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Religulous

I am not a fan of Bill Maher. As a matter of fact, I find him to be annoying. His obnoxiousness does not appeal to me. But I watched Maher’s “Religulous.” Essentially, it is a documentary that pokes fun at the credulity of religious people and the ridiculousness of religious claims (Christianity in particular). Although I am a Christian, I surprisingly like “Religulous.” It appears sacrilegious or blasphemous for a Christian to watch it. But I think that Christians should watch it.

Rottenness is sometimes not readily visible. It infects the inner core and gradually sets the process of decay. Sometimes the truth about a certain condition becomes more visible, when someone uninhibitedly brings out in the open the rottenness of what many consider to be sacred. So, there has to be a playing field, where nothing is sacred. In that playing field, we discover even that which is initially unimaginable. In a playing field where freethinking is suppressed in order to protect the sacred, the mind becomes oppressed by imprisonment to the uncorrected thinking of the past. A thing that is branded as sacred is usually immune from all-out criticisms. Such immunity hinders the discovery of any truth that can be accessible to humans, which can include the falsities of beliefs that we cherish as sacred. Maher’s uncensored mockeries of religion can bring to light the ridiculousness of our illusions and delusions. They are comedic corrections to our tragic doxastic dispositions.

Popular Christianity in its inner core is arguably rotten. Popular Christianity is corrupted by the ambitions of power-hungry clerics, scandalous behaviors of sexual maniacs in religious garbs, and money-making acts of religious pimps. Popular Christianity today is different from what Jesus and the apostles envisioned two thousand years ago. It looks shallow, dumb, ignorant, irrelevant, corrupt, hypocritical, narrow-minded, dogmatic, etc. “Religulous” reveals the current perception of Christianity among its cultured despisers. Christians should figure out what they can humbly learn from Maher’s insulting claims about Christianity, in order for them to learn how they should then live in the 21st century.

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