Not much chance of a conversation like that with Brother Bill, whose unshakeable grip on certainty protects him well enough from cavils, such as that virtually the whole world is religious in one way or another and so, in his own way is Brother Bill himself: religiously committed to the idea of religion as a nullity, a waste of everybody's valuable time.
The irony here is that Brother Bill's absolutist mind-set reveals to him -- more or less accurately -- the absolutist, profoundly non-humorous, ambitions of extremist Muslims. His tone turns from bumptious to serious when these people come on camera. There is next to no kidding; perhaps, really, none at all. He hypothesizes that those who seek to kill their opponents have one style of interpreting the Koran when mosque doors are closed. For outsiders, he suggests, apologists for extremism spin the sacred texts prettily as instruments of peace. Whether he is exactly right about this or not, we need to hear such things said in order to ponder them.
You take away from "Religulous" the sense that, yes, religion is a combustible mass that bears watching. You take away also the sense that religious people are a bunch of yahoos and brain-dead louts who happen -- just imagine! -- to disagree with Bill Maher. On Brother Bill's invitation, we jeer, we sneer, we laugh, we gibe. Having done so, we -- well, I don't know. What do you do when what you believe is a big fat nothing?
Bill Murchison
Bill Murchison is the former senior columns writer for
The Dallas Morning News and author of
There's More to Life Than Politics.
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©Creators Syndicate
©Creators Syndicate