Dear Bill Maher, RE: “Religulous”

Dear Bill,

I commend your effort and courage in making this film, but confess to some disappointment. It doesn’t go far enough on several fronts to be an accurate reflection of the dangers we face, or a solution.

I have been something of a fan, especially since you got yourself and your show, “Politically Incorrect,” fired off the air for your response to a guest (I paraphrase you from memory): “Say what you will about the 9-11 hijackers, but I don’t see how you can label people who blows themselves up for their cause cowards. We sit five miles off-shore and fire cruise missiles off from destroyers without ever seeing who we’re shooting at. That seems more like cowardice to me.”

Such candor in the near post 9-11 era was not to be tolerated on mainstream TV. I missed such candor in your current effort. What exactly do I expect from a comedian in one hundred minutes? Let me mention a few stones left unturned on the field of Armageddon.

America as the country that maintains a thousand foreign military bases in order to exert power within its ‘national interest,’ thereby suppressing the self-determination of the people of a hundred foreign nations: not mentioned.

Islamic fundamentalism arising as a political response to such suppression and resource control, terrorism as blowback: not mentioned.

Israel’s policies and wars both internal and external that are theocratic and oppressive to non-Jews: not mentioned.

Anti-Zionism: portrayed as wacky.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent comments saying that Israel’s future must be democratic, that is, secular: not mentioned.

The hypocrisy of this when coming from a leader of a theocratic state: not mentioned.

The only country ever to use nuclear weapons seeking to control who can and cannot develop nuclear power, let alone weapons, regardless of treaty obligations: not mentioned.

How this puts us outside the bounds of international law into the category of rogue state status: not mentioned.

The impossibility of maintaining such control: not mentioned.

Picking a fight with Russia over control of a province that borders their country, where the majority population in the province would prefer Russian control, when Russia has ten thousand nukes lying around, and Islamic nations on its borders probably containing would be buyers for said nukes : not mentioned.

The weaponry to destroy the world was developed by scientists, 93% of whom (the film mentions) currently identify themselves atheist/agnostic: not mentioned.

I see our problems as more tribal than religious. Our inability to identify our appropriate connections to each other and our environment exceeds religious fundamentalism, which is one tribal reaction to scarcity and resource control. Others are based on class, nationalism, race, and gender.

If we fail to acknowledge the real connections we have to each other and the natural world, we will destroy ourselves. If this not be through wars induced by religious strife masking conflict over resources, then simply through killing the ocean, resource depletion and climate change induced famine.

Faced with this, “I do not know” will not be the religion that saves us, but the humility it indicates can be a good start. After the first half, I wished you had presented it with a little more humility, and a little less zeal.