religulous

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i was in rochester, minnesota this weekend for the mwbc annual meeting. while i was there i thought i would go after the friday evening meeting and watch religulous. since the movie is an attempt to convince people that religious belief is stupid and should be rejected by everyone, i thought it was pretty important for me to see it. truthfully bill maher makes fun of some things in faith that deserve to be made fun of. let’s face it, if we’re honest with ourselves there are some things we do “in the name of CHRIST” that have absolutely nothing to do with CHRIST and should be ridiculed. i don’t have a problem with someone doing that. in fact, i often think it helps correct us.

one of the main problems i have with the movie is that he only presents the stupid stuff. it would be easy to reject faith if that was all there was. if the holy land experience in orlando is the sum total of what faith is all about then we probably should reject it. i think the problem in maher’s argument comes in the fact that he never considers the good that comes out of faith. visit a few homeless shelters and indigent works with me that are only operated because of the faith of the organizations’ leadership and then talk about faith being ridiculous. consider martin luther king and the fact that his actions came out his faith and then say faith is ridiculous. come with me to diriamba, nicaragua and join the baltodonas as they help the weakest in their society because they see JESUS in those individuals and then look me in the face and say faith is ridiculous. there are so many other examples: desmond tutu, mother teressa, miss lilly (mission arlington), etc. you can say faith doesn’t make sense to you but look at some of this actions that are the result of faith and say it is ridiculous. i dare you.

maybe these amazing actions more clearly represent the effects of faith than the stupid things do. after all, the world is full of stupidity and brutality. those actions do not belong just the realm of faith (just look at mao & stalin for examples of irreligious perpetrators of mass evil).

there are other issues that i could mention but judging by the response at the theater i probably won’t be discussing any of the issues raised on religulous with anyone. as you can probably tell from the photo above i was the only one in the theater. i asked the ticket guy how many tickets had been sold and he said there were probably 5 people who watched the movie on friday.

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