I'm yet another person who agrees with Maher's message but who doesn't really have that much respect for the vehicle in which he delivers it. The decision to make this a comedy (presumably to get people to see it) is just one of its many flaws. Maher takes on the obvious phonies and extreme cases (which he justifies in the commentary track because many of these folks do have large numbers of followers), and does tangentially make the case that undocumented belief is undocumented belief, regardless of whether it is wacky or mainstream. But this kind of easy cheap shot isn't going to change the minds of the fundamentalist followers and it allows more mainstream religionists to discount his arguments. He may have had trouble getting mainstream representatives of religion to engage with him, but if he had it wouldn't have been particularly funny and wouldn't have fit into the film Maher and Charles wanted to make.
One exception is a straightforward interview with Father George Coyne, a Vatican scientist, who describes the "fundamentalist approach to religious belief (as) kind of a plague." It's a plague worth fighting, one that many people of faith would join, and it's really the target of much of the film even though Maher says he is taking on all belief.
There are certainly some interesting and fun moments here, the highlight being the interview with impish Vatican Latin scholar Father Reginald Foster. Another is the interview with "ex-gay" minister John Wescott, who holds his own against Maher while maintaining strong rapport and good cheer, a really interesting character. The scenes in the Truckers Chapel are especially good. Maher doesn't mock these believers but treats them seriously and with respect. The rapport that Maher seems to have developed with these men suggests that their discussion may have been much longer than what wound up in the film. At the end of the scene, Maher accepts their prayers for him in a generous spirit and says, "Thank you for being Christ-like and not just Christian." This sequence, coming at the beginning, gave me high hopes for the film, hopes largely not met.
What I found reprehensible--and it happens several times--is the phony editing, where, after Maher makes his point there's a cut to the other person apparently chagrined or speechless. These isolated cuts obviously come from some other point in the conversation--really dishonest and cheap manipulation of film. All the interviews show evidence of being heavily edited, sometimes, one suspects, to somewhat change actual content. Maher has also been rightly taken to task in other IMDb comments for making some casual absolute statements of fact that are either incorrect or deserve more nuanced comment. One is the statement that there's a "gay gene," which is still under discussion in the scientific community (see "No, Scientists Have Not Found the 'Gay Gene'," dated October 10, 2015 on The Atlantic magazine website).
At the end of the day, the problem isn't really religion, it's people. Religion can serve as a vessel for codes of moral and ethical behavior and empathy with one's fellow man. But, human nature being what it is, religion is also a vessel for all sorts of intolerant and evil behavior. Things can be just as bad, or even worse, without religious belief. I think Maher copped out when he said that, well, Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, they were religions of a sort.
One exception is a straightforward interview with Father George Coyne, a Vatican scientist, who describes the "fundamentalist approach to religious belief (as) kind of a plague." It's a plague worth fighting, one that many people of faith would join, and it's really the target of much of the film even though Maher says he is taking on all belief.
There are certainly some interesting and fun moments here, the highlight being the interview with impish Vatican Latin scholar Father Reginald Foster. Another is the interview with "ex-gay" minister John Wescott, who holds his own against Maher while maintaining strong rapport and good cheer, a really interesting character. The scenes in the Truckers Chapel are especially good. Maher doesn't mock these believers but treats them seriously and with respect. The rapport that Maher seems to have developed with these men suggests that their discussion may have been much longer than what wound up in the film. At the end of the scene, Maher accepts their prayers for him in a generous spirit and says, "Thank you for being Christ-like and not just Christian." This sequence, coming at the beginning, gave me high hopes for the film, hopes largely not met.
What I found reprehensible--and it happens several times--is the phony editing, where, after Maher makes his point there's a cut to the other person apparently chagrined or speechless. These isolated cuts obviously come from some other point in the conversation--really dishonest and cheap manipulation of film. All the interviews show evidence of being heavily edited, sometimes, one suspects, to somewhat change actual content. Maher has also been rightly taken to task in other IMDb comments for making some casual absolute statements of fact that are either incorrect or deserve more nuanced comment. One is the statement that there's a "gay gene," which is still under discussion in the scientific community (see "No, Scientists Have Not Found the 'Gay Gene'," dated October 10, 2015 on The Atlantic magazine website).
At the end of the day, the problem isn't really religion, it's people. Religion can serve as a vessel for codes of moral and ethical behavior and empathy with one's fellow man. But, human nature being what it is, religion is also a vessel for all sorts of intolerant and evil behavior. Things can be just as bad, or even worse, without religious belief. I think Maher copped out when he said that, well, Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, they were religions of a sort.