Bill Maher travels all over creation - so to speak - in order to confront the faithful with cherry-picked contradictions to the answers they give to his loaded questions about what they believe. His own religious upbringing is muddled - Catholic father and Jewish mother - and he has come to conclude that religion is dangerous. In a sense, he’s right; but he misses, somewhat surprisingly, an important secondary point - which is that conservative thinking is also dangerous. At least, the two have the potential to be quite dangerous - just on their own. Combine them, and the result is a toxic stew of abdicated reason and mental decomposition that, in its very worst extremities, leads people to learn to fly straight so that they can park airplanes in skyscrapers.
He also misses - or chooses to ignore, which is probably closer to the truth - the point that religion does do some very fine things - though I strongly believe that this doing of fine things is directly proportional to how liberal a particular church or congregation is. That’s mostly a supposition based on my belief that little to no good comes from conservative thinking and politics - but it would take some pretty persuasive evidence to convince me otherwise.
But anyway...we’re talking about Bill Maher and his religion polemic. It’s heavy-handed and one-sided, brooks virtually no argument, and ends with several minutes of oddly incongruous anti-hellfire-and-brimstone hellfire and brimstone. And yet...I liked it. But then again, I don’t believe in god and I don’t go to church - and that’s pretty much the target demographic here. I liked the movie, but it was not completely satisfying. Maher seems genuinely interested in why believers believe what they believe, but seems so stuck on what he finds ridiculous about religion that he winds up making fun of the people he talks to rather than having serious discussions with them - a would-be investigative reporter who can’t quite transcend his comedic roots.
See, I don’t think religion is ridiculous. I think its applications can be ridiculous (paging the Saudis) and that some of its most ardent adherents are completely around the bend (paging Rod Parsley, and other such mental furballs) - but not that religion, in and of itself, is ridiculous. (Well...okay, Leviticus is ridiculous.) Treating it as such is unfair and, ultimately, not nearly interesting enough nor satisfying enough - but right up to the last three or four minutes, it’s pretty freaking funny.
5 comments:
I figured you'd have to write about this film eventually. I watched part of Maher's TV show recently, and while I find some of the things he says interesting, I have difficulty with the fact that he really likes himself, or at least comes off that way. It's like he thinks he's an intellectual, but he's from Hollywood, so combine those and it makes for an unpleasant mix, much like the combo of conservative thinking and religion.
Yeah, no danger in liberalism. Just the complete capitulation to the one culture that DOES fly planes in to buildings (if you believe the popular fiction).
And that whole 100 million corpses in one century thing. But those weren't "REAL" liberals that did that. So we'll just ignore those.
Maher's a moronic self-contradicting liberTINE (not libertarian as he likes to say). He has no sense of history or truth. The very few nuggets of truth he does spout are delivered in such a stupid manner he pisses everyone off.
The only good thing he's ever done was Amazon Women In The Avacado Jungle of Death.
I'm starting to like Mr Maier more and more with each comment!
The complete capitulation comment needs to be elaborated upon in order for it to make actual sense. You're not by any chance conflating "tolerance" with "capitulation," are you?
As far as the 100 million corpses, that absolutely is a conflation of radical leftism with contemporary American socio-political liberalism. If you want to ignore the various shades of grey in between, that's fine; just don't pretend that you're making an actual argument.
I've never seen Real Time, and never really cared for Politically Incorrect (though that was a long time ago, and I might think differently about it now). I never even thought Bill Maher was all that funny until Religulous. It's very important that non-believers make their voices heard; the suppression of those voices lends false authority to the assertions of the hillbilly retards that this is a Christian country. It absolutely is not.
Sorry, didn't trust myself to coherently respond last night as I was shit-faced.
John-O: "You're not by any chance conflating "tolerance" with "capitulation," are you?"
Not in the least. Look up how the UK is actually allowing its laws to be supplanted with the Islamoron Sharia codes.
England used to have balls. They shot men that forced widows to burn with their dead husbands' corpses in India.
Now they turn the other way while "honour killings" happen on their home turf and Muslim gangs run their streets.
And we're headed straight for the same road... all in the name of "tolerance".
And that's no conflation with American leftism when the stated goals of most leftists match those of Communism. Look up the planks of the Communist Revolution. Hell, look up the planks of the Nazis and the Fascists in Italy pre/during WWII and compare them to the Democratic Party. They're very nearly identical.
The 100 million corpses are the logical end of what Communism leads to. And liberalism is just Communism Lite without the courage of its convictions.
And are you going to tell me that Obama's crew is actually "tolerant" of dissent when they threaten lawsuits against those producing opposing political ads? And everyone that has a differing opinion is a "racist" by default?
The affirmative action baby has to get his way... or else.
The Cult of Tolerance (AKA the Democratic Party) is nothing of the sort. They scream down dissent at every turn. They're actually worse than the Republicans on that score. If you don't toe the party line, you're persona non grata, even if you've been a Democrat your whole life.
Me? MY evil agenda? I just want everyone to be left alone to run their own damn lives.
Obama? I fully suspect he'll use the Patriot Act to stifle domestic dissent. After all, after the first few go to Gitmo for pissing him off, most of the others will STFU real quick.
Hell, in this country we actually have a former Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize winner advocating physical violence and destruction of property against his business rivals and folks think all's okay cuz "he cares about the environment!"
Don't tell me about "tolerance". Liberals don't know the meaning of the word.
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