only one.

My initial reaction to this documentary was that it was fun.

I think one of the things that Bill Maher didn't focus on was that every religion has different views on their authoritative word (Koran, the Bible, etc.). In Christianity, there are different denominations, reformed theology, and so on. But we also have to remember that it's a documentary from a comedian and so because the tone of the documentary, you have to take it as a fun/and slightly informative film.

One thing I did enjoy was the actual honesty from Bill Maher. He was probably the most genuine out of all the people interviewed.

*dead

This published video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by eric3579.

I'm part of that weird segment of society that thinks copyright should be respected. Clips and excerpts, fine, but the whole movie? Theft. I think it's pretty weak to actively cut and paste the embed code and then say it's the original poster who is violating copyright. Talk about lack of responsibility. That's like if I see you get car-jacked and then the car-jacker tosses me the keys to your car... sorta.

*killed, in accordance with this comment.

Permanently discarding this video - kill requested by submitter Ornthoron.