Problems with the "Religulous" movie

[excreationist]

....It sounds like Wikipedia is applying its "No original research" policy. They don't want an explanation of what's wrong with the movie unless the explanation comes from some other published source that they can cite -- which means if you haven't been published in a real journal then your criticisms aren't what they consider it their job to report. So I'm guessing if instead of saying what's wrong with the movie, you add a paragraph to the "Critical Response" section reporting what Catholic Answers Magazine says is wrong with it, and you cite "Catholic Answers Magazine", and you put in a footnote with the issue number and date and so forth, then I expect they'll leave it in.

In the talk page the other guy never said it was against the no original research policy....
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.ph...curacies_regarding_the_Horus-Jesus_connection
The critical response section already has 8 paragraphs and some are really long.

In the talk apparently there is "...a policy preventing articles about documentaries from including opinions about whether parts are accurate or misleading"

The other people in the talk page never ever suggested any way in which any of my four sentences could be added to the Religulous page - it seemed they just wanted to use any excuse they could think of to remove any mention that the Horus section is inaccurate. They claim that The Straight Dope is a "dubious" site.... though The Straight Dope is "published in the Chicago Reader and syndicated in eight newspapers"....

 

[atrib]

Are you saying that Bill wasn't really serious about his claim or something?

Bill is a professional entertainer who has a show on HBO that ridicules Christians and other assorted right wing zealots. He is NOT an expert on the Bible or ancient mythology. He was very likely just following a script from his screenplay writers.

 

[excreationist]

I watched your video, but to be honest, I have never taken the movie in question seriously.

Perhaps it is like a person saying "you beat your wife" and them replying "what do you mean?" and then the documentary showing 47 seconds of wife beating scenes from movies and statements about the guy with music ("Smack My Bitch Up")... then just leaving it at that. Then Wikipedia refusing to allow counter-arguments to those claims while allowing people saying the movie is funny, etc.

 

[excreationist]

Are you saying that Bill wasn't really serious about his claim or something?

Bill is a professional entertainer who has a show on HBO that ridicules Christians and other assorted right wing zealots. He is NOT an expert on the Bible or ancient mythology. He was very likely just following a script from his screenplay writers.

So they included a 47 second segment that was pretty much completely inaccurate. But Wikipedia says 9 times that it is a documentary.

Before the segment it says:

Bill: But Jesus' story isn't original
Guy: How so?

Was Bill's statement there part of the script? I guess "How so?" was his real opinion. Who do you think was responsible for licensing the "Walk Like an Egyptian" song, putting together those old movie scenes and those Gerald Massey statements? I thought if they're going to go to that trouble they could have talked to someone who actually knows something about Horus....

 

[none]

Maybe the movie is holy.

 

[WAB]

I have not seen the movie, and don't plan to. Not that I don't like satire about religion. One of my favorite movies is Python's Life of Brian. I also love Dogma (well, Salma Hayek is in it, for one thing), and I like some comics who poke fun at religious faith, like George Carlin (though his pissing all over the theory of rights is terrible and naive), and too many others to count.

The reason I won't bother to watch Religulous is because I think (which means my view is subjective, meaning something that means something to ME) that Bill Maher is unfunny; not just unfunny but utterly unfunny. He could be funny, in that he's sharp and intelligent, and witty, and loves a good barb.

His absolute unfunniness (for ME) results from his delivery, which is so clustered and misshapen with fake posturing and "comedic" body language, eye-movements, inserted laughter (often at the worst times) and pregnant pauses and distractions which are typically intended to take the viewer's attention away from something stupid or desperately unfunny that he has just said: sometimes you can see it dawn on him right away that what he has uttered is stupid, because he's sharp and very intelligent - just not funny! Thomas Reid was funnier than Bill Maher! And Reid was a philosopher! And he died a L O N G time ago.

But then again he did he wear that silly red hat that his friend Hume also wore - those freakin' sweathogs!...so there's th...etc, etc, etc.&

Keith&co is very funny! Yes indeed, but the idea that Christians won't see a movie like Religulous is silly. Certainly there are some outliers who won't watch it, but pooh and boo-hoo on them. Their loss. Now where was I?



You want to see funny? Watch some Frank Zappa interviews. But a lot of people won't get the jokes.

Or watch some Groucho Marx interviews. Amazingly funny even without the slapstick and his brilliant brothers.

Or Brian Regan, who's amazingly funny, while not preachy in the least, and who doesn't do blue material, or even swear.

 

[none]

I have not seen the movie, and don't plan to. Not that I don't like satire about religion. One of my favorite movies is Python's Life of Brian. I also love Dogma (well, Salma Hayek is in it, for one thing), and I like some comics who poke fun at religious faith, like George Carlin (though his pissing all over the theory of rights is terrible and naive), and too many others to count.

The reason I won't bother to watch Religulous is because I think (which means my view is subjective, meaning something that means something to ME) that Bill Maher is unfunny; not just unfunny but utterly unfunny. He could be funny, in that he's sharp and intelligent, and witty, and loves a good barb.

His absolute unfunniness (for ME) results from his delivery, which is so clustered and misshapen with fake posturing and "comedic" body language, eye-movements, inserted laughter (often at the worst times) and pregnant pauses and distractions which are typically intended to take the viewer's attention away from something stupid or desperately unfunny that he has just said: sometimes you can see it dawn on him right away that what he has uttered is stupid, because he's sharp and very intelligent - just not funny! Thomas Reid was funnier than Bill Maher! And Reid was a philosopher! And he died a L O N G time ago.

