It's no secret that I am an atheist.  At first I would go all out against religion and engage in a vigorous debate with anyone religious who tried to preach or appeal to god for any reason. Over time though I've mellowed down a bit and prefer not get involved in any sort of serious debate about religion. I've figured that it is extremely difficult to rationalise with people who hold fundamentally irrational belief system.

In practice though, I continue to reject religion and god. These days, I couldn't give a rats ass if someone found my atheistic lifestyle (which isn't anything special) as offensive. I say that, because in our society an overwhelming number of people are religious and they automatically presume that I am one as well. In any coversation they would naturally start appealing to god. As soon as I reveal my non-belief in their religion or god, they're completely taken aback and more often then not give me the look as if I am stupid or something.

My favourite local daily (The Fiji Times), regularly publishes letters to the editor from people of faith debating the details of their religion or holy book. The newspaper seems to place enormous value on these letters as if they serve some public good. I am sure these are done at the expense of some really valuable contributions. It's always annoying to find letters from the self proclaimed religious experts engaging in utter nonsense from their letters.

This brings me to the title of this blog post, Religulous. For those who don't know, Religulous is the title of a new movie by US comedian, Bill Maher. I've just finished watching this brilliant movie which essentially consists of Bill interviewing a whole bunch of religious people (mostly Jews, Christians and Muslims) from North America and Europe. It is sometimes funny as you'd expect from something that has Bill in it. But it also shows the jaw dropping stupidity of religion. It isn't exactly a ground breaking film as I've seen a few others in similar vein, but Bill manages to give the movie the kind of star power that others simply don't have. Other movies of this kind seem to have been made by serious atheists who try really hard to show the stupidy of religion, but this one contains the style, humour and star power to pull a wider audience.

I downloaded the movie with help from Atheist Movies blog. Check the site out for links to amazing collection of Atheist related movies, books, etc.