Politically Incorrect, Bill Maher's infamous HBO show has its season premiere tonight followed by his documentary, Religulous, which will be released on DVD this week...a big week for Bill and his fans. I know because I'm one of them!

"I'm here promoting doubt -- that's my product," Maher says near the beginning of the movie. "The other guys are selling certainty. Not me. I'm on the corner with doubt."

The film was the seventh highest grossing documentary of all time, a tribute to the way it utilizes Maher's ability to think on his feet and produce comic rejoinders and cut-downs. Maher has been cultivating this talent since he found his niche with Politically Incorrect in 1993, and continues to do so with Real Time with Bill Maher, the new season of which premieres tonight.

His religious interview subjects on his world-tour range from the brilliant (Dr. Francis Collins, a scientist on the human genome project and an evangelical Christian), the bizarre (the actor who plays Jesus at The Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando), the quackish (Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, who claims to be a reincarnation of Christ), and the downright frightening (Aki Nawaz, aka Propa-Gandhi, a Muslim British rapper who glorifies suicide bombing).

Most of the time, they come out on the butt-end of a Maher quip, their religious certainly no match for Maher's wit. With their certainty momentarily punctured, the film moves on and the viewer is left to revel in yet another victory for Maher, agnosticism, and comedy.

Maher is funny, but as always, he borders on contemptuous and dismissive, qualities that have long turned some people off to him. Needless to say, those who don't like Maher will not like this movie.

Critics say Maher's anger-tinged condescension undermines the ostensibly earnest purpose of his interviews: to find out why people believe. They also point out that, with a few exceptions, Maher's interview subjects are easy targets -- many of them are outlandish characters, and many of them just aren't as smart as he.

In an interview with me for HuffPost, Maher called this "a bogus criticism. We don't pick on the mentally infirm. There are a bunch of fringe characters who are very funny, but the majority of the movie is mainstream religious people."

He added: "What these [critics] fail to understand is that no matter who you are, no matter how quote-unquote intelligent you are, when you are defending religion, you sound like an idiot. That's the point: Anybody who defends the nonsense in religion is going to sound like a fool."

He was not finished: "If you believe in the core beliefs of the religion, that means you are tethered to the bible. You get your beliefs out of a book that condones slavery and says a man lived inside of a whale for 300 years. The religion comes from the book, and the book is full of nonsense and fucked-up ethics."

But Maher's contempt for religion is more than about making people look stupid. At the very end of the movie, the comedy gives way to a scathing monologue about religion and a call to political action. Maher cites a recent poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life saying that 16 percent of Americans classified themselves as unaffiliated with a major religion. This represents a greater percentage of Americans than blacks, Jews, homosexuals, or NRA members. Why, then, Maher wonders, has religious faith become a prerequisite for political life in America?

"Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking," he says, concluding the movie.

NOTE: Even though this movie is satirical in nature and gives Bill Maher a chance to show his contempt for all things supernatural……don’t let it fool you into believing that this isn’t an important film….because it is.

***Thank you to Greg Hanlon and the Huffington Post for the above article,,,,