Bill Maher's Anti-Religion Movie

Fox News ^ | Friday, August 22, 2008 | Roger Friedman

[Sybeck1]

Bill Maher's Anti-Religion Movie “Religion is detrimental to the progress of society.” That’s my favorite quote from Bill Maher’s often brilliant, but often unfocused “documentary,” called “Religulous.” It opens in early October right after its debut at the Toronto Film Festival. The articulate, quick-witted comedian sets out in this film — which was supposed to have been released last Easter — to prove that line is true. Directed by Larry Charles, the man who put "Borat" together so skillfully, "Religulous" is blatant about Maher’s feelings: religion is bad. All religions are bad. They are ruining everything. If you go for that, then "Religulous" is for you. Unlike Michael Moore, whose controversial films at least allow stories to be told, Maher is not interested in other viewpoints. Rather, "Religulous" is a long Maher spiel that pauses only to underscore his own points. At first the film is very funny as Maher gently mocks one organized religion after another. He questions just about everything in Catholicism, even though he was raised Catholic. (His mother is Jewish, but threw it all over for the father.) Everything from the Immaculate Conception to crucifixion re-enactments are covered. By the time “Religulous” is over, the faith-seekers in the audience will have scratched Catholic off their possibilities. Not that the other major religious groups don’t come in for razzing, either. Maher is brutal to Orthodox Jews and just as nasty to Muslims. (He interviews gay Muslims in Amsterdam, a city where he also smokes a lot of pot and finds many easy laughs.) Mormons get it, and so do Scientologists, whom Maher mocks in London’s Hyde Park. Maher sends up everything outrageous and unusual in religion, cherry-picking the fringe elements wherever he can find them.

[Diamond]

Maher’s feelings: religion is bad. All religions are bad."

There is another incoherence. If religion is just another product of some impersonal stochastic, physical process of evolution, like gills on a fish, or Bill Maher, or any other concatenation of atoms, how can it be said to be "bad"? How can evolution produce something "bad"?

Cordially,

[jackibutterfly]

Would there be a Youtube link?

[CaliGirl-R]

Whenever I see Mr. Maher, the odor of the water that’s leftover after steaming cauliflower, comes to my mind, seriously, like he smells that way. Maybe it’s his paleness or something.

He reminds me of Andy Dick, too. The repulsiveness. Those lovely pictures of him that I’ve seen.

[Citizen Blade]

Yawn. I question the intelligence of anyone who finds Bill Maher even the least bit funny. The man is a strident bigot with a bad haircut.

When it first started, his old show used to be pretty fair- no sacred cow was safe and he would put together a panel of interesting people from all sides of the political spectrum and let them go at it.

But, over time, I think he figured out that it's easier to make it in the entertainment biz if you just bash conservatives and adopt all of the old, tired liberal positions.

[dead]

When it first started, his old show used to be pretty fair- no sacred cow was safe and he would put together a panel of interesting people from all sides of the political spectrum and let them go at it.

I agree. I actually went to see a taping for two shows at NBC studios in NYC. He balanced the panel nicely and pretty much slammed everybody. He also didn't have any of those vile snarky and disgusting comments like he has now.

But, over time, I think he figured out that it's easier to make it in the entertainment biz if you just bash conservatives and adopt all of the old, tired liberal positions.

He moved the show and himself to LA, where diversity of opinion is not allowed. Instead of fighting or merely submitting lamely to the thought police in the entertainment/stripper industry out there, he decided to become commandant of them.

He's just a surly unfunny vicious bitter animal now.

[Citizen Blade]

I agree. I actually went to see a taping for two shows at NBC studios in NYC. He balanced the panel nicely and pretty much slammed everybody. He also didn't have any of those vile snarky and disgusting comments like he has now.

I remember one episode where Kathy Ireland was getting attacked for being pro-life. One the liberals came out and claimed that a fetus wasn't really a human being. Maher interjected and asked "Well, what is it then? A frog?"

Originally, he came off as a straight-shooter who enjoyed being a smart-aleck and poking holes in peoples' arguments. It made for a lively show because he gave no one any mercy and was just as hard on a self-important liberal as he was on a humorless conservative.

