I've always had my own theory about religion, one that was actually illustrated by a man I have no use for in the one work of art he's done I unequivocally love.

In Ricky Gervais The Invention of Lying, no one can lie. Everyone tells everybody the absolute truth. Everyone is miserable but they accept it as a way of life. Suddenly Gervais has the ability to lie - or say things that aren't so.

His mother is in a hostel which is called 'a place where people go to die'. Because there is no lying everyone thinks that when they die, they go to a meaningless void for eternity. That may be a part why everyone is so miserable. Gervais's character wants to cheer his mom up. So he tells her that: "when you die, you go to a place in the sky where you get to be everyone you know." Essentially he comes to invent God.

"Everything happens for a reason," he tells a crowd. Including my cancer, a man says. "Yes, but its best not to think about too closely," Gervais says.

This is one of the sharpest satires I've ever seen because in affect Gervais is arguing, in no uncertain terms, that are society is basically functioning entirely because of the big lies in it. He's suggest that as bad as the world is today, the only reason it is not between either complete chaos or utter misery is because of the possibility of an afterlife.

I have never been religious in my life and I won't pretend I've been happy as a result but I think if I had to go through my entire life knowing that there was nothing but this life, that all that awaited me was a black void is frankly a more terrifying concept then burning in Hell.

You have, for the moment at least, spoiled Hereitc for me. I suspect that by the time I end up seeing - which I will, no question, I will have forgotten it and pondered those same questions. I suspect this film will be part of what is becoming a terrifying trend in horror about belief, along with the equally frightening Saint Maud, which shows the other end of this spectrum - blind faith and where it leads you. Now there's a double feature that the clergy will have more trouble with than they EVER had with Passion of the Christ.