A scene from Bill Maher's RELIGULOUS

We recently received a very well thought out synopsis for a strong response to Bill Maher‘s irreverent RELIGULOUS movie from a concerned citizen named Travis Else. Since we’re in the middle of editing our latest documentary THE 12 BIGGEST LIES, much of what he wrote rang true again and again. Thankfully Travis agreed to let us post what he wrote. We need to encourage people to think critically and seek the truth however we can! Thank you Travis!

André van Heerden, Executive Director/Producer at Cloud Ten Pictures

I recently watched Bill Maher’s documentary “Religulous”, because I feel it is important to keep up with what people are saying about Christianity. This is something I feel like I’m doing a lot lately. With Maher’s preaching, Dan Brown’s truth twisting, and various other movies and literature, there seems to be a major movement today against faith. Of course this isn’t the first time a group, or movement has tried to do this and it won’t be the last. You have the Darwinists in the early 1900s, which spread the idea of evolution by natural selection. Back further you have the Renaissance movement, which spread propaganda about the Catholic Church, such as Galileo being imprisoned for his beliefs. He actually wasn’t. Yet people believe this even today. The book When Science and Christianity Meet by David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers discusses this and tackles the issue of cutting through the propaganda in history and finding the truth.

Maher asks the question how can intelligent people believe in a God. A fair question, but it doesn’t get fair treatment. Maher keeps his reach way too thin, content with interviewing a few people in a randomly picked church, people around the Vatican, and so on. I appreciated the fact that he interviewed a scientist who is a part of the Human Genome Project, but the interview is sliced to pieces. When he interviews a man who believes he is the Second Coming of Christ, you know the wheels have come off. Maher says “I don’t know” when asked about his own religious views, but this “I don’t know” seems to change to “I don’t care” as he drops this serious quest (if it even was serious to begin with) for the sake of entertainment and humor. Most of these interviews are set-ups plain and simple.

A big problem with this portion of the documentary is that Maher never interviews the Christian youth or different styles of church. Seminary students are engaged 24/7 in studying hermeneutics and homiletics, Greek and Hebrew, yet not one is approached. In fact, the best explanation Maher got for the Holy Trinity was from the youngest man he interviewed. This man explained that the Trinity is like water, which can also be a gas and a solid. Maher actually called this argument ‘brilliant.’ Imagine if he engaged any other young minds…

Mr. Maher keeps asking for extra-biblical sources, but he isn’t asking the right people. Since he refused to go to a seminary or any biblical scholars, he does not get a satisfactory answer. Of course extra-biblical sources exist. To name a couple, the non-Christian Roman Educator Tacitus mentions Jesus in The Annals Of Imperial Rome (100 AD) and Jewish historian Flavius Josephus talks about Jesus to some extent in Jewish Antiquities. In Immanuel Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision, the writings ancient cultures are studied. In these writings, Velikovsky discovers a shocking correlation in these documents with the miracles of the Old Testament. The most compelling example of this is the Sun standing still for Joshua, as narrated in Joshua 10:1-15, is corroborated by sources around the world, including the Mexican Annals of Cuauhtitlan, the Midrash, Mayan, Asian, Native Indian, and other writings from that time.

Maher’s most interesting argument compares horus the Egyptian god to Jesus. Indeed similarities exist with horus, but some of these similarities are in dispute, including conflicting accounts of how horus was killed. The question one needs to ask here is where do we get this information from? The bible is one of the most historically accurate and attested document in antiquity, so how do these sources compare? When were they written? How many documents exist to attest to its accuracy? Maher points out that all these similar religions, horus, Zoroastrianism, Jesus, all come from the same area, but he doesn’t ask why, assuming it must mean all are suspect. He also assumes that the story of Horus was incorporated into stories about Jesus, but what if this was the other way around? Perhaps these other cultures heard the Jewish religion and its coming Messiah and stole this idea for themselves. Why is that so hard to believe? The point is we can’t know who the original source was, but we do know that the bible has the most manuscripts and is the most attested, so wouldn’t the nod logically fall here?

My main gripe about “Religulous” comes at the end when Maher pleas for doubt. Why? Maher says, “Because doubt is humble.” So I guess this is the reason you made a 90-minute documentary making fun of other people’s beliefs. Is this the humility of doubt? People can be just as proud no matter what they believe. And NOTHING beats Jesus-centered humility. My plea is for study, for research. For looking beyond what someone tells you and learning for yourself what is true. And what is truth? Truth is the quiet voice amidst the loud propaganda and agendas that are everywhere. All you need is a camera and some well-timed edits. I pray that people can see through this documentary and start studying these issues for themselves. Otherwise, I may just get my own camera equipment!

- Response by Travis Else
Travis Else currently lives in Tulsa, OK. Travis loves writing, acting, analyzing film, and making the perfect cup of coffee.