Dear Bill Maher…

After several months of radio silence, NBA hoopster and peace activist Etan Thomas is back and badder than ever.  (And longer.  2,374 words!)

Etan -- who blogs regularly for The Huffington Post on topics unrelated to basketball -- made his revival in the form of an open letter to Bill Maher.  Apparently, Etan finally got around to seeing Religulous, and his piece for The Post was intended to rebut the movie's central thesis: Religion is the root cause of most of the world's conflict.

Etan's take?  Maher's thesis is reductive, unsubstantiated and — more or less — a load of hooey.  (But much respect.  Etan still has mad love for Maher, whom he thanks for getting a younger generation of viewers plugged into current events. Along with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.)

Etan's writes, "It's not the religion that diverts man; it's the fanatics that use religion to justify their cause."

For those who haven't seen Religulous:

Etan acknowledges that Maher is correct in his assertion that there are a whole lot of religious wackjobs out there.  And he points to a number of such examples -- religious extremists, who use theology to justify violence and intolerance. He cites hateful quotes from Jerry Falwell, Paul Weyrich and others.

At times, Etan's recollections sound like they come from a George Carlin routine.  He talks about his experience in Catholic school, where he was constantly penalized for asking probing questions about religious issues that confused him.  He talks about how his classes were conducted by nuns who ranged from uninterested to plain old racist.  (No, not like racist in the insidious way.  Like, racist in the Sister Emily unabashedly using the "N" word in front of the whole class way.)

I remember being sent to detention for asking, "How on earth is saying five Hail Mary's going to help anything? Does saying it more than once mean you really mean it, or do you think God didn't hear it the first time?"

I remember being sent to the principal's office for asking, "So let me get this straight, I am supposed to tell this stranger sitting behind a booth everything I have done wrong, and what, he is supposed to talk to Jesus for me? Why don't I take out the middle man and talk to Jesus myself?"

But while Etan gets Bill's beef, he cautions Maher to leave God out of it:

The messages of these extremists are not soaked in the word of God. They are soaked in the word of man. These men are masking their own beliefs and prejudices in the word of God, and that is a reflection of them, not of God."

Ultimately, Etan tells Bill that Religulous was a comedy — and a funny one at that — but not a documentary.  Certainly not a documentary that painted a fair and accurate portrait of the whole religious landscape.  Writes Etan:

You held up the ill informed yet comical people you interviewed as evidence to support your position. There were plenty of places you could've gone to have an intelligent debate on religion, just as you know where to go to have an intelligent debate on politics. Asking people dressed up in Jesus outfits in theme parks or random people at truck stops probably wouldn't elicit the most well thought out response to some of your questions....

You are not a person faith, and with that said, cannot even begin to understand any religion that requires faith at its core.

At the end of the day, when it comes to believers and non-believers, to quote Rudyard Kipling -- a slightly more famous racist than Sister Emily, "East is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet."

Certainly, they're not meeting anywhere in this extended 30-minute clip of the film:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1470552690859108147

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