In his office at CBS-TV studios in Hollywood, Bill Maher is busy being Bill Maher. “You’ll never get rid of Christianity in this country because it will reinvent itself, as it always has. Every generation does a Superman movie, every generation does Hamlet, and they do it in a new and different way. Because that’s what a myth is: a living, breathing, mutating thing. So that central bit of, ‘There was a God, he had a son and he died for your sins’? I mean that’s just an entitlement programme that no one wants to give up! Why would you? ‘Oh, he died for my sins? That’s fantastic – why, of course I love him! So I can keep sinning now, because he died for me!'”
Somewhere along the way, this half-Catholic, half-Jewish, wholly non-observant stand-up comedian has turned into one of the most visible, vocal atheists in America. He is a ruder, less intellectual, far more foul-mouthed and much funnier teammate of Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. Next week sees the release of Maher’s own atheist manifesto, the effervescent and provocative documentary feature film Religulous.
Directed by Larry Charles, the former Seinfeld writer who brought us Borat’s cinematic provocations, Religulous is atheism and rationalism washed down with a spoonful of acidic comedy. Maher has travelled the US and the Middle East confronting the craziest and sanest devout figures he can find, inserting himself into situations where religion and ridiculousness naturally and unabashedly band together.
