Bill Maher, American hero: Laughing at religion is exactly what the world needs : Salon

[V0ltairesGh0st]

http://www.salon.com/2015/04/26/bill_maher_american_hero_laughing_at_religion_is_exactly_what_the_world_needs/


I agree wholeheartedly. Thank you Bill, and never mind your naysayers on this site. Here is an Excerpt that reflects the juvenile opinions of many here about Bill Maher.

Facing such a task, a desire for comic relief is only natural. Bill Maher is where anger, outrage and religion meet – in humor. (This essay will address only his stance on religion.) There is nothing un-American about his faith-bashing – far from it. Thomas Jefferson, who denied the divinity of Jesus, wrote that, “Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions” – and what is religion but a jumble of unintelligible propositions about our cosmos and its origins? Yet Maher has incited no small amount of ire among both the faith-addled masses (fully two-thirds of Americans believe Jesus actually rose from the dead, and almost half expect him to return in the coming decades) and their muddleheaded sympathizers for his brutal broadsides against religion, and Islam in particular. Bigot! Racist! Islamophobe! they cry, at times bemoaning the “offense” they purport to have suffered from his words, and illustrating how far the cognitive capacities of so many of us have deteriorated since Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority began meddling in politics. (This can be no coincidence.) Their real message to Maher: Shut up!

[Binkie The Clown]

1. +1000 A must read. n/t

[Surya Gayatri]

2. I find interesting parallels between Bill Maher's equal-opportunity skewering

of religious hypocrisy and that of Charlie Hebdo.

[chervilant]

3. This:

The proper response to religion, riddled as it is with absurdities, is, thus, laughter, either of the belly-slapping, table-pounding kind or the pitying, head-shaking sort. Laughter, but also outrage. After all, those who take such absurdities as manifestations of the Godhead have, especially since the Reagan years, hogged the moral high ground and commandeered American politics, polluting public discourse with their reactionary cant and halting progress in reproductive rights, science (think the Bush-era ban on stem cell research) and EDUCATION (to wit: stubborn attempts to have oxymoronic “Intelligent Design” rubbish taught in schools). Look abroad, and the panorama of savagery religion must answer for curdles the blood. No rationalist could contemplate all this entirely unnecessary faith-driven regress and backsliding with anything but anger, tempered with despair. If we want to do true and lasting good in this world, we are morally obligated to fight faith in the open, and root it out from every nook and cranny in which it hides.

Faith-driven regress, indeed...

[yurbud]

4. real issue with Islamic extremism is not whether it's bad but why our gov't supports it

again and again.

We backed the mujihadeen and Arab foreign fighters in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets in the late 70's and through the 80's, and when they morphed into al Qaeda, we used them to help break up Yugoslavia along religious and ethnic lines.

Our close ally, the Saudis, backed al Qaeda through the 9/11 attacks, and the bulk of the sectarian foreign fighters who streamed into Iraq during the Bush years were from Saudi.

Obama backed Islamic fundamentalists in Libya and Syria to undermine those governments and didn't seem to have much problem with ISIS until they turned on Iraq.

I have the same problems with religion that Bill Maher does, but I want to be careful that my distaste for it doesn't endorse the genocide and chaos our government is sowing in the Middle East, pouring gasoline (and money) on fundamentalists while pretending to fight them.

[V0ltairesGh0st]

6. not buying it

Well that is an interesting editorial opinion my friend... but to suggest Islamic extremism is not bad enough on it's own, without anyone exacerbating it is something a can not agree with. I bet I'm not the only one either.

[yurbud]

8. if our government cared that much about Islamic extremist they would go for the motherlode

and take out the government of Saudi Arabia.

not doing that is like fighting the war on drugs by only going after dime bag dealers and pretending the kingpins don't exist.

Ignoring the context means our government kills A LOT of innocent people while claiming to try to kill extremists they and our allies funded in the first place.

[yurbud]

9. after 9/11, FRONTLINE did a piece on Saudi promoting Wahhabi Islam in poor countries

They talked to a moderate imam in Madagascar or someplace like that and he said the Saudis come in and pay for extremists madrasahs to be set up, and the boys flock to them, but what can the community do? They are the only schools.

Saudi depends on our weapons and protection to survive. If our government didn't want or tacitly allow them to spread that, they could make them stop by simply clearing their throat.

[yurbud]

10. if you don't know the causes of the problem, you can't respond appropriately

more than a decade after our failed response to 9/11, that shouldn't even need to be mentioned.

Or do you think that "Be afraid and strike out blindly" is an appropriate foreign policy (or even respectable excuse for what our government is doing in the Middle East).

[V0ltairesGh0st]

11. Really you are just trying to hard.

you could have put the last 3 posts in one you know.

[yurbud]

5. ironically, the Moral Majority's meddling was instigated and underwritten by Chamber of Commerce

As Kruse argues, the belief that America is fundamentally and formally a Christian nation originated in the 1930s when businessmen enlisted religious activists in their fight against FDR’s New Deal. Corporations from General Motors to Hilton Hotels bankrolled conservative clergymen, encouraging them to attack the New Deal as a program of “pagan statism” that perverted the central principle of Christianity: the sanctity and salvation of the individual. Their campaign for “freedom under God” culminated in the election of their close ally Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.

http://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-God-Corporate/dp/0465049494

[Jesus Malverde]

7. He's pretty good at mocking all religions.

Except one.

[mimi85]

12. I finally stopped watching Bill Maher

He has the same themes that have become tiresome. Religion, pot (not that I'm against it), and I think that somewhere in his head and in his comments he's rather homophobic and misogynist. Also, and this isn't anything important, but his mannerisms drive me bonkers. He has a tendency to interrupt guests with inane comments and just isn't as funny or intelligent as he thinks he is. Sorry Bill.