Saturday, April 11, 2009

Religulous

One of our goals in creating this site was to encourage some new ways of thinking about things. With that in mind our topic today is the film Religulous by Bill Maher. A friend of ours introduced us to the movie and we were quite simply blown away by it. Let's get the disclaimer's out of the way first. We defend the right of anyone and everyone to worship what and or whomever they wish. We are not questioning the validity of any religion, we are questioning the validty of all religions. In the film Mr. Maher identifies some anomalies particularly in western religions that would give pause to anyone with a truly open mind. One factoid in particular about how the entire story of Jesus can be traced to an earlier religion we found absolutely amazing. Why hasn't that been brought up before? Mr. Maher points out that about 16% of the U.S. population is unaffiliated with any organized religion making us one of the largest minorities in the country. Given the damage that he believes (and we concur) religion has done to our society he is calling for us to stop being the polite silent minority and start speaking openly about our concerns. We have heard it said many times that religion has been the reason behind more wars and thus more deaths than any other motive. It is still today used as an excuse to dismiss, villify, and ostracize people who are different. We need to shift our belief system for a god who would smote our neighbors because they believe differently than us to a system that relies on the brotherhood of men. We need to say enough is enough, that we are going to stop a system that encourages hatred and mistrust. We need to embrace one another be we black or white, woman or man, gay or straight, old or young, rich or poor and say not that we are all god's children but rather that we are all equal and that for any of us to prosper going forward we must treat each other with respect.

While we worry about the impact of religion we can take some things from it. One quote that comes to mind is 'treat others as you would have others treat you'. We don't need religious leaders asking poor people for donations to acheive that. by Partner999

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