Religulous Page #6

Man is rebelling against his creator.

All these scientists

are sinners?

Well...

We have been talking

to so many religious people

and many of them believe

the earth is 5,000 years old.

If you're a scientist,

you can't accept that.

Now you recently were the director

of the Vatican Observatory.

A Vatican astronomer.

It's one of those terms

like "gay Republican"...

you know,

you just don't expect it.

- I'm not getting into that.

- No no no, I'm not asking you to.

It's not that the church

has the idea, you know,

they're gonna train us up

so we can be the first ones out there

to baptize those extraterrestrials

before the Mormons get at 'em.

The reason is simply

historical facts.

John Paul II,

for instance, said evolution

in the neo-Darwinian sense is

no longer a mere hypothesis.

I mean, he said that.

It's in writing.

I still don't understand

why it's important

for there to have to have been

a situation on earth

where a man co-existed

with dinosaurs.

Only really

in "The Flintstones"...

Is someone talking about me?

...and that Raquel Welch movie

does man ever co-exist

with dinosaurs.

Why is that important

for your salvation or your morality?

If you're saying

this part over here,

it says God made land animals

and man on the same day is not true,

then ultimately, why should

I believe this bit over here?

The Christian Scriptures

were written

between about 2,000 years

before Christ

to about 200 years after Christ.

That's it.

Modern science came

to be with Galileo

up through Newton,

up through Einstein.

What we know

as modern science, okay,

is in that period.

How in the world could

there be any science

in scripture?

There cannot be.

Just the two historical

periods are separated

by so much.

The Scriptures are not

teaching science.

It's very hard for me to accept,

not just a literal interpretation

of scripture,

but a fundamentalist approach

to religious belief.

It's kind of a plague.

It presents itself

as science and it's not.

God is an infinite God

who is working in ways

- we don't always understand.

- You don't think that's a cop-out?

He is God.

Are you God?

No.

We went to church every Sunday.

My sister and I went to Catechism,

which is Catholic, you know,

like Hebrew school for papists.

It was like war.

It was vast stretches

of boredom punctuated

by moments of sheer terror.

I'm in the Vatican.

Buongiorno!

I know what you're thinking.

I'm standing in front of a green screen

at a studio

in Burbank, California,

and they digitalized

the Vatican in behind me.

No no, that's really the Vatican.

I ought to know.

I just got thrown out of it.

See, I wanted

to interview the Pope,

but I was willing to settle

for a cardinal or a monsignor

or the Flying Nun...

really anybody...

but apparently I've been on the

Catholic sh*t list for quite a while.

But that's their loss, 'cause now

I'm gonna say what I really think,

which is mainly:

Does that look anything

like anything Jesus Christ

had in mind?

When you look at a building

like that, a giant palace,

does it seem at odds

with the message of the founder?

Well, certainly.

- Well, thank you.

- I mean, that's obvious.

It really is obvious, isn't it?

But does it bother you?

Well, I mean...

well, yes it does.

I wouldn't...

if I were the boss,

I wouldn't be living there.

I mean Jesus would be

probably out in some barracks here

in a suburb of Rome, got it?

Do you ever get so fed up

you want to take the collar and go...

- Well, I don't wear a collar anyway.

..."That's it, Captain.

Take my badge and my collar."

I read about 10 books recently...

the rationality of religion,

and everyone's saying it's stupid.

You know what's

gonna happen to them.

- No, what's gonna happen?

- They're gonna be roasting in hell.

Come on, roasting.

That's the old Catholic thing.

That's what they taught me.

Yeah, I know, that hell business.

Well, come on, the standard doctrine

that I was taught as a kid...

Yeah, that's all gone.

That's all finished.

But that's not fair.

- Yeah, pfft!

- The date of Jesus's birth

really wasn't established

until 349 A.D.

Oh, yeah...

because he might've

been born on July 3rd.

These are all

nice stories, you know.

- And that doesn't bother you, either?

- That bothers me too.

I mean, when everybody's,

"Ooh, we have to have midnight mass

because Jesus was born

on midnight on 25th of"...

this is all nonsense.

- You're a maverick, aren't you?

- I'm not a maverick.

You're Father Maverick.

You do things your own way.

When you add up

all the saints and all the angels

and archangels

and super-duper angels...

there's God, the Father,

God the Son, the Holy Ghost,

Mother Mary...

it does start to look like

it's not quite

the monotheistic religion that it's...

Oh, I understand.

Like we have mini-gods.

Yeah, well, it does seem like that,

if people pray to a...

Well, yeah, but some people

just don't understand this.

You probably are...

you don't follow things...

but they had a survey here

in Italy, you know,

and they said, "In a crisis,

what kind of saints

do you pray to?" Got it?

You know who's the sixth

on the list? Jesus Christ.

The sixth?

He's the sixth man

that the Italians call upon

when they have problems.

Isn't that neat?

- That's very interesting.

- Talk about Cafeteria Catholics. Pfft!

So how do you convince people

of what's the true faith?

You don't, forget it.

You just have to live and die

with their stupid ideas.

I'm sorry.

What are you gonna do?

You can go to a pitch meeting

at a movie studio and go,

"Okay, there's a spaceman

who zaps a virgin

and he gives birth

to a son who's also him,

who then goes

on a suicide mission."

I wonder what people

would say about that.

Yeah, that is actually

a great pitch.

It has so many elements

that they like,

because they love

suicide missions.

They love violence,

and Hollywood loves something

it's never seen before... a virgin.

Hey, Shalom.

We're so glad to have you here.

Just come and get blessed.

These are here to teach God's word.

We're in a spiritual warfare.

We don't push our beliefs on people,

but we do make them available.

- Have you ever had a Muslim person?

- Yes, definitely.

People from Gaza Strip come.

We get many people

who come here say,

"We've come every year

to Florida

and we've done the tourist

things and all and we enjoy those.

We wish we had

seen this first,"

because their experience

here was so meaningful.

Do you think if...

when you were a kid...

they transposed the Bible stories

with the fairy tales, you'd know

the difference as an adult?

- My name is Eve.

- I'm Adam.

This place is amazing.

If they told you Jack

and the Beanstalk was religion

and that a man who lived

in a whale was in a fairy-tale book...

you think when you got

to be an adult,

you'd be defending

the one instead of the other?

So you're saying that

the Bible's a fairy tale?

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