Religulous review

I saw Bill Maher's Religulous over the weekend, and thought I'd take a bit of time to review it.

The first thing to note is that philosophically it's a bit ham handed. No religious person is going to be persuaded by the film. Maher's subjects are largely at the fringes of their communities. It would have been interesting if he could have sat down with people who really are spearheading mainstream religious sects. Understandably, no such persons seem to have agreed to speak with Maher. However, Maher isn't really aiming at the religious with this movie. Instead, this is a movie aimed at those who already doubt. It's aim is to persuade those who are not deeply religious that religion is something to be worried about. It's an activist film in that it tries to convince those who agree with its message to take action.

Maher highlights the irrationality of religion, the parts that clearly make little or no sense. There's nothing particularly novel or deep about his criticisms. Anyone who has worried about the rationality of religious belief will be familiar with the gist of them, at least in spirit if not in detail. That is, one may not be familiar with the specific examples of, say, scriptural inconsistency or outlandishness that Maher uses, but the general notion that scriptures often say things that are either inconsistent or just plain outrageous when viewed in the clear light of day shuould come as no surprise to anyone.

Maher's film is a call to action to the non-religious. he points out that 16% of Americans are not religious. This is a higher percentage than many more visible and active minorities, for example black are only around 12% and gays around 3%. Maher presents the case that much of the world is controlled by people who have crazy religious beliefs. These are people who simply don't believe the evidence that is clearly before them on subjects such as evolution. Maher suggests (rather strongly) that if we allow policy to be determined by religious belief rather than rationality, things will end badly. Non-believers thus need to stand up for their rights and insist that policy not be based on religion.

Surely there is something to Maher's exhortation. A minority of 16% is large enough that it ought not be run over roughshod without some pretty clear rational backing. But ultimately Maher's portrayal of religion is too one-sided to be really believable on a practical level. Maher focuses exclusively on the negative consequences of religious belief, e.g. on the idea that if the End Times really are upon us then there is little reason to worry about global warming or pollution, or on the idea that only infidels are worthy of death. But this approach simply ignores the fact that much good in the world is religiously motivated. One need only visit various soup kitchens and charities to see this.

Let me develop this idea by pursuing one of Maher's examples: Mormonism. Maher portrays Mormonism as a particularly crazy religion. Mormons believe that God is a physical being who resides on a planet called Kolob, that God and Jesus appeared to Joseph Smith and told him that all religions at that time were an "abomination" to him, and that God has commanded them to baptize living people on behalf of dead people - including Hitler, Stalin, and the like. One could take issue with Maher's portrayal of Mormon beliefs, but for the moment let's assume that his protrayal is accurate (it's close in any case). On what basis do we say that Mormon beliefs are on their face more irrational than, say, catholic beliefs? Maher offers no real argument here. He presents the beliefs as being inherently irrational and then spends his time focusing on the social pressure that is brought to bear on Mormons to believe the doctrines of the church. He doesn't speak to any believing Mormons, just a couple of ex-Mormons. Most importantly, Maher completely misses the social welfare programs of the Mormon church. So with essentially no argument, and a very narrow one-sided focus, Mormonism gets lumped in with radical Islam, Scientology, and Cantheism.

Similarly, Maher focuses exclusively on trends in Christianity that hold that the world was given to mankind to use for his own purposes. This is the view that would allow rampant pollution, so long as the end of the world would occur before humankind could exterminate itself. But there are other trends. For example, one argument is that the earth is an opportunity for humankind to exercise stewardship. On this view, we are responsible to God for how we treat his creation. At the End Times we should be even more caring of the planet as we will have precious little time to correct any mistakes we might make.

While there certainly are crazy and destructive themes in religion, there are also benign and good themes. Maher can quite rightly point out that one can be good without religion, but then again one can be evil without religion so it's not clear how far such an argument can go. Neither religion nor rationality has any corner on the market of evil or good.

So in the end I'm not inclined to accept Maher's portrayal of the evils of religion at face value. However, I am inclined to listen heartily to his two main messages. First, non-believers need to be more vocal about their position. There is nothing wrong in pointing out the craziness inherent in certain religious positions. There is nothing wrong in insisting that public plicy be made on the based of publicly available evidence rather than religious dogma. Atheists, agnostics, and secularists in general ought to be far more vigilant in standing up for their position. And second, Maher's final message - that we need to rid ourselves of the desire for mass extermination and of our carelessness with our environment, lest we succeed in exterminating ourselves - is certainly right. But I don't think Maher has made the case that religion is solely responsible for these ills, nor is its eradication the sole remedy.

Of Spiders and Elephants

As I said, there's a lot more to how hard it is to prove something than just whether it's positive or negative, universal or existential. Sticking with just mathematical statements and a strong notion of proof, consider the proof that earned Kurt Goedel his fame. Goedel proved "there is at least one true statement of arithmetic that is unprovable." Notice this is an existential statement, but it turned out to be very difficult to prove. On the other hand, a universal statement such as "all triangles have interior angles that sum to 180 degrees" is easy enough that we routinely have high school students do the proof.

Let's move to some examples that are easy to understand without knowing a lot of math. Consider the following two statements:
A) There are no elephants in this room.
B) There are no spiders in this room.
Clearly, A is a lot easier to prove than B is. A quick glance around any average size room is enough to prove that there are no elephants in it. However it is much more difficult to prove that there are no spiders in the room. The difference in this case has nothing at all to do with grammatical differences between A and B, it has to do with physical differences between elephants and spiders. Elephants are just the sorts of things that are hard to conceal, whereas spiders are easy to conceal. In many many cases, the grammar of a statement just isn't enough to decide how difficult a proof of the statement might be, you have to take account of the content.

So where does that leave us with respect to proving whether or not there is a god? Well, it means we have to start digging into the concept of god before we know how hard it will be to prove whether or not such a being exists.