George Locke
Just one addition: The Atheism Tapes. It’s a sort of follow up on the Rough History mentioned below. In making the Rough History, they interviewed many people, and edited those interviews to fit into the documentary. The producers decided that six of the interviews were so interesting that they each deserved to be shown on their own. They released these extended interviews as The Atheism Tapes. My personal favorites were Dan Dennett and Steven Weinberg.
brian thomson
www
Bill Maher’s Religulous is interesting, though seriously flawed in some respects. In places, he uses selective editing and some “ambush” tactics that would not be out of place in Ben Stein’s Expelled.
The most interesting part, for me, was his visit to the Vatican, where he spoke to the director of the Vatican Observatory and another senior Vatican scholar. They seemed far more open-minded about what they know or don’t know. There seems to be an undercurrent of insecurity in some religious sects – e.g. Southern Evangelism, Islam in Western countries, and so on – that causes their adherents to behave aggressively and hate those who don’t agree with them.
Bill Maher is a comedian and talk show host, but by the ending (which you can see here) he’s not laughing, and neither was I when I watched it.
SmartLX
It depends on whether you want documentaries on atheism itself and its history, or documentaries which aim to promote atheism.
In the former category I recommend the three-part miniseries Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief hosted by Jonathan Miller.
In the latter category I recommend Richard Dawkins’ anti-religious two-parter The Root of All Evil?
Both documentaries are available in full on Google Video and YouTube if you care to look.
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