Religulous-- Religion Merged With Ridiculous

Since I did go to see Religulous the film by Bill Maher, on Yom Kippur, and I was raised Jewish, one might conclude that I am not religious. I am not. It is not the worst thing I've ever done on a Holy Day, but I'm not telling.

Anyway we went to see Religulous. If someone believes deeply in a religion, don't see this film. It's sarcastic, funny, ironic, and did I say funny? Bill Maher interviews his mother, who happens to be Jewish, although he was raised Catholic in New Jersey. Apparently, he never knew why his mother never went to church with them and didn't bother to ask. Suddenly when he was thirteen, at just the age when church becomes unbearably boring because it didn't lead to copping a feel, his father stopped going, as did Bill and his sister. According to his mother, it was probably because as a couple, they used forbidden birth control. Although she never asked her husband either.

Yes, our generation, the Baby Boomers, was raised in families where nothing of importance was ever discussed.

I am jealous, however, because Bill Maher did get to go to the Creation Museum. When I first heard about this delusion constructed by Ken Ham in Petersburg, KY, just across the border from Cincinnati, OH, I wanted to go immediately. My daughter feared that I would make this into a destination spot on our next mother-daughter summer roadtrip. We didn't. Bill Maher got there first.

He got to stroll through a hall with dinosaurs and cave people despite the fossil record.

He also made it to the Vatican, Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount, although Maher's mother is Jewish, which technically means that he is Jewish, too. When I was in Jerusalem this summer, I did not get to walk into the Mosque because one had to declare that Allah was the one and only god. ( I wonder if I should have capitalized "god.")

And Bill got to speak to Jesus. Well, more than one. At Holy Land Theme Park in Orlando, he spent time with the actor who plays Jesus and who gets whipped and crucified six days a week. And he spoke with an evangelical preacher from Puerto Rico who believes he is the direct descendant of Christ and therefore, the second coming himself. (I wonder if I should have capitalized "second coming himself.")

There are some wonderful visits with people who skeptically question fundamentalism in any form: Jewish, Christian, Mormon, Muslim, Scientology. There are others who are wildly full of certitude about their religion and very hypocritical.

The last five minutes of Religulous get a bit preachy. So I won't. This is my take on religion, at least for me. I like ritual, anyone's, so I go to church, temple, or the local mosque for holidays and rituals when I have been invited by friends. I enjoy the music, where there is any, and the sense of community, so long as it is welcoming. And mostly it is. I enjoy the stories of religion, the fables, myths, and miracles, listening to them as allegories, not as fact. However, I am anti-authoritarian by nature, so I rebel from any "shoulds" in my life.

Instead I am often awed and humbled by the beauty, complexity, and incomprehensibility of much in this world. I don't put a beard on it. I don't put a face to it. I prefer to just let myself be overtaken by the spirit of wonder.

I am really annoyed by the misuse of religion in politics. I believe that the Republican Party has been taken over by fundamentalists who have a very different take on democracy and the separation of church and state. I hate the pandering to religious voters by both candidates. At one point in Religulous, Bill Maher has a chart of the number of agnostics and atheists in America: 16 million. I count myself as one of them. How come no one ever panders to us?

Afterword: Two young people from outside Wilkes-Barre, PA just left our house after buying one of our cars. They are both voting for Obama. The young woman who works in a hospital said that she thought some people weren't voting for Obama because of race. But it seems to be generational. So in Pennsylvania, the key to the election might be getting out the youth vote, the generation less touched by racism, unlike the older folks who remember how it used to be, when inequality was hidden, because no one talked about anything important.