Comedian Bill Maher stands outside Vatican City in Religulous.

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Early on in the documentary Religulous, stand-up comedian/political commentator Bill Maher states his thesis — “Religion is detrimental to humanity” — and then spends the rest of the movie hopping around the world, trying to prove it.

His quest takes him to the Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando, where he asks an actor who plays Jesus “Why do you think people come here? Because Disneyland is too smutty?” He goes to Miami’s Growing in Grace Ministry, where he meets with its founder, Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, who has gotten rich claiming to be Jesus Christ returned.

Maher travels to London and chats with Propa-Gandhi, the Islamic rapper who sings about jihads and suicide bombers. He goes to Amsterdam and shares a doobie with Ferre van Beveren, the self-appointed leader of the Cannabis Ministry. He takes potshots at Scientologists and Mormons. He sits down with anti-Zionist rabbis, truck-stop ministers and ex-Jews for Jesus.

For too much of Religulous, unfortunately, Maher and director Larry Charles (Borat) focus on entertainment, which will frustrate viewers hoping for a deeper, more satisfying exploration of the film’s subject. It doesn’t require a lot of ingenuity to revel in the absurdity of religious fundamentalism of any kind, something Religulous does very effectively. It’s a lot harder to explore the point at which scientific thought must give way to spiritual faith — or, as Maher puts it, how it is that people who are rational about everything else in their lives can genuinely believe they are drinking the blood of a 2,000 year-old God on Sundays.

Occasionally, Religulous gives us people worthy of its ambitious subject matter, like Maher’s interview with Father Reginald Foster, a senior Vatican scholar with a surprisingly progressive view of Catholicism, or Dr. Francis Collins, the highly respected geneticist who also happens to be an evangelical Christian. In scenes like those, Religulous achieves something far more interesting than mockery: It challenges our preconceived notions about institutional science AND religion, finding a fascinating gray area in territory that’s almost inevitably seen in black-and-white.

But the bulk of Religulous is a passionate but misguided attempt by Maher to stimulate the 16 percent of the American population who deem themselves non-religious into standing up and being counted. Maher, who was raised Catholic yet born to a Jewish mother, considers himself an agnostic, but there’s an unmistakable air of ridicule in his dealings with people who won’t be budged from their particular beliefs. Some of them, like Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor, deserve it: When Maher tells him “It worries me there are people running this country who believe in a talking snake,” he replies “You don’t have to pass an IQ test to be in the Senate.”

But Religulous, which often intercuts vintage film clips with Maher’s interviewees to further humiliate them, ultimately comes off like the work of bullies who know better than everyone. At the end, when Maher delivers his preachy summation (“Religion must die for mankind to live!”), Charles films him from a low angle, so he’s literally looking down at the audience. It’s not the message in Religulous that’s a turn-off, but the way in which it’s delivered.

**Religulous

Starring: Bill Maher.

Rated: R, contains vulgar language, brief nudity, adult themes.