Religulous

Whoever has seen this "documentary," I'd like to hear from you.

For those that haven't seen it yet, basically, this film is based on Bill Maher's stance on religion in general. His stance against it also brings about the idea of Doubt. Anyway, here's my opinion...

The film SUCKS as a documentary. Okay, his film is about doubt and skepticism. It's an attempt to debunk religious ideology. None the less, the quality as a documentary is supremely skewed and subjective to the issue of the proposition. I'll admit though, that I'm presenting a bias since I am a believer, however, his viewpoints have no ground and are backed by weak arguments.

Issue #1: Interviewees
The people he interviewed were people who have not had formal training or education in the area of apologetics or theology. Bill apparently goes to random people and asks them questions about their faith and evidence to believe in such matter. My issue with this is that congregations of certain faiths generally don't put the time and energy into researching their beliefs, they simply just have faith.

Mr. Maher could have easily gone to someone from a school of study to find "answers" to his questions. Instead, he goes to small church's, amusement parks, and random train stations to get his "answers". Come on Bill, if you're going to produce a film for the public in hopes of debunking religion, why are you going to regular people rather than going to experts?

Issue #2: The "Gay" Gene
This topic is very sensitive because there are thousands of people in the world who proclaim themselves as "gay". Bill interviews a pastor who used to be gay and tries to discredit his belief and sexual orientation.

The issue arises when the pastor explains that he participated in homosexuality rather than being outright homosexual. He believes that "gays" in general participate in homosexuality but are not homosexual by nature. Afterall, there IS a reason for a differentiation in genetalia right?

Well, not to Bill Maher, because he introduces the idea of a "gay gene" which some scientist has "found". My issue with this is that, the idea isn't thoroughly explained. I would have LOVED to hear about this said gene and the means to it's discovery. There are 23 chromosomes in the body, and a piece of one of the 23 has a code that says a person is gay.

My qualm with this idea is that, genetic DNA is exhaustively complex and complicated. If Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, said that the cell is more complex than any supercomputer known to man, how much more complicated do you think DNA and the genetic code might be?

Issue #3: False Experts
This is in relation to my first issue, but a little different. Not only does Bill Maher interview people who have not had formal education in theology, but he interviews people who CLAIM to be experts! He even makes fun of them in their faces for not knowing scripture.

I can understand that these people are doing wrong in obtaining profit from their actions as said "evangelists", however this has no bearing to his cause in debunking religion. Again, the social impact of religion has nothing to do with the cause of the proposition of whether or not God exists.

My Verdict
I stick to my guns in saying this documentary sucks. Although there are other issues I have with the film, my main objections are that he interviews people with no formal training, makes claims to ideas without showing evidence, and interviews false experts. Way to go Bill, you've shown the world that atheists are too scared to face the truth.

The Commoners

All my life I have been a Christian. My denomination as a Catholic introduced the Christian faith to me since I was born and I furthered my studies through bible study Fridays with a youth group. It wasn't until my junior year in high school when I started to learn about the secular ideas that didn't flow right with my faith. So I asked questions, and got answers. I asked more questions afterward, and got more answers. I repeated this cycle, and what I found were things that actually affirmed my faith. Not only did I learn new things, but my faith grew as a result. What you may be surprised about is that some of the questions I have, you too have. So lets begin.

Open Mindedness:

Open-mindedness is usually considered a virtue in our society, but when it comes to religion, often it seems to be close-mindedness that is considered virtuous, and this is often the basis for religious belief.
- Dave Bruemmer of the Daily Titan 2007

What's funny about the quote above is that I could say the same thing about atheists. But Dave has a point. I've encountered many questions where I did not know the answer to and I would just recite what was taught to me about God. For instance, to "How can you tell me that God is real when he let's others like me suffer in pain watching my loved one die?" I would say "God makes you suffer so you can grow closer to him," then I would go into an example. Now I would say that Dave's viewpoint may be correct in this sense that a reasonably cliche answer was given.

Though God wants us to grow closer to him, he definitely doesn't want us to suffer doing it. But that's what this blog is about, logical answers to logical questions on faith. "So tell me Mr. Know-it-all, why does God allow suffering?" It's quite simple really, we live in an imperfect world. More on that later, for now, just take that into consideration. The point is that there are open minded faith based answers to those hard questions people have in the back of their heads. Though science may try to point out fallacies, to each their own. Christians may give cliche answers, but that doesn't mean it's false and most certainly doesn't mean Christian's are close minded.