But you're right- to stay popular with the "in-crowd" in LA, you can't stray too far from standard orthodoxy, unless you're a really big star.

[vpintheak]

You missed this one then:

Unlike Michael Moore, whose controversial films at least allow stories to be told, Maher is not interested in other viewpoints.

Now there is a crock of BS if I've ever read it.

[mtairycitizen]

It is good I stopped when I did. I would have throw up
if I saw that.

[Jason Kauppinen]

Atheism is lack of belief and therefore not a religion.

[Borges]

Agnosticm is a lack of belief. Atheism is a belief.

[reagan_fanatic]

I really don’t care what Maher thinks about anything, especially religion. He is nothing but a childish, self-centered little ass. The more he puffs himself up with his own sense of self-importance, the sillier he looks.

I would give anything, however, to be there when he meets God face to face and tries to explain why he spent so much of his time and effort mocking him.

[Diamond]

Agnosticm is a lack of belief. Atheism is a belief.

Neither of them are lack of belief. Agnosticism entails a claim that one cannot know for certain whether or not there is a God, which itself constitutes a belief about knowledge. Atheism (at least the strong form) entails the claim that there is no God, which is also a belief.

Cordially,

[Borges]

‘Agnostic’ literally means ‘without secret knowledge’. It’s not a positive belief.

[Diamond]

‘Agnostic’ literally means ‘without secret knowledge’.

The word is not normally used that hyper-literal of a sense. If you are referring to the etymology of the word, it was rather loosly made up by T.H. Huxley, around 1869, from the prefix a-, meaning "without, not," and the noun Gnostic, referring to the ancient Greek sect of Gnostics who claimed to possess a higher, esoteric spiritual knowledge. Huxley wrote:

"I ... invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic,' ... antithetic to the 'Gnostic' of Church history who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant." [T.H. Huxley, "Science and Christian Tradition," 1889]
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/agnostic

The problem with Huxley's definition is that if taken too literally in the sense of Gnostic claims of higher, esoteric spiritual knowledge, then the New Testament writers such as Paul and John, who opposed the Gnostics, would have to be considered as agnostics, which is absurd.

–noun

1.	a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.

2.	a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.

–adjective

3.	of or pertaining to agnostics or agnosticism.

4.	asserting the uncertainty of all claims to knowledge.

---

[Origin: < Gk ágn?st(os), var. of ágn?tos not known, incapable of being known (a- a-⁶ + gn?tós known, adj. deriv. from base of gignskein to know) + -ic, after gnostic; said to have been coined by T.H. Huxley in 1869]

—Related forms

ag·nos·ti·cal·ly, adverb

—Synonyms 1. See atheist.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

A philosophical claim that "the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience", is every bit a belief about some state of affairs as a belief in the contrary.

Cordially,

[Borges]

So then what would the word descrbing a lack of belief?

[Diamond]

"Denial" is a word that could be used to refer to a lack of belief in a particular proposition. It seems to me though, that an absolute lack of belief, or an absolute skepticism, is a self-defeating and incoherent concept.

Cordially,

[tpanther]

This is in fact the central problem with Godless liberalism and they know it.

They’re all snowflakes and daisys, tolerant of ALL things...

but when it comes to God...

or His children, they go right off the rails.

So we see Palin attacked by the likes of hollyweirdos.

Christians attacked for public displays of faith.

Conservative Christians are the biggest threat to failed liberalism, and they’re all too aware of it.

Palin sets them into panic mode.

[metmom]

Sure religion is detrimental to society.

That explains the progress made on the heels of the Protestant Reformation.

That explains the increase in violence and immorality with the decrease in religious activity.

That explains how our country became the greatest nation on earth. We abandoned our faith. Yeah, that’s it......

Maybe the people in communist China, the Soviet Union, NK, Viet Nam, would like to hear that news. I’m sure they missed that part while they were starving in death camps.

[Borges]

Soviet Style Communism and Nazism really were religions in the sense that there was a clear Orthodoxy and consequences for those who didn’t follow it.

[Rastus]

I think Bill came by his views because he looked in the mirror one day and said, “If there is a God, why did He make my head so big?”