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Religulous
Religion is a lot like D.B. Cooper. Who? D.B. Cooper. No one talks about Cooper anymore, but he might have been the most famous outlaw of the last third of the twentieth century. No one knows what his real name was. He just showed up on November 24, 1971, just before Thanksgiving, at the Portland International Airport. No one knew where this middle-aged man, who looked a little like Bing Crosby, dressed in a dark suit, pressed white shirt, black raincoat, necktie, and sunglasses came from or how he even got to the airport. Not one of the 36 passengers or 6 crewmembers really noticed him as he boarded the Boeing 727-051, Northwest Airlines Flight 305 and sat in the back row. As the flight began to taxi down the runaway, Cooper handed a note to the flight attendant, who thought he was slipping her his phone number. Instead Cooper was hijacking the flight. In his briefcase were some red cylinders, a large battery, and wires, which looked like a real bomb to the flight attendant. Ordering the flight to reroute towards Seattle, he ransomed the passengers. For $200,000 and four parachutes Cooper would release 39 of the travelers. Keeping just three crewmembers onboard, he ordered the plane to take off again and then for the aft stairs (outdoor rear) to be lowered. He then locked the crew in the cockpit. It was the last time anyone ever saw D.B. Cooper. At 8:13 p.m., somewhere over southwest Washington, the hijacker stood on the aft stairs and leaped into the rainy, cold, pitch black night. The two F-106 jet fighters following the Boeing saw nothing. A six week search for him turned up nothing. Cooper and the money disappeared into legend. Did he freeze to death on the way down or get killed in the fall? Did he get hung up in a tree or drown in the Columbia River? Even though there is not one ounce of proof, most people like to think he got away.
Religion is that answer we look to that makes looking and eventually leaping into the darkness of death easier or at least less taxing. No one knows what lies beneath that darkness with 100 percent certainty. A few brave souls look into the dark, proclaiming there is nothing there. The rest of us can believe, we can have faith, we can even hope that there is a safe landing spot, that someone will catch us, but no one really knows. When you die, you disappear into the icy darkness and those left behind are left to speculate what happened to you. It might be one long eternal dirt nap. It might be heaven, reincarnation, Sheol, oneness with the universal, or a planet called Kolob all to your own. Some people just see the darkness and do not even bother to speculate what might be beneath. Others put off thinking about it, stay busy, until they have to fall into the night. Some people’s prep for jumping is so whacked out and goofy that you roll your eyes. Yet, you might be a nobody, a nothing, until you make that jump, but if you guess right, you can become a legend, a story of the one that got away, like D.B. Cooper or maybe you just disappear into the night like everyone else.
The main reason that the United States is one of the few uber-religious industrialized nations is that our founding fathers, deists, took the D.B. Cooper approach to religion. They believed that question is not whether we have Jesus or not, but rather sometimes it is whose Jesus. These powdered wig wearers understood that your God or Jesus might be different than my God or Jesus. (For example, most rapture right parents would go nuts if junior came home from school and informed mom and dad that they are going to hell because they participate in the capitalist system, usury, even though the Bible pretty much condemns our current capitalist system.) While lip service is given to a deistic God, He is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This agnostic policy approach to which religion or faith is true has allowed personal faith to take root and blossom in this country.
The problem is in the last few years the conservative right has forced their ideals onto everyone else in the name of returning America back to a moral time that never was, a time when we were walking more faithfully with Jesus. I think this was when we relied on child labor, beat women, had no safety net for the poor, enslaved African-Americans, and killed Indians and stole their land. You know, the good old days. In the name of family values, the far right has backed a man of faith for President, little common sense, almost no caring for the masses, but faith all the same. They have pushed their ideals into school’s science programs and sex education classes, pushed to have judges who are hostile to a women’s right to their own bodies, pushed to interfere with scientific conclusions they disagreed with, demonized homosexuality, prevented little girls from vaccinations to prevent cervical cancer, prevented stem cell research, pushed and pushed a little more. But something strange has happened. A lot of people started pushing back. Atheists, agnostics and even fellow religious believers who normally stood quietly in the corner, have spoken up and are pushing back. Parents at school board meetings, families of people suffering from Parkinson’s, the poor and the outcast have pushed back. As a percentage, twice as many high school students are looking at having a faith and saying not for me. Three of the top selling books in the last two years, Sam Harris’ Letter To A Christian Nation, Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Good, and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, are attacks on Christianity. Television shows like “South Park” and Penn and Teller’s “Bullsh!t” has openly mocked religious faith. The growth of the Internet and places like YouTube have allowed skeptics to congregate and deny the existence of the Holy Spirit. Now it is Comedian Bill Maher’s turn.
Bill Maher, who was suspended and later fired by ABC television when a guest on his show “Politically Incorrect” made a politically incorrect statement in the wake of September 11th and is now the host of “Real Time” on HBO, is taking a swipe at religion with his documentary Religulous (religion + ridiculous). Anyone with a comedic ear will also recognize the work of writer and producer Larry Charles who made his bones on “Seinfeld,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Released in the Easter season to get the most outrage and press, Maher believes that religion is a neurological disorder that offers the believer nothing, spreads guilt and hate and prevents him or her from thinking logically. Claiming that he is an agnostic, not an atheist, because when he looks into the darkness he does not see what lies beneath. Maher has stated, “I'm not an atheist. There's a really big difference between an atheist and someone who just doesn't believe in religion. Religion to me is a bureaucracy between man and God that I don't need. But I'm not an atheist, no. I believe there's some force. If you want to call it God... I don't believe God is a single parent who writes books." In Religulous, he crisscrosses the world, ending up in places like Jerusalem and Rome, to mock the world’s religion and show some of these faiths more unseemly aspects. In many ways, Maher gives various believers enough rope to hang themselves, whether a Rapture believing Senator, Creationists, Satanists, Jews for Jesus, Hasidic scholars, stoners, and Rael, the prophet of the Raelians. He takes a skeptic eye to the virgin birth, anti-homosexual attitudes, and the randomness of suffering. It is a humorous, often cutting, scatological version of Richard Dawkins’ documentary Root Of All Evil (which can be seen on YouTube). Much like Jackass: The Movie, it is best for the audience not to give away the individual scenes. Given its release date, it is sure to make waves and raise a lot of people’s animosity. Still, maybe that is a good thing when you’re standing in the darkness, ready to make the leap, and wondering what is out there.
Verdict: A Funny, Tough Documentary