But then again he did he wear that silly red hat that his friend Hume also wore - those freakin' sweathogs!...so there's th...etc, etc, etc.&

Keith&co is very funny! Yes indeed, but the idea that Christians won't see a movie like Religulous is silly. Certainly there are some outliers who won't watch it, but pooh and boo-hoo on them. Their loss. Now where was I?



You want to see funny? Watch some Frank Zappa interviews. But a lot of people won't get the jokes.

Or watch some Groucho Marx interviews. Amazingly funny even without the slapstick and his brilliant brothers.

Or Brian Regan, who's amazingly funny, while not preachy in the least, and who doesn't do blue material, or even swear.

I was walking down the street, wait.. that wasn't me - Steven Wright

 

[southernhybrid]

I watched your video, but to be honest, I have never taken the movie in question seriously.

Perhaps it is like a person saying "you beat your wife" and them replying "what do you mean?" and then the documentary showing 47 seconds of wife beating scenes from movies and statements about the guy with music ("Smack My Bitch Up")... then just leaving it at that. Then Wikipedia refusing to allow counter-arguments to those claims while allowing people saying the movie is funny, etc.

I'm sorry that you are taking a goofy satirical movie so seriously. There are a lot of movies that I've seen but didn't like, but I've never taken a movie, even one that was supposed to be based on something factual, as seriously as you seem to be taking this movie. I loved the movie "Ray" about the late Ray Charles, but I'm sure there was probably lots of non factual information in the movie. I've watched two different movies about the life of Billie Holiday, but I'd be willing to bet that there was some misinformation in each of them. "Amadeus" was a fantastic movie, but if Mozart were still around, I bet he'd find plenty of fiction in that movie too. Movies are primarily for entertainment, not for being historically accurate. So, my advice, is not to be so bothered by this movie.

 

[excreationist]

I'm sorry that you are taking a goofy satirical movie so seriously. There are a lot of movies that I've seen but didn't like, but I've never taken a movie, even one that was supposed to be based on something factual, as seriously as you seem to be taking this movie.....

Jon Sorensen wrote 1-5 paragraphs for each claim the Horus segment made - so he was taking it even more seriously than me:
https://strangenotions.com/horus-manure/
So could you respond to my example from post #23? What if a movie played "smack my bitch up" with statements about a guy and his alledged wife beating for 47 seconds? Would you just dismiss it as being a goofy satirical movie? (in Religulous the Horus segment was in response to a guy saying "how so?" to Bill's statement "But Jesus' story isn't original")

BTW Bill Maher makes more related claims such as Mithra being born on December 25....

 

[WAB]

excreationist,

You're doing a fine job here, IMO, and I will read the Wikipedia article in depth later on. What I've been doing is downloading certain articles as pdf files, then going through them when I'm not busy here.

While reading just now I did see this paragraph, which gives me more reason not to bother watching the film:

The documentary received some negative reviews, with Rick McGinnis of Metro concluding that, "Maher is preaching to the choir with an undisguised dishonesty that only the true believers will forgive."[37] James Berardinelli wrote, "If the subject of religion is as important to Maher as he claims during his end comments, then he should have followed those words with actions and made a movie that's more than a sum of inauthentic interviews, ranting attacks, and obvious observations. The choir may hum along with Maher but the rest of those watching this movie will be singing the blues."[38] Nick Schager of Slant Magazine called it an "atheistic wannabe-dissection of modern faith."[39] - emphasis mine.

I did see a few exerpts of the movie on YouTube, and was not impressed. Note: I do not disagree with Bill Maher with respect to his opinions about the negative impact of religious faith on society historically and currently. He is not wrong. The problem for me is that he prefers a cocksure, dismissive mockery rather than a genuine investigative curiosity. And, while his intelligence is not in question, nor the conclusions he reaches very controversial or even original at all (he doesn't pretend that they are), he is just not a good comedian, in my opinion. Apparently he is very funny to a great many people.

But then again there are people who think Shakespeare is over-rated (if anything s/he/they is/are still under-rated); that the Beatles weren't that good; that Led Zeppelin actually sucked. There are people who think symphonic music is a lot of silly noise that anyone can create; there are people who believe that Frank Zappa was just a foul-mouthed asshole who wrote disposable music to make money; there are people who believe Ozzy Osbourne is just a silly, drug-addled brummer who can't even sing (there are studies done by prominent people in the Music world that prove that Ozzy, at least in his strong years, from 1973-1983 or so, had an unusually wide vocal range and could reach extraordinarily high notes without switching to falsetto - not as high as Rob Halford but much higher than the average singer), etc, etc, etc&...

More later. We'll see how this thread progresses. Hang in there, excreationist. And by the way, I find your views in a lot of other areas very interesting.

Gotta get ready for work! Come along, Concord, we must collect more lupins!

 

[steve_bank]

Mahr is a liberal opportunist playing to a demographic. An entertainer putting on an act.

 

[excreationist]

While reading just now I did see this paragraph, which gives me more reason not to bother watching the film:

The documentary received some negative reviews, with Rick McGinnis of Metro concluding that, "Maher is preaching to the choir with an undisguised dishonesty that only the true believers will forgive."[37] James Berardinelli wrote, "If the subject of religion is as important to Maher as he claims during his end comments, then he should have followed those words with actions and made a movie that's more than a sum of inauthentic interviews, ranting attacks, and obvious observations. The choir may hum along with Maher but the rest of those watching this movie will be singing the blues."[38] Nick Schager of Slant Magazine called it an "atheistic wannabe-dissection of modern faith."[39] - emphasis mine.

Thanks I didn't notice that paragraph.... well it looks like things like "undisguised dishonesty" were mentioned in there after all....