In two minds about Religulous

I am in two minds about Bill Maher's film Religulous. On the one hand, much of it adheres to Michael Moore's style of slamming people rather than what they have to say, and it makes me squirm. It is simply not in good taste to attack a person instead of the person's argument, and Bill Maher does it relentlessly throughout the movie. I would have much preferred that he steered a more disinterested course, weighing the arguments for and against religion in a responsible way.

On the other hand, he interviews some really interesting people. The interview I liked the most was with a Vatican priest/astronomer/scientist, in which Maher directed the conversation to science and religion (in this case Christianity). The priest/astronomer said that we need to consider and keep separate two very different time periods. The first covers the period of the Old and New Testaments, perhaps something like 2000 BCE to 300 CE, or a 2300 year period. He called this the 'Age of Belief'. The second runs from the end of the 17th Century to the present, and he called this period 'The Age of Science'. He said that if we want answers to questions pertaining to how people should conduct themselves morally and ethically, we should look to the Age of Belief. However, if we want answers to questions of a scientific nature, we should look to the Age of Science. In other words, if we want to know how to behave once someone has stolen our sheep, we look to the Old and New Testament. However, if we want to know about evolution, we look to the Age of Science.

I think this is very insightful. I agree with him whole-heartedly with questions of a scientific nature. The Old and New Testaments are full of really bad science, and there is simply no point in finding answers to how the physical universe works within those works.

However, I would disagree with him in regards to finding the answers to questions of morality and ethics. Particularly with regard to the Old Testament and specifically Mosaic Law (the first five books), I think the cultural context of such laws was so profoundly different to our time and culture that these laws are of little use today. For example, an answer to the question of whether I should sell my daughter into slavery is highly unlikely to ever come up in my lifetime.

As a result, I do not look for answers to scientific questions in the Old and New Testaments, and I do not look for answers as to how to live a moral and ethical life from these books. Insofar as science and morality are concerned, the Old and New Testaments are to me, a child of the modern period, perfectly useless.

Nevertheless, I do think that the stories in the Old Testament are interesting, clever, and fun, and I do enjoy reading them as pieces of literature. Such literature has influenced western civilization throughout the millennia, and for those of us interested in western culture, one should know at least the general tenor of these two sets of books. I think Bill Maher has missed this point.