Interview: Bill Maher
God Love Him
Atheists and agnostics will likely thank the Lord for Bill Maher’s challenging documentary Religulous. Believers? Well, that’s a different story
By Marni Weisz
One of Bill Maher’s first jokes as a stand-up comic was about how his mixed Jewish, Catholic heritage led him to bring a lawyer to confession. “Forgive me father for I have sinned — and I think you know Mr. Cohen.”
As Maher moved from doing stand-up to hosting talk shows like Politically Incorrect and Real Time his views on religion became more pointed, with the jabs usually directed at those who claim to have concrete knowledge that there is a God. His mantra on the subject: “You know how I know you don’t know? Because I don’t know. And you do not possess mental powers that I do not.”
So last year, he and director Larry Charles (Borat) went on a trip around the world to interview people of faith about why they’re so sure they’re right. There’s the formerly gay pastor; the senator who doesn’t believe in evolution; the ultra-orthodox rabbi who says the Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves because they weren’t righteous enough; the Puerto Rican minister who claims to be the second coming of Christ; the Muslim rapper who defends the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and on and on. Maher says they’re all crazy because believing, without a doubt, in something that cannot be proved is the definition of insanity. He titled the resulting film Religulous — a combination of “religious” and “ridiculous.”
Maher was at his home in L.A. reading the feedback from a test screening of Religulous when we spoke on the phone.
Q: Any negative reaction?
A: “No, some people quibble. I read one comment that said the end was preachy, but so far they’ve all been positive or positive slash mixed.”
Q: No one said, “How dare he! We’re going to picket!”?
A: “I’m bracing for that but I think that’s yet to come, I think the people who are going to see it are not religious zealots. But in the Q&A afterwards, the question was asked how many are religious and half the hands went up, which is amazing considering that it did so well.”
Q: What are you — atheist, agnostic, apatheist?
A: “Apatheist, yeah, I love that one. First of all it dispenses with the usual terms agnostic or atheist, which I find not only very restricting, but very negative of connotation. I like the term either rationalist, which puts it in a positive light, I only truly believe what I can prove rationally, or this apatheist which means the combination of atheist and apathy — I don’t know what happens when you die and I don’t particularly care because I can never know as long as I’m on Earth and it shouldn’t effect my ethical behaviour.”
Q: You seem fairly well versed in the Bible. Have you studied it?
A: “I did. I took a course in college and have thumbed through it on different occasions. There’s a version that came out about 15 years ago, I saw it in the store one day, it’s called The Book. I didn’t think it was the Bible. It had a picture on the cover that looked like a movie poster. It had lots of action and chariots and I was saying, ‘What book is this’? And of course it was the Bible almost written like a novel…so I’ve read that one a couple of times because it makes me laugh.”
Q: You say 16 percent of Americans say they have no religion — a larger minority than Blacks or Jews. Is this movie a call for them to stand up and be counted?
A: “That is a major goal of mine, to arouse those people, to understand that they are not the crazy ones, the people who believe in frogs raining down on you are the crazy ones…. I would love it if those people would understand that 16 percent is an enormous minority and one that should not be nearly as silent or cowed as they are.”
Q: When do you think the U.S. will have its first atheist President?
A: “Oh, you know, certainly not in my lifetime. We have one representative who says he might be an atheist, Pete Stark…. When you think about the representation of 16 percent of the people, one out of 535 members of Congress, that’s hardly an apt representation.”
Q: When Hillary Clinton was running she said it doesn’t matter what you believe in as long as you have faith. She didn’t seem to realize she was offending 16 percent of the population.
A: “Yes, well we hear it all the time from politicians and religious people, and it’s so funny when they say that and the logic behind that, ‘It doesn’t matter what wacky, crazy, ridiculous bit of nonsense you ascribe to as long as you believe in something insane.’”
Q: Most of the people you talked to were, in all honesty, easy marks. Were you tempted to take on someone smart and articulate?
A: “I’m telling you, anyone who defends religion is going to sound like a crazy person. The demarcation you’re making between the smart religious people and the easy-mark religious people, I’m sorry but I can’t sign up on that theory. If you believe in this stuff you’re crazy. And it just takes me, with any of them, two minutes to break it down. If you believe in raining frogs, and that the Earth is 5,000 years old, and that somebody walked on water, and that somebody lived in a whale, and Noah, and the wife turns into salt, you’re a crazy person.”
Q: You’re on the board of PETA. Is there a relationship between your love of animals and your disbelief?
A: “Yes, in the sense that religion allows people to act in an unethical way because they believe that it’s really all about faith and salvation and as long as I buddy up with Jesus Christ and believe the nonsense that the priest tells me I am covered. When you don’t have that cover you have to earn your ethical stripes day by day, with, I think, all of God’s creatures.”
Marni Weisz is the editor of Famous.
Julie, you’re a movie star!
Mother Maher makes her big-screen debut
Religulous begins and ends with Bill Maher talking to his mother Julie and sister Kathy about his religious upbringing. He was raised Catholic even though Julie was Jewish, a fact he didn’t realize until he was a teen. Julie Maher died last October at age 88, shortly after filming had wrapped. For Maher, the saddest thing is that his mom would have gotten such a thrill when the film was released and her friends called up to say, “Julie, you’re a movie star!” As Maher puts it, “She would have been awash in this for weeks.”