Bill Maher began his career as a stand-up who occasionally inserted some political and religious jokes into his act, but gained fame using those hot topics as a springboard for conversation on Politically Incorrect. True to the show’s title, Maher never shied away from speaking his mind on perceived stupidities in the world. On his much more focused HBO show Real Time, Maher finds better guests willing to engage him on the political outrages of the day. An unabashed basher of religion—the root cause of far more harm than good, in his estimation—it’s no surprise that Maher has turned his full attention to attacking it in his feature-length documentary Religulous, directed by Borat helmer Larry Charles. Though ostensibly aimed at religion as a whole, the doc focuses on the kooks of every faith—those who believe, with a smug righteousness matched only by Maher’s own, that their story is the right one, and all others are wrong. (Maher simply has faith that nobody knows, or can know.) It’s a funny, scary look at the fringes, all framed by Maher’s blunt, edge-of-irritated questioning. The A.V. Club spoke with Maher about the film, his own beliefs, and what non-believers can do to help.
