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For atheists in the know there isn’t much if anything that is new in this film, such as the connections between Jesus and other pagan gods, but I’m sure there are still a lot of people, atheist or not, who haven’t learned some of these things yet.

The strength of the film, however, as one would hope, is in its humor. Maher peppers the film with witty and vulgar one-liners, as well as hysterical sound effects and “moment of zen”-like video asides. A good example of this can be found in this clip of Maher interviewing so-called “ex-gay” John Wescott.

One interesting detail that stands out in the film is that, amidst all the extreme examples of religious thinking that Maher uses to make his point, the Catholics he speaks to make their religion seem pretty reasonable — a Catholic astronomer argues that it is impossible for there to have been science in the bible and takes issue with a fundamentalist reading of the bible, and another Catholic says that, yes, his religion is full of silly beliefs, but what are you going to do? (Edit: I forgot to mention the other Catholic who says that the bible meant to say that it is not a sin to engage in same-sex relations if you were born gay.)

Unfortunately, the end of Religulous takes a surprisingly serious turn from the comedy in the rest of the movie when Maher argues that we must destroy religion before religion destroys us. Aside from disagreeing with Maher’s argument, I thought the ending of his movie was just too over the top. It seems to replace the fire and brimstone messages of (some) religion(s) with a secular fire and brimstone message.

Put simply, I don’t think that the situation is as dire as Maher makes it out to be — indeed, Maher doesn’t give religion any credit for holding the world together in addition to tearing it apart. Nor do I think the problems we face as humans can be neatly subsumed under the heading “religion” — these problems are instead the result of an absence of liberal democratic values and the attack that has been made upon these values by the growth of neoliberal capitalism.

Maher also starts off the movie by saying that science created dangerous things, such as weapons and pollution producing industries, before we matured enough from our religious phase to use them properly, but that is where his critique of science stops. It would have been far better if Maher had ended up in a gray space that is more representative of reality than the black and white grunt of “science good, religion bad.”

Either way, as an atheist, it’s still great to have a cathartic movie like this out there for us. The movie is filled with lots of sacrilegious guffaws, so if you atheists go with that in mind and tune out the oh so serious ending, then you’ll have a gay ol’ time.