Never the less, I loved this movie. It fired some well-deserved ridicule at religion. Some of the extremely religious people he interviewed acted and sounded like such nitwits that they were difficult to listen to. Some of the other people he interviewed, particularly two Catholic priests, one a Vatican astronomer and the other a monsignor, were clearly very sophisticated and very modern. The movie is hilarious and outs religion as the anachronistic absurdity that it is. Near the end of the film, Maher warns of the dangers of religion, particularly in how deeply religious political leaders can make critical policy decisions based on the tenets of Bronze Age mythologies rather than a rational evaluation of current facts. Maher goes on to claim that religion is a direct threat to the survival of civilization.
This film will probably not change the views of many deeply religious people. However, for that large number of people who are religious, but still open-minded and capable of critical thinking, it may well facilitate doubts that they probably already harbor. Maher is dead on in his assertion that religion is absurd, outdated, and dangerous. If nothing else, it might encourage a few closet atheists to come out and challenge these anachronistic dogmas.
