Pluskylang Great Film overall

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Aspen Orson There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

Mindy Polinari I really enjoyed this. Maher says at the beginning that it's all about doubt but by the end it's very clear his position on religion. I didn't know there was a Jesusland in FL. Scary. I also found it quite humorous how most people didn't get that he was making fun of them. The reformed gay? Seriously? I'm guessing he was never gay to begin with. It's not a disease people, seriously! I loved this; religious zealots may not. Recommended.

bensonj I'm yet another person who agrees with Maher's message but who doesn't really have that much respect for the vehicle in which he delivers it. The decision to make this a comedy (presumably to get people to see it) is just one of its many flaws. Maher takes on the obvious phonies and extreme cases (which he justifies in the commentary track because many of these folks do have large numbers of followers), and does tangentially make the case that undocumented belief is undocumented belief, regardless of whether it is wacky or mainstream. But this kind of easy cheap shot isn't going to change the minds of the fundamentalist followers and it allows more mainstream religionists to discount his arguments. He may have had trouble getting mainstream representatives of religion to engage with him, but if he had it wouldn't have been particularly funny and wouldn't have fit into the film Maher and Charles wanted to make.One exception is a straightforward interview with Father George Coyne, a Vatican scientist, who describes the "fundamentalist approach to religious belief (as) kind of a plague." It's a plague worth fighting, one that many people of faith would join, and it's really the target of much of the film even though Maher says he is taking on all belief.There are certainly some interesting and fun moments here, the highlight being the interview with impish Vatican Latin scholar Father Reginald Foster. Another is the interview with "ex-gay" minister John Wescott, who holds his own against Maher while maintaining strong rapport and good cheer, a really interesting character. The scenes in the Truckers Chapel are especially good. Maher doesn't mock these believers but treats them seriously and with respect. The rapport that Maher seems to have developed with these men suggests that their discussion may have been much longer than what wound up in the film. At the end of the scene, Maher accepts their prayers for him in a generous spirit and says, "Thank you for being Christ-like and not just Christian." This sequence, coming at the beginning, gave me high hopes for the film, hopes largely not met.What I found reprehensible--and it happens several times--is the phony editing, where, after Maher makes his point there's a cut to the other person apparently chagrined or speechless. These isolated cuts obviously come from some other point in the conversation--really dishonest and cheap manipulation of film. All the interviews show evidence of being heavily edited, sometimes, one suspects, to somewhat change actual content. Maher has also been rightly taken to task in other IMDb comments for making some casual absolute statements of fact that are either incorrect or deserve more nuanced comment. One is the statement that there's a "gay gene," which is still under discussion in the scientific community (see "No, Scientists Have Not Found the 'Gay Gene'," dated October 10, 2015 on The Atlantic magazine website).At the end of the day, the problem isn't really religion, it's people. Religion can serve as a vessel for codes of moral and ethical behavior and empathy with one's fellow man. But, human nature being what it is, religion is also a vessel for all sorts of intolerant and evil behavior. Things can be just as bad, or even worse, without religious belief. I think Maher copped out when he said that, well, Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, they were religions of a sort.

RbDeraj This starts out as any typical documentary where Bill Maher presents that he is on a journey to find the truth about the validity or stupidity of religion. By claiming agnosticism (when clearly he is not) Maher pretends to be fair by acting like he is un-biasedly going to explore religion, saying "I have to find out." Shortly afterward one can clearly see that this is purely a Bill Maher ego trip and a Borat-style type of mockumentary. He doesn't really bring any debate, discussion of issues, or scrutiny to the table. Instead he just resorts to a religious joke fest which is all very entertaining and humorous, but then the real joke is calling this an intellectual documentary on the criticism of religion.To prove his points he finds only the most extreme or corrupt religious fanatics that are even considered nutcases in their own respective religious communities. He especially loves throwing loaded questions to people who are unlearned in their religion, or others who have skewed off-base and non-canon ideas within their own beliefs. He questions laymen and doesn't once acknowledge the experts or learned crowd in religion.Some of his subjects include pastors who don't even know what their bible says, a Jew who doesn't believe Israel is currently a nation who supports that the holocaust was from God, gay Muslims, a weed smoking church, and a Jewish inventor that creates contraptions to avoid Sabbath laws. These people are all extremely obscure and on the outer fringes of these religious groups.At one point Maher even tries to argue that the existence of the historical man Jesus was up for debate. I don't know if he actually believes this or if he was just trying to fluster the interviewee and make him falter (I think the latter). But if he does actually believe this he would be laughed out academia by nearly every scholar, theist and atheist alike.Bill does make many valid criticisms of religions but the problem is he leaves no room for any real intellectual rebuttal. He is mostly catching people off-guard and asking loaded questions. He had some good points like on the U.S. not being founded as a Christian nation, or the absurd idea that "Christianity is American." But there were other claimed "facts" completely false like his information on the Horus/Jesus debate or pulling despicable Biblical stories and not really addressing what those passages were actually about. Maher also asserts that all religion is violent, when in fact just as much or more violence has been done in the name of no religion. He eventually moves on to other religions, but really never far from Judaism based ones which really doesn't touch on most of the world.This is without a doubt a very funny piece (unless you are extremely offended by it all), but it would be completely inaccurate to call it an intellectual one. It's just Bill Maher being Bill Maher. Even to the point of him bringing up other irrelevant issues like his views on the environment and nuclear applications. He didn't actually do extensive research, he's mostly just shooting from the hip and catching dumb people off-guard. The makers even cut the scenes cleverly in the interviews (weird pauses, strange faces) for extra awkwardness and comedy.The only thing this "documentary" really proved was that there are a lot of people that believe strange things some of them being very stupid. Most people watching this already knew that beforehand. At one point Maher says: "Religion is arrogant certitude," which ironically also perfectly describes himself.

dempseytroy What do you get when you debate people that know little to nothing about the position they are defending? This movie. It's like watching someone beating up children. Does Bill interview theologians, professors, apologists, or any leading scholars in faith? No, he picks on idiots. (Ken Hamm is NOT a leading Christian scholar.) This is called a Strawman fallacy. Congratulations Bill. You defended Atheism by debating truckers. Impressive. Now, in fairness one could argue that his point is that the average person of faith doesn't know much about their faith. I would agree that this is often the case for religion, as well as in Atheism, politics, cooking and so on. However this doesn't prove a religion wrong. It only proves that many people don't bother to educate themselves on the issues to which they ascribe. I feel that this film is deliberately deceptive and manipulative.